#I’m a deeply normal individual 95% of the time but then they do something like this to me

[novelconcepts]

Had this screencap living on my phone for art purposes, and I just lost like twenty minutes staring at their hands. These are some of the gayest hands in human history. An entire Pride month could be dedicated to these hands. Put this shot in the MoMA, dude.

[mirrorfurniturelivingwithlayla]

The Urban Dictionary Of Interiorsinvogue.Com New York Mirrored Furniture

Transforming London: The New Breed Of Designers at the Super-Prime

London's modern-day HNWs have different concerns and needs for their homes-- and fresh brand-new designers are stepping up to satisfy the difficulty with innovative approaches, composes William Cash.

Every years-- or generation-- London sees a brand-new type of interior designers or 'developer-designers' who stand out and consult with a visual voice, whose vision mixes easily with the architectural zeitgeist. While many HNWs have actually become aware of Candy & Candy (or at least their Monaco superyacht), Finchatton, or a custom company like Fenton Whelan, these 'designer brand name' firms are all now regarded as well established. To put it simply, they've made lots of cash establishing in London's super-prime market, which up until just recently was up 40 per cent because 2009.

However, following punitive stamp duty hikes, London's super-prime market is down 20 percent. 'Billionaires are shunning the London high-end home market, with sales of "extremely prime" ₤ 10 million-plus houses in the capital collapsing by 86 per cent over the past year,' the Guardian reported in October. The paper mentioned figures from Land Registry which exposed that just five properties were cost more than ₤ 10 million in the 3 months to August 2016, compared to 35 such homes in the very same quarter the previous year. Outdoors London, no property cost more than ₤ 10 million.

As constantly in the residential or commercial property development business, such price falls have created new chances for designers who are tuned into the mindset of HNW clients, and more notably are not caught economically with a slate of pricey super-prime tasks and advancements on their books. HNW customers looking to purchase 'off-plan' have various priorities-- such as desiring a two-bed lateral flat with sufficient entertaining area to host twenty for supper, rather than a six-bedroom ₤ 11.5 million super-home.

The previous few years have the emergence of several under-the-radar individuals who are transforming the guidelines of interior decoration and of what it indicates to create a designer 'brand name' today. Leaders include Katharine Pooley and Helen Green Design, which are following in the tradition of the great London interior designer brands such as Colefax & Fowler.

What is most striking about such renowned 'designer' brands is that, on the whole, clients pertained to them since they wanted their hallmark look. Colefax & Fowler originated what is known today as 'country home design', using a revitalizing mix of modern chic and timeless chintz that stripped away the cluttered gloom of Victoriana. But the brand-new breed of designers is moving far from the signature brand look. Instead, their customers want provenance, creativity, artisan-craftsmanship, eccentric architectural information. These designer-developers have a philosophy of style that transcends the aesthetic into the practical.

Edo Mapelli Mozzi of Banda is passionate about the stage set of contemporary metropolitan life. For each Banda project, 'designers, artisans and professionals are thoroughly picked to guarantee the homes we produce an interest the relevant market. We aim to surpass expectations in regards to the quality and service in the residential or commercial properties we deliver.'

Banda's acutely in-depth bespoke work reflects the most extensive aspirations of HNW clients today and society's altering architectural tastes and domestic design. Edo, who was brought up and educated in England, has actually embraced the title of Noël Coward's 1932 play Design for Living for his branding functions. 'At Banda, our homes are developed for life,'

he says.

With twelve years' experience, Edo and his group utilize their deeply embedded 'market intelligence' (i.e. relationships with representatives and purchasers' agents) to source eccentric homes, typically with some commercial heritage or architectural provenance. Using a team of 'artisan-craftsmen' and designers, the Banda principle is to only put its name to a development that has 'an original identity' and will 'make its own mark'.

The Banda Design Studio is unusual because it provides a really 'full service' experience for HNWs, from interior design to designer's designs, through to the dressing of all reveal apartment or condos within advancements. The most talked-about decorators of each generation are more than mere designers: they provide a window into the soul of our times and the Way We Live Now. Some 95 percent of Banda's work is 'speculative development'; the other 5 percent is a private commission or task work.

Edo has been developing 'character' properties in areas like Battersea, where he has actually had noteworthy success transforming an old bakeshop. 'A great deal of our business model has been producing prime lateral flats outside the conventional zone 1 location,' he states. He points out that in locations like Nine Elms most two-bed flats vary from 900-1,300 sq ft. Think kitchen area dinner for four-six if you squash around the table. 'So you can't captivate.'

