Q10E Labs
The way I commonly choose to explain the “why” of Q10E Labs at a party is to point out that TikTok is bad, that doomscrolling is bad, that phone addiction is bad, that these are real dangers for our youth, that these modern problems don't have a solution yet, and that I wanted to do something about it. This much is true, and saying just that already gets most people pretty enthusiastic about the mission.
The full explanation is more like a confluence of several separate threads in the tapestry of my life.
Woes of our time
Problematic relationships to technology
One thread is that I currently spend a good amount of my time chatting with and mentoring younger people. Without children of my own, I choose to invest some of my free time towards the youth. I care deeply about the folk I come in contact with, and so I feel sad when I see them struggle. I see addiction behaviors, issues with impulse control, and executive dysfunction, in patterns that can all be traced back to their consumption of algorithmic short-form content feeds. This happens while their brain is not fully formed yet, and so it would be wrong to expect them to take full responsibility for these behaviors.
The technology providers are responsible for this happening, but they don't do anything. I truly believe that the companies behind these feeds have sacrificed the well-being of two generations (and possibly more) in exchange for short-term profits—profits they are not even reinvesting in the betterment of society elsewhere!
So, what can I do about this? On the one hand, more and more frequently I choose to associate with groups that practice minimal use of technology; I attend and organize “offline groups”; I also advocate weaning off social feeds, etc. On the other hand, I refuse to throw the proverbial baby away with the bathwater: I believe technology can be useful, and wielded properly, digital devices can amplify our life.
To me, toeing the line properly involves reconfiguring the relationship of users with their technology. I have developed experience and proven patterns to achieve that already, and I want to share them at a wider scale. I hope to put some of that in Q10E Labs.
Meanwhile, while this particular thread started through my investment with the youth, I am aware that adults of all ages can also have problematic relationships with their devices, and so solutions that help with technology addiction could help them too.
Lives we don't like to think about
In another thread of life, memories of my youth often bring me back to dinner tables or family gatherings where everyone was sitting together, mostly silent, their eyes and attention directed at the television.
My limited ability to direct my attention for long—at the time—combined with my curiosity for things with more texture, did not allow me to share their interest for the screen; instead, I remember feeling scared and sad that the television was “taking my family away from me.” Although I did not have the words for it yet, I was already aware, that early on, that passive media consumption shuts off part of consciousness and pulls people apart.
The way I see this is that YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other similar apps have now allied with the venerable television, as instruments that adults can use to “shut off their mind”, to briefly disconnect from their busy life. Then, because media delivery is optimized to be addictive, they find it harder and harder to stop after they start.
However, the screen is not the problem here. The problem is that these adults find themselves so tired / distressed / overwhelmed from their busy life that they feel the need to “shut off their mind”, to rest from it somewhat. (That, too, is a bit tragic: life should be something we celebrate, not something we want to escape from.)
An even worse version of that is what I would call “misalignment distress.” This happens when adults experience a general frustration that the world is expecting too much from them, or the wrong things. For example, a person may feel stuck in a job they don't like, or working more hours than they're happy to sell in exchange for money. When this happens, every quiet moment in the day where they could rest and relax, their mind reminds them of this frustration and the quiet is replaced by stress.
By filling their time with television, or doomscrolling, they keep themselves mindlessly busy and keep these stressful thoughts at bay.
The problem here is not really being busy, or being misaligned. It's that the same adults do not feel they have agency over their situation. Then they do what a rational human would do: they let go of what they feel they cannot control, and try to survive instead. This, too, is tragic.
It's especially tragic when I know (from my experience as a teacher, a mentor and a coach) that most adults have doors to a different life available to open, if only they could see them.
Here, too, I would like to offer techniques and tools to offer a better future to folk who are stressed out by life. I hope to put some of that into Q10E Labs as well.
Overthinking is just a symptom
Throughout my coaching and mentoring career, one behavior I see folk struggle with quite often is overthinking. When we work together, their proximate interest is to address a pain in their life caused by their overthinking: increased anxiety, reduced ability to feel joy (or feeling anything really), decreased sleep quality, etc. To them, this pain is the main topic and they believe overthinking is its root cause. We often start there.
