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September 21 - September 22, 2024
Dopamine gives us the desire to take action to earn the exciting reward that’s waiting for us. It is the force that makes us act.
Contrary to what many people believe, dopamine is not a pleasure chemical.
In fact, when you pay close attention, you’ll notice that as soon as you obtain the expected reward, you’ll often feel empty and unfulfilled.
Under such a state of stimulation, any task that requires concentration becomes much harder to perform. As a result, you will procrastinate.
from an evolutionary perspective, dopamine’s role is to encourage you to act to earn the anticipated reward needed for your survival or reproduction. This is dopamine’s primary role.
the more our environment or actions trigger the release of dopamine, the more we’ll want our next “shot” of dopamine.
Dopamine and constant stimulation can impair your ability to think long term
By receiving constant feedback, whether through likes, comments, or immediate replies to our messages, we condition ourselves to expect fast results with everything we do.
As we demand more and more stimulation, our focus is increasingly geared toward the short term and our vision of reality becomes distorted.
No, watching motivational videos all day long won’t help you reach your goals. But, performing daily consistent actions, sustained over a long period of time will. Staying calm and focusing on the one task in front of you every day will. The point is, to achieve long-term goals in your personal or professional life, you must regain control of your attention and rewire your brain to focus on the long term. To do so, you should start by staying away from highly stimulating activities.
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.
Overstimulated, you find yourself unable to do the difficult things that would have the greatest positive impact on your life and on the lives of people around you.
While there are many reasons to procrastinate, the most important one—and the one overlooked most often—is overstimulation.
When you are calm and focused, doing your main work can be surprisingly easy.
However, the problem is that you’re often anything but calm and focused. Instead, you’re rushing through your day, jumping from one task to the next.
It often starts first thing in the morning when you grab your phone. Then, it continues when you check your emails. But it doesn’t stop there. You then decide to visit social media sites for “a few minutes”.
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.
As my level of stimulation increases, writing becomes one of the most unappealing and challenging tasks imaginable.
Speaking into my soul right now!
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.
Therefore, if you catch yourself thinking you’re in control of your actions and can return to work whenever you want, watch out!
Remember, excitement isn’t fulfillment.
Checking emails or news every thirty minutes gives you the illusion of having some control over your environment.
Dopamine detox describes the following process: The reduction of stimulation to prevent overstimulation and put you in the proper state of mind to tackle major tasks.
When you need less stimulation, seemingly challenging, boring or tedious tasks will become more appealing—and easier to tackle.
eliminate most or all sources of external stimulation for a total of 48 hours. Doing so will help you reduce your overall level of stimulation and revert to your natural state.
If your phone is your biggest distraction, remove all notifications or put it on airplane mode. Or, even better, switch it off and put it in a separate room.
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. If you need to go to another room to grab your phone (friction #1) and also need to turn it on (friction #2), you are less likely to do it for a while.
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. For instance, to facilitate writing in the morning, I avoid checking my phone or my emails and leave my word processor open.
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.
refuse to let busyness be an excuse to avoid reflecting on your life.
our never-ending search for stimulation is often an attempt to hide our fears.
stressed and more in control. Instead
If I could complete only one task today, which one would have the greatest impact?
If I could complete only one task today before taking a month off, what would that task be?
