The Simple Things – May 2025

The Simple Things is a beautiful, useful, quirky and fun magazine about taking time to live well. We cover mindfulness and micro adventures, eating and growing, forgotten wisdom, home life and slow moments.

It’s for people who love their lives but want to take the pressure off and remember what’s really important. We like tea & cake, learning stuff, being outside and the satisfaction of a job well done. Do you?

The Exhausted Brain: The Origin of Our Mental Energy and Why It Dwindles

Everyone knows the feeling after a long day—it is difficult to concentrate, make good decisions, or even empathize with others. This daily but completely natural decline in our mental capacity is called "ego depletion," a state of mind that miraculously but naturally disappears after a good night's sleep.

However, more and more people are waking up in a perpetual state of ego depletion: their mental energy source is not recharging—it is actually shrinking. We live in a chronically exhausted society with disastrous consequences for ourselves, society, and future generations.

In The Exhausted Brain, Dr. Michael Nehls uncovers the source of our mental energy. He reveals where our "brain battery" is located, what function it serves within our brain, and how we can stop and reverse the decline in its capacity—with profound consequences for our mental wellbeing and social capacity. In short, this book will change the world.