Q. You write that “the fantasy isn’t wealth or luxury anymore—it’s presence.” Why?
Think about what luxury looks like now. An afternoon where nobody needs you. A dinner where
no one reaches for their phone. A vacation where you’re not answering emails by the pool.
Someone looking you in the eye and actually listening when you speak. We have more access
to each other than ever before, and somehow undivided attention has become one of the
hardest things to get.
That’s what I mean when I say “presence is attention made visible.” People can feel when
you’re actually with them. Giving someone our full attention might be one of the clearest ways
we can show love. Maybe the ultimate status symbol isn’t having access to everything anymore.
Maybe it’s having the freedom to be unavailable.
Q. You have a chapter that is a love letter to influencers. What makes someone worth
following?
I actually love influencers. There, I said it. We’ve somehow turned “influencer” into a dirty word,
but humans have always influenced each other. We’ve always looked to other people for what to
wear, where to go, what to try, and even who we might become. Social media didn’t invent
influence. It just put a follow button on it.
So I’m less interested in whether someone influences me and much more interested in how they
influence me. Does following you make me curious? Make me laugh? Teach me something?
Make me want to cook the recipe, take the trip, call my mom, put down my phone and actually
go live my life? The people worth following don’t make me want their life. They make me want to
show up more fully for my own.
Q. You spent a decade inside Google, Uber, and other major tech companies. Then one day
you found yourself hiding behind a potted plant at Google, struggling to breathe. What
happened?
The plant was my breaking point, but I think the Google bus was when I first started noticing
something wasn’t right. I remember sitting there surrounded by brilliant, exhausted people,
everyone’s head bent over a screen while San Francisco blurred past outside. These were
people who seemingly had everything, and somehow being present had become a luxury.
And I wasn’t just observing that culture. I was part of it. Eventually, I found myself hiding behind
a potted plant at Google, struggling to breathe through a stress-induced asthma attack.
Afterward, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and barely recognized the person looking
back. The bus made me notice what was happening around me. The plant forced me to
recognize what was happening to me. Somewhere between those two moments was the
beginning of Reclaim.
Q. How is Reclaim different from other books in the same genre?
I’m a techie through and through. I’m a systems thinker. Give me a new platform, and I want to
play with it. If I can put something into a system, I probably will. I love innovation, and I
genuinely believe technology has made so much of our lives better. I don’t want to go backward.
There’s a story I’ve told on college campuses for years as a campus recruiter because it
captures exactly why I love technology. In 2008, Uber’s co-founders were in Paris on a snowy
night, struggling to get a cab. That same year, I was a college student at Chico State,
temporarily using a wheelchair and struggling to get a cab for a very different reason. I needed
to get to physical therapy. I called a yellow taxi, and when the driver pulled up and saw me
sitting there in my wheelchair, he drove away.
Years later, I ended up working at Uber. After two more knee surgeries, I couldn’t walk.
Suddenly, the technology I helped build became something I relied on. I could tap a button and
get a ride to physical therapy. I could have groceries delivered when I couldn’t get down three
flights of stairs to get them myself. There’s something about that full-circle experience that still
feels a little like magic to me.
That’s why I don’t believe the answer to our complicated relationship with technology is getting
rid of it. And honestly, I think being able to completely opt out or go on a digital detox can itself
be a privilege. Most of us need technology to work, get around, parent, connect, and participate
in modern life.
Reclaim asks a harder question: How do we keep everything extraordinary about technology
without handing our lives over to the persuasive parts of it? How do we use these tools without
letting them quietly decide how we spend our time, where our attention goes, or what matters to
us?
I don’t want less technology just for the sake of having less technology. I want the magic. I just
want us to keep our choices, too
Q. Reclaim was written before the March 2026 Meta and Google verdicts. What went through
your mind when they happened?
My first thought was: Finally! Because these verdicts forced a much bigger conversation about
something I’d already spent years writing about: design influences behavior.
Reclaim was already finished. For years, we’ve treated our relationship with technology primarily
as a question of individual willpower and personal responsibility. These cases pushed us to look
at the environment surrounding those choices too. My second thought was simply: Design
matters. This is a conversation we should have been having a long time ago.
Q. You say technology shapes our lives in “small, quiet ways.” What do you mean by that?
I think we expect technology to change us in these big, obvious ways. But most of the time,
that’s not how it happens. It’s much quieter. You’re having dinner with someone you love, your
phone lights up, and you’re gone for 30 seconds. You see a beautiful sunset, and somehow
your first instinct is to experience it through your camera. You open Instagram to check one
thing, and 20 minutes later you’re watching a stranger organize her refrigerator. How did we get
here?
None of those moments feels important enough to worry about. But that’s exactly the point. Our
lives are made up of those tiny, ordinary moments. And when enough of them get interrupted or
given away without us really choosing to, they become what I call unconscious time. We didn’t
wake up one morning and decide to be less present for our lives. We just gave little pieces of
them away without realizing we were doing it
Q. What is “Growth Theater”?
Growth Theater is when consuming growth starts to feel like growth itself. And I am so guilty of
this. Give me the podcast, the book, the course—I will absolutely buy it and may or may not
finish it. There’s something incredibly satisfying about learning how to improve your life without
having to do the much less exciting part: actually changing it.
At some point, I realized I had become really good at collecting insight. But collecting insight
and integrating it are two very different things. So now I try to follow a ridiculously simple rule:
before I consume something else, apply one thing I’ve already learned. Just one. Because the
point isn’t to know more about becoming the person you want to be. It’s to actually become
them.
Q. What do you wish you knew before you started to write Reclaim?
I wish I knew that I wasn’t actually writing a book about technology. I thought I was. I started with
our phones, our attention, persuasive design, all of it. But the deeper I went, the more I realized
that underneath almost every reach is something incredibly human. We’re bored. We’re lonely.
We want reassurance. We want to feel seen. We want to escape something uncomfortable.
Technology didn’t create those needs. It just became incredibly good at meeting them quickly.
And that completely changed the book for me. Because if technology isn’t really the problem,
getting rid of technology can’t really be the answer. The antidote to an increasingly technological
world is our humanity. It’s understanding what we actually need, learning to meet those needs
more intentionally, and remembering that we still have the power to choose. I thought I was
writing a book about our relationship with technology. It turned out I was writing a book about
our relationship with ourselves.
Q. What is your favorite excerpt from your book?
“It’s about what kind of person you’re quietly becoming every time you reach without
choosing.”
To me, that line captures what the book is really about. Our relationship with technology isn’t just
about screen time or productivity. It’s about what we practice, over and over again, in small
moments—and who we become through those choices.
Q. Do you have other books in the works?
Oh, I have ideas. I’m really interested in exploring consumerism and consumption next, because
I think they’re deeply connected to so many of the same human needs I explore in Reclaim.
What are we actually looking for when we buy something? What need are we trying to meet?
There’s so much there around identity, enoughness, aspiration, and the stories we tell ourselves
about what will finally make us feel satisfied. I could absolutely see that becoming my next
nonfiction book.
And then, completely different direction: I would love to write fiction. I have a fantasy book
floating around in my head that I’d really like to explore someday. But Reclaim is my second
book, and I’ve learned that writing a book is a lot. My partner may actually revolt if I immediately
start another one. So for now, I’m not even letting myself begin. I want to let Reclaim have its
moment, take a break, and actually be present for the thing I just spent years creating. There
will be more books. Just not tomorrow.
