Taming the Modern Mind

My son walks into my office to finish his Electrical Engineering lab—because, of course, he didn’t get all the right parts.

Specifically, he needed a 5V power source but only had a 9V battery.

Meanwhile, I was “just quickly checking” my to-do list… which had somehow spiraled into reorganizing my entire digital filing system—not just my laptop, but also Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive— because clearly, all three might get wiped out in the same freak hurricane, and I needed triple-redundant backups of everything I’ve ever touched.

Naturally, I dropped that and opened LTSpice to sketch out a voltage divider, then marched him to the breadboard to build it.

That took two hours. Two hours… to get five volts.

Then my spouse walked in, looked at the chaos, and said, “Why don’t you just tape together three AA batteries?”

This was after I’d spent an hour in a Wikipedia deep-dive on the health benefits of Turkey Tail mushrooms and how to grow them—why, you ask? Honestly, I have no idea. I blacked out somewhere around “beta-glucans” and came to while researching spore print techniques.

Which is how I met Yi Yulgok—a 16th-century Korean philosopher who now lives rent-free in my head.

I live there too. More specifically, I live in that moment when you look up from your perfectly formatted spreadsheet, realize you’ve done nothing of actual value, and feel your grip on reality slowly slipping under the weight of beautifully managed nonsense.

And no—this isn’t a modern affliction, despite what productivity gurus claim. Sure, our ancestors didn’t have YouTube or Microsoft Word’s insidious “helpful” formatting suggestions, but the mind’s ability to chase shiny irrelevancies? That’s ancient.

Which is why I found myself, at 11:47 PM on a Thursday, three cups of peppermint tea deep, scrolling through academic papers on attention and focus—because apparently, when you can’t focus, the most logical solution is to read seventeen peer-reviewed studies on how to focus, while definitely not focusing on any of them.

Somewhere between a dense paper on “Contemplative Practices in East Asian Philosophy” and my fourth existential crisis of the week, I saw a name: Yulgok.

Yi I (1536–1584), known as Yulgok—which apparently means “Chestnut Valley,” and honestly, what a name—was a Korean philosopher during the Joseon period. When I first read “Confucian scholar,” I’ll admit my brain immediately conjured images of impossibly rigid moral systems and the kind of abstract perfection that makes you feel guilty for enjoying reality TV—like the latest Devil’s Plan from K-drama world. You know, the philosophical equivalent of someone who irons their jeans (apologies to those who do!) —technically impressive, but also deeply unsettling.

Yulgok lived during the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea was deeply shaped by Neo-Confucian ideals imported from China. By the 16th century, these weren't just academic theories—they were guiding government, education, and social hierarchy. While his contemporaries retreated into mountain caves contemplating existence, Yulgok was rolling up his sleeves trying to actually run a government.

This guy was what you might call a pragmatic Confucian—if that's not a complete oxymoron. He believed that understanding something in theory while being useless at it in practice was just expensive daydreaming. Basically, he was the anti-philosopher Neo-Confucian scholar—someone who thought wisdom should actually be used. Shocking, I know.

This practical approach made his take on mental discipline immediately relevant to my spreadsheet-formatting obsession. For Yulgok, training your mind wasn't about achieving ethereal inner peace that would look good on Instagram—it was about cultivating enough mental clarity to actually engage with the world effectively and ethically.

From Yulgok’s perspective, distraction wasn't just annoying—it was a fundamental obstacle to being a decent human being. If you can’t “fully reach to the matter in hand,” as he put it, how can you lead anyone, nurture relationships, or handle basic responsibilities without making a complete mess?

This hits different when you realize our entire economy is built on fragmenting attention. Every notification is designed to scatter your thoughts. Every app wants you ping-ponging between tasks. Fragment, scatter, consume, repeat—that’s the rhythm our devices demand.

And we’ve internalized it completely. How many times have you opened your laptop to do one thing and found yourself seventeen browser tabs deep, researching something completely unrelated? Or “quickly checked” Slack only to emerge twenty minutes later having accomplished nothing except stress-responding to non-urgent messages?

My mind operates like a browser with forty-seven tabs open, most playing YouTube videos I don't remember starting. We've trained ourselves to be distractible, then wonder why we feel scattered, ineffective, and increasingly anxious about our inability to focus on what actually matters.

