2025-01-24 00:21:29
We all want certainty. It’s natural – after all, our ancestors needed to know where to find food and how to avoid danger. The more information they had, the better their chances of survival.
But today’s world is different. When the pace of change keeps accelerating and we need to adapt to constant technological, social, and economic shifts, our instinct for certainty can hold us back.
While our ancestors thrived on seeking certainty, our survival now depends on embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it. So how can we befriend and even leverage uncertainty?
When you’re uncertain, your brain activates two key regions. Your amygdala, the emotional center, treats uncertainty as a potential threat. It releases stress hormones and prepares your body for danger. At the same time, your prefrontal cortex tries to analyze the situation and plan a logical response.
These regions don’t work in isolation. The thalamus connects them, creating a dialogue between your emotional and rational responses. This teaches us something important: handling uncertainty isn’t about suppressing emotions in favor of logic. Instead, it’s about coordinating both parts of yourself to respond more effectively.
Research suggests that this integration of thinking and feeling leads to better decisions under uncertainty. When we work with our brain’s natural responses rather than fighting them, we navigate uncertain situations more successfully.
Unfortunately, many of us fall into predictable traps when facing uncertainty. We fall prey to analysis paralysis, trying to gather every piece of information before acting, or binary thinking where we see only best/worst outcomes rather than the spectrum of possibilities.
We might experience emotional avoidance, attempting to think our way out of uncertainty without processing our emotions first. Often, we try to handle everything alone instead of leveraging social support.
Instead of trying to control everything and go back to an illusory place of certainty, the key to thriving in uncertainty is developing an experimental mindset. Instead of seeing uncertain situations as problems to solve, we can view them as opportunities to run experiments.
This mental shift can have profound effects on your brain:
So next time you face uncertainty, don’t ask “What’s the right answer?” Instead, try approaching the question like a scientist, asking: What could I learn from this experience?
This simple reframe – the willingness to step into the unknown – will help transform anxiety into curiosity. That’s the power of an experimental mindset.
While we can’t eliminate uncertainty, we can develop better ways to handle it. Here are three evidence-based strategies that work with your brain’s natural responses to uncertainty. You can think of them as three interlocking “gears” working together.
Uncertainty creates space for growth and discovery. Through metacognition, emotional regulation, and social connection, understanding and adapting your brain’s automatic response will help you work with uncertainty rather than against it.
Your brain might prefer certainty, but it’s fully equipped to handle the unknown. The real question isn’t whether you can handle uncertainty – it’s what you’ll discover when you approach it with an experimental mindset.
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2025-01-15 20:16:49
At his school in ancient Athens, Aristotle encouraged everyone to walk through the gardens while discussing ideas, rather than sitting quietly for lectures. Teachers and students would explore questions, challenge each other’s thinking, and build on each other’s insights.
This tradition of walking and wondering together became so successful that it continued for centuries, influencing how knowledge was shared throughout the ancient world.
Yet today we rarely create space for such collective curiosity. While we have unprecedented access to information, we’re often too busy, too distracted, or too preoccupied with immediate results to engage in shared exploration. Plus, our education and workplaces usually prioritize individual achievement over collaborative discovery.
This is unfortunate, as exploring together can lead to remarkable outcomes. When you share your questions with others, you can create new possibilities that none of you could have imagined alone. Let’s explore why this happens and how you can make it work for you.
History often paints a romantic picture of the lone genius – the solitary inventor in their workshop, the isolated scientist in their lab, the writer alone in their garret… This narrative is compelling but incomplete: individual brilliance is rarely enough for breakthrough innovation.
The Wright brothers didn’t invent flight in isolation; they extensively corresponded with fellow aviation enthusiasts. The Human Genome Project, which successfully mapped our genetic code, wasn’t the work of a single brilliant mind, but rather a massive collaborative effort where thousands of scientists shared their questions, challenges, and discoveries.
Collective curiosity is the practice of exploring questions and discovering answers together, where we build on each other’s insights and create an environment that encourages open inquiry and shared learning.
When you practice collective curiosity, you will:
Many resist collective curiosity for understandable reasons. In competitive workplaces, admitting uncertainty can feel risky. Time pressures push us toward quick solutions. You might worry that asking questions might make you seem indecisive. Yet, those who embrace a shared, generative state of unknowing often find it leads to better outcomes.
