Everything below is chosen for one job: to make the bottom row easier than the top row. That is the whole idea, and the reasoning is further down the page if you want it.
Everything I use to live more human-friendly, more as intended: for a clear mind, a healthy body, and feeling more alive. This helps you not only to live longer, but also fuller. Not only based on research, but also on real human experience. No warehouse, no checkout, no upsell: just the things that genuinely earned a place in my own life, and my clients'.
Instead of opening yet another store, or making you sign up across a dozen different sites, I simply link the products I use myself, that my clients use, and that I genuinely believe in. If you buy through my link, you help keep this project alive, at no extra cost to you. That's the whole arrangement, all transparent.
Where you see "Get it →", that's an affiliate link. The price is the same for you whether you use it or not; I just earn a small thank-you that keeps the lights on here.
Everything below is chosen for one job: to make the bottom row easier than the top row. That is the whole idea, and the reasoning is further down the page if you want it.
Because they rely on willpower, and willpower runs out exactly when you need it most. Restructure your environment instead, and you stop needing it.
Positive side-effect: restructuring your environment does not only lift your mood, lower your anxiety and raise your vitality. It can also add years to your life. So what is stopping you from living as intended? Let's restructure, now.
Tools and techniques I use to improve sleep quality and duration, resembling a natural bio rhythm.
Lets me read late in the evening, or scribble down that thought I want to remember in the morning, without disrupting my circadian rhythm. It cuts 99.8% of blue light, so even if you get up at night, you fall sound asleep again. Affordable, and reliable for me for over two years now.
The tiny companion for hallway and bathroom: a 3am trip stays biologically dark, and you drift straight back to sleep instead of greeting a white ceiling light like a sunrise.
Always 100% silk, never synthetic. Mine looks properly wrinkled by now, a year in, but it goes through the wash at the weekend and is ready for the next one. Since I started using it, sleep simply feels deeper. True darkness is the cheapest sleep aid there is, and this is how you get it when the room will not cooperate.
I have been sleeping on the floor for a while now. It started with a yoga mat, and it took a few days to get used to. Then my body started waking up feeling roughly ten years younger. A soft bed lets your muscles relax; a firm floor lets your spine do the same, because it resembles the ground our ancestors slept on, and they had no cushioning. This futon on a natural tatami is my compromise: sleep on the floor, live like you are on top.
Shaping the space that quietly shapes you.
For the screen time you can't avoid after sunset: the red lens blocks the blue end of the spectrum hard, so your body still knows it's night. I keep this pair right next to the laptop.
For long working days in front of screens: the amber lens takes the edge off the glare while colours stay workable. The red pair owns the evening; this one owns the office hours.
You'll sit for hours either way, sit in something that actually holds you. Yes, it's a serious investment; I made it, and my spine reminds me daily that it was the right one. Your back is analog equipment, treat it that way.
Alternating between sitting and standing keeps my energy far steadier through a long working day. The single best change I made to my home office.
You do not need a smart watch. Re-learning what and how to use technology so it actually serves you as a human.
Honest words first: the science on low-level radiation from our devices is not settled, and I won't pretend otherwise. But as a researcher, I'll tell you what the reassuring headlines quietly miss: most studies test one isolated source, in a laboratory. That is not how you live. Open the Wi-Fi menu on your phone and count the networks reaching you right now, then add 4G and 5G, the Bluetooth devices around you, and the "dirty electricity" buzzing out of every charger. Your real exposure is this whole interplay, low-level and ongoing, all day and all night, and that combined, long-term picture is exactly what the isolated studies were never designed to capture.
So I apply the same principle here as everywhere on this site: fine today, fine tomorrow, fine next month, and it accumulates, quietly, for decades. That's not a gamble I take when the alternative costs me nothing in convenience. Wherever a wired, analog or lower-emission option exists, I simply take it. Work digital, live analog, where you can.
A free hack while you are here: press F11 in your browser, or Fn plus F11 on most laptops. Everything except the text disappears: no tabs, no bookmarks, nothing blinking at the edge of your eye. Press it again to come back. Costs nothing, works everywhere, and makes reading online feel like reading again.
