Antidoters Podcast

Building a More Soul Society

Hey! It’s been a while. Sorry. I’ve been hustling, business-developing, Zoom-ing, moutain walking; web-designing, product-testing, conference-speaking, making 100s of packed-lunches; business-planning, ad-testing, trade-marking, veruca-treating; podcast-appearing, pitching, AI-training, picking up socks; you get the idea…As a result ScrollAware is gathering exciting momentum and appears to have hit a serious nerve, with *big* brands and 🤞some high profile ambassador conversations in play. But my own nerves are frazzled. So much for a slow Summer. I’ve felt like a priest at times, unwittingly eliciting countless confessions around bad habits and screen time fears. It can be depressing - horror stories abound - but it’s all validation that something’s gone seriously wrong and that we need more reminders to stop, pause and smell the roses. In moments of overwhelm, it can feel futile and like pushing water uphill. Am I staking my reputation and using up all my network’s goodwill on trying to push against the gravity of global-trends and cultural change? Is this a business, or is it a ‘movement’? Can it be both? There are certainly enough awesome antidote products, and services to support more intentional living - the returns from which could fuel the movement - but equally, I’m increasingly realising that much of this is simply a life philosophy to focus on how much of the good stuff in life is actually free. I feel like I’m trying to package and market an amalgam of personal philosophy (as revealed here) and old-world wisdom into something suitable for this age of overwhelm. To turn the clock back in many ways, but leveraging the modern tools of promotion that I find so icky: personal brand and the cult of celebrity, the primacy of social content and data optimisation, with the intensifying earthquake of AI-opportunity/ threat rumbling underfoot. The ‘More Soul Society’ has launched this week in response. It seeks to offer the simple reminders that I need in order to to practice what I preach, packaged into a short, weekly, free missive. A ‘slowletter’ if you will, rather than a newsletter. It’s the start of the audience-building side of the movement to create a home for all the More-Soulers whose confessions I’m privy to. Fancy it? Yes, it’s another substack… but a shorter, pithier one. Fewer elipses, semi-colons and rambling-Jess. And one that might trigger a mass ‘unsubscribe’ to so much other superfluous noise and out of which a movement could emerge to shift the pendulum back a little. It’s certainly a ‘could’ worth aiming for. More mature Antidoters may find some of the contents obvious or trite (Hi Mum), but trust me when I say that much of this stuff will be depressingly new to many under 30s and/or partially forgotten by the generation above them. The prospect of sitting on a bench for 5 minutes to people-watch, sending a physical postcard or going out of your way to give a stranger a compliment can be hugely novel, unnerving concepts. Idleness, reverie, pondering and boredom are close to extinct states of being. So I’m keeping this as short as I can(‘t!) as I’d rather you checked the below out than spent more valuable minutes reading this. (And Antidoters will continue in the same vein, as freewheeling as ever. As and when I have some spleen to vent). Please subscribe and share. PS- I was tempted to auto-subscribe you all as the sales-funnel gurus would advocate - but I figured that would be counter to the philosophy. This has to be opted-in to by those that feel this and find it a breath of fresh air in over-optimised lives. But bribery’s ok, right? I’ll send a handwritten postcard to anyone that gets 10 Soul Society sign-ups. A Smaart Pocket if you can get 50… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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Less Scroll, More Soul... in 5,4,3,2...

Jun 1100:13:28Tap to summarize

I’m so excited. It’s been less ‘Eureka’ and more a fog slowly clearing through the end of a telescope but after months of reading, writing and processing, my thinking has crystallised into a next professional chapter I can’t wait to write. One that hones in on the problems I care most about and draws on all my experience to date.Let’s start with a thought experiment: a short utopia in an age of dystopia. It’s 2035, and the Analogue Renaissance is thriving.It all began in 2025, when a people-powered #LessScrollMoreSoul movement took hold. The message appeared everywhere as a reminder of what society was losing in our 3 hours+ of daily scroll and what we had to gain from reclaiming some of it back. GenZ led the ‘digital defiance’ charge as frustration grew around childhoods they realised they’d lost, but it quickly spread as all woke up to the fact that we are what we pay attention to and that our time was ours to optimise, not others’ to mine and sell.A craze kicked off to visibly carry and use phone sleeping bags to signify disconnection and presence to ourselves and those around - our kids, friends, colleagues. Phone cloakrooms are now common at social gatherings with ‘no-phone zone’ signage in most public spaces. It is now frowned upon for phones to be out in social settings.Selfies, once hailed as a form of self-expression are now viewed as narcissistic and deeply uncool. Amateur public filming stopped, accelerated from 2031 by the risk of prosecution for sharing images without consent. Posting children on social media stopped altogether by 2030 after a number of AI-image manipulation abuse cases captured the media’s attention.Public spaces began to be designed more thoughtfully to invite connection: benches facing each other, communal talk tables, free chess boards and community walls for public expression and local event promotion. Dating app use declined, ‘single zones’ and public connection walls replaced them. Eye contact came back into fashion and analogue is cool again - vinyl, paper-planners, alarm clocks, disposable cameras, game nights. Bookshops are “digital detox zones” with cafés, events and open-mic nights. The previously diminishing concept of local, in-person community has crept back. Corporate CSR budgets increasingly back local initiatives - grassroots sports, youth clubs, events and community facilities. ‘Digital Sabbaticals' for young adults became common-place with 3 to 6 months spent off-grid, and the unplugged travel sector now booms.As evidence for the efficacy of ‘free’ antidotes grew, ‘Disconnection prescriptions’ became mainstream in mental healthcare; ‘Helicopter’ parenting continues to give way to ‘cavalier parenting.’ Kids fall. They get back up. Chores are back in vogue along with teen jobs. Band-aid sales have gone up, inversely correlated with the decline of antidepressants.In education, whilst tech and AI remain critical subjects in this tech-enabled world, their use in other disciplines has decreased with schools reviving slow learning: books, pens, gardening and map-reading. ‘Life lessons’ include media-literacy, financial management, “how to hold a real conversation” and “how to manage conflict” . Offline competence matters again and the humanities have received a new emphasis and boost as the ‘soul’ subjects that distinguish us from AI.As global governments woke up to the shifting public sentiment, 35 countries (so far) have enforced age-restrictions on social media. The Advertiser Revolt of 2027 effectively forced the social business models away from outrage and insecurity-fuelling toward quality-first content. Paid tiers were introduced for those who wanted to reinstate friend-only feeds or editing-control over 3rd party content.The ‘Digital Balance’ sector is booming and IRL (in-real-life) is big business once again.Naive? Perhaps. But a huge cultural shift is coming… you feel it as so do most people. And many elements of this utopia, especially the shifts in social norms and perception, I now consider my professional mission…* a quest to reclaim technology as an enabler for our real lives as opposed to a destination where we spend most of them. And deeper than that:* To remind people in a dopamine-driven, hack-obsessed, over-consumption world that happiness and pleasure are not the same thing, indeed they conflict. * To promote the age-old wisdom that happiness comes from embracing people, place and perspective (or ‘soul’ time): time in nature, sport, community, the arts, creativity, skills-building and collaboration.The phone is not really the problemThe smartphone is awesome. A truly magical wand in our pockets that can enable soul time: inspiration, logistics management, event-booking, education and community-building. It’s much more specifically infinite scroll and the attention (addiction) economy that is causing most of the problems.It’s the ‘free’ business model of doom-scrolling (along with its sophisticated algorithms that sate our worst human instincts) that is lobotomising society. An industry that’s literally mining us of 720 billion minutes per day (143 mins/ user/ day), 260 trillion minutes or 500 million years of collective human time annually (source). The average 18 year old is currently on course to spend 93% of their free time for the rest of their lives in scroll (source). And it’s not just the time-opportunity cost, but the damage done to our powers of concentration - especially pernicious to young brains still wiring-up - but a problem for all who now exist in a distracted state of multitasking overwhelm with the weight of global problems on our shoulders. ‘A model that’s literally mining us of 720 billion minutes per day (143 mins/ user/ day), 260 trillion minutes or 500 million years of collective human time annually’Maybe you have more self-control - well done - but if you’re not worried about these stats for civilisation’s sake, read them again.And I’m not saying I don’t deeply care about specific ‘harms’: the proven links to child anxiety, extremism, polarisation or dis-information- entrenching insecurities and tribal instincts. But I see these as downstream from the issues of time and focus and shifting adult perceptions as the key to unlocking action. In recent years we’ve seen the total extinction of boredom. Children never experience it despite the evidence of its critical importance for creativity, agency and resilience-building. The average child now spends less time outdoors than a high security inmate (source). And how often do any of us adults sit with our thoughts, processing or making sense of our experiences, chewing on curiosity rather than tapping it into Google or ChatGPT? We don’t, not even on the can.‘The average child now spends less time outdoors than a high security inmate’For as long as our attention is manipulated, we are not in full control of our own lives. If we’re not careful, the next great social divide will be between those who know how to harness it and go ‘deep’ and those who don’t (likely, as with all disparities, to fall along socio-economic lines). The former will rule the latter (as China appreciates).But enough with the gloom. The tides are shifting. Introducing Scroll Aware… …with constructive optimism at its core.Scroll Aware is a new social enterprise to tackle tech addiction and a collective-action movement to reclaim time, attention and soul in a screen-saturated world. A national (international?) #LessScrollMoreSoul consumer ‘health’ campaign will kick it off soon with many high profile partnerships in place or in discussion.Whilst the zeitgeist is shifting (see the recent Deloitte survey where 53% of GenZ favour a ban on social media for U16s), many initiatives are discounted as doom-mongering (even if truth-telling) and/or luddite. As such, Scroll Aware has a fabulous opportunity to shape a positive conversation with measurable targets for behavioural change that invert the scroll:soul ratio.Scroll Aware is a non-partisan social enterprise. It’s a positive, antidote-based take on the challenge and less anti-tech or anti-phone as pro-people, pro-place, and pro-perspective. 'Less Scroll' is the push - shining light on the ...