Better ideas, stronger relationships, more enjoyable work… While the benefits of collective curiosity are clear, creating an environment where people feel comfortable exploring together takes some thought and effort.
But the payoff is worth the investment. Fortunately, there are practical ways to get started. Here are five ways you can start unlocking these benefits:
1. Mapping the unknown. Many breakthroughs start when someone admits “I don’t understand why…” Sit down with your colleagues and explicitly write down what you don’t know or understand about a topic. This turns knowledge gaps into shared opportunities for discovery.
2. Multilevel metacognition. Question your assumptions together as a form of self-anthropology. Have your team trace back their assumptions to their origins. Start with any current practice and ask “Why do we do this?” For each answer, ask “Why do we believe that?” This metacognitive practice helps uncover hidden assumptions that might be limiting better solutions.
3. Wonder walks. Take walks with colleagues where you share what you’re working on and what questions you’re wrestling with. You can try this one-on-one or in small groups. The informal setting and movement often lead to more open conversations and unexpected connections.
4. Tiny experiments. Try a new meeting format for a week or test a different approach with three customers. Keep experiments small enough that failure feels safe – this encourages bolder questions and sometimes the most interesting discoveries come from experiments that don’t work as planned.
5. Learning in public. Start a newsletter about what you’re learning or host “Curiosity Hour” sessions where people share their work in progress. When we openly share our uncertainties, it creates psychological safety for others to do the same. It also creates opportunities for unexpected paths as others can spot patterns you might have missed.
The greatest breakthroughs in human history haven’t come from lone geniuses but from communities of curious minds, each building upon each other’s questions and insights.
When we practice collective curiosity, every conversation becomes a chance to learn something new. So let me ask: which questions will you and your team explore today, together?
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2025-01-09 00:35:16
As a child, I believed in magic. During family holidays in Brittany, I would scan the landscape for korrigans, the local gnome-like spirits. I collected stones and suspected that our neighbor might be a witch. I lost myself in fantasy books, particularly those by Bernard Werber. His novel The Thanatonauts about scientists traveling to the afterlife inspired countless hours of failed astral projection.
Years passed, and my perspective shifted. Now, as a neuroscientist with a tech background, I always look for empirical evidence before accepting any claims. This creates an interesting tension whenever I discover some practices that help me personally but lack robust research.
Looking at my friends, I also notice fascinating patterns in how they approach “woo woo” beliefs. I know clinicians who believe in reincarnation, highly analytical entrepreneurs who pull a tarot card each morning, and engineers who consult astrology but reject the existence of spirits. Some are deeply scientific about certain phenomena while accepting paranormal explanations for others.
My own relationship to woo stuff is complex, and I wanted to create a simple framework to discuss these differences with friends. I call it the Woo Spectrum. I hope it will resonate with those of you who, like me, feel both spiritually and scientifically minded, and who want to have more generative conversations.
Conversations can become binary and polarized when we lack language to describe our beliefs. The Woo Spectrum helps us understand and describe our relationship with debated practices and philosophies. It consists of four levels:
1) Woo Critical (rejecting). You view certain practices as specious, a fun thing to do at best, but misleading and potentially dangerous at worst. You actively challenge claims about these and seek to expose what you consider pseudoscience, or avoid these topics entirely as not worth engaging with.
2) Woo Cautious (observing). You’re skeptical but remain open to evidence. You’re happy to engage in friendly conversations about these practices (although you might not be the one initiating them), but you’re not ready to try them personally.
3) Woo Curious (experimenting). You actively explore these practices while maintaining critical thinking. You’ve found some benefits but you’re not fully convinced, or you think there might be some yet-to-be-discovered scientific explanation to strange phenomena.
4) Woo Convinced (practicing). You’ve integrated these practices into your life based on personal experience and evidence you find compelling. You might even encourage or guide others through these modalities.
This isn’t about factually categorizing the practices themselves. This isn’t about identifying yourself with an overall stance akin to a persona either. Instead, the Woo Spectrum offers a frame to explore how you relate to specific practices at this point in time.
Your stance can vary across different practices and evolve based on new evidence and experiences. You might even find yourself on overlapping levels when it comes to some practices.
