Resetting Your Dopamine: A Journey to Focus

Summary

In this episode of the Earn Your Title podcast, Danny Dumas explores the concept of dopamine and its impact on attention span and technology use. He shares personal experiences and realizations about his own relationship with social media and technology, leading to a decision to undertake a dopamine reset. Throughout the conversation, he discusses the importance of understanding dopamine as a motivator, his steps to reset his habits, and reflections on the journey towards improved focus and mental health.

Takeaways

• Dopamine is the molecule of desire and motivation.
• Excessive technology use can lead to a diminished attention span.
• A dopamine reset can help recalibrate our relationship with technology.
• It's important to engage fully with content rather than multitasking.
• Setting boundaries with social media can improve mental health.
• The process of change is not linear; it's okay to fail and try again.
• Reading more can be a beneficial alternative to screen time.
• Being present with family can enhance relationships.
• Self-awareness is key to recognizing unhealthy habits.
• Seeking help and support can facilitate personal growth.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dopamine and Attention Span
04:04 Understanding Dopamine: The Molecule of More
07:49 The Dopamine Reset: Steps and Strategies
12:08 Reflections on the Journey and Future Plans

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Transcript

0:00

you Bye. Hey guys, my name is Danny Dumas and this is the Earn Your Title podcast and today I want to do a little diagnosis. Now, as in my job as a paramedic, there's certain conditions or emergencies that we do some very simple tests and it determines whether or not we, that the patient is having an emergency. For instance, if you can't smile with one side drooping down, you're probably having a stroke. If you can't say the simple words without without slurring like ball tree flag. If you say blah, blah, blah, you're having a stroke. You hold your hands out in front of you, if one drops below the other one, you're having a stroke. It's almost definitive. Like this, if this is happening, you are having a problem. If you told me I'm crushing chest pain, it's rating down my left arm and up into my jaw, even without doing an EKG, I would say more than likely you're having a heart attack. And over the new year, during the holidays, I had to do a little bit of assessment on my mental state, and specifically my attention span. And I have a couple tests for you. All right. And this is going to be related to technology and your phone. Test one. When was the last time you sat down on the toilet and didn't look at your phone? Test one. If you answered, don't remember, you might have a problem with social media. And I think this could be, It could be several problems all in the same family. It could be that you're addicted to technology. It could be that you're bored. More than likely, what I think it is for me is that I have a problem with the amount of dopamine that I get, that what is giving me my dopamine? Like I'm looking for it in these short bursts. When was the last time you went to a doctor's appointment and instead of sitting there and just thinking and waiting, you pulled out your phone and looked at it? If the answer is I can't remember, you might have a problem. Can you remember the last time that you had access to your phone and you were bored? If you can't remember, you might have a problem. And I'm saying that because I did. I had a problem. I was constantly looking at my phone, constantly filling the board time. And the other thing that I was doing, and this is not good either, is that while I'm consuming this social media and the YouTube entertainment, I found that my attention span was getting so short, even to the point where if I was watching a series at about the 20 minute mark, say it's a 45 minute series or show, I'd be clicking on the video to look to see how much more time I had left, because it had seemed like it's so long. Now, I fully planned on watching the entire episode. Like I had no other plans. So whether it took an hour or 45 minutes, it didn't matter. I was gonna watch it. But in my mind, I had almost like an anxiety, like how much time left, how much time left. I noticed that I would watch videos that were seven minutes long and I'm clicking, doing the same thing. I'm clicking on my iPad to look, oh, there's only three more minutes left. Like I needed to know, like I couldn't fathom the thought of just letting it surprise me when it was done. So I took some steps. I decided I needed to make an intervention. if you look online, you might hear people call this a dopamine detox because dopamine, Sometimes we think of as the pleasure molecule or the pressure hormone, but really it's the molecule of more. There's a book that's called The Molecule of More. Basically, it's the drive to do anything. Some people say, need to have a dopamine detox. That is incorrect. You do not need to get rid of dopamine. In fact, if you did, your life would be terrible. You might starve to death. We wouldn't repopulate the planet. Good things wouldn't happen because dopamine is the drive that gets us to do that. And so I just wanted to do a reset and I'm going to do my best Andrew Huberman to try to explain how dopamine