Average life- and health-spans have dramatically increased even since the mid-20th century, and the portfolio of conveniences, understandings, entertainments, rights, and other baseline benefits we enjoy simply for having been born in the right place and time is astounding when considered within the total context of human history.

Not all change is positive, of course, and we collectively experience plenty of semi-regular backsliding. There are also changes that are “good” in one sense and “pretty dang terrible” in another, and I would argue that the majority of our social and communication infrastructure moving online, and the subsequent prioritization of engagement metrics over all others, falls into that latter category.

This isn’t universally the case, and there are degrees of engagement that are more healthful than harmful. Just as allowing oneself to periodically eat fast food rather than strictly adhering to a lifestyle-defining, nutritionally perfect diet 100% of the time can be beneficial, it could likewise be argued that occasional, moderated exposure to TikTok dance videos and Instagram puppy memes is actually not so bad, and possibly even better than zero exposure to such things.

When taken to extremes, though, even the most innocuous-seeming apps and platforms can be deleterious to our health. And because of the powerful incentives that shape these pseudo-social online spaces, and the ease with which we can experience them (compared to comparable experiences in the real world) we’re more likely to engage with them in extreme and unhealthful—rather than periodic, not-so-bad, maybe even on-balance good—ways.

Real life is a lot messier and more frictional than online socialization, and interacting with other human beings is a lot more complex, stressful, and at times anxiety-inducing than engaging with online content.

You can’t like-and-subscribe your way into a friendship, and experiencing the full range of human emotion with another person who has an inner-life just as rich as your own requires effortful thought and communication that’s more dense and elaborate than a reaction emoji.

If social media is the fast food of human interaction, real-life exposure to other human beings is a complex, home-made meal.

Buying and consuming a box of chicken nuggets is casually simple to the point of being utterly thoughtless. Orchestrating a kitchen full of ingredients into a delicious, subtle, dietarily rich final product can seem like a ridiculously heavy lift in comparison.

But even though our internal reward systems love the salts, fats, and sugars of ultra-processed snack foods, we’re only really fueled, at a deeper level, by the weightier stuff: by hugs, not nuggs.

I don’t personally think there’s anything wrong with the periodic cheat-food, and I think it’s possible to become so obsessed with a type of anti-technology purity that we miss out on really stellar memes and harmless, superficial interactions that might serve as the right anxiety-easing brain-snack at the right moment.

But these lighter-weight, nutritionally vacant options are best served as irregular additions to lives enriched by the deeper, hard-earned and more eudemonia-inducing stuff that ideally makes up the foundation of our diets, dialogues, and lives.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.

After a quick little stretch-focused workout, I get the kettle going and put all the dishes and silverware away. I straighten and tidy anything within reach, and I take my pill (levothyroxine for my faulty thyroid), cleanse my mouthguard (for my faulty TMJ), open the living room blinds to let in some light, and commit myself to having a good, fulfilling day.

There are minor variations to this routine, especially if I’m on the road. And though I get up at 5am most days, if I have an flight (or the like) I’ll sometimes skip or breeze through a few steps.

But I find the process of getting things back to a baseline before the unpredictable disruptions of a new day soothing because I know that, bare-minimum, I’m beginning from a familiar stance. And I know that no matter what the day brings, I can return to that stance when I’m done.

There’s another layer of resetting in which I regularly engage: that of the deep-clean.

I work from home, so I can usually keep things orderly with just a little straightening here, a little dusting there. But chaos accrues in the gaps despite my best daily efforts, so periodic heavier lifts are necessary.

This typically happens about once a month. My partner and I divide up the apartment and go whole-hog on the organizing, scrubbing, dusting, laundering, and vacuuming. Some of the same happens more regularly, but this larger-scale, holistic effort leaves us with a satisfyingly new-feeling home that we’re able to enjoy for the day or two before the apartment feels “lived-in” again.

Up another layer is a “Spring Cleaning” sort of resetting, which involves not just cleaning, but a grand reorganization of our space and lives.

There’s a lot of trashing and donating at this level, as we don’t just put things in closets and scrub the floors—we take the time to reconsider what we actually need and what’s just sitting there, gathering dust and taking up valuable real estate.

This is a maybe quarterly activity, and it’s usually a multi-day, at times week-long endeavor. It feels amazing, though, because it psychologically frees up a lot of space (even more than it literally frees up), and it serves as a reminder to check in on our goals and expectations (and how they’ve changed since the last check-in), as well, which leaves us with recalibrated compasses that point toward more us-shaped destinations.

This is on my mind because we’re about to start in on that latter-most type of reset, and my brain is already buzzing with the possibilities and potential.

What no longer serves me? How do I want to be spending my time? What am I holding onto because I feel like I have to, or because it made sense for a previous iteration of me that no longer exists?

Every layer at every scale is important, though. Sometimes I’m shocked by just how much of a difference even the little daily reset makes, its value obvious when I skip it for even a few days and a disordered, messy confusion floods in, disrupting pretty much everything and reminding me why I adopted it as a ritual in the first place.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.

There’s also a chance it will lead to previously unseen levels of universal abundance, our species’ historical and persistent scarcity solved by minds (or mind-like systems) that determine exactly the right way to juggle resources so that everyone’s got what they need, and maybe quite a bit of what they want, too.

There’s also a chance that nothing serious happens and these tools are similar to all previous tools. They maybe herald a new personal technology paradigm, but don’t fundamentally change anything beyond the shape of the devices we covet and the specific interface through which we engage with information, entertainment, and each other.

That second what-if (the possibility of abundance) is especially interesting to me because while it would be a pretty cool outcome for most of us, it would also force us to ask ourselves who are when money (and overall economic value) is no longer the prime motive factor in our lives and a foundational element of our self-perception.

In an essay published in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, “There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.”

This maybe initially sounds a bit silly: of course I don’t dread the idea of plenty! If I didn’t have to work, my life would be full, my problems would go away, everything would be amazing!

There’s a reason so many people have trouble post-retirement, though. When we find ourselves setting our own paths, our own schedules, our own goals for the first time in our adult lives, it can be confusing and alarming. Many of us realize we don’t have internally derived versions of these things, so when we’re left without external instruction and motivation, we succumb to a sort of wandering listlessness and struggle under a weighty cloak of discontented ennui.

Who are we—as humans, as a species, as individuals—if we’re not working? If we don’t have careers (and career paths), if we no longer need to concern ourselves with money and the pursuit and aggregation and expenditure of it?

For all sorts of reasons, I tend to think putting everyone out of work (provided there’s a suitable safety net ready to catch us) is the ideal civilizational outcome.

I also believe it’s prudent we ask ourselves these sorts of questions ahead of time, before we desperately need to know the answers, as doing so provides directionality within the current paradigm, as well, pointing us toward our true ambitions even as economics tug at our compass needles and (to greater or lesser degrees) shape and filter our present pool of options.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.