As an example, I tend to be critical of crystal healing, astrology, and feng shui – practices that to me have no basis in reality. My friends know I might get bored fairly quickly if these become the main topic of conversation.
I remain cautious about modalities such as acupuncture and hypnosis. While I don’t have much experience with these and am not familiar with the research, I know many people who have found them helpful, such as friends who quit smoking. These results are tangible enough that it gives me pause.
Based on both personal experience and scientific evidence, I’m convinced about practices that might be considered “woo” such as plant medicine, breathwork, meditation, and somatic movement. I find myself aligned with debated philosophical ideas such as panpsychism, which to me offers the most parsimonious explanation for consciousness.
My stance has evolved in other areas. I’ve become curious about tarot and I-Ching, viewing them as tools for self-reflection rather than divination. Sound healing intrigues me not for mystical reasons, but for its potential effects on the nervous system.
I’m also cautious-curious about manifestation from a psychological perspective – such as how visualization and self-belief might influence behavior and thus outcomes, rather than any supernatural mechanism. So I’m happy to let friends say they’re manifesting something without having to start a debate.
While we might often progress through these four levels of woo sequentially, that’s not necessarily the case. Certain experiences can trigger sudden shifts – in my case it was working with psychedelics, while others have reported similar abrupt transitions after NDEs or profound meditation experiences.
You might also revert back to a lower level on the Woo Spectrum. For instance, new scientific research might move someone from convinced to cautious about certain practices. Rather than sequential fixed steps, these levels should be seen as a snapshot of your current beliefs.
The Woo Spectrum offers a simple framework for exploring your relationship with alternative practices and having more nuanced conversations about them.
First, spend a few minutes filling in the map (make a copy), placing practices on a spectrum depending on how critical to convinced you feel about them. Then, here’s how you can use your Woo Spectrum:
• Self-reflection: Notice what you tend to accept or reject, and why. Track how your views evolve over time. This can reveal blind spots in your thinking and areas where you might benefit from more openness or skepticism.
• Communication: Use it as part of conversations with friends. Understanding our position on the spectrum can provide language to express where we stand and why. Instead of binary debates about whether something works or not, we can have nuanced conversations integrating varying levels of evidence and diverse experiences that might shape (and reshape) our views.
• Personal development: Leverage the framework as a guide to explore unfamiliar practices with intention. This might mean trying a practice at least once or reading the scientific literature. You can then choose to integrate it into your life or decide it’s not for you, but only after actively exploring its potential benefits. The idea isn’t to accept or reject wholesale but to make intentional decisions based on what you know and don’t know (yet).
We all navigate the strange territory between science and spirituality in our own way. The Woo Spectrum offers a map for this journey – not to judge where others stand, but to better understand your own path and have richer conversations along the way.
If you’re curious about these topics, here are some online communities you might want to join: (1) The Leading Edge created by Tom Morgan, who gives a “woo rating” to concepts he explores; (2) InterIntellect by Anna Gát with salons about a wide range of topics; (3) and of course the Ness Labs community for curious minds.
The Woo Spectrum: A Framework for Understanding and Communicating our Relationship with Debated Practices and Philosophies. Published: January 8th, 2025.
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2025-01-03 22:03:34
Pre-order your copy of Tiny Experiments before January 7, 2025 to receive the Year of Curiosity worksheet with 52 curiosity prompts, 12 monthly themes, and fillable weekly review templates.
New technologies, new ways of working, new modes of communication… Each new year is a reminder that the world is changing faster than ever. And it can feel like it’s impossible to keep up.
Fortunately, curiosity can help us keep up. When we experiment and stay open to uncertainty, we’re better equipped to handle whatever comes our way. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, we can see these changes as interesting challenges to explore.
What would your life look like if curiosity was your default mode of thinking? What kind of personal and professional growth could you unlock if any doubt became an opportunity for self-discovery? Let’s explore how you can design a year of curiosity.
Recent research shows that curiosity does more than help us learn – it makes us better at solving problems, connecting with others, and adapting to change. It suggests that nurturing your curiosity might be one of the most effective investments you can make in yourself.
When we encounter something new and interesting, our brains release dopamine – the same neurotransmitter associated with reward and pleasure. This creates a simple pattern: the more we learn, the more we want to learn.