His two-bed flats tend to be 2,000-3000sq ft. In one flat he had a 'bedroom that had his-and-hers dressing spaces, a substantial restroom with an amusing space where you might have twenty for supper or 40 for a beverages celebration. But it's a two-bedroom flat. And that doesn't exist on the market.' When Banda took these 'two-bed prime lateral' flats to market, all sold in 24 hours. 'We produced something that is not cookie-cut, is not what everyone else is producing.'

Edo says his client focus has actually always been based upon listening to what 'owner-occupiers' desire, instead of the sales pitch of representatives. 'We understand there is a demand from these sorts of downsizers, individuals in their early fifties whose children have actually matured, have actually left home. They require a spare bedroom however they don't need a five-bedroomed house anymore. However they still desire the space they had.' Many also have a home office space.

Another leading example of the leading brand-new breed of designer is Andrew Murray, founder of Morpheus London design. I initially fulfilled Andrew in May at the MIPIM exhibition in Cannes, where he had invited me to an exclusive lunch party. Andrew is also a co-partner (with Simon Davis) of the Rosebery, Britain's most exclusive double-decker personal box bus-- more like a private luxury yacht decorated like a Mayfair club than your normal bus.

I asked him how a designer today can get the balance right between being a luxury 'brand name' (like the Rosebery) and at the same time keep being unique and individual as a business with personal commission work. The answer is that Morpheus is rooted in craftsmen design work. His mom was an interior designer and his father 'very imaginative', and this is the common DNA style aspect to all its projects. Andrew began as a cabinet-maker and joiner, pretty much self-taught. 'This has been vital because I understand how things are made, and I understand how things should stream,' he states. 'So, originating from that craftsman background, the business progressed as my direct exposure to high-end home evolved.'

Andrew's vocation started at Canford School in Dorset, which had an outstanding carpentry department. 'I established my service when I was still at school,' he says. 'I decorated an office block when I was about sixteen and used individuals from school, which was quite enjoyable. So it progressed from there.'

Clients started asking him guidance on all aspects of the design task-- not simply the cabinet he was making. 'I realised none had a full service, and they were constantly at a bit of a loss. So they were having this charming piece of cabinets made, however everything else didn't truly match, and the arrangement of service wasn't there. It was really historical. It was really in the old school. And so I saw an opportunity to offer the sort of end-to-end service.'

Morpheus is now among the most sought-out design companies in London, with customers all over Europe (hence the trendy however discreet lunch party at MIPIM). It wasn't always so glamorous, though: his very first big project was the conversion of a large house in Stockwell in which the dance act KLF utilized to live. 'Then I ingratiated a designer in Mayfair who had a portfolio of 60 homes-- rentals. I was about 25 then, and I took control of the advancement management of their maintenance, archive, repair-- so it led from there.'

The next move was to develop his own aesthetic design-- putting the Morpheus imprint on tasks without them becoming more about Morpheus than the customer. 'I look quite at the function of area. Our designers do the interior decoration and the stylising, however I do the function, the flow, the purpose. Which was coming through extremely strongly then, and I think that's what caused success and led to growth.'

What makes Andrew the choice of magnates, UHNWs and City tycoons who want their houses to stand apart however also remain under the radar design brand-wise is his knowledge of who the absolute best craftspeople are. 'I can still go onto a website and state, "Actually, make it like that. It's a lot more business." So Morpheus is a design home, but we are also so much more than that-- we comprehend business truths. If a client states, "I've got 4 apartments that I want you to develop," I'm not even going to take a look at the style till I've comprehended the commercial service case. And I'm going to go, "Who's going to buy it? Why are they purchasing? What do they want?" And then that will lead the design.'