works and why we need to reset it, know, recalibrate it if you will. And then I'll explain what I'm currently doing, what I plan to continue to do to just make sure that, you know, I have a little bit more focus, that I have an attention span that's longer than a, you know, a goldfish's. And so first. What is dopamine and how does it work? It's the molecule more. It's the thing that makes you desire something. So for instance, let's say you are driving home and you think, man, right now a burrito would be so good. Not just a burrito, the Chipotle burrito. I'm not being sponsored, but if I have to have fast food, that's what I want. I want a Chipotle chicken and rice burrito. So I get this spike of dopamine in my brain. It says, yes, that's a good idea. You're hungry, you've hard, you deserve it. You want this and you get this spike of dopamine and you actually feel, you can feel good, like, okay, cool. And then what happens, it's interesting. You actually get a little bit of a drop. So if you have baseline, you desire something, dopamine goes up. Then you get a drop of dopamine below baseline, which gives you the drive, the drive, the feeling of not having the baseline dopamine is what drives you to Instead of going straight home, take the 15 minute detour to go and find the nearest Chipotle. Go in there. It gives you that drive to go do that. So you get the spike, then you get the dip and then the accomplishment actually sometimes if it's just, hey, this was a burrito, it's really good. It just brings you back to baseline and life is good. Maybe they gave you extra cheese and it was even amazing. So you get even a little bit higher bump past baseline or maybe the rice was overcooked and the chicken was chewy and you don't get quite back to where you want. But we live our life in these peaks and valleys of dopamine, the desire to drop, which gives you the motivation to go get what you want. And then based on the results, either higher or lower, or baseline of dopamine. Well, in our highly interactive world with all this technology, we're getting small hits of dopamine, little peaks of dopamine. there's a notification. Is it my friend? No, it's a text message telling me who to vote for. renew my car insurance or, know, wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not fulfilled. My dopamine is down a little bit and we're doing this all day long. And the, the technology companies, and for me, the big three are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are so good at just, you know, those, those creators are just hitting the buttons, man. Like, and this is where I kind of had to like decide, I addicted to technology? Or do I just really enjoy it and I'm addicted to the enjoyment of it. And I don't think that I'm addicted to the technology. Like I don't need to, I can go a week. I want to go hunting. I don't have my phone. know, I'm out in the woods. Life is good. I don't feel like I'm empty, but I realize I really do enjoy it. if you want to make me feel bad about myself, show me a video of somebody falling down and I will laugh every single time. It makes me feel bad, but it's like my kryptonite. but I'll watch videos of people falling down for hours. It's something that I just enjoy. Maybe that's kind of sick, but it's something that I do. You know, I really like gathering information from YouTube. very rarely watch TV. Maybe I watch sports games. That's about it that I watch on normal TV. At work we watch the news, go out, we're eating, but I don't go after it. I go after YouTube. There's things I want see. And so... I decided I need to just do a reset, right? Because you don't want to get rid of dopamine. You don't want to detox dopamine out of your life. That's not what you want to do. I wanted to do a reset. And so I came up with what I thought would help. I am about 10 days in when this gets released. I'll be roughly two weeks of my dopamine detox, dopamine reset, whatever you want. And it has been really, really good. And it's very simple. I have decided to not engage with Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. I'm not going on there. Now I have made some exceptions. I was looking to buy something. So I got a Facebook marketplace. Maybe I'm cheating a little bit. I don't know. I decided to get rid of that. And initially I was like, and I'm getting rid of YouTube. And what I realized is I really liked YouTube and I didn't want to. And I think when you're trying to change your habits, you got to make it a little bit easier. I didn't want to suffer of just sitting, sitting around and just reading. Although I do enjoy reading and I'm doing that more. So what I decided is if I'm going to watch a YouTube video, when I click on it, whether it's five minutes or 30 minutes or an hour and a half, I need to watch the entire thing. So if it's something I'm interested in and I click on it and it ends up being a Saki video, unless it's just totally like click bait and it wasn't what I wanted, I'm going to watch all 20 minutes of whatever this thing is. And that's really helped. I decided on an app like YouTube. I'm not gonna watch anything that automatically populates the next video. So I'm not gonna go to shorts, click on it just let the next one and the next one. I'm not gonna do that scrolling. I decided in, I didn't really know this has anything to do with dopamine, but it's just a healthy habit is that an hour before I go to bed, I'm gonna get off electronics completely. And it's been great. I've been reading more. I'm halfway through two books. I've got one book at work and one book at home and I'm halfway through them. And I've enjoyed that process of just reading. That's the, that's the plan. