Episode 3 of our new podcast series, Work Happy, is live now!
Work Happy is centred around workplace happiness in all its glorious forms. Our host, Angelica Malin, Editor-in-Chief at About Time Magazine, will be talking everything from transformational breathwork to digital nutrition with experts, entrepreneurs and coaches who are making happy waves in the wellbeing industry.
We’ll be exploring the landscape of workplace happiness to gain tips on how to move, eat, sleep and work better.
This week, Angelica sat down with Founder at Moodrise, Michael Phillips Moskowitz, to explore digital nutrition and how what we consume affects our mood.
Michael describes Moodrise as, “an attempt to inculcate the basic virtues of digital nutrition, which we define as a more purposeful approach of consuming content”. Moodrise offers “wonderfully nutritious” pieces of content designed to elicit a specific chemical response in your brain, which can be “self-administered” according to your mood in the same way you would take a physical drug from a pharmacy.
With 1 in 4 in the UK experiencing a mental health problem, Michael feels strongly about harnessing the relationship between our digital habits and the way that we feel: “the average person consumes an estimated 12hr and 7 minutes of digital assets and materials every single day […] The challenge is that much of that material can be problematic […] and people aren’t necessarily making informed decisions having never been taught the basics of digital literacy”.
The Moodrise team view the app as something of a science experiment with hopefully very real benefits, “We’re not trying to cure episodes of deep, crippling depression […]. but to improve people’s understanding of the techniques or tools they can self administer to improve the quality of their lives”. The mission is a “combination of awareness and practice” to teach people when and when not to use digital.
Michael raises some interesting questions over the course of his and Angelica’s conversation, pointing out that, “Movies come with a rating […] we’re endeavouring to do the same with digital content”.
When it comes to workplace happiness, Michael cites human interaction and the energy shared with your team as his number one motivator, “the people to my left and right make a difference […] the state of the people you’re working with are maybe the most important piece”. Similarly, Michael finds catching up with friends is a way for him to check in with his own mental health, “London is a really hard place to live unless you prioritise interpersonal relationships”.
To listen to the whole podcast, click here. You’ll hear fascinating insights on the way in which Moodrise derives and organises its content, as Michael explains the breakdown in physical communication as digital communication evolves.
