If meditation and mindfulness can make you more depressed, what does that mean for Calm?

Don Draper, meditating to maximise his KPIs. Image credit: AMC

Meditation, mindfulness and the marketing industry which has driven their recent trendiness are hopefully about to get the backlash they deserve. My New Scientist colleague Clare Wilson reports on the first systematic review of the evidence about the practice, which finds that for a minority of people meditation and mindfulness can worsen depression and anxiety, or even provoke panic attacks, psychosis and thoughts of suicide.

The study does not deny that many people do benefit from these practices, some of whom are probably reading this, but it does allow a bit of space for more forceful criticism of the mostly invented world of “wellness”, and the marketing of mindfulness and meditation as the solution to all your problems. And the marketing messages are where the issues lie. If you want to overpay for an an app with prepackaged MP3s of celebrities whispering, that’s up to you. But don’t pretend it will reduce your stress, make your life better or solve any of your problems.

A few years ago I embarked on a body transformation, a rite of passage for most people who have worked at a men’s magazine. One of the things my fitness instructor recommended was trying mindfulness app Calm, which I found was close to a Black Mirror experience, a bit like voluntarily locking yourself in a room with a Tim Ferris wannabe in control of a surround sound PA system telling you to breathe in mysterious patterns, knowing that their net worth has probably increased by a London house-deposit sized proportion by the end of your 30 minute session. But maybe that’s just me.

Using Calm immediately increased my anxiety and I immediately stopped using it, which is fine because no-one is forcing me to use it, but it’s still very hard to escape the app and the pervasive marketing message of wellness. American Express even thought it wise to grant card members a premium subscription for a year, perhaps the best example of corporate wellness box ticking I’ve seen during this crazy year.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the most famous recent examples of meditation in popular culture is in the final episode of Mad Men, where the sum result of Don Draper’s meditation retreat is an idea for a new Coca Cola advertisement.

Life changing doesn’t necessarily mean positively life changing. Image credit: Calm

Although I do get some satisfaction imagining aspiring Silicon Valley entrepreneurs using their Calm sessions to try and channel their mind into discovering new organisational efficiencies (think: Amelie counting orgasms in Paris, but maler, pastier and with KPIs instead of cumming), they and we deserve better diagnoses and treatment for our modern day ails and ennui. And we certainly need to detach mental health from work efficiencies, and put it lower down the priority list for solving people’s problems.

One of the most disturbing elements of Clare’s newsletter about her story is that schools and the NHS are now recommending mindfulness, in some cases to schoolchildren with the intention of boosting their resilience against bullying. Should the NHS and schools really be recommending meditation if in some cases it is making people feel worse?

My form of meditation is practicing my trombone, looking up if I hear a distinctive aeroplane’s engine (and then looking it up on Flightradar24) and writing lightly researched polemics on my blog about how much the meditation industry annoys me. I couldn’t do any of this if I didn’t have a comfortable home, a good job and a healthy “fuck off fund.” Those are prerequisites for good mental health, and anything that doesn’t consider that first and foremost is arguably damaging.

Hopefully this study will be the beginning of the end of the marketing trend which suggest that closing your eyes and breathing a little deeper can have impact whatsoever on systemic problems. Even though we now have the evidence that meditation can make your mental situation worse, I can’t imagine that ever making its way into Calm’s marketing rules.

The glamorous* things keeping me sane now that home is work and work is home

Two sprays of Byredo cedar scent which takes me on a dreamy night out with my fiancee, even though I’ve only been to a bar once in five months. With each push of the metal cap I imagine a 20p piece jangling into a piggy bank, the price of each expensive squirt.

The smell of suncream applied in the morning, even when it’s cloudy outside. It never fails in fooling my brain that I’m at the beach. My only worry is that I might overpower the sun and sand association and permanently replace it with a memory of my bathroom, circa 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

Updating my savings spreadsheet. Opening all the tabs and totting up the changes in the stock market or the miserly interest is a very soothing ritual for me. Some nights I go to sleep thinking of my financial cushion. If you’re looking for mental peace, you don’t need meditation: you need a “fuck off” fund.

Doing the meter reading. You mean I have to go outside to do a task? Shall I get dressed up?

