This week I’ve saved a worrying number of reels about dopamine detoxes.

So naturally, I decided to make it everyone else’s problem too.

From raw-dogging flights (no phone, no music, no water, no joy) to promises that cutting out dopamine will magically fix motivation, laziness, and modern life in general — dopamine has officially entered its villain era.

In this episode, I’m not trying anything yet. I’m circling the idea, poking it, and asking some basic questions first, like:

• What actually is dopamine and why has it suddenly become the enemy?
• Are dopamine detoxes sensible… or just dry January for your phone?
• Is scrolling ruining our brains, or are we just terrible at stopping?
• Why can I listen to podcasts endlessly but can’t watch a full TV episode without grabbing my phone?
• And at what point does “self-control” turn into sitting on a plane staring at the flight map like a Victorian orphan?

I also dig into:

• Healthy vs unhelpful dopamine (effort vs passive flooding)
• Why modern life makes everything feel simultaneously overstimulating and boring
• How screen culture is quietly reshaping films, TV, and attention spans
• And whether completely removing stimulation actually helps… or just makes life grim

By the end, I set up this week’s experiment:

• One day of doing nothing (true detox, unfortunately)
• One day replacing scrolling with reading
• One day watching a full film without touching my phone (pray for me)

This is Field Notes — where I test modern self-improvement ideas in real life, outside of perfect conditions, and report back honestly on what actually happens.

🎧 Friday: I’ll be back with a Field Report on whether any of this helped, or whether I just became deeply annoying to live with.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review or subscribe.

Find me on instagram: @rosehoneymorgan

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After launching the podcast and immediately developing a brief but intense sense of delusion, I realised I’d slightly abandoned the entire premise of the show. Instead of calmly testing a saved bit of advice and reporting back, I panicked, went semi-guru, and tried to convince everyone (including my family) that vision boards absolutely, definitely work.

This episode is me correcting course.

I talk about:

• my delusions of grandeur
• why outcome-based vision boards can feel motivating and then quietly ruin your life
• how “process pictures” are supposed to work in theory, and why they’re surprisingly hard when your goals involve screens, editing, or admin
• and the growing realisation that naming a podcast without Googling it first may have been… optimistic

We also establish two recurring Field Notes features:

• Fail of the Week (there were many)
• Find of the Week: if your perfume doesn't smell great, leave it for 4 years then come back to it

If you like self-improvement in theory but struggle with it in real life, you’re in the right place.

• Follow me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan
• Podcast clips, experiments & visual chaos: @field.notes.pod

You can:

• follow / subscribe so you don’t lose it in your apps
• leave a review (even a short one, I will screenshot it for my lame folder)
• or send this to someone on the same wavelength

On Monday, I’m testing another widely saved piece of internet advice to see whether it actually survives contact with real life.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

📸 You can see the vision boards mentioned in this episode on Instagram:

• Personal: @rosehoneymorgan
• Podcast: @field.notes.pod

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review — even a short one. It genuinely helps this show find the people it’s meant for.

New episodes every Monday, with short Friday Field Reports.

Why Vision Boards Fail (And How to Fix Them)

Most of us don’t have a motivation problem.

We have a too-much-advice problem.

If you’ve ever saved hundreds of self-improvement posts, understood all of them, and still felt overwhelmed, guilty, and no closer to actually changing anything — this episode is for you.

In the first ever episode of Field Notes, I explain the premise of the podcast and put our first experiment to the test: vision boards. Not the fantasy, yacht-and-linen version — but the kind that might actually work in real life.

I talk through:

• why modern vision boards often backfire
• the neuroscience behind why visual cues can work
• where self-help goes wrong when it focuses on outcomes instead of process
• how humans have used imagery for survival and behaviour change across history
• and why cave art might be a better model for self-improvement than Pinterest

I also bring along my 2024 and 2025 vision boards as the first (and most humiliating) guests on the show, including the one goal that accidentally did work thanks to a Sarah Connor lock-screen.

This podcast isn’t about becoming a new person overnight.

It’s about filtering advice, testing one small idea at a time, and figuring out what’s actually worth doing, outside of perfect conditions.

On Friday, I’ll be back with a short Field Report on what happened when I made a process-based vision board and whether it helped or just gave me another thing to judge myself by.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.