Yes, I feel like my brain is fried by dopamine dispensers, it's very bad and I have no clue how to get control back. At least I have some healthy routines in my days but it really does feel like being addicted to a hard drug.
Yes, I feel like my brain is fried by dopamine dispensers, it's very bad and I have no clue how to get control back. At least I have some healthy routines in my days but it really does feel like being addicted to a hard drug.
To me, it is the same as a "hard drug". I struggle on and off. For me, it's HN and just general fear of AI / career trajectory. I'm constantly reading articles about it. To a lesser degree, videogames and other scrolling take mgood chunks of my time away.
I've been making a concerted effort of waking up in the morning, sitting out in my garage gym for an hour with coffee and a book. I'll do 1 workout per day, 6 times a week, and read a few pages of "Meditations" (The stoicism book). It really centers me and feels refreshing to break away from everything and just focus on my body and mind ad the real physical world. I'm not religious, so I consider that my "church" or something.
Obviously, carrying that mindset throughout the day is difficult - but having a set "no-screens" time is useful, especially when my previous schedule was this:
- Wake up + look at phone
- Sit on toilet and look at phone
- Drive to work and look at computer for 4 hours
- Have lunch and look at phone
- Look at computer for 4 more hours
- Come home, make dinner, eat food
- Look at computer or tv for 3 hours
- Go to bed and look at phone for another hour
Writing it down like this makes it very clear that this cannot be a healthy lifestyle - so for me, where work is ALL done in front of a screen, I'm increasingly trying to remove screens from the rest of my life. There's no reason for us to be on the internet all day long, there's other cool shit to do that feels way better than burning my eyes and brain receptors all day long.
There exist problems which cause years of suffering which can be solved in hours (sometimes minutes). Not every problem is like that, of course, but some are. Procrastination is like that, sometimes posture is like that, and mental effects of social media are like that. At least for now - this may get worse with time. But the solution is not to consume more content - books seem to be a common suggestion. It is to consume no content. Humans evolved to grind most of the time with a little excitement and entertainment now and again, but tech has inverted this. Its "what we want" in the same way a child wants sugar all the time, and its at once addictive and unhealthy. The screen is an insidious habit former and I'm not sure yet if there is any healthy level or use for some people.
>There exist problems which cause years of suffering which can be solved in hours (sometimes minutes). Not every problem is like that, of course, but some are. Procrastination is like that, sometimes posture is like that, and mental effects of social media are like that.
So simple to solve all those things in mere minutes, yet you can't even say how? Do I have to buy your book or subscribe to your website to find out the solution for poor posture and procrastination!
How long has it been since you've gone a single day without a screen? I don't have a miracle cure, just a suggestion to try going without for a day and see how you feel. Similar to how a pile of work in the corner can make you feel bad until you finally do it. The ratio of suffering time to cure time in both cases is very high.
Get a kindle and buy some really gripping books.
That won't help. I can get engrossed in a book/film/videogame I like. Most day-to-day task are not as interesting though. The problem is being able to concentrate on an activity that doesn't get you instant gratification.
Nothing will help if you don't put in the effort. You need to regain dopamine sensitivity and the way to do that is going on a dopamine diet. If you keep gorging on easy dopamine, it can only get worse.