The core of Yulgok’s approach was something called Kyŏng (경) in Korean, or Jing (敬) in Chinese—usually translated as “reverent mindfulness” or “seriousness.” And before you roll your eyes—it’s not the grim, joyless kind of seriousness that makes people avoid you at gatherings. It’s that quiet, steady resolve that says, “I am here, now, and I’m going to engage with this fully, even if ‘this’ is a spreadsheet that doesn’t actually need perfect formatting.”

Where others treated this as a lofty moral state, Yulgok saw it as essential daily discipline—a tool for navigating real-life distractions.

Which brings us to the line that made me pause mid-peppermint tea-sip:

“Let your mind abide always upon the Way; do not allow even a single thought to go astray.”

My first reaction was to chuckle—because seriously, one thought? On a good day, keeping even three consecutive thoughts from wandering off would be worthy of a personal parade.

But here's where Yulgok’s pragmatism kicked in. This is the same guy who called himself lazy and didn't start serious reading until seventeen. He got it.

This wasn't about skimming articles while cooking dinner and responding to texts. This was deliberate engagement designed to train the mind to concentrate on what matters.

“Abide always upon the Way.”

Speaking of managing competing priorities, wouldn’t it be nice if you had an APP that could automatically prioritize tasks the way Yulgok taught mindful attention?

Here’s what I found fascinating: Yulgok understood that mental fragmentation wasn't just inefficient—it was a complete barrier to what he called “fully reaching to the matter in hand.” For him, a scattered mind was fundamentally incompatible with both personal growth and effective action.

But here’s what keeps me awake: Is sustained attention even possible anymore?

We live in a world that profits from our distraction—that fragments our attention and sells it back to us in bite-sized pieces. Are we fighting a losing battle against systems designed to scatter us?

Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe what Yulgok understood that we keep forgetting is this: The mind that can return is more powerful than the mind that never wanders.

“Abide always upon the Way.”

It’s not a command for saints or people with their lives figured out. It’s an invitation for those of us who are wonderfully, frustratingly distractible to keep returning our attention to what actually matters. Not because we’ll achieve perfect focus—I certainly don't expect to—but because the practice of returning, again and again, builds the mental muscle of attention.

The next time you find yourself lost in perfectly formatted headers while your real work sits waiting, remember: You're not broken for being distracted. You're human. The power isn't in perfect focus—it's in the return.

Yulgok called it “abiding upon the Way.” I call it the most quietly rebellious thing you can do in 2025.

So here’s your challenge: Pick one thing today. Just one. When your mind inevitably wanders, don’t judge it. Just notice. And bring it back!

So it took exactly 5 minutes for my spouse to put 3-AAA batteries together with duct tape and my son finished his lab in 30 minutes!

Because in a world designed to scatter you, the simple act of returning your attention to what matters isn't just productivity advice.

It’s revolution!

Next week: What happens when Confucian calm collides with Samurai do-or-die thinking—and how that unlikely fusion still shapes modern business culture. Another unexpected Confucius story (from well beyond the Analects).

If this resonated with you, you’re probably feeling that same philosophical tension in your own life. The good news? You’re in excellent historical company. The even better news? There’s no deadline for figuring it out.

For those who want to dive deeper into Yulgok’s philosophy and Korean Confucianism:

All specific quotes and philosophical interpretations are drawn from these academic sources and historical texts.

Yulgok believed that focus wasn’t about never drifting—it was about training yourself to return. To come back to the center of what matters. Turns out, your immune system needs that same kind of discipline.

Enter: Turkey Tail.

One of the most studied medicinal mushrooms, Turkey Tail is rich in beta-glucans—compounds that help regulate immune response, support gut balance, and keep your system from overreacting to every little stressor (sound familiar?). In Japan, extracts like PSK have even been used alongside cancer therapies for their immune-modulating effects.

So no, it’s not just another pretty shelf fungus. It’s helping your body do what Yulgok taught the mind to do: recognize imbalance and gently return to home base.

Pro tip: Choose a dual-extracted tincture (hot water + alcohol). And if the label doesn’t mention “beta-glucans” or “PSK”? That’s your cue to walk away.