I mean a real one. Not a DM. Not a reaction to someone's story. Not a comment under a post.
Call someone. Show up somewhere. Look a person in the eye and ask them something you actually want to know the answer to.
We are more "connected" than any generation in human history, and somehow lonelier.
Research consistently shows that the quality of our relationships - not the quantity of our followers - is the single greatest predictor of our health and happiness. Not our diet. Not our income. Our relationships.
So this January, pick one person you've been meaning to reach out to and make it real. Not a text. A real conversation. The kind where the conversation is the focus. You're not multitasking, you’re not half-watching something, you’re not crafting a witty reply. You’re present.
That's where the good stuff lives.
Let me ask you something: When was the last time you were bored and didn't immediately reach for your phone?
We have outsourced so much of our mental labor to our devices that we've quietly eroded some of our most human capacities – patience, problem-solving, memory, creativity, and the ability to just... sit with ourselves.
Convenience is seductive. Shucks, some conveniences actually give us time back so we can spend it engaged in more meaningful activities. Technology is not bad – it’s genuinely useful. But there's a cost we don't talk about enough. Every time we let an app navigate for us, choose our music, finish our sentences, or tell us what to watch next, we forfeit a tiny piece of our own agency.
This month, try doing one thing the "harder" way. Cook something without following a video. Drive somewhere without GPS. Have a conversation without Googling the answer mid-sentence. Be a little more self-reliant. You might surprise yourself.
Presence doesn't live in the grand moments. It lives in the small ones.
It lives in the ten seconds you spend watching steam rise from your morning coffee. It lives in the sound of a child laughing at something that has nothing to do with a screen. It lives in the way the light looks at 5pm in January, low and golden and quietly beautiful.
We scroll through those moments. We post them. We caption them. But do we feel them?
One of my favorite things to practice – and teach – is simply noticing. Not fixing. Not documenting. Just noticing. What's happening right now, in this moment? What can you hear? What can you feel? What's in front of you that you haven't really looked at in a while?
Presence isn't a productivity hack. It's a way of being. And it's available to you right now, in whatever ordinary moment you're in.
I want you to think about your phone the way you think about any other relationship in your life.
Does it respect your time? Does it support your peace? Or does it interrupt you constantly, demand your attention at the worst moments, and leave you feeling drained?
Your phone is a tool – a powerful one, but still a tool. And like any tool, it works best when you're in control of it, not the other way around.
A tech boundary isn't a punishment. It's an act of self-respect.
It might look like this: no phone in the bedroom. Or no scrolling before 9am. Or phone-free meals. Or turning off every notification that isn't a call or a text from a real person in your life. You get to decide. The point is that you decide, intentionally, and on purpose, rather than letting the app designers decide for you.
Start with one boundary. One. And protect it like it matters. Because it does.
This one is hard. I know it is, because it's hard for me too.
Silence has become uncomfortable for a lot of us. We fill every quiet moment – the elevator, the waiting room, the commute, the two minutes between tasks – with noise. Music, podcasts, videos, doom-scrolling. Anything to avoid being still.
But silence is where we process. It's where we hear ourselves think. It's where creativity lives, and grief gets worked through, and real rest actually happens. We are chronically bereft of silence and chronically brimming everywhere else, and we wonder why we feel so scattered. That silence we avoid is the antidote to our anxiety and stress.
Start small. Two minutes of intentional quiet. No phone, no audio, no input. Just breathe. Notice what comes up. Don't judge it, just let it be there.
Thich Nhat Hanh said it simply: "Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body."
Home is a good place to start a new year.
A reset doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to start on January 1st. It can start on a random Tuesday in the middle of the month, when you decide – quietly and without announcement – that you want to live a little more intentionally.
These five things aren't a challenge. They're an invitation.
Come back to real connection. Reclaim your own mind. Notice the small things. Draw a boundary with your tech. Find some silence.
That's the reset. That's the good stuff.
If any of this resonated with you, you're in the right place. POP exists to help people like you live more intentionally in a world that's constantly pulling for your attention. Explore our community and stay tuned for more this year.*