This drive to explore and understand isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential to who we are as humans. Every major breakthrough, from early tools to modern technology, started with someone asking “What if?” or “How does this work?”
In the same way, this experimental mindset – always asking questions, trying new approaches, and learning from the outcomes, even if they’re unexpected – can become your compass in navigating our ever-changing world.
Many of us make less space for curiosity as we get older. We get busy, fall into routines, or worry about looking like we don’t know enough. The good news is: curiosity is a skill we can rebuild at any age.
There’s no single “right” way to be curious. Learning practical skills like coding or cooking, diving into topics like history or science, joining groups of people who share your interests… These are all great ways to inject more curiosity into your life.
The key is asking questions and trying things out. Instead of thinking “I should already know this” when you don’t understand something, it’s about seeing doubt as an interesting puzzle to solve. And there are simple ways you can nurture this mindset all year round.
Designing a year of curiosity means creating small, manageable habits that keep curiosity alive in your everyday routines. This way, you can ensure that curiosity becomes a natural part of your life instead of an afterthought.
• Monthly: Design one tiny experiment at the beginning of each month This could be as simple as exploring a topic you know nothing about, trying a new hobby, or doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. The goal isn’t mastery – it’s discovery. Think of it as giving yourself permission to follow a question for a few weeks and see where it leads.
• Weekly: Every week, take 10 to 15 minutes to conduct a weekly review. What went well this week? What didn’t go as planned? What will you focus on next week? This could mean doubling down on what worked or tweaking something that didn’t. Week after week, these moments of reflection will help you build momentum even if you don’t have a clear destination.
• Daily: Create at least one moment of curiosity in your day, no matter how small. Experiment with a new recipe or tool, have one meaningful conversation, try a journaling prompt, or take a different route to work. Even one minute of curiosity a day can add up to a much richer life.
Designing a year of curiosity doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. It’s about making small, intentional choices to incorporate curiosity into your monthly, weekly, and daily routines so you can make space for growth and discovery – no matter how busy life might get.
At the end of the year, you want to be able to look back, not in awe of everything you accomplished, but in awe of how much you’ve learned and changed.
A bit of scaffolding can help to make curiosity a year-long habit. You need more than motivation – you need a support system that works for you. Here are some practical ways to help make curiosity a regular part of your life this year:
And consider becoming a teacher yourself! Sharing what you’ve learned is one of the best ways to deepen your knowledge. Whether you start a blog, a newsletter, or just share your thoughts with friends, learning in public will encourage you to think more critically and creatively about topics you’re curious about.
Curiosity is a skill we can all practice. Whether you’re asking more questions, exploring new topics, or stepping outside your comfort zone, tiny experiments can add up to big changes. So, what will you discover this year? There’s only one way to find out – start exploring!
Pre-order your copy of Tiny Experiments before January 7, 2025 to receive the Year of Curiosity worksheet with 52 curiosity prompts, 12 monthly themes, and fillable weekly review templates.
The post A Year of Curiosity appeared first on Ness Labs.
2024-12-20 18:12:41
Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think better and live happier. Clint Jarvis is the founder of Roots, a mobile app designed to set boundaries with your phone and make time for the things you love.
In this interview, we talked about how to find balance in the digital world, how to build an intentional relationship with technology, how gamification can help us stick with our intentions, and much more. Enjoy the read!
Hi Clint, thanks for agreeing to this interview! You’re on a mission to help us live a balanced life in a digital world. What does that mean exactly?
We live in a very digital world where we are more “connected” than ever before. This has some amazing benefits, but it also comes with some big downsides. The 2024 Oxford Word of the Year was “Brain Rot”. I think this is a strong signal of how people feel about living in our hyper-connected world.
For us, finding balance is about intentionally building a healthier relationship with our digital devices and setting clear boundaries. This applies to all technology, but I think phone usage is the most acute and addressable problem. Studies show that over 50% of us are addicted to our phones, and I suspect the real number is higher.
The average person spends over 6 hours per day consuming content, and checks their phone around 150 times… that’s every 6 minutes. When you add it all up, we touch, tap, or scroll on our phones 2,617 times per day.
