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And the more we seek stimulation, the worse it becomes.
Now, look at your own life. What are you addicted to? What do you crave? What are your main sources of stimulation? Do these things really make you happy?
To sum up, from an evolutionary perspective, dopamine’s role is to encourage you to act to earn the anticipated reward needed for your survival or reproduction.
Social media notifications are a great example of how your brain is being hijacked. Whenever you see a notification, you anticipate the reward you’ll receive when clicking on it, which triggers the release of dopamine in your brain. However, this doesn’t make you happy or fulfill you—at least not for long. Remember, dopamine is not a pleasure chemical; it is a neurotransmitter that is activated when you anticipate a potential pleasure. And that pleasure is usually temporary.
The billionaire investor and former senior executive at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, argues that we must rewire our brain to focus on the long term, which starts by removing social media apps from our phones. In his words, such apps, “wire
your brain for super-fast feedback.”
As we demand more and more stimulation, our focus is increasingly geared toward the short term and our vision of reality becomes distorted. This leads us to adopt inaccurate mental models such as: Success should come quickly and easily, or I don’t need to work hard to lose weight or make money.
You must develop the art of patience and consistency. To do so, eliminate the distractions that make you feel restless. Remove the external stimulations that prevent you from focusing on the long-term picture.
When you are calm and focused, doing your main work can be surprisingly easy. You might even be excited, looking forward to making progress toward your biggest goals each day. However, the problem is that you’re often anything but calm and focused.
When you’re engaging in highly stimulating activities, your brain will keep demanding more and more stimulation. As your level of stimulation rises, regular tasks will appear increasingly dull and unappealing.
The gap between your current high level of stimulation and the lower level of stimulation needed to tackle difficult tasks leads you to procrastinate.
As soon as you enter a state of overstimulation, your mind will play tricks on you to convince you there is no need to leave that “trance”. Instead, your mind encourages you to embrace it and
seek even more stimulation. After all, we have to enjoy life, right?
Remember, excitement isn’t fulfillment. Excitement can be fun, but make sure you work on developing an inner sense of peace and a heightened state of focus. This is much more likely to bring you fulfillment in the long run.
Adding friction might sound overly simple, but it works. This is because, as humans, we’re fundamentally lazy. We hate wasting energy unless we are forced to.
The bottom line is, the more difficult you make it to engage in unwanted behaviors, the better. Conversely, make your desired behaviors as frictionless as possible.
Remember, your mind is lazy. Use this to your advantage.
To establish your morning routine, write down two or three simple things you could do each morning. You’ll use these activities to kickstart your dopamine detox—and, hopefully, you will stick to the routine over the long term. Remember that the routine should deepen your focus rather than stimulate you.
Just putting your thoughts on paper can help you declutter your mind and gain clarity. This is because it’s difficult to address thoughts that stay in your mind. You tend to ruminate on them. On the other hand, writing them down makes them more concrete. It helps clarify your thinking. By giving words to your thoughts (or worries), you can address them more easily. I encourage you to take a pen and a sheet of paper and answer the questions above. In the absence of highly stimulating activities, you’ll be calmer and more relaxed, and this, in turn, will allow you to develop greater insight.
Identify your fears Finally, our never-ending search for stimulation is often an attempt to hide our fears. Being busy enables us to avoid having to face unpleasant feelings and scary truths about ourselves. Thus, if you notice certain disempowering thoughts or underlying fears, write them down too.
pen and paper.
You’ll notice that your most important tasks are often the ones you want to do the least. Perhaps, it’s because they are challenging. Perhaps, you don’t know where to start. Or, perhaps, they’re boring. But your dopamine detox will help make these tasks easier to tackle.
While there are thousands of books on productivity, only a few principles matter. I believe the most important one is to identify your key task and tackle it first thing in the morning—and do this consistently. Even though you might have a never-ending to-do list, there are always a few major tasks that, when completed, will skyrocket your productivity. Unless you can complete them, nothing else will really matter.
Productivity can then be defined as having consistent focus on your most impactful tasks.
Again, the more relaxed you are, the easier it will be to focus. So, just get started and don’t worry about completing your task perfectly. It’s okay if you don’t
feel motivated or creative, taking action will generate motivation and stimulate your creativity.
Action step Using your action guide, follow the steps below to develop laser-sharp focus: Decide what time you will focus on your key tasks. Then, make sure you’re at the same place at the same time each day. Choose a specific trigger to signal the start of your morning routine. Just get started. When you work on your tasks for a few minutes, you’ll be more likely to enter the flow and keep working longer. Eliminate any distractions (phone notifications, internet, et cetera), and Finally, work without interruption. Aim to complete forty-five minutes of uninterrupted work.
closed system,
Remember, what you do first thing in the morning matters far more than you think.
However, your focus is also worth a lot of money to you.
Here’s my point. The world is working against you. There will always be someone trying to grab your attention. As such, you have two choices. You can protect your focus by building habits and systems, or you can remain unprepared and let anyone distract you from the important things you should be doing with your time.
