Claiming back your time with dopamine detox

Time is your most valuable asset and you are throwing it away. Let me explain… 

What is dopamine?

In simple terms, dopamine is a molecule that gets released in your brain to make you feel good. 

You can say that humanity is driven by dopamine. You achieve something, you get rewarded for it, you want more, and the cycle keeps going. 

Now, this is great as it drives us forward… The real problem starts when dopamine starts getting released when you haven’t achieved anything.

The problem

Many of the things we are surrounded by every day are designed to trigger the release of dopamine, without you having to achieve anything. 

In case you didn’t know, this is why it’s really hard to quit using drugs once you fall into that pit… You simply want an amount of dopamine that you can’t achieve through natural means.

What I am here to write about though is not drugs, but something much more common. It exists at a scale so great that it is now accepted as a way of living, something you can’t live without and your life would be sad if you decided to stop.

That thing, of course, is social media.

The issue with social media

Social media is a great tool. It helps you stay… well, social. It also gives you access to more useful content in a day, than you would have encountered in a lifetime before it existed.

The trouble starts when it stops becoming the tool, and instead YOU become the tool.

All social media platforms have been meticulously engineered from the ground up for one simple task… Grab the user’s attention.

The statement “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product” is real.

Social media platforms run on powerful and complicated algorithms, whose job is to track what you do on the platform and recommend more of that.

This triggers the release of pleasure molecules in your brain… Dopamine.

As we already established before, once you find a source of dopamine, you will want more. The faster, the better.

There is a chilling statement from ‘The Social Dilemma’ that made me think: 

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software”

Is it impossible to free yourself from the shackles of social media addiction? Will you never be able to use social media as a tool? Is it either you live with it as a ‘user’ or quit it forever?

The answer to that, in my opinion, is NO.

Like many of the machines that malfunction for no apparent reason, sometimes the solution is simple… A reset.

Dopamine detox

Dopamine detox is a 7 days experiment that has been talked about all around the internet for years now. It is simply a way for you to reset your dopamine curve to its natural levels, rather than the unrealistic levels that have been set by social media and other means of instant gratification… It’s the reset button for your dopamine transmitters.

The basic idea is that after you are done with the experiment, you will be in a more objective place, where you can look at social media as a tool that you choose to either use or not, rather than be dependent on it for your happiness.

How I did it

When I decided to do the dopamine detox I set some simple ground rules after a bit of research:

1. No social media: I straight away deleted all social media apps from my phone.

2. No digital entertainment: I didn’t watch any movies, shows or anime.

3. No junk food: I didn’t buy any food from outside.

4. 1 hour of screen-on time: I limited my phone’s screen-on time to 1 hour per day.

5. 10 minutes of meditation: I meditated for 10 minutes every morning

I lived by these rules for just 7 days, and the results were mindboggling…

The experiment

I didn’t need to wait for the 7 days to end, to see the benefits of this experiment. It started from day 1 itself.

Once you remove distractions from your life, you will unlock hours upon hours in your day that you just didn’t know existed. 

Suddenly you can keep up with your studies, read every day and sleep well. You don’t have to choose 2 out of the 3.

This is what I felt throughout the dopamine detox. Rather than sulking over the stuff I can’t do because of the rules I set, I looked with wonder at what I could do now with all that free time I unlocked.

I studied every day, and when I felt like taking a break, I pulled out my copy of ‘atomic habits’ and started reading. 

That feeling of pulling your phone out of habit and then remembering there is nothing to do in it makes you ask “Is this what I would have done with these 30 minutes of free time?” 

Another unexpected side benefit I experienced was being regarded by my friends as having super willpower for the simple fact that am not using social media… Makes you wonder what we have come to, doesn’t it?

The benefits were even more clear once the 7 days ended…

The final results

As I mentioned before, at the end of the 7 days, your dopamine curve should be back to a level where it doesn’t require social media and other means of instant gratification to make you happy.

This couldn’t have been more true. 

First of all, I didn’t even download my social media apps back until the weekend, because I was busy with other stuff and didn’t feel like making time for it… Looking positive already.

On the weekend I downloaded Instagram back to see how it will go and I was astonished… I did not feel satisfied with the action of scrolling through Instagram. I even went as far as unfollowing a lot of the pages I used to follow because I now view them as a waste of time.

The news was another thing. I started catching myself being affected by the news I viewed on social media. This was something I heard about many times, but it was the first time I was able to catch myself being affected.

This is what I meant when I said you should be in a more objective place after 7 days. When you don’t NEED social media, you won’t feel like making the time for it in your day.

Since then, I never relapsed into scrolling mindlessly through social media. If you search my phone right now, you will not even find the applications. I deleted them all and only install Instagram every now and then to catch up on movie and anime release dates.

Takeaway

Social media is a great tool, but a terrible master. 

Most of the time, you are wrong when you say “I don’t have time”. There is usually time, it’s just that you don’t know where it goes. 

As I said in the beginning time is the single most valuable asset for us humans. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

This is why, whether it is through dopamine detox or other means, you should make an effort to reclaim your time, be mindful about it and CHOOSE consciously what you want to do with it. You will be proud of the choices you make.

For More on The Things Am Learning:

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