Is attention a resource or a relationship?
Tom Chatfield’s short essay, "The attention economy,” raises an interesting question: why do we think of attention as a resource? For all the sophistication of a world in
The Internet of Things is just another way to distract you
One of the things you always, and I mean always, hear about Internet of Things and smart home devices is that they “just work.” They’re all like these
Identity projects, adolescence, and success
A recent book by Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin, Coming of Age in the Other America, that aims to explain how some poor kids manage to thrive,
Big news: Rapper Crush wins second Korean Space Out Contest
This is easy to play as a "news of the weird" piece, but having spent lots of time studying the benefits of mind-wandering and restorative activities, I can't
I’m back
For the last few weeks I've been finishing the revisions to my book on deliberate rest, and so have been focused on that instead of the blog. As much
16 hours a month on Facebook is the new normal
A new study by Comscore of Americans’ social media network use in 2015 reveals that people over 35 spend an average of 22 hours a month on social
“Our challenge is to build that wisdom into our next generations of contemplative technology”
I’m deep in revisions of the next book and am not taking the time to write at length about anything else, but I wanted to flag this Vincent
Mind-wandering and Edge of Tomorrow
One of my favorite movies is the under-appreciated Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow, in which Cruise has to relive a disastrous battle hundreds of
Addiction, cellphone use, and depression
As someone who wrote a book called The Distraction Addiction, this new study by University of Illinois researchers Alejandro Lleras and Tayana Panova caught my eye: Is cellphone use detrimental
On creative lives and the art of saying “no”
One of the striking things I noticed when writing REST was how often the people I was studying said no to things, arranged their lives to smoothy avoid