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The Idle Way: Flirting with Anti-Consumerism

Mar 14, 202500:09:18Tap to summarize

Something in me is shifting. It struck me as I walked out of security last month at the departures terminal and into the walkway that snakes through duty free. Every sense was immediately assaulted. Glossy images of A-listers, neon lights, huge point-of-sale booze-deals and an overwhelming scent of perfume. Three children tugged me in the directions of giant M&Ms, tech accessories and overpriced body-sprays respectively, whilst my own eyes were involuntarily drawn to the rows of sunglasses and Swatch watches I don’t need, (but feel a nostalgic 80s love for). It took every ounce of willpower to stay in-lane, snaking my carry-on through whilst shaking my head sternly ‘absolutely not’. I felt a bit nauseous.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It struck me at that moment how gross and exploitative this omnipresent consumerism has become. Stuff, stuff and more stuff. Stuff to make us prettier, less-inhibited, more organised, more noticed, more… more. Happiness in the form of retail therapy and the dopamine of a shiny new thing. We’re all susceptible. Brands wouldn’t exist if we weren’t, but how happy does any of this really make us?My husband and I often play the Marie Kondo game. What ‘stuff’ do we own that actually ‘brings us joy’? The answers are odd and have zero correlation to price: his (ugly) gilet; my thermos coffee cup (to which i’m surgically attached prior to 11am); our ceiling-projecting bedside clock; my mud-boots for dog-walking; our dry robes for saturday-soccer; my thrice-yearly photo books; the Eastpak rucksack I picked up at the village-fete for 50p that is now my handbag; our crocs (oh, spare me your judgement)... and er..? It’s a pathetically small list when I think of all the money we spend on crap. Crap that ends up causing a huge amount of stress in a house of three children as it’s never bloody returned where it’s supposed to go. Another exercise: ask a kid what they got for past Christmases (even the last one!) and depressingly, they rarely remember. They recall what they did around that time, who visited, any festive outings and which games were played, but rarely the gifts themselves, despite the huge expense, time, worry (and midnight assembly hours) ‘Santa’ invested in them. The most played-with toys are *never* the ones you expect. I’ve spent the best part of my career in the world of brands: building tech to harness attention; selling loyalty schemes and honing marketing messaging. I enjoy brand-building and message-massaging around the behavioural science of what people need or think they need. And I’ve believed in the value delivered by the brands I’ve worked on. Through choosing them as consumers we make a statement about who we are. They can be aspirational and provide identity, status, comfort or convenience. Branding is the way to make our (uniquely brilliant, obviously) product stand out in a crowded marketplace. And it’s no coincidence that many of the biggest social movements of the last few decades… Pride, Extinction Rebellion, BLM, LiveAid etc have succeeded by harnessing the branding playbook… logos and merch included. Purchases do produce ‘highs’.. but they’re short-lived, so desire for them is now insatiable.These thoughts have intersected with the work I’m doing at the moment on antidotes to tech addiction. I have a few exciting product ideas of my own (on which, more to follow) and (with thanks to Jonathan Haidt’s team), have been chatting to a number of talented, energising entrepreneurs working on solutions. Given the growing demand for solutions, I suspect some of these products and services may end up being very lucrative indeed.But actually, the best solutions to this issue are free… education, willpower, socialising, reading, walks, nature, more pondering, community engagement etc. But therein lies the problem…. as if they’re free, it’s no one’s real incentive to market them well and make them seem ‘cool’ or aspirational. No VCs to back the social-media marketing campaign or SEO. Feeling sad or overwhelmed? Here’s a premium app subscription to master the act of mindfulness. Much cooler than 10 minutes of watching clouds drift across the sky or half an hour spent on an old puzzle from the back of the cupboard- despite them having a very similar effect.Maybe, where lifestyle brands are concerned, paying for something provides a placebo effect in itself though? Maybe if you pay, you’re more committed to change. This psychology certainly works for me where my gym membership is concerned.Anyway, the other event that prompted me to flirt further with my growing anti-capitalist inclination was opportunistically reaching out to the hero-author of a book I loved recently and landing a lunch with him.Tom Hodgkinson wrote ‘The Idle Parent’ and has, for the last 20 years been running ‘The Idler’- a wonderful counter-cultural publication dedicated to ‘slow living’ and our lunch was fabulous. It was like meeting another version of myself in a parallel world, someone who’s spent most of his professional life promoting free life-additives through a lens I feel like I'm only just rediscovering.As readers will know from my ‘what I can’t see I can’t overparent’ post, I was immediately inclined to his book from its title and it did not disappoint. In turn, laugh-out-loud funny and ridiculously annoying, as I wished I’d written it. In essence, a tract on why parenting less is good for both parent and child. Why a slower, less ‘proactive’ family life is a more fulfilling, richer life. Why possessions - especially plastic ones - are less important than experiences. Why you should never take your child to a theme park and how the best family days are the ones where parents drink together in a tent on one side of a field and the kids run feral on the other. I’m in. I highly recommend that everyone sign up to his newsletter for the opportunity to receive a free download of ‘The Idler’s Manual’ - a quick-read charter for life that is a funny, poignant reminder of so many of the ‘boring’, unmarketed things that make life worth living: messing around on water; wondering a city aimlessly, riding a bike for fun, staring at walls, afternoon naps, playing old games and lolling by a fire - to name just a few examples. The Idler mag itself is gorgeous escapism, full of brief journeys into the fascinating worlds of philophers, historians, art and ukelele playing… worlds that few on the ‘productivity’ treadmill ever make time for. It’s annoying when people articulate your thoughts better than you can, but herewith, the Idler Manifesto:The religion of industry has turned human beings into robots. The imposition of work-discipline on free-wheeling dreamers enslaves us all. Joy and wisdom has been replaced by work and worry. We must defend our right to be lazy. It is in our idleness that we become who we are. It is when lazy that we achieve self-mastery. Jobs rob our time. Productivity and progress have led to anxiety and unease. Technology imprisons as it promises to liberate. Careers are phatasms. Money is mind forg’d. We can create our own paradise. Nothing must be done. With freedom comes responsibility. Stay in bed. Be good to yourself. Inaction is the wellspring of creation. Art, people, life. Bread, bacon, beer. Live first, work later. Time is not money. Stop spending. Quit your job. Study the art of living. Live slow, die old. Embrace nothing. Know nothing. Do nothing. Be idle.What a breath of fresh air.Am I in danger of dying my hair blue?Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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Why Pubs Matter More than Ever