For most of us, this was not a conscious choice. We just woke up one day and realized that our phones were stealing our time, attention, and energy. And it has a major impact on our mental and physical health. Excessive phone usage leads to an increase in anxiety and depression, neck pain, and sleep disturbances… shorter attention spans, less time outside, less time with loved ones… the list goes on and on. You’ve probably seen the infamous chart that shows how mental health problems spiked the year of the first iPhone launch.
So, we have found ourselves in a position where things have gotten pretty out of balance when it comes to our relationship with technology.
But this is not about demonizing technology, right?
That’s a great point. We love technology. When used intentionally, it really can make our lives better. And, it’s not going anywhere. We are not suggesting that you get rid of your phone, or avoid technology completely.
But, if we continue on our current trajectory, we could end up living in one of those near future dystopian movies where everyone is plugged into virtual reality 16 hours a day. It feels like an important moment for us to take a step back and reassess what it means to use technology thoughtfully,
It’s really about building a balanced relationship. We believe it’s possible to use technology to its fullest potential without compromising your wellbeing.
So that’s what inspired you to create Roots.
That’s right. I’ve experienced this problem first hand. When I was building my first startup, I reached a point of serious burnout. I was working 7 days a week, and in a self-imposed way, I was never disconnected. I checked slack and email 24/7, and filled every gap in my day with my phone.
My brain was always wired, I struggled with sleep, I was having back issues, and generally was not very happy on a day to day basis. And I was only 25 years old. I took a long look in the mirror, and decided it was time for a change.
I started taking small steps towards finding better balance in my life. It wasn’t just about screen time or my phone, but taking a fresh look at everything I was doing. That was about 10 years ago and was the start of a journey towards finding better personal balance. It’s still a work in progress and I imagine always will be.
Around 3 years ago I started to get the urge to build something that could help other people find better balance in our digital world, but I didn’t know what it should be. At the time I was building my second startup, Intown Golf Club, which was growing fast, we went from zero to #205 on the Inc. 5000 list over the last 5 years. Despite the success of Intown Golf Club, I felt a strong pull towards building something new. I started working weekends on a few ideas.
Two years ago, we launched the first version of Roots — a nature-based mindfulness app — as a side project. After talking to a lot of our users, I realized that we were building something that was “nice to have”, not “must have”. But, during those conversations I started to see a pattern. People talked about how their phones were getting in the way of everyday life. This resonated strongly with my own experience.
I joined a startup studio with Wildwood Ventures to explore what Roots could become. I came in with several broad ideas, but we honed in on phone addiction pretty quickly. Everyone we talked to had a similar story — the paradox of “I don’t have enough time”, and “I spend 4+ hours per day on my phone”. It felt like there was a real opportunity to unlock this time.
It was clear that people needed help keeping their mindless scrolling in check, and they didn’t have a solution — they either weren’t aware of the native phone limits, or found it too easy to ignore them.
We believed we could build a brand that promoted better balance, and create an app that acted like a friendly accountability partner with app blocking that had more friction, so you could actually stick to it.
Even with a clear vision, the path is a winding one. There was actually a point in the journey where we almost quit. In early 2024, we had just launched our beta version of the app, we were struggling with the Apple Screen Time API, we were almost out of cash, and it felt like everything was an uphill battle. The voice in my head started having doubts. I specifically remember going for a walk in my neighborhood to clear my mind and decide whether we should keep moving forward.
I saw 5 people on the walk. Two kids walking to the bus stop, a mom pushing a stroller, a grandparent in the park, and a man running. Every single one of them was distracted and on their phone. It felt like a sign from the universe. I went home, and decided to commit to the next phase, which included making a personal investment in our pre-seed round to extend the runway.
We made a ton of progress over the next 6 months. In October, it felt like we turned a corner. I send a personal email to everyone who signs up. For a long time, I rarely got a reply. If I did, it was usually about a bug or potential improvement. Then, I started getting love letters. Lots of them. We track a lot of KPIs, but this one is probably my favorite.
So, how does Roots work, exactly?
Roots works like a friendly accountability partner. We give you tools to set hard limits, offer encouraging nudges, and help turn data into actionable insights.
We start by setting your intentions — how much time do you want to spend on your phone? How often do you want to check your phone? What kind of limits and downtimes do you want to adopt? And, importantly, what are the simple things you can use as “scroll replacements”? It’s easier to cut back on doom scrolling when you have something to replace it with.