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Tik Tok. And I'm executing it now next Tuesday when I, when I'm done with this, I have to decide where I'm going to go and like what, what the maintenance dose will be of, of, of, be of this, this challenge. Like what am I going to continue? But before I do that, I don't want you to think that I'm perfect. You know, I think sometimes we hear, I don't know what I am, but for lack of a better word, an influencer or a podcaster, and they're talking about all these things they're doing. the workouts they're doing and how they're nailing it. I am not. I failed multiple times, multiple times in the day, especially the first two or three days, I would do something like I was editing one of these podcasts and I, when I do the video, I has to render, which takes a little bit of time. So I hit render normally, you know, it takes, you know, five minutes and without even thinking about it, I was two minutes in and I'm scrolling on my phone, like zero thought whatsoever of this is not what I wanted to do. Like it literally just happened. So I've had been very conscious of reaching for my phone and like automatically going there. But it, so I've failed and I've done that several times throughout the past two weeks and that's okay. One thing I'm really trying to get away from is an all or nothing approach. I'm working on my diet a little bit for the beginning of the year and I've definitely not been consistent. every single day and that's okay. You know, like I don't want you to think that, I'm going to try something and you're to be perfect at it. It's literally not how we work. We don't just do something, start it and you're excellent and you excel and it's perfect. It's a process. I'm going through the process and I would encourage you to, to just see it as a process and that's something that you have to do. So I'm going through it and my life is better. 100%. I realized that I'm more available to my wife and kids. My daughter's, you know, the youngest would ask to play and I wouldn't, I wasn't engulfed into this world of fast wins. And I think it's a good thing. So when I'm done, I really think that I will stay off of those three platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok, at least during the week. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to get on my iPhone and I have iPhone and I'm going to set a limit of 20 minutes daily. but I don't plan on using that. So that would be an hour's worth of my time that I could get on those platforms. And it's a couple reasons. One, I do interact with you through social media. I have a desire to increase my social media presence as the earner title podcast. I don't necessarily enjoy that immensely of posting, but I think I need to do better because this podcast is doing well and thank you for that. I would like it to do better and I would like it to reach more men and help them. And I think that would be. That would be good. So if you ever see me on social media and Instagram and I'm promoting something, if you could encourage me a little bit, cause I don't necessarily love it. Just, know, give me thumbs up, say, Hey, that's awesome. Even if it's not just, you know, boost my ego a little bit. So maybe I'll get a little more excited about I get a little dopamine hit, right? You could be the, you can be the catalyst. You could be my dealer of dopamine. And so, so I want to have that. I don't want to take it away completely, but I think I'm going to just reduce the amount and it's, it's been good. I would encourage you if you have any of those criteria, you can't go to the bathroom without getting on your phone. You scroll and you've lost track of time. You don't know where the time has gone. You can't watch a 10 minute video without looking ahead to see how much faster. If you're currently listening to this podcast and anything more than one and half speeds, that's you too. know, like 1.25 I think is accurate. That's where I listen to it. Like if you ever meet me in person, my voice will probably be lower because you're used to hearing me at 1.25 or 1.5. That's okay, but over two, you guys are crazy. So just dial back a little bit and I think your life will be better. If you need help doing that, I want to help. I want to get on a phone call with you, come up with a plan on how to reset your dopamine, change the way you speak to your wife, with disciplining your kids and figuring that out, figure out what job you want next, figure out what kind of health goals you want to go after. I want to help. My email is danny at dannydumas.com. And I am there. I checked my email. Actually, I don't try to, I don't check it every day, which I think is a good thing. But when I go to work, I always check it. So if it takes me a couple of days to get back with you, it's because I'm trying not to be addicted to my phone, but reach out. I'd love to talk to you there. And I think it'd be good. Can't wait to meet you. My name is Danny Dumas and this is the earn your title podcast. I will talk to you later. Bye.