Essays on brain, behavior, and decision science.
Original frameworks, research deep-dives, and analysis from the LifeByLogic editorial team — on cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, wellbeing measurement, and the architecture of the examined life.
Why So Many Adults Have Depression But Never Get Help
In 2024, 21.4 million US adults experienced a major depressive episode. Roughly 48% of adults with mental illness received no treatment of any kind. The gap is not for lack of effective options. A research-grounded walkthrough of what depression is, what evidence says actually helps, and the path from recognition to recovery.
Read the essay →Depression is one of the most studied and most treatable conditions in modern medicine. The science is clear. The access, the recognition, and the follow-through are not.
Why "Eight Hours" Is the Wrong Question
Sleep duration is one variable. Regularity, timing, and chronotype matter at least as much — and they are the variables most under your behavioral control. What the latest UK Biobank evidence (60,977 adults, 10 million hours of wearable data) actually shows about sleep and cognition.
Read the essay →Sleep regularity predicted all-cause mortality more strongly than sleep duration in 60,977 adults across 10 million hours of wearable data. The popular advice has the wrong variable.
Why Adult Autism Goes Unrecognized
Adult autism is real, frequently missed in clinical settings, and increasingly self-identified online. An estimated 5.4 million U.S. adults have autism spectrum disorder — most diagnosed late, many never. What self-tests can honestly tell you, and what they can't.
Read the essay →A validated screen estimates a probability. An educational self-inventory describes a shape. Both can be honest. Neither can diagnose.
Why Adult ADHD Goes Undiagnosed
The hyperactive boy at the back of the classroom is the wrong picture. Most adults with ADHD don't look like that — and a generation of late-diagnosed adults, especially women, have spent decades not recognizing themselves in the diagnostic criteria.
Read the essay →The condition didn't appear. The compensation budget got spent.
Rumination vs Reflection
There's a kind of overthinking that makes you wiser. There's another kind that makes you sicker. Most people don't know which one they're doing — and the difference is one of the most under-appreciated findings in clinical psychology.
Read the essay →The problem isn't that we think too much. The problem is that we think the wrong way too much.
The 17 Factors That Age Your Brain
Fourteen modifiable risk factors from the 2024 Lancet Commission. Three more from emerging evidence. Here's what actually ages your brain — and a tool to estimate where yours stands.
Read the essay →A 60-year-old can have the brain of a 50-year-old or the brain of a 75-year-old. Brain aging is the cumulative outcome of dozens of modifiable factors.
What Human Flourishing Actually Is
Six measurable domains. 200,000 participants across 22 countries. One of the most consequential wellbeing studies of the decade — and one finding that should reset how we talk about happiness in 2026.
Read the essay →Most people, when asked if they're doing well, answer the wrong question. They report a mood. Flourishing is something else entirely.
The Four Species of Web Content
AI is not killing the web. It's killing two of the four things on it — and making the other two more valuable than ever. A new taxonomy for the AI era.
Read the essay →A calculator is not a summary. A simulator is not a paragraph. The value is the computation, not the prose around it.