[pnzdieholzpflegemanufaktur]

How social innovation can lead to technological breakthroughs

The proudest moment of my professional career happened almost a year ago. A female member of our production team came to me and said that they had found a way of improving the industry standard for cleaning processes by the factor of 9 in terms of efficiency and sustainability. I have been in my position for long enough to know, that my colleagues can be very serious at times and - funny - the first question that came to my mind was "why?". A rather stupid question, I know, but I really wanted to know why she did it before I even knew any details. And her answer was as terse an one can imagine: "it's better!". Half a year later we became the only second B Corporation worldwide from the paint industry. We are today - to our knowledge - the only CO2-neutral paint manufacturer in the world when measuring scope 1, 2 and part-3. Hopefully there are others, but we are definitely just a few. I think we are the only ones in the world that provide industrial-use-type of wood coatings with a content of regrowing raw materials of over 95%, striving to make them net-negative. That made me think how we, a team of 42 employees and a mildly gifted boss, actually got there: we and not the multinationals that dominate our industry would be invited for environment research, implement new technologies before the multinationals do and drive climate-friendly manufacturing to a new level. To a point where an employee out of her feeling that the process is bad would work for 6 months with her colleagues to find an environment-friendly alternative, spend hours of her spare time for research and then come back after she had made sure that the thing she invented works just fine. I think, the former might be closely related to the latter. Having thought about it for a while now I now know that this did not happen by mastermin-design nor by a well thought through strategy or excellent managerial decisions. For us it happened because of four factors: The area we are located inThe people we hire (and fire)Having a purpose but not a religionThe dynamics of all three together The area we are located in I know it sounds odd, but there is something to the countryside that I have found very hard to replicate in metropolitan areas. The people that were born and raised here (or moved to Kipfenberg a long time ago) have an attitude around them that makes it totally natural not to waste food, eat small for dinner and always pick up your waste from the street. I have owned a few companies in metropolitan areas like Munich and that type of deeply engrained behavior: stuff you don't have to educate because everybody knows from home. We have always been a company that cared about environment-friendly products and manufacturing, but that goal has to see fit in the people that want to attain it. And the combination of sustainable products and people from a natural reserve park are a perfect match. The people we hire (and fire) Oh terrible all those books... the seven (nine, twelve) habits of industry leaders, how to make your company great (again) and so on. We never believed in this type of counseling books. But one thing was totally true for us. It is 100% about the people that are grouped together in a tight spot, every day. It makes a complete difference if you love to go for work or you have to. Over the years we have developed our "criteria to hire" in written (happy to share if anyone is interested) and followed the basic principle that every employee has a veto for hiring anybody in any position - a power that has not been used by a colleague at least for the last five years. Equally important: the people we fire. We don't fire very often (because we have actually gotten much better in hiring) but we fire for one reason and one reason alone: if somebody cannot stand the idea that we are peers and have to trust each other. I don't mean arguments or discussions, not even the occasional fights over who's job it is to get coffee from the supermarket. I mean situations where someone is led to believe that he is in some way intellectually or morally superior to his or her colleagues. We once found a leading manager treat employees not with respect, badmouthing a refugee from Syria that we had hired, and it took us 5 minutes to part ways. As a close friend of mine used to say: hire slow, fire fast. But hire much more often than you fire. Having a purpose but not a religion There is a lot of literature about companies that find their WHY being more successful than the technocratic, product driven competitors. Simon Sinek has made a living from educating people that purpose really matters. Just I find that there are two things wrong with that. For once, it seems that this type of what one could call purpose-driven marketing thing has spun out of control for too many companies. It has become a marketing-wash instead of a meaningful thing. Not a company that does not claim, it is particularly sustainable and encourages customers to consume more with an even better conscience. I think the environmental problems man is facing on earth are not going away by maintaining our lifestyle of consumption - just reducing sugar and plastics and all will be fine. It doesn't work this way. The second