Outline
Welcome to the twenty-first edition of Airplane Mode, where less is more and the WiFi is always off.
Every week, we curate 3 impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.
Use this newsletter as a signal to pause, breathe, and think, helping you realign with your purpose and clear out the ‘scroll pollution’ that clouds our brains every day.
Thank you for flying with 99 Lives 🐆✈️
🚨🚨🚨 P.S. If you’re interested in coming to Airplane Mode Lisbon #002, check the end of this email for an update! 🙏 🚨🚨🚨
🤔 Curiosity
How multitasking makes our brains age faster
I’m not going to lie, this one is frightening…for all of us.
Multitasking in the modern age has become a habit for all of us, one that’s become increasingly harder to escape. And for those of us with ADHD, this struggle is amplified even more.
I think it’s fair to say none of us feed “good” when we are multitasking, and a (very old!) study out of Stanford University shows exactly why this is.
In the study, researchers found that heavy multitaskers showed decreased gray matter density in this region, known as the anterior cingulate cortex.
We discussed gray matter and it’s importance in previous editions of Airplane Mode:
What is most alarming to me about this study isn’t just the decreased gray matter, but how rapidly multitasking ages our brains. The brains of chronic multitaskers age 3 years per decade faster than the average brain.
3 YEARS FASTER PER DECADE.
Nothing is more responsible for our multitasking than smartphones, and they are likely aging our brains faster than anything else in our daily lives. Every notification we receive triggers a dopamine response, that response leads to a neurochemical reaction resembling addiction, destroying our attention and the neural pathways responsible.
What I learned from this study is that our neural pathways are actually coated and protected by a substance called myelin, which helps us with fast and efficient brain function. A degraded amount of myelin in our brains is one of the major signs of cognitive aging.
In theory, if you started using a smartphone at age 10 and became accustomed to multitasking as a result, by the age of 60, your brain would be closer to the age of 75, in terms of wear and tear.
Now, while these results are truly terrifying, there are clear signs and ways to not only stop this deterioration and aging from happening, but potentially even reverse it.
Deep Work: Other studies show that people who protect time for focused work show brain activity patterns of individuals 7-10 years younger, potentially reversing the damage multitasking can cause
Environment Changes: Removing our phones and other attention grabbing elements from our work environments can reduce our tendencies to multitask
Attention Training: Knowledge is power, and the more we are aware and choose to ignore our triggers to check our phones helps us strength neural pathways instead of degrading them, just like lifting weights at the gym
Recovery Protocols: There are various protocols we can implement after work to help our brains recover our cognitive abilities and resources (see below)
While I’m nowhere near perfect, and still struggle at times, I’ve listed below some of the things I have been implementing over the past few years to try and take back some of my attention and limit my tendency to lose it easily:
Grayscale in the Morning: Every morning when I wake up, I setup an automation to make my screen gray before I ever use it, that way my brain doesn’t light up from all the colors on my app icons like I’m a kid in an American cereal isle
Don’t Use Phone Until Lunch: It’s crystal clear for me, if I use my phone a lot in the morning, my thinking is fragmented all day. Combined with grayscale mode, not using my phone makes my brain function 5-10x better throughout the day and makes me crave my phone less all day long.
Pomodoro Technique: I used to hate this and think it was wack, but it really does help with cognitive recovery. Usually it’s 25 minutes of work followed by 5-10 mins of break, but it’s not rigid and your work blocks can be any length you want inside 60 mins. (Just make sure your break includes not using your smartphone almost at all)
Phones Down 60 min Before Bed: We all have heard this one on Huberman or elsewhere, but it’s almost an essential for me now to start turning my brain off.
Red Screen 2-3 Hours Before Bed: There’s a way on my iPhone to not only turn on Night Shift, but make my screen completely red, eliminating any blue light whatsoever, a great precursor to putting the phone away before bed.
Shower in the Dark: This one is brand new for me, but it has had a massive impact. The combo of the darkness (lack of stimuli) + the warm water + constant sound of water really helps reduce any overload of my nervous system.
🗺️ Culture
Victim mentality is strongly linked to vulnerable narcissism
I don’t know about you, but victim mentality is something that seems to be more prevalent than ever these days, coinciding with the rise and importance of social media in our day-to-day lives.
(Before I go on here, this post has absolutely nothing to do with true victims, those who have suffered abuse of any form. The focus here and in this study is exclusively focused on the rise in victim mentality as a whole, and it’s connections to narcissism)
Way back in Airplane Mode #002, we discussed ‘The Narcissism Spectrum”, but we didn’t go in depth or differentiate between the two main types of narcissists: grandiose narcissists and vulnerable narcissists.
Grandiose narcissism is characterized by high self-esteem, assertiveness, and a desire for power.
Vulnerable narcissism involves high entitlement but is accompanied by low self-esteem, hypersensitivity to criticism, and defensive behavior.