Feb 14, 202500:12:01Tap to summarize

Today, I’m delighted to be sharing my first guest post from a great friend of mine, Adam Nicoll. Adam is truly an ‘old soul’, and someone I hugely enjoy for his irreverent sense of humour and salty language. He pulls no punches, debatewise, has a penchant for spraying robust opinions on radio phone-ins and along with our better halves, we frequently put the world to rights over drinks. Indeed the name of our 4-way whatsapp group remains ‘Nelson’ after our gammon fury some years back at the changing of a school house name from ‘Nelson’ to ‘Attenborough’ (ick). The subject of community-decline has been a recurrent theme in our conversations but whilst lots of people talk the talk, few walk that talk. Adam does… and for miles, as his post outlines.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Whilst a high-achieving C-level/ board player in global corporations, he is also a fierce family and community man with solid priorities. If I have any criticism of what follows it’s that he greatly understates the gargantuan task he undertook in rescuing his local village pub. He was a man on a mission to which he gave everything, including calls to breweries from mountain-tops during a shared family holiday.The stunning value of what he created and continues to sustain as an intensive passion-project is evident to any visitor.He is my antidoter of the week. The world needs more Adams.“Only Connect” EM Forster, Howards End.Over the last 25 years or so I can recall at least half a dozen occasions when leaders in the businesses I’ve operated in, have toyed with the notion of cancelling work socials, parties or culled the work canteen – ‘but people can walk to Greggs easily enough...’. Some have acted accordingly. When they’ve done so in the spirit of saving money or driving profit, they have ignored one fundamental truth. People like people. More than that, people need people to be happy. People only work because of people. Removing that social interaction and expecting a business to continue to operate at the same optimal rate, is like expecting an orgasm at a funeral. It’s possible but unlikely and a social car crash.And it’s not just businesses which make such glaring mistakes. We’re all quite good at it for ourselves. We often don’t know what’s good for us. It never ceases to amaze me how people draw conclusions about their lot in life and then prescribe themselves the very medicine which is most contradictory to the diagnosis. Since COVID, this trend has found a fifth and sixth gear. Dare I say, it’s the younger generations who seem more susceptible to this pitfall and perhaps experience counts for something after all?Here’s how a thought process may roll around the topic of remote working.“People in the office are getting more opportunities than me. I didn’t get to go on that Parisian jolly but I’ve always wanted to see the Paris office. Maybe I wasn’t around when it was mooted around the water cooler? Jade got it. She would have been at the water cooler. She’s always in the office, sucking up to the bosses. Cow!”It’s cold and the cost of living is ridiculous right now, especially heating bills. Now I’m WFH it costs at least £20 to heat this place for the day...but I suppose that’s cheaper than commuting…. even if the WiFi is terribleI want to WFH to have more freedom and control over my destiny and workload. It saves me on commuting costs too and I’m in when Amazon parcels arrive. I got a couple of great books today. One to tackle my loneliness and one about anxiety. Great.I wish I had a job where I felt I belonged to something bigger. There’s no sense of identity and community at this place. Why am I so unhappy?What’s this survey from HR in my inbox? Oh, it’s asking me if I still want to work remotely or come back into the office 2 days a week!! WTF. I don’t like the tone of these questions. It’s like they’re FORCING me to come in or else. I’m ticking that box, ‘I prefer to work remotely 5 days a week’. That’ll teach ‘em for victimising me. HR arseholes.”...Just as people have gained more freedom regarding when and where they work, their mental health has collapsed at an alarming rate. Up to 80% of workers report that remote working impacted their mental health negatively. Why? Well, it’s clear to many of us that it’s about connection. Isolate a rat in a lab from its pals for a few days and it shows signs of stress. We’re just the same. As EM Forster writes in his opening line of Howards End ‘Only Connect’.Over the last several years the social glue of society has been dosed in a solvent, robbing us all of a cohesion which used to make us smile more, and love more. In 1990, one in five people in the UK met their spouse at work. Today’s figure can’t even be surveyed for fear that people would get sacked for completing the survey honestly...’work relationships!!!’...Ewwww, HR AND COMPUTER SAYS NO, CANCEL AND DETONATE ON SITE!So that, finally, brings me to pubs, why they matter more now than ever, and why I’ve been asked to guest blog today.Well, you know where this is going. Pubs are connection. They are community. They are not just where culture flows, they are that culture.It may be too antiquated a cliche to say that pubs are a part of the fabric of society; and perhaps too exclusive and rural-biased to reference that the holy trinity of a village community was once a village shop, a Church and a thriving village pub. Those days have long gone, but I can’t help but quote Hilaire Belloc“Change your hearts or you lose your inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.”I’m sure some readers won’t dare to relate to this, think it jingoistic, have vomited and already started playing Fortnite with a repeat offender in Wisconsin who they’ll never actually meet, like, love or loathe. But, whatever your religious viewpoint or ideology, pubs matter. They matter to towns and villages and to all countries where they comprise a significant cultural impact. And now, more than ever. Places to connect in person are disappearing at an alarming rate. If they were a pink footed goose, there would be a Chris Packham-led appeal on BBC9 at 8pm every weekday asking people to dig deeper. Community centres are in short supply and underfunded, church attendance has been on the wane for decades, working men’s clubs have vanished, newsagents going, village shops vanishing, even bookmakers have disappeared and youth clubs have gone the way of the dodo. And yes, people will argue that coffee shops have plugged the gap and society has just moved in a different direction from the boozer. Well I’d say walk into a coffee shop and count how many people are alone, working on a laptop or scrolling on a mobile. How many people are actually connecting in the way that they might in a pub...All this, and in a world where 9 million people in the UK alone describe themselves as ‘lonely’ or ‘very lonely’. Is it any wonder, when you can’t even guarantee speaking to someone in a shop at the bloody till. It drives me mental when I see an elderly person struggling with self-checkout. Well done, Lord Saintrose, you’ve saved a bob or two with your miserly automation but made everyone’s lives more stressful. You’ve outsourced a chunk of your ‘service’ to the people actually paying for your product - those who are most vulnerable in society and who may only get out once or twice a week to speak to someone in real life (since their other half died and their kids moved away). You’ve cast them into a digital oblivion of covid-infecting screen swiping.... Arrrghghhghgh. Shame on you.We know the loneliness diagnosis, and yet we prescribe solutions which bring more of the same misery. Madness.Back to pubs. There aren’t many left. Under 39,000 actually. In 1990, there were 63,500. My village pub was under threat a couple of years ago and I decided to stand up for it. I stood on a pub table a few times in actual real life, and then did more of the same virtually on Facebook to generate noise to save the thing; eventually got some funding from a generous chap who ‘got it’; and shamed the conglomerate who owned the pub on radio enough to convince them it was easier to sell it to a community inspired bid. Almost a year down the line and the pub is open, refurbished, viable and thriving.But it’s in the conversations I hear in the pub where the real victory lies. People discussing break-ups, their latest diagnosis or prognosis, their children’s victories and challenges. People moaning about their boss in a safe place, airing their woes about the world and occasionally their politics. People decompressing from a day at work with a pint on the way home or a game of darts. Without a pub, many of these conversations would have no natural home. They wouldn’t happen at all. They’d be inner talk at best. Inner chat which may eat away at us, pushing happiness further and further away, isolating us from others. Emotions bottled up with no release.Worse still, we may put these thoughts on social media instead, to be misinterpreted, driving anger northwards, and ...