One thing I will say plainly: I sleep better with the Wi-Fi off, and there is good evidence to suggest that EMF from Wi-Fi, 5G and the rest is more harmful than we are told. It accumulates, like everything else here.
Melnick et al. (2025), Environmental Health 24:70. doi.org/10.1186/s12940-025-01220-4
Pall (2013), Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine 17(8), 958-965.
Have you noticed how many athletes and public figures wear wired headsets, while most of us went wireless? Draw your own conclusions. I use a wired Sennheiser headset, after my old Jabra one broke sooner than I expected from that price. No pairing, no charging, no transmitter next to my skull all day, and the sound is simply better.
The Logitech G213. Plug it in, it works, done. I am thinking about an ergonomic one eventually, but it has to be wired: I would rather not have another Bluetooth transmitter sitting under my hands all day. If I find an ergonomic one with a cable that I actually like, you will hear about it here.
The Logitech G403 with the cord. Precise, comfortable in the hand, and reliable in the boring way good tools are. Cable over cordless again, to cut one more small source of radiation. We are surrounded by exposure we cannot influence, so I take care of the sources I can, even the tiny ones.
Most of us work in biological darkness. A proper daylight lamp at the desk gives your brain the bright-light signal it expects during the day, steadier energy, better mood, and a body that knows what time it is.
No more excuse to reach for the phone. All you need is the current time and a wake-up time, and an analog clock does both without a single notification attached. I ended up buying a few of them, so that checking the time during the day does not quietly turn into ten minutes of browsing. Use technology in the way that actually serves you.
The simplest sleep upgrade in this whole list. A mechanical dial, no app, no smart anything: the router switches off at night and back on before I wake. Zero effort after setup, and the bedroom is radio silent while you rest.
The best games have already been made. This plays the original cartridges you grew up with, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, on a screen that finally does them justice. No updates, no store, no live service quietly eating your evening. Turn on, play, turn off. Take what was good into today's world without missing out on anything.
The same idea for the living room: a modern remake that plays your original Nintendo 64 cartridges on a modern TV. Mario Kart 64 is still Mario Kart 64, and Pokémon Stadium is finally mine, thirty years after I could not afford it as a child. Screen time with a beginning and an end, and a couch with actual people on it.
Natural is always better, also for supplements. The essentials your body needs, if you cannot get them through food and sunlight.
The sunshine vitamin, for the months the sun barely reaches us, paired with K2, which helps direct calcium where it belongs. A winter staple in my routine.
My number one supplement. Magnesium comes in several forms, and most of them are not this one: bisglycinate is the form that calms the nervous system, taken about an hour before bed. If I had to put a number on it, it has improved my sleep by a good 20%.
My quiet winter insurance. Since I started taking it, I have not had a bad cold or an airway infection, and my blood work has looked better alongside it. No guarantees, and one person's experience is not evidence, but I am very happy with this one.
My one beloved exception on the go. No sugar, no fillers, just cacao, which means all the polyphenols and none of the crash. If "unprocessed" needed a chocolate bar, this would be it. I love these bars, and one travels in my lunch box most days.
Concentrated grape seed polyphenols: one of the quiet antioxidant staples on my shelf, from the same German brand I trust for my magnesium and D3.
The trace mineral almost nobody thinks about, involved in energy, iron transport and connective tissue. I keep my levels covered with this clean vegan complex.
A note on brands: I mostly reach for Nature Heart or Sunday Natural. Nature Heart is a German company that ships within Europe, so some labels you see here are in German. Where neither had a suitable option at the time, you may spot other brands I currently use.
A note from me: supplements are personal, not universal, and nothing here is medical advice. If you take medication or have a health condition, run it past your doctor first.
Everything you need for a healthy, human-friendly kitchen: no microplastic, no mystery coatings, no industrial oils.
Prepare your healthy food without unintentionally making it less healthy than intended: once a non-stick coating gets damaged, which happens easily, research has found it can shed millions of micro- and nanoplastic particles into your food. The photo shows mine: not sparkling clean, because it is happily used every single day, and will outlive us both.
