Brand Tas

When I make decisions where there’s a sense of surrendering my own choices, then I end up with more choices.

Perhaps it was always meant to be. On his spiritual beliefs, Daniel doesn't believe in a fixed path where he’s simply guided or forced along. Instead, he sees life as having a greater purpose, but with room for personal agency. He feels like his decisions are best when made with reflection and contemplation. “I know that when I make decisions without a reflective, contemplative listening, they’re usually dumb decisions that hurt me. When I make decisions where there’s a sense of surrendering my own choices, then I end up with more choices.”

These days, Daniel is known as a productivity expert with an underlying philosophy of making space. “For me, making space encompasses a whole lot of ideas,” he says. “It encompasses silence and solitude. It encompasses intentional living, and breathing and reflecting and being present with people you love.” He thinks too many of us live on autopilot: endlessly scrolling, checking emails, reaching for our phones without intention or deeper meaning. It’s an easy trap to fall into.

Daniel’s philosophy is rooted in his experiences in Vanuatu as a 19-year-old physiotherapy student. He participated in a leadership program that involved spending a full day in silence. “It was a super confronting experience,” he says. “I wasn’t even allowed to read. It wasn’t just, ‘entertain yourself.’ It was, ‘be still with your own thoughts.’”

While it wasn’t easy, the experience helped him process emotions he’d been avoiding and revealed the power of silence. Later, he spent time in a remote village in Vanuatu without electricity, where he would sit alone in the jungle each day to reflect. “I took that really seriously, and had some really profound, cathartic moments of learning to enjoy silence and reflection,” he says. “I think if we don’t have silence, we tend to live out other people’s lives.”

This period of reflection also helped Daniel realise it was time to move on from being a physio. While he enjoyed helping people, he was more drawn to communicating vision and big ideas. But it took him a while to make this change.

In his 30s, after struggling with breathlessness, he finally listened to the signs. His doctor gave him an explanation: he was struggling with anxiety and overwork. He didn’t need a physical change; he needed a lifestyle one.

Daniel explains what anxiety felt like for him. “It felt like acting from the outside in, rather than the inside out—like my external self was outrunning my internal self,” he says. “And for me, that’s what space-making is about.”

That’s when he started his healing journey: building a space for himself in which his outer life had to follow the inner life. Acting from a place of being. Living an intentional life and not getting ahead of himself. This became the foundation of his work helping others manage the balance between technology and wellbeing.

“I’m not anti-tech,” he says. “I just really care about people knowing who they are and making choices that help them live well.”

A recurring question after many of Daniel’s talks is, “How can I help my kids make space?” As a father of three and the author of Raising Tech-Healthy Humans, he’s got plenty to say to that.

Daniel encourages deeper reflection, because today’s technologies require more than a simple how-to approach. “You need an underlying philosophy of technology that then drives a bigger story of who you are and what you want for your family, and then for that story to inform your habits, and for your habits to inform your kids’ habits,” he says. “You can only model who you are, and if you're saying something and living something opposite, well, that’s not going to play out.”

A key element of Daniel’s beliefs is community. Growing up in Australia, he was shaped by a culture of individualism. To build a different kind of life, one where his kids could experience community, Daniel and his family decided to live communally in Tasmania. They bought land with another family, built two homes, and created a shared space where they could support each other. They created a little village.

“It is super hard to parent alone,” Daniel says. “You have to earn the money, have to do all the schooling, make all the decisions.” It’s even harder today in a culture of individualism.

Now, he has three teenagers growing up with a sense of community and sharing. He’s always encouraging them to go outside and play, but there’s often no one to play with. Today’s kids turn to online platforms for social interaction instead of running around the neighbourhood with friends. That’s made parenting even trickier, as the expectation is that parents should manage all their children’s entertainment. That never used to be the case.

To help, Daniel created a free online tech-parenting course based on his book and parenting seminars, packed with videos, guides, and resources. His main message is the choices parents make about technology early have a big impact: “If you want your kids to be great at technology when they’re adults, the best way to do that is not give them interactive technology too early. Because the people who can use technology really well are those who can focus and pay attention to things that matter.”

Start slow with tech. Give them lots of life experiences, and everyday, ordinary human experiences. Trust that their brain and their character and their resilience will be in a much better place for them to start engaging with tech healthily. And then grade up as they grow up.

Daniel supports the no-screens-for-the-first-1,000-days approach. He also believes passive media (like TV and streaming) is better than interactive screens (like video games and apps) for focus and visual health. “Young children cannot self-regulate using highly distracting apps,” he explains. “Interactive screens like Minecraft, or even education games, are far more stimulating on the fight, flight and freeze centres of the brain. That’s why kids get so wired and focused on a video game or iPad. They look like they’re learning, but if you take them off the screen, they crack it, and they really, really want to get back on. It’s because it ramps up the anxiety and dopamine centres of their brain. Kids need time to develop attention spans, emotional regulation, and social skills to truly learn—a foundation for using technology.”

He encourages parents not to be fearful about their kids missing out on tech, because if they are given a childhood that’s full of free play, human interaction, physical books, climbing trees, and riding bikes, they’re going to be better equipped to thrive in a digital economy. For Daniel, it’s all about playing the long game. “Start slow with tech. Give them lots of life experiences, and everyday, ordinary human experiences. Trust that their brain and their character and their resilience will be in a much better place for them to start engaging with tech healthily. And then grade up as they grow up.”

Even with all the challenges of raising kids in today’s world, Daniel thinks Tasmania offers something special. “There are trees and there’s the opportunity to get out in nature, which I think is tremendously important for people’s mental health and community,” he says. “We can create little communities, and we also don’t have to be pretentious. We wear puffer jackets and we’re happy to get out there.”

The outdoors, real play, and human connection. “That’s the stuff that makes childhood really beautiful,” Daniel smiles.