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Where Have all the Compassionate Neighbours Gone?

Jan 24, 202500:11:11Tap to summarize

Hello Strangers! Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve spent a lovely last month taking my own advice and prioritising family, plus reading to restock my mind-pantry. Because the truth is, I’d run out of spleen-venting material and feared I was repeating myself. (Perhaps it might help all our content-overwhelm if people stopped posting for the sake of it. Two ears, one mouth etc).And what a last month it’s been with so many explosive global news events in all my fields of fascination/ concern: a poisonous feast of political polarisation; a prospective (likely abortive) TikTok ban in the US; tribal battle lines drawn over whether it’s possible to accidentally extend one’s right arm; identity-politics playing out in responses to two huge UK news stories- grooming gangs and the tragic Southport murders; and much more. I’m following as much of it as my stress levels can take, and yes, I have opinions (indeed, I was sat on a zoom with Sky News at 7.30pm last friday, thirty seconds from interview go-live to discuss the TikTok ban I wholeheartedly support before being bumped by the demise of a much-loved footballer). Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Global politics is viewed as either deeply concerning or a welcome course-correction as pendulums of ascendant opinions swing around wildly, but our obsession with the global comes at what cost to the local? Indeed, how much of what is (or isn’t) happening at the local community level is responsible for it? Arguably, all of it…The decline of community is one of the repetitive themes of Antidoters and last week I was hugely struck by a brilliant long article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson that articulated and evidenced this phenomenon much more beautifully than I ever could: ‘The Antisocial Century’. (If you have the time, stop reading this and read that - you have my permission. If not, some highlights as follows). Whilst it’s US focussed, I believe it to be just as relevant to the UK. The article details how, from the very social early part of the 20th century (thriving churches, growth of local group participation plus the rapid spread of libraries, theatres, music venues and parks), various trends over the last few decades have seen communities go into terminal decline. It started with the rise of car-culture and the impact on urban-planning… then shifting political priorities… then TV’s appearing in every home… (“From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half” (Robert D Putnam “Bowling Alone”)..All this well before the turbo-charging of these trends by recent technology shifts, Covid, on-demand entertainment and the explosion of food-delivery services:“If two of the 20th century’s iconic technologies, the automobile and the television, initiated the rise of American aloneness, the 21st century’s most notorious piece of hardware has continued to fuel, and has indeed accelerated, our national anti-social streak. Countless books, articles, and cable-news segments have warned Americans that smartphones can negatively affect mental health and may be especially harmful to adolescents. But the fretful coverage is, if anything, restrained given how greatly these devices have changed our conscious experience. The typical person is awake for about 900 minutes a day. American kids and teenagers spend, on average, about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends gazing into their screens… By this account, screens occupy more than 30 percent of their waking life….The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality….More worrisome than what young people do on their phone is what they aren’t doing. Young people are less likely… to get their driver’s license, or to go on a date, or to have more than one close friend, or even to hang out with their friends at all….Phones mean that solitude is more crowded than it used to be, and crowds are more solitary. Bright lines once separated being alone and being in a crowd… Boundaries helped us. You could be present with your friends and reflective in your downtime. Now our social time is haunted by the possibility that something more interesting is happening somewhere else, and our downtime is contaminated by the streams and posts and texts of dozens of friends, colleagues, frenemies, strangers….Practically the entire economy has reoriented itself to allow Americans to stay within their four walls. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to remote work. It is something far more totalizing—something more like “remote life.”And one lovely framing theory that I’ve since plagiarised in conversation is the following:Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town.. We used to know them well; now we don’t”I would personally add ‘the narcissistic obsession of self’ to the inner ring - and global political obsession to the outer, tribal ring. But yes, the middle ring we neglect at our peril.Thompson goes on to explain how the “the middle ring is key to social cohesion… Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance”. Bumping regularly into those with whom we might disagree on ideology or politics but share so many other experiences, family-dynamics or local concerns allows us to truly see each other and find common-ground. Different experiences and life-perspectives are given greater consideration. Accommodation and peaceful co-existence becomes both possible and necessary.And so, in an attempt to take my own medicine, my antidote-quest has driven me to middle-ring proactivity. I’ve volunteered with a local hospice initiative to be a ‘compassionate neighbour’ for an hour a week to a local elderly person who is lonely or socially excluded. I hesitate to share this, as I feel there’s too much ‘look what a nice person I am’ virtue signalling in the world, so I’ll be honest and admit that my motivation here is only part altruistic and part selfish/ for research-purposes. Who are the people that do this and what is their motivation? What difference do/ can they make? How might one scale this? On a personal level, who might I get to know and how differently might they see the world based on their much longer experience of it? I’d love to hear personal stories of bygone-times and to broaden my narrow ‘people-like-me’ social circle. (But yes, I will commit to it and not quit once I’ve extracted some Antidoters value!)So far, without yet having even been matched to a new socially-excluded friend, my research curiosity has already been piqued as follows:Why was it so hard to volunteer for this? Why did I need to be DBS-checked, impose on two friends for references and attend a whole-day training event to give an hour of my time each week to have coffee with another consenting adult? But of course I know the answer: the precautionary principle. If I murder Doris or steal all her money, someone will need to be held responsible (albeit possibly Amazon for selling me the knife… ‘do something! anything!’ *facepalm*). Whilst potentially there from the best of intentions, how far are all these barriers putting many off from getting involved in local initiatives? How many more football coaches, youth workers, scout-leaders or citizen-advice volunteers might we benefit from without them? We’ll never know.(In related research, I talked to the British Nightclub Association last week about the potential of putting on alcohol-free ‘lite club’ evenings in their venues for teenagers but yet again, the precautionary principle is a key blocker. One negative news story involving drugs, a fight or a spiking would see the whole initiative would go up in flames of negative publicity, so it’s easier not to try. Let’s leave the kids to hang out in dingy, underfunded parks. (Or not… watch this space… or take that idea for yourself and run with it))Why were all the 15 volunteers in my training session (bar one) female and with an average age of c. 68? Again no surprise perhaps given how similar percentages play out across the care sector (only 18% of the people working in adult social care identify as men – and even fewer among care workers (16%), senior care workers (15%), nurses (13%) and occupational therapists (11%...

