Living Well in a Digital World
Technology changed almost everything about how we live. It did not change what we need as human beings — and the gap between those two facts is where most of the modern strain actually lives.
Why this matters now
Most advice about technology arrives as a verdict — quit it, limit it, fear it — when what people actually need is a working model of why it affects them the way it does.
The tools in your pocket were not designed against your willpower by accident. Understanding that design is not paranoia; it is basic literacy for living now.
The six areas this course covers — attention, connection, identity, digital life, presence and real life — are not separate problems. They are one nervous system meeting one environment, and it helps enormously to see them as connected.
Nobody is coming to redesign your phone for your wellbeing. The redesigning is yours to do, and it is more possible than it feels once you know where to start.
What you'll understand
- Why your attention behaves the way it does around a device built to hold it, and what that has to do with dopamine, novelty and unpredictability.
- Why digital connection can feel both essential and hollow at the same time, and what actual closeness requires that a feed cannot supply.
- How identity gets shaped by an audience, real or imagined, and what happens to self-knowledge when performance and reflection get blurred together.
- What your digital life is quietly optimised for, versus what you are actually optimised for as a person.
- Why presence — attention on the thing in front of you — has become a skill you now have to practise rather than something that simply happens.
- What a full human life needs that no app can supply, and how to protect room for it without treating technology as the enemy.
What you'll actually do
- Run a plain attention audit across one ordinary day, without judgement, to see where your hours are actually going.
- Take a connection inventory that separates contact from closeness, so you know which relationships need more than a notification.
- Redesign the defaults on your own devices — the settings nobody asked you to accept — so your environment stops working against you.
- Run a two-week real-life experiment: one small, specific change to what you do with reclaimed time, tracked honestly rather than aspirationally.
- Build your own Modern Human Plan: a short, personal, non-generic document about what you want more of, less of, protected, and changed.
Who this is for
- Anyone who has finished a phone-related article feeling more anxious rather than more equipped, and wants something more useful than another warning.
- People who suspect their relationship with their devices is costing them something specific — attention, closeness, sleep, creative time — but haven't been able to name it precisely enough to change it.
- Parents, partners and professionals who are not looking to disappear from digital life, only to stop being quietly run by it.
- Readers who want a framework they can return to, not a 30-day challenge that ends the moment it's over.
The curriculum
- 01
The Premise: What Changed, and What Didn't
Technology moved fast. Human need held still.
20 min · Free preview
- 02
Attention
The resource everything else is built from
22 min
- 03
Connection
Contact is not the same as closeness
20 min
- 04
Identity
Who you are when you're also who you're seen to be
22 min
- 05
Digital Life
The environment you didn't choose, and can still redesign
22 min
- 06
Presence
Being where you actually are
20 min
- 07
Real Life
The body, the world, and the time nothing is scheduled
22 min
- ★
Your Modern Human Plan
A written, saved plan in your own words — what you want more of, less of, and what you are actually going to change.
Tools included
- Audit
The Attention Audit
To see, in plain terms rather than app-reported summaries, where your attention actually goes across one ordinary day.
- Reflection sheet
The Connection Inventory
To separate contact from closeness, and identify which relationships need more than a notification.
- Decision tool
Defaults & Environment Redesign Sheet
To identify which unchosen defaults are shaping your digital behaviour, and deliberately redesign the ones doing the most quiet damage.
- Tracker
The Real Life Experiment Tracker
To run a genuine two-week experiment in reclaiming unstructured, embodied, offline time — tracked honestly rather than aspirationally.
The Premise: What Changed, and What Didn't
Technology moved fast. Human need held still.
Loading the preview…
One payment. Lifetime access, including every future revision of the course. Your reflections and your plan stay in your private account.