A small upgrade over the stainless steel pan. Stainless works brilliantly for me, it just gets sticky at lower temperatures when the heat drops. Titanium handles those gentler jobs better. It has not replaced my stainless pan though, and it never will: they share the hob and I am not giving either of them away.
The traditional frying fat, back on duty: grass-fed British cattle, sugar free, seed oil free. Handles high heat the way industrial oils only pretend to, and tastes like cooking used to.
Water simply tastes better from one, and it's one more small, beautiful step away from plastic in daily life. An analog object that makes you want to drink more water.
The upgrade I feel every day: microplastics, residues and heavy metals out, alkaline water in, ready at the press of a button. Honest note: parts of the machine are plastic, and the water is still in a different league from tap or most bottled water. This is my pick for Europe; outside Europe, the Frizzlife works on the same principle.
My backup for anywhere the Osmofresh is not sold, and the one I now use when I am abroad. Unpacked and installed in minutes, no plumber, and the water tastes excellent: no comparison to tap or to most bottled water, and slightly alkaline like the other one. The longer I drink reverse osmosis water, the clearer my body and mind seem to feel. A tiny bit more each day, step by step away from contamination and towards clarity.
For the occasional chopping day and the all-in-one jobs: one machine that weighs, chops and cooks while your hands do something analog. Not essential, quietly excellent, and it has outlived every gadget I ever regretted.
If you really like someone, you do nice things for them. You signal that you care, and it makes them feel good about themselves.
The same applies to your own mind and body. If you regularly feed them what they actually need, you get positive feedback: feeling happier, more satisfied, balanced, grateful, energetic.
The reverse is just as true. If you are eating trash and constantly consuming online content, you are sending yourself a different signal: that you are not worth the effort. And in consequence you feel low, stuck, less confident, less vital.
So the way you structure your life matters. Transform your mental health by transforming your daily environment, your food, your habits.
Some of what I recommend is expensive. That was a sad realisation for me too: living the way humans are actually built to live has somehow become the costly option.
But here is what the alternative really costs. The unhealthy defaults never send an invoice today. Today is fine. Next week is fine. Next month is fine. It accumulates silently, until one day the brain fog is regular, the sleep is shallow, you're bloated, out of breath, hard to focus, quick to snap, and somewhere along the way you stopped looking fresh. It hits hard precisely because it arrived quietly.
Good tools are expensive. Deteriorating is more expensive, in medicine, in recovery, in years. This is money spent on the only asset you'll own your whole life. Don't feel guilty for looking after yourself.
Reprogramming the beliefs that run quietly in the background.
The book I return to most on releasing what quietly weighs you down. One simple mechanism, feel it fully, let it pass, and remarkably deep effects on daily peace.
Blunt, funny, and freeing. Ellis shows that it's rarely people or events that upset us, it's what we tell ourselves about them. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
A good read to reflect on where our world is heading. What unsettles me is how accurate his predictions were, written when none of this existed: more control, more overload, more distraction, and less freedom and mental clarity. My copy looks battered because it has been read properly.
Written by the founder of Consciously Digital, someone I've had the privilege of working alongside for years. The clearest account I know of what constant connectivity does to attention, and how to take it back.
I've taken this course twice and later worked as a course facilitator for it, so I can whole-heartedly recommend it as the most structured way I know to rebuild your digital life around what actually matters to you.
Always with me. The act of writing something down helps your brain let it go: super therapeutic, and no notification has ever interrupted a page.
I write so much I would empty normal pens within a day, so for years it has been this Lamy with ink. Very much pen and paper: it simply helps my brain work better.
How about starting by helping people live more consciously in the digital age? I can wholeheartedly recommend the Digital Wellbeing Coaching course from the Consciously Digital Institute. I've done it twice, the second time as an instructor and course assistant.
It gives you accredited coaching tools for real, long-lasting behavioural change, plus the knowledge to stay sane in the digital age yourself, and to pass that on to future clients. And if you love it the way I did, it can become part of how you earn. It's how I started.