thing that strikes me as wrong with the propose-inflation is that many companies treat their values as a religion. I know more than one company that would not allow their employees to openly use products from competitors. Quick self check for executives: what do you say when an employee brings a competitor's product to work? The dynamics of all three together In my opinion, the dynamics of people and their motives makes all the difference. It is common wisdom that the "vertical" relationship between the company and the employees is governed directly or indirectly by the top management; and the horizontal relationships in a company (i.e. between employees) is governed by the individual skills of the people. I actually think now, that it is quite the other way round. The vertical relationship, that is where purpose comes into play. Do we all believe in the things to be our goal? Do we have common principles that we as a company want to follow? My opinion is that top management should (apart from being organizers of the discussion of such things) stay out of the way. We found our formal purpose and story in a series of workshops with employees from all departments and levels. Some were more capable of formulating their views and visions than others, but one thing was blindingly obvious: all workshops that went without top management participation were the most fruitful and successful of all. We, for example, have defined a clear WHY a couple of years ago (We'd like to make the world more beautiful and better), have a couple of HOW's that we do (regrowing raw materials, a continuous product development, regional sourcing, etc.) and that's how we make our products and conduct research. You could call this our "purpose" but it is far from a religious understanding of the world, it's actually quite pragmatic. This type of purpose is carried by all of our employees and it is carried with much less problems then a huge "we are the best in XY" purpose, because it needs no explanation. Guidelines that are totally clear and self-explaining are much easier to follow. This is the vertical part that determines the relationship of employees with the company. The horizontal relationship of people within the company is where in my opinion top management has the greatest impact of all. I for sure am not the brightest kid in town, I have reasonable financial skills but that is about it. The only thing I was clear about from the beginning of my career was that there are two things that I want from life: people I like around meit should not feel like I'm wasting my time Assuming that most other people feel the same, we devised some very clear rules for ourselves in the management team: We will never hire people that we don't like because they are so good in whatever... culture eats skills for breakfast.There is no such thing as a "direct report" in our organization. Actually nobody is supposed to report anything to anybody. We are not slaves, we have a task and it totally makes sense to propagate information through an organization. Not as report, but as a question, a comment, an idea or a seeking of opinion. Seriously, it's much easier than you might think and it works perfectly.Feed-back is (quite) instantaneous or never. We as managers collect strengths and weaknesses over the year and then - one day in late December - we spit it all out and spoil every meaningful discussion about it by having to talk about a pay raise moments later? Doomed to fail. And me personally on the other hand, I actually don't like being criticized months after something happened I can only faintly remember. How to discuss that in a meaningful way. Impossible! So it's fairly quickly or never. Both ways.No gain - no blame. The hardest part, especially for top managers: nobody claims a victory for himself. When we brag about ourselves, we say how invaluable the help of the colleague was in achieving this and that goal. NEVER EVER would you hear somebody in our company say "I have accomplished...". This is quite an exciting experiment that you should consider doing as an executive: the moment you stop to take credit for yourself, you will stop putting blame on others. And eventually all the others will do it as you do. The result is a super relaxed working environment. Available without expensive consultants and incentives. I don't know the psychological mechanism behind it, but I can assure you that it works. We have been doing this kind of "responsible collaboration" for five years now: we haven't fired more people than normal, our profits are strong. Had it been a strategic masterplan, I'd say it was a success. I'm not saying that our organization model is universally good; it just happens to work for us. But I'd be tempted to say that it is worth a try. And the subversive part is: even if you are not the CEO of the company, you can do it still secretly in your own department or group. It works without talking about it. So we accidentally became environmental innovators by being social innovators. And that in a broader sense could actually work for others as well. About the author: Dr. Marcel Pietsch is a studied economist and philosopher. He runs a family business that deals with sustainability and that was certified as B Corporation in 2019. Lesen Sie den ganzen Artikel