Then we help you set up a personalized combination of app limits and downtimes. One of our most popular blocking features is “Monk Mode” which keeps you from unblocking apps completely. Another popular blocking feature is “Intentional Mode”, which keeps apps blocked by default and forces you to unblock mindfully for each session. We think it’s important to offer a flexible set up since everyone has a unique relationship with their phone.
We also include a small dose of gamification. We have a beautiful tree for you to keep healthy by staying within your intentions. As you stay under your limits and downtimes, you’ll build a streak, and you can earn cheat days and custom app icons as you go.
We take boring screen time data and make it interesting. The “Daily Balance Score” is like a sleep score for your phone. We break down app usage using our patent-pending “Digital Dopamine Tracker”, which helps quantify the impact of time on each app, since not all screen time is equal. We show you “how often you check your phone” instead of just pickups, and much more.
Finally, we help you quantify progress and encourage you to keep it up by showing you how much time you’ve unlocked by using the app, and progress over time.
Another interesting feature is challenges. Can you tell more?
This is one of my favorite features. The idea is to host time-based phone detox challenges that anyone can join. The beauty of it is, the app will track everything automatically and keep you accountable. Plus, you can invite friends or family to join and make it a social thing.
We have hosted everything from a “Sunday Social Media Detox”, to “Be Present for Thanksgiving”. We typically will host a few unique challenges per week. All of them involve blocking your most distracting apps for the day, and only allowing a few unblocks.
There is something special about the community aspect of Challenges. It’s fun to know that you’re in it together. Even for our team, on Monday’s, it’s always exciting to share stories from the Sunday Detox Challenge.
Challenges are also a great way to get “back on the horse” if you fall out of your daily blocking habits. We’ve heard from many users that they will use a Sunday Detox Challenge as a way to kick things back off when they start to slip.
What kind of people use Roots?
It’s funny, part of the playbook when you build an early stage company is to “start narrow.” Meaning, you should have a single focus on a specific type of user.
We started with this goal in mind, but as we went along we realized that Roots works really well for many several different types of people.
Professionals (both remote and in-office) are a big one. Folks who are tied to a screen for work and want to set boundaries so they can be more productive, and enjoy real downtime.
Parents use Roots to be more present with their family, and to set better examples for their kids. Students use Roots to stay focused on studying, and help with anxiety and mental health. Couples use Roots to be more present in their relationship, and join challenges like “phone free date nights”.
The beauty is that many types of people use Roots to boost productivity, unlock more time, improve wellbeing, be more present, strengthen relationships, and get better sleep. The average person on Roots is unlocking two hours every single day.
What about you, how do you use Roots?
I use Roots every day. I averaged 4 hours per day on my phone before Roots. Now I’m consistently under 2 hours per day. My pickups have gone from 150 per day down to 50. But, if I’m testing something new and delete my regular setup, it’s a slippery slope. I find myself creeping back up towards 4 hours per day very quickly. I’ve found I really need the guardrails.
I use it in a few different ways. First, I have a weekly set of blocking rules. I keep all social media and work apps blocked in the morning (4:00AM – 9:00AM) and evening (6:00PM-4:00AM). In the morning I give myself 2 unblocks, so I can check in on the day, without doom scrolling my morning away. In the evening, I use “Monk Mode”, so I can’t unblock even if I want to. This helps me wind down at night and keeps me off my phone in bed. If I really need to get online I’m forced to be intentional and use my computer.
Outside of my downtimes, I keep social media blocked by default and only allow 5 unblocks per day. This has made a big difference. It’s only a small amount of friction to unblock, but it forces me to think twice each time.
I set up my “scroll replacements” to be reading, stretching, going outside, and walking my dog. Each time I want to unblock an app, I’m forced to look at the list of things I could be doing instead. My dog gets a lot more walks than she did before I started using Roots.
In Roots, we show you “how often you check your phone”. So I keep a close eye on my pickups and try to stay above “every 20 minutes”, which is around 50 pickups per day. I do our weekly “Sunday Social Media Detox” challenge, this serves as a nice reset each week. I will usually take a few minutes on this day to review the prior week and see which apps I consumed the most “digital dopamine” from, check my balance score, and assess my plans for the coming week so I can adjust as needed.
