The “Reclaim” author and former Big Tech insider gets candid about our relationship with technology, trusting your own story, the unexpected experiences that shaped her book, and why attention may be our most valuable resource.
Q. What makes your book a must-read? – We’re standing at a crossroads right now as technology is only becoming more embedded in our lives. People who are able to control their attention are going to be best equipped for what comes next.
This goes so much deeper than screen time. Our attention affects how we work, how we think, how we connect with other people, what we believe, and ultimately, how we spend our lives.
The answer isn’t to throw our phones into the ocean or disappear on a digital detox. We have to get much better at recognizing when we are choosing how we use technology and when technology is quietly choosing for us.
This is a problem that doesn’t just affect you. It affects everyone around you.
As I like to say, we’re all in this together.
Q. If you could give your book to one world leader, who would it be and why? – Melinda French Gates.
One thing I care deeply about is making sure conversations about attention and digital well-being reach young people across socioeconomic backgrounds, not just people who already have access to resources that help them navigate technology differently.
She has spent years investing in women and expanding opportunity, and she has the reach and resources to get these ideas into the hands of people I could never reach on my own.
Q. What was the hardest part of writing your book? – Knowing what to cut and what to keep.
There was so much I wanted to say, and I had to learn to trust that saying something once was enough. I didn’t have to keep proving the same point.
I wrote 90,000 words in total. The finished book is closer to 52,000. That’s a lot of words on the cutting-room floor.
Even now, I’ll have some new realization and think, “Ohhhh, I should have put that in the book.”
That’s also the strange thing about writing something like Reclaim. You can’t see it until you see it, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Writing the book actually changed the way I notice the world, so of course I’m still seeing new things.
Eventually, I had to accept that one book cannot contain every thought I will ever have. And just let it be finished.
Q. What is the most enlightening/inspirational story you tell in your book? – One of my favorites is actually about a philosophy grad student I dated when I was twenty-four. He was writing his dissertation on Martin Heidegger, and I would sit in his apartment near the Santa Cruz Boardwalk listening to him read his work.
I understood maybe half of what he was saying, but I became fascinated by Heidegger’s ideas about technology and how it can shape the way we see the world.
Then I went off and spent the next decade working in Silicon Valley.
It wasn’t until years later, sitting on a corporate shuttle surrounded by people staring at their screens, that I thought back to those conversations and realized how much they had stayed with me.
I love that story because there was absolutely no way twenty-four-year-old me could have known that the guy I was seeing and his philosophy dissertation would somehow end up influencing a book I wrote fifteen years later.
Life is weird like that.
Q. One word that best describes you. – Curious.
I just love thinking. Questioning ideas, connecting dots, and taking something from the big picture down to the smallest details and back again.
I’ve been asking “why?” for as long as I can remember. I was that kid who constantly asked my mom why because I wanted to understand how the world worked and why.
That curiosity has followed me everywhere. I majored in human development because I was fascinated by what makes people tick. I later found philosophy, which gave me a completely different way of questioning the world around me.
I guess that’s why I love interdisciplinary thinking so much. I’m always pulling context from different places and trying to see how it connects. How does this work? Why does it work this way? Does it actually work? Who decided it should work this way in the first place?
I’m endlessly curious about people, ideas, systems, and the forces that shape the world around us.
Q. Any ritual like a specific scented candle, preferred writing place, or drink that you kept through writing? – My Boston Terrier Ziggy was my writing companion, and Waterloo Guava Berry is basically the official beverage of Reclaim.
I’m also very much a couch writer. Desks are for meetings and podcasts. I could write for hours with my little giraffe blanket, Ziggy between my legs, and a Waterloo within reach.
Q. If there is a movie adaptation of your book, who do you think would be perfect for the lead roles? – This is a fun question because Reclaimis nonfiction, but so much of the book is told through stories from my own life. So I’m basically the main character.
For me now, Emma Stone or Rachel McAdams. For twenty-something me, Sophie Turner. I adore her, and people used to tell me I looked like Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones, so that one feels especially fitting.
I also write about four lovers who made an impact on my life. They even got a shoutout in the dedication. For them, I’d cast Dave Franco, Glen Powell, Diego Boneta, and Patrick J. Adams.
Q. What can this teach to a motivated and mission-driven population of writers? – Trust your story.
The experiences we go through, the good, the bad, the ugly, the things that almost break us, change the way we see the world. That perspective is a gift.
Your experiences become the lens through which you notice things other people might miss. That’s what makes writers interesting.
People come in and out of your life. They teach you things you might not understand for years. As Steve Jobs famously said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.
As writers, those dots are where so many of our most original ideas come from.
That matters even more in a world where AI can make everything sound the same. AI can write a generic book, yes. But it cannot live your life. It doesn’t have your experiences or your perspective. Ultimately, it doesn’t have a voice because it hasn’t lived.
Your authenticity is in what you experienced, what you noticed, what it changed in you, and what you understand because you lived through it.
That’s your superpower as a writer.
Q. What would make you feel that your book has truly reached the people who need it most? – If Reclaimwere selected as a common read at a university.
The book is written for a broad audience, but I’m incredibly passionate about college students and young adults who are figuring out who they are and how they want to live while technology is competing for more and more of their attention.
I would love to see Reclaim used in first-year experience programs or campus-wide common reads where students aren’t just reading it individually, but actually talking to one another about these ideas.
Part 2: Are you ready for our rapid-fire questions? Let’s go.
Q. Morning writing or midnight writing?
Both. Just not the afternoon.
Q. Coffee, tea, or neither?
Coffee.
Q. One book you wish you had written?
Harry Potter.
Q. Favorite fictional character of all time?
Hermione Granger.
Q. If you could spend a day with any author, living or dead, who would it be?
J.K. Rowling.
Q. One word you hope readers use to describe your book?
Empowering.
Q. Favorite place to read or write?
Write on the couch. Read poolside.
Q. If your book had a theme song, what would it be?
“We’re All in This Together” from High School Musical.
Q. Plot twist or happy ending?
Plot twist.
Q. If your book were a person at a party, what kind of person would it be?
The person who surprised you.
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