Rearranging my book shelves and rotating the books on my bedside table is so important. Want to escape the dishes? Better pick up some Cixin Liu and visit outer space. Frustrated with pandemic politics? Pick up Dark Money and get angry. I’ve been reading at a rate of knots ince I started putting the books that actually interest me within my eye line. Next up, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is soon to graduate from propping up the fan to my reading list.

As a fair skinned man, tanning is not top of the list of my abilities. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to develop a healthy cyclist’s tan with a very noticeable threshold on my legs from pasty to almost healthy looking. Maintaining it with regular rides is what counts for fun in 2020.

Apparently the key to keeping house plants alive is spending your entire life at home. All they need is water, sunlight and the occasional chat.

*actually utterly unglamorous, but you wouldn’t have clicked that.

Got a NEST pension? Consider changing your default fund

The government’s pensions auto enrolment fund has been wildly successful. Today, 87 per cent of people have a UK pension scheme, up from 55 per cent in 2012 when the rules changed to mean that you had to opt-out of saving (rather than opt-in). The numbers are even more impressive for young people: 84 per cent of people aged 22-29 now have a workplace pension, up from 24 per cent in 2012.

A huge number of these new savers are investing their money in a NEST pension, one of the government’s main pension scheme options which now has more than six million members.

99 per cent of these six million savers are invested in NEST’s “default funds.” In other words, of the millions of new automatic savers, only 1 per cent have made a manual decision about where their money goes.

I’m one of those 1 per cent.

The default fund option in NEST is not right for me, and I think many other savers who, like me, have many decades until retirement, should consider moving their money too.

What was the NEST default fund wrong for me?

The objectives of the default fund are threefold: maximising the total size of the retirement pots; ensuring that cohorts who contribute similar amounts have similar outcomes; and, to “dampen volatility” while people are saving.

To achieve these objectives, the default fund invests a maximum of 55% of its portfolio in equities, presumably because any major volatility in the stock market would mean a temporary fall in the value of their pension, which would put off savers who will then choose to withdraw their money entirely.

Even worse, in the first five years of investing, only 35 per cent of your default fund money is in the stock market, and up to 30 per cent of your money could be invested in cash (in other words, inflating away!).

The portfolio for the default NEST pension fund in its least conservative phase puts a maximum of 65% of its assets in the stock market, which I feel is very conservative

I want my retirement fund to make me as much money as possible and for me the best way to do that is to put it all in the stock market. Read my Freetrade review for more detailed reasons why.

Since I won’t be able to access my retirement fund for at least 30 years, I’m not worried about monthly or even annual fluctuations. NEST does provide alternative options for those who want to take on more risk, but even its “higher risk” fund targets a portfolio that is 70 per cent equities. The only option that is 100 per cent equities is the Sharia fund, (which also happens to be the fund that’s performed best since inception.)

In summary: the default fund is an incredibly conservative and risk-averse option, and you should consider changing it. Even if you don’t change, you should know where your money is going.

Further reading

NEST’s different funds and how they invest your money

UK Post Box review: my most luxurious digital service

Is your pension plan water?

Pensions: WATER or a nice cottage by the water?

The polar bear optical illusion you can see in the Needles from Bournemouth. (Photo by Terry Robinson)

Two stories in the Sunday Times today offer two conflicting perspectives about pensions, which I think is as good a topic as any to restart my blog.

In Ian Cowie’s latest column about his retirement fund he says he’s recently liquidated a fairly big chunk of his shares so he can buy a seaside cottage. Good for him.

“…so many editorial colleagues over the years seemed to think they were being terribly witty telling me, “Pensions are boring. Sometimes I would say: ‘Not really, I enjoy sailing around in part of my pension.’ Soon, with luck, Sue and I will also have a Victorian cottage with a splendid sea view, all thanks to saving and investing effectively. How boring is that?”

Josh Glancy is less impressed with his pension savings which, at the moment, would probably only cover a few dozen Brooklyn brunches. Not so good for him.

“My retirement plan is more like Water: won’t aim to ever retire. This realisation was a shock at first, but I’m coming round to the idea. I’ve chosen to prioritise satisfaction over security, thrills today over funds tomorrow.”

I wonder what the two would say about each other’s columns…