Every month or so I will go phone-free by turning on Monk Mode for 24 hours. The first time I did this I was shocked by how good it felt. I hadn’t stayed off my phone for 24 hours since I got my first iPhone in high school in 2008. By the end of the 24 hours, I honestly felt like time had slowed down and I was more at peace than I had been in a long time.
And finally… What’s next for Roots?
We are very bullish about the future. I believe everyone who has a phone can benefit from Roots. It feels like the screen time space is in a similar position to where meditation apps were in 2015. Headspace and Calm were early in their journey, and over the next 10 years we would see several unicorns emerge and hundreds of millions of people start using meditation apps.
2025 will be all about growth. We have worked very hard this year to iterate quickly, and set the app up to be very scalable. We have several exciting marketing activations kicking off in the new year.
I expect the team will grow quickly. We currently have 4 full time co-founders, and several key part-time team members. I am very proud of our founding team. We have an amazing culture where everyone is excited about what they are doing on a daily basis.
On the product side we have a lot of exciting things planned for Q1 2025, and beyond. We are a very design focused team. We are obsessed with continuing to iterate the app, and building it into the best possible product it can be. We still have a long way to go to realize our vision, but we’re already helping people change their lives with the current version.
We aim to be the category winners of the screen time space. Our goal is to help 100,000,000 people build a better relationship with their digital devices in the next 5 years. I truly believe we can help change the world, and the way we live with technology.
Thank you so much for your time, Clint! Where can people learn more about Roots?
Thank you for all the great questions! You can learn more on our website, or jump right in and download the app. Follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter (X), where we share insights and product updates. And, if you’re up for a challenge, join us for a Sunday Social Media Detox this weekend!
The post Scroll Less and Live More with Clint Jarvis, founder of Roots appeared first on Ness Labs.
2024-12-20 00:43:56
This time last year, I had just nervously hit “send” to share the first draft of the manuscript with beta-readers. The book didn’t have a cover. We didn’t even have the final title.
I felt quite lost and had to apply all the principles in the book to enjoy this dance — one that had no clear steps, set to strange music I had never heard before — and trust that things would unfold in time. It was a meta-exercise in curiosity.
Now, the book has been officially announced, and I can’t wait for it to be in readers’ hands. As someone who loves feedback, this is the longest feedback loop I’ve ever had to go through!
Here are some of the other highlights of 2024:
Read on for a detailed account of my year, along with the experiments I’m excited to explore next year. You can also find my past annual reviews here.
Let me start with my proudest accomplishment: in 2024, for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol. Given my long struggle with depression, this feels bigger than any other milestone.
Over the past twelve months, I explored how to build healthy routines upon this foundation. It started with a meditation experiment where I committed to meditate for 15 minutes every day for 15 days, and to learn in public by documenting the process in a shared Google Doc.
This simple experiment completely changed my relationship with meditation. I went from “this isn’t for me” to “this is a tool I can learn to use.” I shared my notes, including the parts I found challenging, and people left comments suggesting different techniques, from breathing and visualization to shifting my posture. Today, meditation has become part of my toolkit.
Two other important tools this year were journaling (to connect with the mind) and dancing (to connect with the body). Although I missed a few days, I always journaled several times a week. I also attended Ecstatic Dance sessions (a freeform dance practice) several times a month.
Intentionally building those moments of self-connection into my routine has been crucial to managing my mental health despite a busy schedule. However, it wasn’t always perfect.
Around the summer, I started experiencing early signs of what my best friend and I like to call “wobbliness” — when you can feel yourself losing balance and instinctively grabbing for your usual crutches.
For me, since I quit drinking, those crutches have been sugar and social media. At first, I treat myself to a snack or some mindless scrolling, but soon enough my reward system becomes overstimulated. Those bad habits impact my sleep, which affects my decisions, and the cycle repeats… You get the idea.
I’ve found that psychedelics help a lot when I’m on the verge of falling into such a vortex. They play a crucial role in my mental health. This year, I worked with Ayahuasca again, designed our own mini psilocybin retreat with close friends, and regularly used mushrooms on my own in a medicinal / ceremonial way.