Explore the course →Or simply reach out for a chat. I've done the course twice and still collaborate with CDI, so I'm happy to share honestly and help you figure out whether it's your path.
Living human-friendly is sadly quite expensive. Here is what I do, and you can do too, to make more of the money you have.
We all share the same starting point: an income arrives each month. The difference is what happens next. Fifteen minutes to set up a monthly ETF savings plan, and from then on it asks nothing of you. I open mine every few months, smile, and close it again while it quietly compounds in the background.
Because to me, money was never the lifestyle. Material and financial assets are simply the means to invest in the biggest asset you'll ever own, yourself, your body, your mind.
For individual stocks and a flexible stocks-and-shares ISA. I've been genuinely happy with it, clean, low-cost, and it stays out of your way. My sign-up link gives you a welcome bonus after your first deposit.
Where my autopilot lives: a monthly ETF savings plan, set up once in fifteen minutes. This is the "no effort during the year" part, it simply runs. Welcome bonus via my link after your first deposit.
For readers in Germany and across the EU. Trade Republic is great too, but when I had to choose, I chose Scalable and never regretted it. Sign-up bonus via my link after your first deposit.
The honest small print: investing carries risk, values can fall as well as rise, and past performance guarantees nothing. This is my personal experience, not financial advice. Never invest money you may need soon.
Your body was built to move, lift and recover. A few honest tools, and one reminder that the most important one costs nothing.
This one travels everywhere with me. A mini gym wherever I am: visiting my parents, a hotel room, an Airbnb. It hangs over any door in seconds, weighs almost nothing, and is built so robustly that mine has taken years of this without complaint. Two straps, your own bodyweight, and the travel excuse is gone.
There are plenty of foam rollers around, and your gym probably has one. I trust the original. Mine has been with me since 2017 and it has done wonders whenever legs, neck or back felt stiff. It is remarkable how alive you can feel after a few minutes of working on sticky fascia.
It looks far more intimidating than it is. Roll it over sore joints, tendons or tight muscles and it simply feels amazing: more blood flow, more warmth, and the feeling that something is finally being looked after. My mum tried mine, ordered her own soon after, and is delighted with it.
The game changer for my forearms. Your body is designed for nature and movement, not for typing in a poor posture all day, and mine let me know about it. A few minutes of wrapping and moving the joint and the ache that had been building for weeks let go.
No link, no commission, nothing to buy from me here. Just go to the one closest to you, because the best gym is the one you actually walk into. Lift something heavy, twice a week. Your body, mood and sleep will all thank you.
The plans I actually follow, written down properly: simple, sustainable, and built for people with a life outside the gym. Coming soon to this page.
Digital wellbeing is where I've done my deepest work, researching problematic smartphone use at doctoral level and publishing in international journals. These are the tools that came out of it.
Everything this site stands on, in one document: what modern food does to a human body, why cholesterol and saturated fat were never the villains, what species-appropriate eating actually looks like, how fasting and meal timing change your metabolism, and the stress side almost nobody mentions, that you cannot digest good food in a body stuck in fight or flight. Free, because the principles should not sit behind a paywall.
Your eyes were built for horizons, not pixels. A one-page set of simple eye exercises to relieve screen fatigue and keep your eyes feeling fresh through long digital days, free, because everyone staring at a screen needs it.
My core expertise in one guide: the latest research, including my own doctoral work on problematic smartphone use, combined with evidence-based coaching and therapy tools to take back your time, energy and focus in a world built to steal them.
Recorded in one take, unpolished on purpose, because the content changes your life, not the production. Everything I teach about rebuilding a life around your attention instead of your notifications.
A practical, one-page protocol to reprogramme the habits that drain you. Print it, follow it.
A clear, careful walkthrough of the protocol I'm asked about most.
Reprogramme your mind, restructure your life, together. Currently full; join the waitlist.
I also run workshops on boosting performance and wellbeing within your organisation. As intended, and without "squeezing" your employees: helping them, and their managers, feel their best so that they can do their best. For direct enquiries, email hello@realisemyself.com.