Tiny cultural translation (for non-UK / under-25 listeners)

•Bargain Hunt: British daytime TV where people buy antiques and act like it’s a pension strategy.

•Wordle: a daily five-letter word game we all got hooked on in lockdown.

New listener segment starting next week: Ask Guru & Granny

From next week, we’ll be answering listener questions — anything you’re stuck on, spiralling about, or quietly panicking over.

You’ll get:

•a chronically online take (me)

•and a chronically offline take (Old Ma)

Send your questions to: rosefieldnotespod@gmail.com

Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan or @field.notes.pod

Tell us if you’d like to be anonymous or named.

Neither of us are licensed psychologists or counsellors. My mum’s main credential is “a life well lived” and several decades of being unimpressed by nonsense. Mine is that I'm now a guru.

We are all exhausted. Properly frazzled. Brain-fogged. Running on caffeine, habit, and whatever scraps of motivation are left after bedtime.

And then you open Instagram or TikTok and get hit with the most infuriating contradiction imaginable:

Drink coffee for energy.

No — coffee is ruining your nervous system.

Try mushroom coffee.

No — you need to microdose psychedelics.

Actually, you just need perfect sleep, perfect routines, and zero stimulants (good luck with that).

So today, I’m trying to work out what we’re actually supposed to do when we’re tired, overwhelmed, and drowning in wellness advice that can’t agree with itself for more than eleven seconds.

This episode looks at energy, focus, and brain fog through the lens of:

•coffee vs no coffee

•mushroom coffee / nootropics / adaptogens

•microdosing psychedelics

•and why optimisation culture often collapses in real life

I react to some of the most common reels doing the rounds right now — doctors, nutritionists, biohackers, and internet experts all offering wildly conflicting advice — and try to slow the whole thing down enough to make sense of it.

What we cover

•Why so many of us feel permanently tired and mentally scattered

•Coffee on an empty stomach: cortisol, hormones, gut health — fearmongering or fair warning?

•Mushroom coffee explained (what it is and what it definitely isn’t)

•Common functional mushrooms and adaptogens you’ll hear about online, including:

Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga, Reishi, Maca, and other “brain-boosting” blends

•Nootropics vs stimulants: focus without the crash?

•Brian Johnson, extreme optimisation, and the fantasy of total nervous-system stability

•Psychedelics and microdosing: potential benefits, real risks, and why this conversation has gone so strange online

•The Stoned Ape Theory (and why archaeologists absolutely love an unprovable idea)

This episode also introduces my mum — Old Ma — an archaeologist, lifelong observer of human behaviour, and proudly chronically offline control group. She brings a very different perspective on psychedelics, energy, and the idea that modern life can be “fixed” with powders and protocols.

This is not medical advice. It’s an honest attempt to translate modern wellness culture for tired people who don’t have the bandwidth to fact-check every reel.

⸻

Follow for clips, extras & deleted scenes

•Podcast Instagram: @field.notes.pod (deleted scenes, extra bits, behind-the-scenes chaos)

Next up: I’ll actually test some of this advice in real life and report back.

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

Absolute lol Brick have given me a code : https://www.getbrick.app/ROSE90330

It may not get you any more of a discount that you can get yourselves (I haven't clicked it yet), and they may request that I take it down after listening to this episode. But hey ho. The show notes are looking professional this week.

Field Report of the dopamine detox experiment. I tested three “highly scientific” methods in my most dangerous scrolling window: 7–10pm after the girls are asleep.

What I tried:

• Night 1: full raw-dog detox (no phone, no TV, no music, no book… just vibes and existential dread)
• Night 2: reading instead (Kindle + a dangerously moorish fantasy romance)
• Night 3: TV without the phone (feat. the Bonnie Blue documentary and a sudden moral debate I wasn’t prepared for)

We also cover:

• why “doing nothing” is a rich man’s hobby
• the weird way scrolling has ruined reading
• why watching a whole film now feels like personal growth
• sex being transactional across human history (lightly… then not lightly)
• Flatmate’s Field Notes: my husband’s unhinged business analysis of Bonnie Blue
• Find of the Week: Brick (a physical gadget that blocks apps unless you walk to it)
• Fail of the Week: realising I’m not enjoying reading like I used to (rude)

If you tried a dopamine detox too, I want your results. And if you’ve used Brick, please report to the group chat (my DMs).

Follow: @rosehoneymorgan

Podcast IG: @field.notes.pod

New Monday episodes + Friday Field Reports.

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

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.

Field Notes is a weekly experiment in self-improvement, psychology and modern life, tested badly in public.

Each week, one idea is filtered and tested in real life, outside of perfect conditions, then reported on honestly.

This short trailer explains the premise of the podcast, the format, and what to expect from the weekly Monday episodes and Friday Field Reports.

Follow along on Instagram:

@rosehoneymorgan

@field.notes.pod

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