Now a new study published in Personality and Individual Differences has decided to take a look at the correlation between vulnerable narcissism and the rise of victim mentality. This is particularly important when looking at shifting political landscapes, and the way victimhood shapes the way people vote or choose their politics.
The research team in this study used a sample of 400+ adults in Canada between the ages of 18-71, putting each participant through a series of standardized psychological assessments, focusing on the participants’ propensity for feeling like a victim.
As the title of this section already indicates, the results showed that there was a very strong link between vulnerable narcissism and the tendency for participants to see themselves as a victim.
This is less about actual trauma, and more about a specific personality structure that seeks recognition and validation, through four key dimensions:
A need for recognition of one’s suffering
A sense of moral elitism
A lack of empathy for others
Rumination on past offenses
One of the main ways this victim mentality is manifesting in modern society is through victim signaling, the public expression of one’s suffering, amplified by social media of course.
As the researchers discovered, individuals with a victim mentality tend to have both feelings of entitlement and hypersensitivity, which leads them to signal their suffering to others.
One particular part from the authors of this study really stood out to me though:
“This leads to the likelihood that individuals that are prone to this tendency have psychological problems, and that ‘victim mentality’ is not a psychologically healthy way to live in the world, and likely will lead to various problems for the person.”
In the end, this suggests that having a victim mentality is very much driven by a fragility of self and a difficulty regulating negative emotions, creating a negative feedback loop that makes this mindset hard to shake off or become aware of.
🖇️ Connection
Loneliness is growing, even as we become more “connected” online
Last week, I wrote about how even with more friends, young adults suffer the most from loneliness & lack of connection.
This week, I wanted to go a bit deeper on this, to understand why it is that the online world isn’t helping solve the loneliness epidemic, and how it might be making it worse.
There are two studies I found in particular that touch exclusively on this topic of people feeling isolated while still being more connected than ever before. [1] [2]
Both of them point to a couple clear explanations for why this is happening, but they also show how an individual’s habits and lifestyle determine whether online participation enhances their connectivity to others, or fuels their loneliness.
Because this comes from two studies, I will summarize with bullets here:
Overall social media use does not uniformly increase loneliness. Instead, loneliness outcomes depend heavily on the nature of online experiences.
Positive online interactions (supportive messages, meaningful exchanges, feeling understood) were associated with reductions in loneliness over time
Negative online experiences (social comparison, rejection, feeling ignored, exposure to conflict) predicted increases in loneliness
Social media use is not inherently harmful, but should be seen as an emotional amplifier, intensifying someone’s existing social and psychological tendencies
Certain online experiences then either alleviated or exacerbated loneliness depending on their emotional tone
Regulated individuals (who don’t feel lonely generally) often use digital platforms for active communication with people they already know, leading to stronger sense of connection
Lonely individuals overall were more likely to increase social media use, leading to a negative feedback loop
Individuals who already feel isolated may turn to online spaces more, but this does not reliably relieve loneliness and may sometimes worsen it, especially for those who seek validation externally.
The key takeaway from all of this for me is this: social media is an amplifier for whatever is already happening inside of us and outside of us in our day-to-day lives. Regulated and connected people feel more connected from using social media, why disregulated and more lonely individuals tend to feel more lonely and disconnected while using social media.
❓ Question of the Week
2016 is hot right now.
Think back to yourself 10 years ago, what is something you used to love or do regularly, that you almost never do anymore? And why did you stop?
🐆 Quote of the Week
“Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.”
—
On the reason most people run from what will truly heal them
🛫 Airplane Mode Lisbon #002 🇵🇹
If you’re receiving this email for the first time after signing up for the Airplane Mode Lisbon wait list, first of all, WELCOME!
Thank you so much for signing up.
Airplane Mode began in 2025 as a 99 Lives newsletter with one sole purpose: providing impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.
I am blown away and so grateful to see how much the Airplane Mode Lisbon wait list has blown up today.
Because of this high demand, I have decided that to give everyone on the list a fair shot, I am going to release the link for everyone at the same time, so everyone has an equal chance.
So please be on the look out in your inboxes this Sunday, February 1st, at 7pm GMT, for an email with the link to sign up for Airplane Mode Lisbon #002.
I feel truly blessed to have hosted such incredible people for the first dinner, and can’t wait to see who comes for the second one! And if you can’t make it for the February edition, we’ll see you in March 🙏
(Note: Anyone a part of the 99 Lives Culture Club, or who attended Airplane Mode Lisbon #001, already received first dibs for the dinner and some have already signed up! I will tell you how you can join the Culture Club on Sunday 😎)
Thanks for reading the twenty-first edition!
You can count on Airplane Mode arriving in your inbox every week, just in time for you to switch off & reconnect with the topics that matter most.