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A Ponder on the Lost Art of Pondering

Dec 6, 202400:08:48Tap to summarize

I sat in a group team event last week, listening to a presentation about the trajectory of one of the most exciting technology companies in the world. Twenty minutes…. that was all it took before the fidgeting started, before hands (including my own), reached instinctively to check a device and you could feel the attention in the room wavering.This was not an indictment on the content or delivery - which were both brilliant - but on a modern culture where brains have been reprogrammed to multi-task; one where we struggle to stay in the moment and where we are slaves to the allure of devices. My mother’s generation isn’t so afflicted, but mine certainly is and as I scan the room - a brilliant team who work remotely all over the world and come together in person only once every 18 months - I notice that it’s worse the younger people are. We may worry about how this is rewiring our children’s brains, but we also need to take greater responsibility for our own and the example we set. A chant starts up in my head ‘Con-cen-tra-tion… Concentration now begin… Keep in rhythm’ - a kid’s game but apparently now ripe for adult team-building.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.As I write, I have 102 tabs open on three browsers which I scroll between for different projects. Amongst them: 3 separate inboxes; a 40-channel Slack; 12 half-read articles; 5 half-listened-to YouTubes; 4 pdf reports waiting to reviewed; some half-baked product research; GoDaddy (because any idea that pops into my head can result in a rash url purchase); two conferences I’d like to attend; Trello, for tracking Christmas gifts and family-admin; 5 separate Linkedin tabs with posts I may or may not ‘like’; and (no-joke), the lyrics to a partridge in a pear tree. Let’s not even talk about my phone and the number of Whatsapps awaiting processing.WTF am I doing? And how uniquely chaotic is my desktop? Why, mid-sentence here, do I feel a compulsion to quickly check if anything interesting has popped into one of my inboxes in the last 15 minutes? Quick scroll left, sign a birthday-party waiver, delete a marketing spam, add a football game to the calendar… and I’m back. The reason I record an audio version of this blog is so that it don’t sit in another tab to-read-later or fall down below the inbox fold. Perhaps my dulcet tones can be enjoyed at greater leisure, next time you’re in a car, walking the dog or doing a shop. Your time is precious. I don’t take it lightly.Given that volume of content, how can we possibly give any of it proper consideration or find time to stop and process any meaningful conclusions? My tabs of potential knowledge-gems sit there contributing to mental overload in the same way that the physical detritus of our family life on every available surface stresses me out. It’s the content snorkelling habit analogy I’ve used before and I know it’s making me stupid and unproductive. Distraction is an illness and we’re all now afflicted.In a moment of down time with my husband recently I had pause to reflect on my gallbladder… as you do. What even is it? Where is it? What does it do? It struck me that I recall *nothing* from school biology and haven’t ever given it a single thought. On musing this out loud, my husband and I both reached for devices. 7 minutes later, we know the answer - thank god - but at the cost of 14 cumulative minutes of our precious together time… x20 other such examples in any given week (where do I know that actress from? How do you stop your puppy eating s**t? Synonyms for ‘pondering’?) Christ. Cogitate on the cumulative nature of that and how much of it is utterly, utterly pointless.Answers to anything and everything that pops into our heads are a tap away and this instant accessibility has dramatically altered how we think about and retain facts. Are the ones we yield on a quick search even true? (Pineapple in dog-food? Really?). As an unwelcome byproduct, we seem to have utterly lost the art of pondering. Even modern toilet roll holders are conspiring against pondering-time with their phone-rest shelves. Maybe it needs a rebrand? To ‘broogle’ is one term I recently heard.. (brain-google - although admittedly it would have yielded little on the gallbladder).And yet, to ponder is a critical life skill. To do so silently is to process the noise of modern life and come to our own conclusions (as opposed to someone else’s); and to ponder out-loud fosters deep connection through shared curiosity - remarkably effective given the rarity of volunteered-ignorance in an age of cast-iron opinions. For children, it’s even more important. As Monica C. Parker writes in Time magazine (with thanks to Hannah Oertel for sharing this quote in her own fabulous blog), “Rather than demonizing daydreaming, we should protect it, nurture it, honor it—if not for the raft of physiological and psychological benefits, then for the potential societal benefits. People who daydream are more reflective, have a deeper sense of compassion, and show more moral decision-making. And ultimately, children who are more reflective, compassionate, and moral grow up to be the adults who build a more just society.”We ignore this habit at our peril. And there are worrying trends everywhere conspiring to exacerbate the problem: the disappearance of free play and boredom for children despite its proven power to build resilience and relationship-building skills; the decline of long-form hand-writing, despite its superiority to typing on brain-connectivity, recall and comprehension; the decline of challenging, longer-form reading in education; and with ChatGPT and AI, turbo-charging these habits still further. Most depressingly, ‘Brain Rot’ has just been revealed as the Oxford University Press’s word of the year (n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.Yet still, the Antidoters persist.A founder community I’m a part of ran ‘Ponder Wanders’ for a while. A wonderful idea where loosely-connected strangers would meet to take a stroll and discuss a selection of random topics at leisure. A friend has implemented something similar locally to alleviate loneliness and connect people in Hertfordshire. The Men’s Shed movement started in response to a recognition that men only really talk to each other when ‘doing something’ side-by-side: fixing, tinkering, playing golf etc. And the ‘unplugged’ movement is rapidly gathering momentum, with many phone-free events now popping up around the globe.I believe that hope lies is something akin to an analogue renaissance. The buds are here and being cultivated by many of the innovators that have flooded my inbox since my After Babel blog with Jonathan Haidt (for which you can blame my blog inconsistency of late). I believe it to be some of the most important work happening in the world today.Attention and focus is the new gold. I’d go so far as to say that it could become the next great soceital divide. Those kids with the ability to mine it and deep-dive will become our next leaders, leaving all others snorkelling subjects of the world they create. And if we ourselves, still hope to make a dent, or at least calm our frazzled brains?… Con-cen-tra-tion…. Concentration now begin…. Keep in rhythm… Me. You. Ponder on. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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Cheating on my Readers