[machinehead]

CHARLOTTESVILLE

I’ve debated even writing this. You all know how I feel. I’ve said probably all I’ll ever need to say on the subject a year and half ago. I’m going to tell you the conversation my wife and I had Sunday morning. As she drank tea (me; Blue Bottle coffee) I told her about the white supremacist rally(s) held in Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday and Saturday, she had only heard bits… She was appalled. We discussed how people could feel that way, read our president’s pathetic “many sides” response to a domestic terrorist attack by white supremist's, watched the horrifying videos of a white supremacist's car barreling though counter-protesters killing one woman and injuring 34, and looked at the barreling car photo in the NY Times showing a pair of shoes on the ground (where a person used to be) while men hung upside-down in the air. It was seriously disturbing. She looked at me and said “ I hope you’re not planning on writing a General Journal about this…?  I don’t want to have my life threatened again, I don’t want to have out kids lives threatened again… this kind of stuff scares me”. I sat in silence.  I let her know I had begun dabbling with one a little before she woke up. She continued, “Berto, I was scared to go to your birthday bash, worried that some whack-o was going to bomb the place or do something crazy to you, or me, or someone else." "People know how you feel, do you need to add fuel to the fire?” And she’s right. I don’t need to add fuel to the fire. What happened to my family as a result of the “Racism In Metal” video was fucking scary. She’s not over it. I’m not over it. Hence, why I debated this. Even a year and half later, when I go out to most big metal shows, at least one group screams “white power” at me. I keep my head up, do my best to ignore them. And while a healthy fear of whack-o’s comes with the territory of being married to someone famous, no one “wants that”. Out of respect to her, I told her if I finished writing something, I would show it to her before posting asking for her blessing. She read this and said "go for it". So I’m not gonna offer my opinions on the events in Charlottesville. Instead, I’m gonna tell you a story about a journalist I used to know. His name was Onno Cro-Mag. He was a Dutch hardcore journalist / hardcore scene supporter /and co-owned a record company with Agnostic Front’s Roger Miret. He passed away a few years ago, but the mark he left on me was deep. And while the story is a little hazy to me 20 years later, I’ll do my best to honor the dead. I first met him on our 1994 tour across the Europe.  He interviewed me a few times, we shared a mutual love of the hardcore band Cro-Mags, (that’s Onno who comes up and sings back ups on our Cro-Mags cover of “Hard Times” in the Dynamo ’95 YouTube clip). Ya see… Onno was an ex-skinhead.  An ex-racist-skinhead. He was extremely open about that to me during our conversations / interviews and it always caught me a little off-gaurd.  Not in a bad way… but let’s face it, how many ex-nazi’s do you know?  It’s not the first thing you expect to hear out of someone’s mouth. He explained to me how he’d gotten caught up in some bullshit in the scene, at some point something serious happened, serious enough that it shook him out of it. He never looked back. At least in the handful of conversations we had, he looked back on those days with a brutal honesty and regret that was palpable. But he wasn’t apologetic about it, he was strong about it.  He fucking owned it.  It was a life-lesson that he never let himself forget. I gotta tell you, I’ve never met anyone quite like him. And it’s not like because he realized the error of his ways, that all was forgiven.  No, no, no.  He faced considerable danger from his ex-partners, he faced a considerable lack of trust from people who knew the “old Onno”. It bothered him deeply. We could all learn a lot from Onno Cro-Mag. We should all aspire to be so honest with our flaws. Because we all have them. We were/are all assholes at one (or many) points in our lives. I’m no exception to that. I look back on the person I was in my mid-twenties and think “who the fuck is that guy?” And if you change, someone will always be there to shove it in your face, the asshole you have been. Now more than ever, in today’s “gotcha” society someone is gonna try and say to you “LOOK, you were like THIS before!" I can assure you, as soon as I post this, some dickhead will post a 22 year old photo of Kerry King and I (from when MH and Slayer toured together in 1995), arms by our sides, walking alongside Jeff Hanneman and Gary Holt (both in nazi-salute), and go “why didn’t you write a song about these guys?!” Or say, “you’re a hypocrite for saying what you said about Anselmo!” That’s been the racist's rallying cry for decades, “how, if you’ve ever been racist, can you decry racism?”. Welp… Guess what..? That just ain’t gonna happen. And the fact is, most people are incapable of change. Once someones mind is made up, whether via political party, religion, whatever... it’s nigh impossible to change. It usually takes a considerable tragedy to shake ‘em out of it, and even then... But people can change. I don’t care if someone was in the nazi rally Saturday, if they were disgusted by the senseless death of Heather Heyer, and said “Fuck this shit, enough... I’m out”…. we need to be tolerant enough to respect that. A tad skeptical…?  Sure. As I wrote this today, I read a story about an ex-white supremacist named Christian Picciolini who started an organization to help people get out of the WP movement called Life After Hate. In a nutshell:  they are a non-profit created by former members (called “formers”) of the American violent far-right extremist movement. Their goal is to "work with individuals who wish to leave a life of hate and violence, and help organizations (community, educational, civic, government, etc.) in grappling with the causes of intolerance and racism.” In their own words, "Life After Hate works to counter the seeds of hate we once planted." Because on the flip side of this fiery topic, we need be non-judgemental of the defectors of that movement.  The Onno Cro-Mags of that movement, who wish to change, who want out, but fear they won’t be accepted by anyone other than their own. I’ll leave you with this. Saturday my buddy Sean Doolittle (ex-Oakland A's pitcher and current National's pitcher) was on a tweet rampage (he along with comedian Patton Oswalt were seriously giving me hope for the entire world). Amazingly Sean has not been silenced and regularly post provocative, thoughtful opinions on political land mines for subjects. Kudos to him for being such a high profile sports figure, and still letting his voice be heard. He tweeted: "People say, 'if we don’t give them attention, they’ll go away'. Maybe. But if we don’t condemn this evil, it might continue to spread.  This kind of hatred has never gone, but now it’s been normalized, they didn’t even wear hoods. It’s on us to condemn it and drive it out. There is only one side. Actual nazi’s just marched on Charlotesville, we have to come together and drive this hatred & domestic terrorism from our country. While it’s important to protect free speech, we have a patriotic obligation to condemn racism and domestic terrorism." - Sean Doolittle Links: https://www.lifeafterhate.org https://www.exitusa.org http://www.npr.org/2017/08/13/543259499/a-reformed-white-nationalist-speaks-out-on-charlottesville