Things still get wobbly at times, but thanks to these tools I’ve learned to trust myself to regain balance when I stumble.
I also froze my eggs at the start of the year — a decision my partner and I made when we didn’t know when we’d live together again. What a rollercoaster…
As someone who’s usually emotionally level, I was stunned by the wild mood swings and how quickly my body changed. Brainstorming titles for Tiny Experiments during that time became quite emotional!
On top of it all, navigating the medical process was incredibly complicated. I was fortunate that one round was enough, and my heart goes out to anyone who has to go through this more than once.
Tiny Experiments is my first book, and every decision is one I’ve never had to make before. I didn’t have ready-made heuristics or mental models to rely on — but I do have access to the internet.
At first I looked into hiring freelancers and spoke to a few agencies. I set the bar high, inspired by James Clear who went to great lengths to find Lyndsey, his “Executive Assistant / Master of Many Things.” I kept telling myself: I need to find my Lyndsey!
But I eventually realized the right people were already around me. The Ness Labs team had the skills to take on tasks related to the book — it was just a matter of transferring their expertise from one project to another.
What started as a search for outside help became an opportunity to grow together, and I feel so lucky to work with such an incredible group of people.
This was a recurring theme this year — how the people around me helped me learn, grow, and discover more about myself and the world. I attended two life-changing retreats for entrepreneurs, kindly hosted by Tiago Forte and Rand Fishkin, and was invited to give talks at incredible conferences. Friends offered to introduce me to their friends.
As a result, I connected with several people I’d previously only known online and deepened relationships with others to the point where the lines blurred between friendship and creative collaboration. What these people have in common is that I could just as easily spend hours discussing the meaning of life with them as jump on a quick call to brainstorm an idea.
I’m not going to list them all here — they’re all in the acknowledgement section of my upcoming book — but I’m deeply grateful for these friendships.
Something has become crystal clear for me this year. My creativity and productivity are fueled by two streams that must flow freely for me to do work that feels alive and connected: my intellectual health and my relational health.
Taking care of my intellectual health means having ample time to conduct research and write, whether that’s the Ness Labs newsletter, academic papers, or even another book. It means being able to read purely for curiosity’s sake and having space for those nourishing conversations with fellow curious minds.
I’ve been fortunate over the past years to work with Prof. Ellie Dommett at the ADHD Research Lab. She’s always supported my hypercurious mind and the many projects I love to juggle. We’ve now secured funding to continue working together in 2025, and I’m also applying for longer-term funding to investigate the intersection of ADHD and curiosity, hopefully with Dr. Vincent Giampietro, my other wonderful PhD supervisor.
To make space for deeper exploration, I’d like to work with the Ness Labs team to design a system where I can continue contributing to our educational content while empowering them to manage — and even lead — the business aspects.
The other stream is relational health. In 2024, I prioritized spending time with friends and family whenever I could. I jumped on trains and planes, traveling to more than a dozen cities across Europe and the world.
I had my parents over several times, and we went on house-hunting visits together. We dressed up for a big Halloween party, I introduced them to my research supervisors, and overall included them more fully in my life.
We also spent much more time together with my siblings, particularly my sister, who lives in Seoul. This year, I saw her in San Francisco, Paris, London, Singapore, and the Philippines, where we saw flying foxes and swam with whale sharks — making many lifelong memories.
In 2025, I want to spend even more time with the people I love: building a home with my partner in London after years of long distance, enjoying as much time as possible with my parents, and deepening connections with old and new friends by creating shared spaces for meaningful connection.
I see my spiritual health as the land between these two streams: it serves as the necessary foundation that supports both my intellectual and relational health. I plan to keep exploring psychedelics, journaling, and other mindfulness practices.
One possible experiment for 2025 is attending my first silent Vipassana meditation retreat — something I’m both excited and a little nervous about. Some other questions I’d like to explore include:
In short, I don’t know what 2025 will look like, but I want it to be a year shaped by curiosity and to have many opportunities to learn from others throughout this big experiment we call life.
P.S. The title of this year’s annual review is a reference of the original title of my book, which was supposed to be called Liminal Minds. In a fun twist, I had to embrace a long period of uncertainty until we settled on what I now think perfectly encapsulates the themes of the book.
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