Nov 1, 202400:14:50Tap to summarize

A reading of my recent blog post on 'After Babel' - Jonathn Haidt's team's publication sharing resaerch and data around his book 'The Anxious Generation'.Entitled: A Mission for Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Help Bring Back ChildhoodWhen entrepreneurs hear about problems, they see opportunities. This is what I love about the entrepreneurial sectors I’ve spent my career in—the optimism, energy, problem-solving, and value-creation that abound. At the other end of the business spectrum, corporations are increasingly recognizing their societal responsibilities (CSR) and embracing sustainability and social purpose (albeit with ideological tripwires everywhere). Given the huge challenges described in The Anxious Generation—the multi-national youth mental health crisis, a generation of kids deprived of real-world independence, and an oversaturation of screens and personal devices—we need both this creative optimism and corporate conscience channeled towards solutions. My goal in this essay is to encourage entrepreneurs—both social and for-profit—to see this challenge as a meaningful market opportunity. Millions of parents around the world are mobilizing and clamoring for solutions as their concerns for their children grow. They’re increasingly recognizing the emptiness and negativity of their own digital habits, too. There is a nostalgic hunger in the air for less frenetic, polarized, and superficial times, which means that there's a market for in-real-life (‘IRL’) memory-making and businesses to be built around it. The two biggest entrepreneurial gaps are in developing IRL solutions to tackle norm #4 from The Anxious Generation––more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world––and in creating safer technology tools for young people. In other words, we need more places for young people to practice and enjoy independence, and we need better technology that will let young people use their devices as tools (like a Swiss army knife), without getting exploited through those devices by companies that are trying to control and addict them. Let’s zoom in on some of the opportunities: Opportunity 1: IRL SolutionsTo remind kids that the physical world is more meaningful and thrilling than the virtual one, we need to create more compelling spaces and opportunities that encourage independence. Only with greater access to these spaces will cultural norms shift, prompting parents to give their children more independence.Teens these days are sadly ‘non-grata’ in many public spaces. With downtown shopping areas and malls in decline across many Western nations, ‘teenism’ (my term) has emerged as a phenomenon. Teens are often unwelcome, barred from entering stores or shopping areas in groups, and left to mill around in dingy parks or communal street areas. Interestingly, McDonald’s has capitalized on this trend with a clever ad campaign in the UK that shows how it has become the teen meeting place of choice. But surely fast-food joints can’t be the only safe public spaces for teens? It certainly doesn’t bode well for their health if so.Video. McDonald’s ‘Make it Yours’ teenager ad campaign.There’s a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to create and expand spaces and organized opportunities for IRL hangouts, entertainment, skills-building, and memory-making. There are ambitious commercial entrants to this market, such as ‘The Den’— a membership-based, phone-free youth club brand launching in the UK that aims to scale nationally and then internationally, given the right medium- to long-term investors. These beautifully designed venues for 13- to 18-year-olds feature event calendars, open spaces, DJ decks, cafe-areas, games, shuffleboards, and critically… limited supervision. Video. Enjoy The Den’s fabulous vision.Fabrik, though targeted at adults, is another simple example in the U.S. of creating IRL community hangout spaces.Grassroots sports, drama, and hobby clubs provide fantastic opportunities for IRL play, socializing, and skills-building. There’s no happier sight for me than standing on the sidelines of my 8-year-old daughters’ Saturday morning football match, while another 10 fiercely competitive games rage noisily on the surrounding pitches, with girls aged 6 to 18 cheering each other on and erupting in delight at every goal. (Interestingly, it’s usually the parents who bring the tone down). Unfortunately, many of these organized clubs are struggling. They lack funding, the ability to professionalize, and the resources to scale. They often scrape by on local sponsorship and volunteer support. The Scout and Girl Guide movements—which provide a strong antidote to phone-based childhood—have also seen declining membership over recent decades. Boy Scout membership in the U.S., for instance, has dropped from 4 million in the 1980s to around 1 million today. More needs to be done to reinvigorate these movements and promote their huge, increasing value in modern society. Their resurgence and greater availability will help parents to slacken their reins on children, restore trust, and renormalize unsupervised neighborhood play. The lack of provision for community spaces and association rests also with government cuts to community spending (at least in the UK). For example, youth club funding in the UK has been cut by £1 billion (70%) over the last 10 years. However, the investment world is also culpable. Longer-term, slower-growth bricks-and-mortar investments don’t attract the same scale of funding as shiny, tech solutions that promise 100x returns and attract angel and venture capital. While the decline of the high street (or main street) isn’t entirely due to investor short-termism or greed (Amazon and China share much of the blame), it’s certainly a factor. Brands that sink millions into social media advertising are also exacerbating the problem, contributing to the addictiveness and resulting anxiety these platforms fuel while filling the social media companies’ coffersCorporations and global consumer brands could step in here, offering both employee volunteers and branded sponsorship to fuel successful community initiatives. Burberry, Lego and UBS have done this with the growing chain of Onside Youth Zones in the UK—a sophisticated charity model that harnesses local, public and private sector partnerships to provide valuable youth spaces in underserved communities. With corporate investment and support to professionalize operations, these success stories could be scaled significantly. We don’t necessarily need to wait for governments to dip into overstretched tax revenues. These initiatives would also directly alleviate many of the social inequalities that DEI initiatives have sought (with limited success) to address. With so many retail units currently vacant and community facilities—from churches to community centers—underutilized, not to mention the school grounds that lie vacant after hours, are there franchising or ‘pop-up’ opportunities to be exploited? Spaces for dances, musical performances, art collaborations, comedy, theater, or debates? Opportunities for young people to ‘do’—to get together, play, and learn during their free time—rather than wasting hours watching what online strangers ‘do’. Perhaps partnerships could be established between property owners and companies, local associations or parent groups to repurpose such spaces for youth initiatives? An ‘IRL Pledge’ from corporations to better support the in-real-life lives of employees and their communities could combine financial sponsorship for local projects with employee volunteer commitments. This would drive the replication and expansion of successful programs. ‘Big Brothers, Big Sisters’ is yet another example, providing not only strong role models for disadvantaged children, but also fostering valuable social mixing across our ever-widening societal divides. But as we improve our real world solutions, we also need to innovate around technology and online solutions. Leave a commentOpportunity 2: Healthier Tech Tools for the YoungSuccessful solutions will require a combination of hardware, software, product design, branding, and business-building expertise. Critically, these experts must not have a vested interest in recruiting young people into the ‘attention economy’ — a challenge in itself when Big Tech offers such deep incentives (free lunches and bean-bag filled offices) to attract the best of the best. The ‘opposition’ is powerful, with billions of dollars of attention econo...

