Introduction

‘Mmmmmhmmmm,’ she sighed into my ear, enveloping me from behind in both her arms and her patchouli musk. Her head was shaved, but her armpits weren’t. This was what the teacher had told us was an armchair hug.

I would have scooted forward, except, there was another stranger slumped between my legs, pressing me from the front in a pincer attack of affection.

‘Mmmhmm’, he sighed too. ‘Mmmmhmmmmm. Do you feel it?’

‘Yup,’ I grimaced.

Sandwiched here between two strangers, my insides contracting like an accordion, I was beginning to wonder just what the hell I was doing. Why had I, a grumpy introvert, a man of science no less, signed up for a cuddle workshop in the first place?

Yes, I was doing one new thing for every week of the year, but did I have to do this thing? In a year that included infiltrating a secret society, corresponding with a serial killer, and getting a colonic irrigation – a year that cost me £11,000 and nearly my marriage – this very moment was me at my most uncomfortable.

People always ask me what my favourite activity-du-week was. It’s too hard to choose. My incredible journey took me from the highs (then lows, then highs, then lows again) of bungee jumping one sunny Saturday hundreds of feet above Battersea, to the abyss of Club Antichrist, sloughing through the trenches of sex perverts and Satanists in London’s underground BDSM nightclub. I laughed my way past hooded hoodlums during laugher yoga in Ilford Park and cried as I heard my mother’s voice for the first time. I ate my first doner kebab, I killed and cooked a chicken, and I drank my wife’s breastmilk. I infiltrated a My Little Pony convention, Just Stop Oil, and the secret society of [REDACTED]. I even got on TV.

In short, I did a lot – and it was the best year of my life.

Even in the cuddle workshop, squirmy though it was, I was living. It was real. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything, certainly not for my past life, the gilded cage of screens and sofas.

Modern life is making us sick. We all feel it, especially since the pandemic – stuck and suffocated, like time is moving faster, like nothing feels real. Often, our memories feel distorted and foggy, the last few years a blank.

The science is clear on why. We spend most of our days staring at the screens which are making our brains shallower, flitting and fleeting from Tweets to TikToks, never taking the time to reflect and encode things to long-term memory. We work bullshit jobs, pushing numbers around an Excel sheet, waiting to be replaced by AI while our bodies turn to dust. Our sedentary, solitary, indoor lifestyles are causing our brains to atrophy. And all of this was amplified by lockdowns. Solitary confinement used to be a form of torture; now, it’s how most of us spend most of our days.

But most importantly, our lives are lacking in experience. Our brains don’t mark the passage of time through clocks and calendars, but through events – weddings, holidays, funerals, football matches, family days in and raucous nights out. Without experiences, we don’t make memories, and life becomes nothing but a grey soup. Blink and you’re dead.

Research shows us experiences make us happier and healthier than material goods. It really is true that you can ‘own nothing and be happy’. It also shows us we’re happier and healthier when we’re outdoors, when we’re physically active, or when we’re socially interacting. These are vital ingredients for wellbeing. (Unless, of course, there’s a bit of a flu going round, in which case they should all be BANNED.)

When older people are asked for their greatest regrets in life, they wish they had taken more risks, enjoyed more activities with loved ones, and not worked so much. It’s rare to hear them say they wish they’d spent more time using PowerPoint or complaining about politicians on Twitter or jerking themselves into oblivion to body-swap Nyotaimori hentai on their Meta Quest 3 512GB All-In-One Mixed Reality Headset.

According to the stats, we’re more depressed and psychopathological than ever. Our sense of time is distorted. We’re more physically ill. We’re seeking escape and stimulation in social media and video games and narcotics. We’re more atomised and polarised and lonely. We’re not even having kids.

Could our modern ills be alleviated by escaping the algorithms and just, well, going outside and doing stuff?

That’s what I set out to discover in this project, tasking myself with getting out and doing one new thing a week. The result is an eye-opening snapshot of modern life, and a captivating travelogue of weekly adventures from the quiet depths of a flotation tank to the awesome heights of the Kingdom Centre skyscraper in Riyadh.

It’s what Tania Edwards, a proper comedian, called ‘the funniest thing I’ve ever read’. It’s humorous, honest, and just the right amount of awkward. Like when I underwent a past life regression and found out who I was in a previous existence: Hercule Poirot! (Poirot! He’s a fictional character! Haha.)

But it’s not all hahas, heehees, or even hoohoos: there are some moving moments. When I saw my first sunrise, or heard my mother’s voice for the first time, there wasn’t a dry eye in my face.

And there’s a bit of science in there too. I am a psychologist, after all. You’ll learn how experiences affect the brain and why they’re so crucial for wellbeing and for healthy relationships; and you’ll learn how screens and lockdowns have damaged us, and how to heal.

As a behavioural scientist, I had a pretty banal and pointless life myself. I spent my days hunched over a laptop under a dim lamp, left-aligning icons in PowerPoint presentations for apathetic clients. Living in a small, gloomy house with my newborn son at the tail-end of lockdowns was causing nights and days to merge into a singular black hole of nothing.

In researching the Sunday Times bestselling book I co-wrote, Free Your Mind (available now on Amazon), I found a glimmer of light. One weekend I forced myself to join a kind-of, little-bit-of-a cult in the woods, a masculinity retreat to be precise. There were no phones – no clocks, in fact – and we took sunrise outdoor showers together and danced naked around a bonfire. It was bonkers but it was magical. It was something real amongst the nothing.

It reminded me when one winter lockdown was looming, and my wife and I said, fuck this, and left the UK for warmer and freer climes. After a month in Tivat – a month of boat excursions and poolside barbecues and wolves howling at night – we were talking to a family member on the phone.

‘Has it been a month already?’ she asked. ‘It feels like yesterday.’

For my wife and I, it felt like a lifetime has passed. That day, I had stumbled upon the secret of slowing down time – experiences – and the cult in the woods had reawakened it and triggered my leap into a year of new adventures.

It was a life-changing process for me. I didn’t just escape the screens, become comfortable with discomfort, and rediscover my zeal for life - I also learned a lot. As I interacted with people I otherwise wouldn’t – from communist-Marxists to My Little Pony enthusiasts – I empathised with them more; I saw the world from different perspectives. They ceased to be abstract shadows in my imagination and became real people.

Sometimes insight sprung from surprising sources. An acupuncturist told me I had a ‘hot mouth’ (not like that) and I needed to drink more water, curing a physical ailment that three years’ of doctors visits could not. A psychic, although she did talk a lot of shit, also awakened an important life lesson about the importance of friendship.

No, this is not just a hilarious Substack (and possibly bestselling book with Netflix adaptation potential). It’s a movement. It’s a manifesto for the modern age, on the importance of getting out and living your life fully. It will inspire you to get out of your comfort zone and rediscover the world and your place within it.

It will stir you to wonder – what would be on your list?