blog
Notes from a quieter corner.
Writing about the small practices that hold a day together, with the research behind them where research exists.
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Meditation for Focus: What Ten Minutes a Day Does to Attention
Does meditation improve attention? What the studies actually show, how big the effect is, and a plain ten-minute focus protocol with a silent timer.
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WOOP for Focus: A Plan for the Moment You Reach for Your Phone
Use WOOP on one focus wish: ninety quiet minutes each morning for two weeks. The obstacle is the itch to check, and the plan fires the moment it arrives.
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Meditation when focusing on the breath makes it worse
If watching your breath makes you more anxious, not less, you are not doing it wrong. Here are six other anchors and how to choose one.
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Counting meditation: the technique you cannot get wrong
Count to ten, lose your place, start again. Three ways to meditate by counting, where it comes from, what the research says, and why losing count is the point.
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WOOP Wish Examples: How to Pick a Goal That Sticks
Most WOOPs fail at the first word. Learn Oettingen's three tests for a wish, why 'be happier' stalls, and see one wish reshaped until it sticks.
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Name It to Tame It: Why Labelling a Mood Calms It
Putting a feeling into words quietly turns it down. What affect labelling research found, why precise words beat a score, and how to do a two-word check-in.
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Writing a Letter to Your Future Self (and Why It Works)
What the research on future self-continuity says about writing to yourself, how to pick the date, what to put in it, and why sealing the letter matters.
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WOOP Obstacle Examples: Finding the Honest One Inside You
WOOP only works with an inner obstacle: a habit, feeling or belief, not time, money or other people. Why that rule exists, the common dodges, and one example.
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How to Meditate for the First Time: A Five-Minute Version
A plain first meditation in five steps: sit, set a timer, pick one anchor, expect to wander, come back. What a first session feels like and how often to do it.
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The WOOP Plan: Writing an If-Then That Fires on Its Own
The last step of WOOP is one if-then sentence. Here is how to write one that fires by itself, what the research says, and why trying harder is not a plan.
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Three Good Things: What the Gratitude Research Really Shows
The three good things exercise has twenty years of trials behind it. The effect is real and modest. What the studies found, and how to do it without forcing it.
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Why Being Kind to a Stranger Helps You Too
What the research says about acts of kindness and wellbeing, the honest finding about anonymous kindness and loneliness, and how a reply changes it.
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The best meditation and manifestation apps for 2026
Who guided meditation is for, where the free depth is, and which manifestation method actually has evidence behind it.
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Is Luvia safe? A plain answer from the people who make it
What never leaves your device, what anonymity structurally prevents, how moderation works in the order it happens, and the honest limits.
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The best private mood tracker apps for iPhone (2026)
Five trackers that respect your privacy, ranked by where the data lives and how the business makes money. Including the one built into iOS.
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Luvia vs Daylio vs Bearable: which fits you?
Three good apps that want different things for you: speed, health data, or calm. A maker's comparison that says what the others do better.
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WOOP: the manifestation method with science behind it
Wishing is where every good change starts. WOOP keeps the wishing and adds the step that makes it move, and twenty years of studies suggest that step is naming the obstacle.
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