[j-kaiwa]

Discussion Article March 11th

‘Learning to relax can be life-changing’: how to find your comfort zone

Many of us have forgotten how to truly unwind. We ask the experts for ways to switch off in an always-on world

How do you like to kick back, chill out and really relax? This sounds as if it should be a simple question. But I can’t be alone in having spent several evenings over the past couple of weeks slumped on the sofa, “watching TV” while my eyes flicker across Twitter and Facebook, as well as five different WhatsApp groups on my phone.

Relaxing is increasingly difficult in our always-on digital world. This first struck me a couple of years ago when I had to stop exercising after an injury. Exercise had always been my go-to “me-time” activity, and without it I felt totally lost. I recently started again, but having only one means to de-stress now feels very limited and I am not even sure it counts as relaxing – it is quite hard work, and inherently competitive. When I find myself at home with a free evening, I often have no idea what to do and inevitably end up staring emptily at one screen or another for hours, before stumbling off to bed, wondering where the time has gone.

This seems to be a common problem. The actor Diane Keaton told More magazine: “I wouldn’t know what to do with a week off,” while the musician Gwen Stefani told Stylist that whenever she has any downtime, she feels as if she is “panicking a bit or trying to plan the next thing”. Elon Musk, when asked what he usually does after work, said: “Usually work more” – which does not seem to be turning out well for him.

The need for some simple source of relaxation can be seen in the initial surge in popularity of the adult colouring book, as well as last year’s 13.3% increasein sales of books providing spiritual guidance on how to live in a hectic world, and the mindfulness “mega trend” seen in Headspace, the meditation app that has been downloaded more than 15m times. Those of us who spent our money on these products were presumably searching for answers to some of the same questions – and many of us are still looking. The bottom has now dropped out of the colouring book market, with Forbes declaring it “dead” in May, and, in June last year, Headspace laid off 13 staff members.

According to a report by Ofcom this summer: “Most people in the UK are dependent on their digital devices and need a constant connection to the internet.” It found that 78% of us now own a smartphone – rising to 95% of 16- to 24-year-olds. We check these phones on average every 12 minutes of our waking lives, with 54% of us feeling that the devices interrupt our conversations with friends and family, and 43% of us feeling that we spend too much time online. We can’t relax with them, and we don’t know how to relax without them. Seven in 10 of us never turn them off.

The clinical psychologist Rachel Andrew says she sees the problem every day in her consulting room, and it is getting worse. “I’ve noticed a rise in my practice, certainly over the last three to five years, of people finding it increasingly difficult to switch off and relax. And it’s across the lifespan, from age 12 to 70,” she says. The same issues come up again and again: technology, phones, work emails and social media.

Kicking back in front of one screen or another does have its place, says Andrew – but it depends how you do it. “Sometimes people describe not being engaged in what they’re looking at – totally zoning out, not knowing what they’ve done for the last half-hour,” she says. “You can view this almost as dissociation, periods of time when your mind is so exhausted and overwhelmed it takes itself out of the situation. That’s unlikely to be nourishing in any way.” Maybe that is why, after I have spent an evening staring emptily at Twitter, or dropping off in front of the TV – less Netflix and chill, more Netflix and nap – I wake up feeling as if I have eaten a load of junk food. I have confused feeling brain-dead with feeling relaxed.

The psychoanalyst David Morgan, of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, believes that for many of us this deadening retreat to our screens is both a reason for and a consequence of the fact that we no longer know how to relax and enjoy ourselves. Our screens and what we use them for are all techniques of distraction, he says. “People have got so used to looking for distraction that they actually cannot stand an evening with themselves. It is a way of not seeing oneself, because to have insight into oneself requires mental space, and all these distraction techniques are used as a way of avoiding getting close to the self.”