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Shhhhhhh. In Defence of ‘Quiet’

Sep 13, 202400:06:49Tap to summarize

I’ve been chewing on the word ‘quiet’ recently… a simple, unassuming word. Somewhat onomatopoeic and almost apologetic. It’s like a full stop. Even when uttering it, it slips gently from the sides of the mouth and silence follows (a sullen one if used as a directive). It’s certainly not a sexy word, indeed, it seems used more as a negative these days. Is it shutting down dissension? Perhaps describing something unambitious or boring? And yet quiet is one of the most powerful things in the world. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It’s in the quiet that magic happens. Deep thoughts, processing, creativity and invention. ‘Solitude is a catalyst of innovation’ (Susan Cain). Quiet people are the ones to watch: the listeners and processors. Because ‘quiet is turning down the volume knob on life (Khaled Hosseini)’. Less is more. Silence is golden. Ignorance is bliss. There’s a reason these idioms are so pervasive. And a friend with whom you can enjoy quiet and silence is typically one of the best. Words can dramatically shift their emphasis and meaning across time and culture. Take ‘awful’, a word that used to mean ‘full of awe’ (by which definition, ‘awesome’ must have meant just a bit good) ‘decimate’, which meant reduce by only 1 in 10; ‘naughty’, which once just meant you had naught or nothing or ‘egregious’ which used to be a good thing- eminent or distinguished. But of course words morph… because language and words are powerful and critical to our understanding of the world. Indeed, their changing meanings can alter our perception of the world. Words are weaponised to disparage and shut down debate (typically any word ending in ‘ist’); and there is much recent commentary about how the rapidly growing overuse of medicalised therapy language is, in itself exacerbating mental health New words are appearing every year. Some recent Mirriam-Webster additions include ‘padawan’, ‘rewild’, ‘GOAT’, ‘tabata’ and ‘doomscroll’ (although my spell-check hasn’t caught up)... all fascinating insights into a world of rapid cultural change (and god knows what the kids are doing at the moment with words like ‘rizz’ and ‘skibidi’ but i know enough not to use them myself). There are also some wonderful words that exist in other cultures that encapsulate everyday feelings beautifully, but aren’t available to us in English. A few now sit in a rotating box in our bathroom thanks to a brilliant gift: ‘Qurencia’ (Spanish): Describes a place where we feel safe, a ‘home’ (which doesn’t literally have to be where we live) from where we draw our strength and inspiration. In bullfighting, a bull may stake out a querencia in a part of the ring where he will gather his energies before another charge’‘L’Espirit de L’Escalier’ (French): The witty or cutting retort that we should have delivered to a frenemy but that comes to mind only after we’ve left the gathering and are on our way down the stairs. Captures our maddening inability to know how to answer humiliation in real time. ‘Duende’ (Spanish): A heightened state of emotion created by a moving piece of art. ‘Dustsceawung’ (Old Engligh): Contemplation of the fact that dust used to be other things - the walls of a city, the chief of the guards, a book, a great tree: dust is always the ultimate destination. Such contemplation may loosen the drip of our worldly desires. ‘Huzun’ (Turkish): The gloomy feeling that things are in decline and that the situation - often political in nature - will probably get gradually worse. Despite the darkness, there’s a joy in having the word to hand, sparing us from a personal sense of persecution and reminding us that our misfortunes are largely collective in nature’ And it’s antidote: ‘Yunen’ (Japanese): Gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious, elusive, but real, beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky, and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility. So I put it to you all, how can we make ‘quiet’ sexy again? How can we reclaim it as a positive? As entrepreneurs we can sell to negatives or we can sell to positives. And I suspect we’re all yearning for a little more quiet. Less anger, distraction and endless information in this increasingly noisy world. The devices in our pocket have removed even the quiet moments we might have experienced behind a locked toilet door or those in the moments before we drift off to sleep. But that contented sigh as the door closes to the last guest at a noisy party and the house falls silent is potentially possible for our brains every time we disconnect. And so, this Friday morning, please take a quiet moment to enjoy my favourite poem: Leisure by William Henry DaviesWhat is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows.No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty's glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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What I can’t see, I can’t over-parent

Aug 30, 202400:04:42Tap to summarize

Kirstie Allsopp - apparently the worst mother in Britain right now (for allowing her 15 year old to go interrailing), has come out swinging. And good for her. I’m team-Allsopp. As readers will know, I’ve long been convinced that giving kids independence as early as possible is the key to building resilience, responsibility and creativity. Yes, there are risks - but, in my opinion (and increasing numbers of others’), many more to over-parenting and childhoods spent more online than off. Having said that, it’s all been a little academic to my own parenting of 3 under 5s, 6. 7, 8… until now, with the eldest just short of 11. Yes, we’ve embraced chores as early as we can, but living in a small, commuter rat-run village with few neighbourhood playmates, it’s been hard to practise the ‘free range parenting’ that Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy (his partner on the ‘Let Grow’ movement) advocate for. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Recently, we’ve started letting the kids sleep out in a shed in the garden, to wander off on solo errands during trips to our small market town and take the puppy out by themselves but none of these allow for much mischief-making for three siblings whose boredom and/or irritation with each other I can hear from 100 yards away. Outside these small tendrils of freedom from our family bounds, I’m struggling to find many other parents willing to loosen the reins to the big-wide-world with me. Instead there are nervous texts in whatsapp checking whether a child will know anyone at an upcoming summer camp; fretful concerns over first sleepovers away from home; chaperones for hang-outs and packed-agenda playdates full of allergy-warnings and online waivers. Holidays provide the perfect opportunity. A change of scene and routine to create more colourful memories - sunny, wet, sandy, dirty, exhausting memories. And the Netherlands, it turns out, is the perfect place to practise free-range parenting. I write this (very briefly) from a holiday there with three other families and it’s the most perfect trip I could ever have imagined for one at our stage. We’re all camped separately within a huge site of static mobile-homes, safari tents and open-camping fields that wrap around a cheesy water park and a refreshingly relaxed theme park. It’s without a doubt, the last kind of holiday the well-travelled, young professional me would ever have thought I would enjoy. Staffing is minimal and unobtrusive. Gates and doors are left open. Bikes piled up in corners, unlocked. Queues are almost non-existent and there’s not a health and safety Nazi to be found (unlike in the UK). It’s all so refreshing and our eight cumulative kids, aged 6-12 are living their best free-range lives, disappearing for hours on end until their stomachs send them back to raid one of our various fridges. There have been endless hours burying each other in sand, on table-tennis tables, noisy games of Uno, beach volleyball (to a blaring Top Gun soundtrack), an impromptu gymnastic display cheered on by strangers; bike races weaving through chilled-out pedestrians and a competition to see who can ride the biggest roller coaster the most times (my 9 year old victorious on 22).There’s also been a twisted ankle, some nasty scrapes and bruises, a lot of exposure to swear words and apparently the offer of a cigarette from a 14 year old loitering around the sandpit plus a few ramifications from slagging off Dutch football players (that we know about). But when our paths cross (whilst the adults channel their inner-kid, running fully clothed through play fountains, beer in hand), the kids are filthy, dripping wet and hungry, but their shining eyes hold stories they’ll share excitedly, and secrets they won’t. And… I’ve realised, I don’t want their secrets. They’re their bonds of friendship. My new mantra… ‘What I can’t see, I can’t over-parent’. No one has asked for a device since we got here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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The Case for Bringing Back Child Labour

