I’ve been consulting my friends but it seems that my experience of losing clarity is unique in my circle. There is lots of self-help online about burnout and “mental fog”, which works to various subtle degrees, but for years nothing has done the trick.

I am at an important “juncture“ of my life: eighteen, and about to leave school and sit A-Levels; perhaps a change from boarding will be the answer I have long sought for, but I cannot afford to wait and hope, as, quite frankly, the next few months of university offers and grades largely determine what doors are open to me in the future.

I have been obsessed with efficiency. Particularly tools which can make us more efficient. My time at school has shown me how inefficient institutions can really be (yes, even the great ones), so I end up happily working between things like Aria, Casanova, Molt, Notion, Auracare, which all aim to help people get their jobs done just that bit better.

Aria has been helpful—but not perfect—in organising my life for me. But I fear that in delegating to my software, I lose the initiative to do so for myself. I was reading a poem at the end of a newsletter called Fix The News which reminded me about digital control. I’ve never been one to shy away from embracing digital tools (I make them), but in the past few months I’ve become more acutely aware of who controls what I see. At the time of writing, I still overuse YouTube, but I’ve built Startpage to help. And it has, by keeping me conscious of the things I want to do, instead of leading me to mindlessly scroll through content from whatever website algorithm comforts me most.

I’ve also switched from my school-provided iPad to my laptop (customised to my workflows and without the spyware), and pen and paper, which opens me up to the flexibility to jot the way I really need.

But now, it’s time to tackle the next big thing: my phone. Every day I seem to wake up groggily and immediately check what’s fresh in the past 6 hours, and end up even more lethargic than before. I’ve now resolved to set a hard 1 hour limit upon waking up, and delegate the attention-leechers to AI. So far, so good.