Some of her patients, Andrew explains, simply never get around to thinking about how they want to spend their time. “People say they are so busy doing the ‘shoulds’,” she says – whether that is working, caring for family or being a part of demanding friendships – that by the time an evening or weekend comes around when they might do what they want, there is no energy or motivation left for anything but “flopping out”. She adds: “That’s a difficulty – because how is life enjoyable or satisfying in the long term if you’re only doing what you should do the whole time?”

For others, the notion of being in touch with their own needs and desires is totally alien, says Andrew. People who grew up in a family environment that centred around the needs of a sibling or a parent might have spent their whole lives never being asked about what they wanted to do. “It might genuinely be something they’ve never considered before,” she says. For those people, identifying something they might find enjoyably relaxing, and pursuing it, can be a huge, life-changing shift. “It can be quite dramatic.”

Another problem is that it can be tricky to untangle our own wishes from those of the people around us, says Nina Grunfeld, the founder of Life Clubs, an organisation that aims to help people live more fulfilling lives. It can take a lot of effort to discover where your enjoyment ends and your partner’s begins. “When my husband and I were young,” she says, “we went to Rome on holiday, and he wanted to go to every church, every restaurant, every everything. And I got home completely shattered. It was only after coming to know myself, after thinking about my life without him and what I like as an individual, that I realised that for me to enjoy a holiday and to come back feeling relaxed and refreshed, I need to read and be still. Now we’ll go on holiday and he goes off to do the churches by himself, but I’m very happy just lying by the beach, pool or fire and reading. It’s a real treat. I might join him for the restaurants, though.”

Speaking to Grunfeld and Andrew, and hearing their advice (see ) on how to identify different occupations that might relax and reinvigorate me, I begin to feel optimistic. I think back to how I liked to pass the time when I was young; the quiet times sitting reading a book, the rowdier times baking with friends. I resolve to make more time to do the adult versions of these things over the next year – then realise I am making excuses. If I could redirect the evenings I am already wasting on screens, that would be a good start.

The fact is, I do already do all those ideal things occasionally, but sometimes it feels as if being in the world is too much, and I need to disappear from it by losing myself in a screen. It is as if I crave that brain-dead feeling, even though I know it isn’t good for me. Having psychoanalytic psychotherapy is helping me to think about the reasons why I might do this – and for Morgan, therapy can be an important pathway out of being stuck in a screen-gazing rut, because it is somewhere a person is encouraged to use his or her mind. “The therapeutic space is the opposite of distraction – it’s concentration,” he says. “When people come into my consulting room, they often tell me it’s the first time they have ever felt they have had a space where they can’t run away from things.”

I have found that not running away from things, but confronting them and reflecting on them, can feel as exhausting as the running itself. It is difficult, disturbing work. But in a room with someone who can listen and help me to make sense of things, it can also be a relief. Morgan tells me: “We have all these various ways of distracting ourselves from the most important fact of life – that we live, and then we die. Having a mind to help you think about things, having a person who can think deeply about things with you, is a way to manage this very frightening fact of life.”

The flip side of that frightening fact is, of course, the realisation that since we don’t have much time on this planet, it is a shame to waste any of it voluntarily making ourselves brain-dead.

• If you are spending time with family or friends over the festive period, Nina Grunfeld recommends assigning each person one hour in which they are in charge of the group’s schedule, when they can choose whichever activity they consider most relaxing. “One of my children might decide we all have to play a video game; another will decide we are all going for a walk; another will make us all bake cakes. That way you all get a bit of ‘me-time’, and you can experience someone else’s – and it’s very relaxing not having to make decisions for the whole day,” she says.

• Try to remember what you most enjoyed doing as a child, then identify the most important aspect of that activity and find the adult version. Grunfeld says: “It might be that you can’t remember, and you have to ask friends or family, or look at old photo albums. There are normally themes in all of our lives, and if we’re missing those themes as an adult, it’s almost as if we’re not a whole person.” If you loved playing in the sandpit, you might want to try pottery, or if you liked building things, you might want to make bread.

• Experiment with looking at the world in a new way. “Allow yourself to explore. Just walk around wherever you are and see what you can find that is completely new. Try to get lost – whenever you get to a turning, ask yourself do you want to go left or right, and see where you end up,” says Grunfeld.

• If you have no idea how to start relaxing, look at the science, says Rachel Andrew. “There is a growing body of research to suggest being out in nature is uplifting and nourishing.”