Aug 2, 202400:08:15Tap to summarize

Ok, clickbait title aside, not *that* type of child labour… (although outrage-fuelling journos do your worst, it’ll all help with readers, just as it did with my TedX views). I recently came across the Harvard Grant Study findings, running since 1938, the longest longitudinal study in history. Among such fun discoveries as the fact that ‘ageing liberals have more sex’ with ‘conservative men ceasing sexual activity around the age of 68’, the most interesting finding was that it identified two key things that enable adults to be happy and successful: 1) Love and 2) work ethic. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The main thing that correlated with self esteem was whether or not they worked as a child, with those who had some form of consistent responsibility demonstrating considerably higher self esteem than those who did not. And yet - kids don’t seem to work much anymore. If at all under the age of 16 or 17. And as we know, most of their ‘spare time’ is spent on devices. This Ted talk which references the research describes how there are two extremes within parenting: underparenting (aka ‘neglect’) and over-parenting, but whereas the negative impact of the former is self-evident, much less attention is paid to the latter despite it being as potentially damaging. Julie Lythcott-Haines talks about the ‘checklisted childhood’ as akin to dog-training with no time for free play or chores where everything has to be ‘enriching’ and ‘A’ grades are valued above all with the result that kids end up feeling brittle and burnt out. She goes on: But if you look at what we've done, if you have the courage to really look at it, you'll see that not only do our kids think their worth comes from grades and scores, but that when we live right up inside their precious developing minds all the time, like our very own version of the movie "Being John Malkovich," we send our children the message: "Hey kid, I don't think you can actually achieve any of this without me." And so with our overhelp, our over-protection and over-direction and hand-holding, we deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy, which is a really fundamental tenet of the human psyche, far more important than that self-esteem they get every time we applaud. Self-efficacy is built when one sees that one's own actions lead to outcomes, not one's parents' actions on one's behalf, but when one's own actions lead to outcomes. So simply put, if our children are to develop self-efficacy, and they must, then they have to do a whole lot more of the thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, coping, trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life for themselves.The good news is that there are some easy fixes here… CHORES.. Cooking, cleaning, tidying, gardening - many possible from even pre-school years.. Because, as Lythcott-Haims told Tech Insider: "By making them do chores -- taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry -- they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life. It's not just about me and what I need in this moment."Whilst far from model parents, my husband and I are embracing this. My 10 year old has started mowing the lawns, the 7 year old empties the dishwasher, bins are taken out and laundry baskets are starting to be decanted down to the machines. OK, so the lawn looks like it’s got alopecia, none of our wine glasses now match and I’m washing far too many clean clothes that were easier to sling in a basket than fold into a cupboard… but… it’s a start. And it also helps us as two busy working parents to stay on top of the household. My eldest has got to the age where he tunes into my stress levels and volunteers to do something… I nearly wept the first time. And then, as they get old enough, encourage them to get out and earn their own money. As a teenager, I stopped getting pocket money at the age of 12 or 13 and to this day, I thank my parents for that (who could have afforded it but who both came from working-class backgrounds and knew the life-skills value of graft). I babysat, had a (brief) paper-round, worked in cafes, a shoe shop, collected glasses, pulled pints and spent a good few years stocking shelves and then behind the till at my local petrol station. Along side the life skills (how to pour a good pint or estimate foot size by looking), I came quickly to understand the value of money and how many hours each purchase equated to. At the age of 17, I recall watching macaws flying towards the sunset over the Amazon River on a youth expedition I’d paid for purely by my pay-check and feeling more pride in myself than I’d ever thought imaginable. I also worked alongside so many people that had little ambition (or qualifications) to do much more than those sort of jobs and discovered them to be some of the wittiest, most interesting people I’d met. So, yes, another potential antidote to polarisation - as this opportunity to get to know those from so many different walks of life was truly a gift that I believe has made me much more empathetic and understanding of socio-economic difference… in attitudes, perceptions, politics, entitlement and more. These days, we see so few teenagers in shops or cafes - indeed, the minimum wage hasn’t actually helped them as it’s priced many of them out - despite the fact that having a part time job in the teen years can be so vital to feelings of competency and to developing responsibility. My heart always soars when I’m driving and see a couple of kids walking door to door with buckets and sponges to offer car-washes or if a hand-written flyer arrives asking if lawns need mowing. (We’ve had two 15 years olds do ours in recent years whilst waiting for the eldest to grow some muscles). Getting children volunteering is another option… a charity shop perhaps where they can learn customer-service or merchandising; scouts or kids clubs where they can feel the power than comes from being an older, responsible ‘leader’; old people’s homes; food banks etc. Not only are we fuelling their self-esteem, but we’re promoting an alternative to the 5-6 hours daily spent on phones. Win-win! We need many more structures, incentives and organisations to help enable such opportunities. Last word to Julie: I've got two kids, Sawyer and Avery. They're teenagers. And once upon a time, I think I was treating my Sawyer and Avery like little bonsai trees that I was going to carefully clip and prune and shape into some perfect form of a human that might just be perfect enough to warrant them admission to one of the most highly selective colleges. But I've come to realize, after working with thousands of other people's kids and raising two kids of my own, my kids aren't bonsai trees. They're wildflowers of an unknown genus and species and it's my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores and to love them so they can love others and receive love… and the college, the major, the career, that's up to them. My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming their glorious selves.Gotta go now - to restack the dishwasher, go through the bins to separate the recycling from the rubbish and double-check where my husband’s current political leanings lie. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

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