How much of your life are you choosing, and how much is being quietly chosen for you?
That question sits at the heart of Heather Henderson’s book, Reclaim: How to Stop Scrolling Through Your Life and Start Living It. Heather joins Desireé Duffy on Books That Make You to examine our complicated relationship with technology and how we can become more intentional about the attention we give it.
Heather brings an unusual perspective to the conversation. After spending a decade working inside major technology companies, including Google and Uber, she understands the digital world from the inside. But her career also brought her face-to-face with the consequences of constant connection, pressure, and achievement.
She recalls experiencing a stress-induced asthma attack while working at Google and realizing how much of herself she had sacrificed in pursuit of her dream job. Another turning point came while visiting Cabo, where she watched vacationers turn their backs to a sunset to create content, while another person scrolled through someone else’s vacation instead of looking at the ocean directly in front of them.
For Heather, these moments raise a larger question about how technology shapes everyday life.
In Reclaim, she identifies five human needs we often use technology to meet: ease, distraction, connection, growth, and impact. The goal is not to decide that technology is inherently good or bad, but to notice whether it is supporting those needs or beginning to replace healthier ways of meeting them.
Heather also discusses seven digital regulator archetypes. One is “the watcher,” someone who constantly checks news and feeds to maintain a sense of awareness and control. Recognizing the emotional need behind a digital habit, she explains, can make it easier to decide whether that habit is adding something meaningful to your life.
The conversation also tackles what Heather calls “growth theater”—consuming books, courses, videos, podcasts, and self-improvement content without putting the ideas into practice. Her response is a simple one-to-one rule: apply something you have learned before consuming another idea.
Perhaps the most striking idea in the conversation is Heather’s belief that presence itself has become a form of wealth. In a world filled with constant stimulation, being fully engaged with the people, places, and moments around us can feel increasingly rare. Reclaim invites readers to examine their own digital lives without guilt or shame and begin asking a deceptively simple question: Did I choose this, or was it chosen for me?
