I don't know how many of you have read this one, but it's quite popular. I had purchased this one along with a few from the same category of books that are focused on self-development a few months ago but couldn't finish any of them, not even this tiny one that consisted of around forty pages. Now this one is quite a different story than the usual one.
What do you do when you are on a solo journey? I have always stuck to my phone, watching movies, scrolling through the newsfeed, used to listen to songs, and so on. Once, I tried to read an ebook, but it's quite hard to keep my attention stuck to a pdf on the phone without getting distracted. This time, I tried the traditional method; I took a hard copy, this tiny 'Dopamine Detox' that has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time.
Yeah, I was on a train journey of a couple of hours, so I planned to complete that on the go in one run. I never thought of myself carrying a book and reading like that. I did during my admission test in the past, but that was a whole different scenario; everyone around me was in the same situation. This time, it was only me, sitting by a window seat, trying to read a book instead of scrolling through the unnecessary news feeds, and I did it. From now on, I am gonna try this over and over again.
Let's talk a bit about the book, specifically, what I have extracted to follow from that book.
This one shows how easily we get overstimulated by social media, which is one of the most common ones among many others. Different people have different sources to get overstimulated, and then the productive work doesn't get that much appealing to us. That's how it's been going on; even the slightest notification sound becomes the gateway to that path, after which we lose consciousness of the less exciting ones. It shows how different algorithms are configured to keep us hooked and how successful they are; the first half of that book shows all the traps we fall for daily.
To be honest, I know this part pretty well from different sources and different ways I got to know how it works and how to stop them, so it was not an unknown read to me. It might be to you or someone who hasn't tried already to mitigate them. I am doing that every day. Wait, something new was there, one formula that seemed to work best for me, one that I would try next.
There are 48 hours dopamine detox method, 24 hours one, and also a partial dopamine detox method to apply. Also, a few other Action Steps that you might try to acquire the goal; I knew and had been trying them a little bit for a long time.
One that seems to be more legit is the first step after waking up every day. What's the first thing you do after waking up? In my case, it's the phone, checking what was happening while I was asleep, if someone remembered me, going through the notifications, and checking the news feed a little. That's where the problem is; our brain gets over-stimulated at that particular time, and after that, our productive works, which are most likely to be less exciting, fail to cope with that much stimulation, and we are always one step behind utilizing those working hours at their fullest.
So in my case, my key learning from this book is that I won't unlock my phone in the morning and won't even turn on my wifi. I will start my most important task from my to-do list, set up one or two hours without any distractions, and only after completing that I will take my break. Yeah, I hope to make that first few hours the most productive period of my day, not to lose the slightest of my attention. It sounds kinda hard, but if I can continue this for a few days, then it won't be a problem anymore.
So let's see, if it works, I am gonna come back with feedback for sure. Maybe within a couple of weeks.