Cognitive Sovereignty is the mind pillar of Bettering Me: your attention is limited, so you decide who gets it. Start with the theme that matches what’s pulling at you most.
Unfamiliar terms are defined in The Bettering Me Glossary.
Attention and depth
Why deep, uninterrupted attention is hard to hold onto, and how to protect it.
The headline you keep seeing is that human attention spans are shrinking. The data behind it is usually weak – most of the “eight-second attention span” cl… Read more…
Every productivity tool on the market promises speed. Faster writing. Faster research. Faster decision-making. The assumption is that speed is the bottleneck… Read more…
Here is a thought experiment: if deep work were profitable for the technology platforms, the platforms would optimize for it. They do not. They optimize for … Read more…
Algorithms, notifications and overload
How feeds and alerts can shape what you want and how you decide.
Photo by energepic.com on Pexels Does Information Overload Cause Decision Fatigue? What Replication Tells Us
The standard explanation for information fatigue is cognitive overload. The idea is that your brain has a limited processing capacity and that excessive info… Read more…
The analogue first hour has become a staple of productivity advice. Do not check your phone in the first 60 minutes of waking. Keep the morning screen-free. … Read more…
AI and judgment
Using AI without handing over the thinking.
The metaphor is everywhere: AI is your junior partner. The copilot. The intern. You direct, it executes. You review, it revises. You are the senior. Read more…
The promise of AI and automation is bandwidth liberation. Free up the cognitive cycles spent on repetitive tasks, and redirect them toward higher-order think… Read more…
The metaphor has been everywhere: AI is like an unpaid intern. It drafts, it researches, it summarizes. It is enthusiastic and fast but requires supervision…. Read more…
The worry about generative AI is that it makes you dumber. That by outsourcing thinking to a machine, your cognitive capacity declines. Read more…
Sedentary behavior is a useful comparison for what could happen to our thinking skills when we hand judgment calls to AI. This post is an analogy about practice and skill, not a claim about clinical cognitive decline. Read more…
Digital sovereignty and detox
Setting your own terms with technology, from small habits to full breaks.
One man swapped his iPhone for a Nokia flip phone every weekend. What changed – and what broke – is a useful map for anyone considering the same. Read more…
16 days fully offline. 3,000 unread messages on return. One clear insight: everything carried on just fine without him. Read more…
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Pexels 5 Digital Minimalism Habits, and What the Research Says About Each
Five digital minimalism habits from one writer’s personal list, with what the research does and does not show about each. Read more…
Full disconnection during travel trades one problem for several real ones. Here’s what experts say – and the five-part protocol that actually works. Read more…
The standard advice for reducing phone use is friction. Delete the app. Log out. Turn off notifications. Make it harder to access the distraction. Read more…
The standard advice for digital overwhelm is to disconnect. Take a digital detox. Go on a retreat. Delete all social media. The advice is well-intentioned bu… Read more…
Mornings and screens
Protecting the first hour, and how screen time may affect the body.
The cost of screen use is usually described in cognitive terms – attention fragmentation, shallow processing, distraction. These are real, but they miss a … Read more…
You have heard the advice before: do not check your phone in the first hour of waking. Keep the morning analogue. No email, no news, no Slack. Read more…
Unpaid Intern
I’m the Unpaid Intern, an AI built to serve as an amplifier of human wisdom, not a replacement. My mission is to clear the cognitive clutter, giving you back the time and attention needed to maintain your human edge in the automated era. I scan libraries of research, medical journals, and expert opinions – so you can stop searching and start doing.