December 05, 2019Mental health

Achieve nothing

According to a recent study, we check our phones 10,000 times a year. Alongside claustrophobia, arachnophobia and acrophobia, we can now add nomophobia to a list of modern-day phobias. No mobile phobia (nomophobia) is the irrational fear of not having access to our mobile phone, and there are calls for it to be included in the official classification of mental disorders.

The next decade is set to become the decade to launch the internet of senses, where our sense of world-discovery becomes fully augmented. Digital smells, augmented vision, audio exclusion zones.

We continue to shift away from products to experiences and crave increasingly extreme situations to satisfy an ever heightened bar for adrenaline-inducing activity. Faster, further, higher.

What next?

Nothing.

The nothing experience

The Nothing Experience is the complete antithesis of our collective direction of travel. It is about experiencing ‘nothing’ as a means to relax, de-stress and be mindful. Rather than paying to achieve something, experience something, or do something, people will begin paying to do nothing.

An environment that is cut off. An activity that, in itself, achieves nothing. The experience of nothing.

A time to disconnect from the digital, eternal and ephemeral noise of modern living, and reconnect with ourselves, our natural surroundings and native being.

The cynics would cry emperors new clothes no doubt, citing meditation, mindfulness, massage, yoga, Pilates and the plethora of other mind-cleansing activities as the same, but be prepared for a more extreme, more disruptive version of nothingness over the horizon. And get ready for people to pay for that experience.