What our further conversations bring to light, however, is that overthinking is hardly a root cause.
To understand why, it helps to step back and look at our biology. Thinking, generally, is a relatively expensive activity for our body. As anyone would readily acknowledge, “laziness” is fundamentally human: to be lazy, really, is our body telling us to do less—to save energy!—because our current circumstances are sufficient for survival. Our biology is highly evolved to find ways to conserve energy! We only spend energy in order to gain something or get out of trouble: pleasure, social belonging, survival, mating, or even the chance at being lazier later. Thinking, as an energy-hungry activity, is only triggered in our body in support of one of these goals, and thinking “should stop” when we gain what we want.
In this context, we can see that excessive thinking happens when we continuously fail to get out of trouble or obtain what we truly desire; in which case our brain never stops to do extra work to “solve the problem” (while continuing to fail solving it). This is why we cannot address the overthinking itself without first understanding what is the underlying trouble and perhaps starting to address it differently.
Tangentially, this connects to device usage as discussed above in that mindless content consumption provides temporary respite from the exhaustion of overthinking. But here our focus is shifting away from maladaptive device use, into what it would mean to “address things differently.”
Also I feel it's important to clarify that I am not opposed to thinking generally. In some cases, a person may not fully see yet what is the true obstacle they are facing, or the true desire they are after. Some thinking here could bring clarity. In other cases, they may be enmeshed in a system of constraints (family obligations, financial difficulties, health issues, etc) which seems impossible to satisfy. Some thinking here could help disentangle things. Oftentimes, the goal is clear but there is a big obstacle on the road and the person simply uses thinking to work their way through the obstacle. This is also OK.
The trouble starts when thinking alone stops moving us forward and we don't notice. Instead of considering other routes, we keep using thinking as our main instrument. That's when it becomes overthinking, and when it becomes a problem: we get stuck.
In other words, the response to overthinking is not just “do less thinking”, it's more “let's do things differently.” But before we can even get there, we need to realize there's an issue. This is a skill, and it can be learned. Over time, I have learned various practices that help, and I hope to share some of them through our Q10E Labs tooling too.
The art of getting unstuck
So what does it mean to stop thinking and “address things differently”?
Across most circumstances I've encountered, the way that works pretty consistently is to pause, to take a step back (including a moment of rest), to consider the situation from a distance, with a fresh mind and, often, with the outside perspective of someone else whom we trust, and then to plot a fresh course of action. It also helps greatly when we can try out different things and learn from our mistakes.
It sounds abstract, but it's really all there is. Most people I've ever met are very able to find a new course once they adopt this approach.
Sadly, it is not that simple!
Before we can pause and take a step back, we first need a schedule that allows pauses. Before we can rest, we need a lifestyle that allows rest. Before we can consider a situation from a distance, we need a spot to go to that feels different. Before we benefit from the outsider perspective of a friend, we need friends whom we are comfortable to talk with. Before we can try different things and make mistakes, we must feel confident that these mistakes won't land us in a tough spot.
And when one or more of these things is not available to us, we are likely to remain stuck.
In other words, before we can get unstuck, we must build a life in which getting unstuck is possible. Each action we take, every day, to build such a life, is an investment in our ability to get out of trouble later.
This is why I'm ensuring that Q10E Labs also designs programs that help you build this kind of life.
Life can be good too
The initial spark for Q10E Labs came from thinking long and deep about what makes life hard and what to do about that. However, I am just as interested in delivering tools and programs that feel delightful.
Respect
One of the central goals I've put in Q10E Labs' mission is to help users increase and maintain their agency. I strongly believe that one of the keys to a dignified life is one where we feel we're making choices. I also know from experience that people don't like being told what to do, or when others make choices for them without asking.
This is what I'll call “respect” in our product.
Our programs and technology will not mean to place you under pressure, nor seek to do things behind your back. Instead, we'll sketch possible doors and pathways for you to explore at your own pace. Some of the keywords we use internally to guide our designs are “calm” and “discovery.”
I'm also personally committed to technology choices that avoid unnecessary data collection and that respect your privacy. We are also carefully staying away from designs that distract your attention or stimulate addictive behaviors, since that is exactly the current societal scourge we're set to fight.
Community
Also from experience, I've learned that taking action and keeping routines is way easier when there's someone else nearby; someone we feel comfortable with. One possible version of this is when a friend or buddy engages in a challenge together with us; another version is when we tell the story of our attempts or progress to someone we trust. Oftentimes, just being part of a group and seeing others make their choices can inspire us to make our own.
This is the version of the word “community” that interests me: the people around us we actually spend time with, with whom we do stuff and with whom we share a story of doing stuff together.
Think of it as a dimension of life that cuts through many types of relationships: family ties, partners, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, all of them can form community around us once we start supporting each other and building a shared story together.
This is why the programs we're building in Q10E Labs are not specifically about “how to make friends” or “how to find a life partner”—instead, we're aiming at creating spaces and mindsets where people feel it's easier to connect (or remain connected), share the life steps they're taking with each other, and let them create their own quality moments together.
As a metaphor: we're not creating the picture of your life for you and your community; we're providing a canvas and some useful drawing tools, and you choose the rest.
Ambition
I don't feel I have all the answers. I don't have the keys to happiness, fulfillment and a life we won't regret. But I've seen the wonderful potential of trying to hack at these questions bit by bit. One of my mottos is “a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.”
For sure, there are also difficult obstacles on the way. However, I also believe in the ability of people to show up for themselves and lift huge obstacles, especially with a strong community around them. Developing that ability, and the opportunity for strong community, starts inside places that foster exploration, intimacy and trust. I'd like Q10E Labs to be recognized for providing exactly that.
Why Q10E Labs?
The various ideas I'm advocating above are already part of my coaching and my mentoring; they have been for many years. I've also been applying these principles in my various leadership roles.
However, what I can do in a conversation, I can only do for a few people at a time. Mentoring works, but it doesn't scale. Good programs, shared among friends, might.
There are already some components in other apps and programs, and I'm a proponent of technology when it helps, but I never found the right combination that I'd trust enough to share. So when I found myself with excess time and some spare resources in 2025, I founded Q10E Labs to build my own and bring these principles to a larger audience.
What we are building now
We've started building our main product, which will combine paced prompts to action, ways to record your milestones, and various ways to develop your own community and share life stuff together with your group. We have not fully decided a name for it yet.
On the way to our main product, we are also releasing smaller and not-so-small related products. One example is Community Maps, which helps you share approximate geographical locations with your group. We're also working on an offline mobile app with a prototype of our prompt pacing algorithm, that can accompany you through the day and pull you away from mindless doomscrolling.
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Statement on LLM use
In a nutshell, we think it's OK to use machines to generate stuff seen only by other machines, but not stuff that's meant for people.
Our user-facing programs and technology are designed with human insights, decisions and responsibility.
We are inspired by the “AI manifesto”:
- Human judgment over algorithmic automation
- Transparency over black-box efficiency
- Augmentation over replacement
- Ethical responsibility over unchecked innovation
- Long-term trust over short-term gain
What we won't build
There are some decisions we're making early and expect to uphold for the foreseeable future, both to help with our missions and sustain focus. We've already mentioned some of them above (e.g. not telling you what to do, no addictive algorithmic feed, etc.); expect more self-imposed limits coherent with our vision, including:
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no public-facing groups, i.e. you can't go and explore what communities exist “in your area” or “based on your interests”. Our model for privacy is closer to Signal than Facebook. You can invite your own peers to your groups, and we're not going to do it for you.
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no public-facing content and feedback from strangers, i.e. the stuff you share inside our products is only shown to people in your private groups. Again, it's more like Signal than Instagram.
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close groups, usually under 50 members, never more than ~150 people. We want you to know everyone in your community.
Despite these limits, we also have the ambition to replace the role social media apps play in people's lives. Working within these constraints will help our users find the stuff that's missing from their life that social media are not providing.