Dopamine Detox: How Overstimulation Is Ruining Your Life & How To Take Back Control

00:00:00.000 | I want to react to something that has been going around the internet recently.

00:00:06.160 | So I'm actually going to share something on the screen here.

00:00:09.200 | So again, this is the deeplife.com or youtube.com/calnewportmedia to watch this episode, episode 262.

00:00:15.480 | I've loaded up a YouTube video.

00:00:18.080 | I won't have the audio on, but I have closed captioning on.

00:00:21.000 | All right, so this is a video from Better Ideas, a popular channel.

00:00:24.840 | It's 2 million subscribers.

00:00:27.760 | And the title of this video is "How overstimulation is ruining your life."

00:00:32.400 | And we see there's a young man on screen here in the woods looking earnestly at the camera.

00:00:38.320 | And I have the closed captioning on.

00:00:39.560 | So I'm going to play this and read you a little bit of what he's saying.

00:00:42.720 | He's saying, "During certain periods of my life..."

00:00:44.440 | Oh, that...

00:00:45.440 | Remember when I said the volume was off?

00:00:49.720 | The volume was very much on.

00:00:50.720 | Let me turn that off here.

00:00:51.720 | Sorry about that.

00:00:52.720 | All right.

00:00:53.720 | "During various periods of my life, I have a very difficult time focusing on pretty much

00:01:02.320 | anything important or difficult.

00:01:05.000 | During these periods, it seems almost impossible to break out of the social media limbo where

00:01:11.320 | you're just constantly switching between tabs, refreshing pages, kind of waiting for something

00:01:16.600 | interesting to happen, like for someone to post a cool photo or Instagram or something.

00:01:22.440 | You're kind of waiting to be entertained.

00:01:24.680 | But if you actually have to apply yourself, it's extremely difficult, borderline painful

00:01:28.580 | to do so.

00:01:30.680 | And I'm pretty sure almost everyone can relate to this problem.

00:01:33.880 | I'm sure you've seen a lot of videos on YouTube giving you little tips and tricks as to how

00:01:38.400 | to better focus, including my own channel.

00:01:40.960 | But there are very few videos kind of diving in, talking about why it's so difficult to

00:01:45.480 | focus on hard things.

00:01:48.680 | You know, like what's the deal?

00:01:50.320 | Why can't we just sit down and do something important with very little strain?"

00:01:53.960 | All right.

00:01:54.960 | So that's the start of that video on better ideas.

00:01:58.920 | And he goes on to get into some of the neuroscience of why we're distracted so easily when we're

00:02:03.440 | trying to work on something hard.

00:02:05.360 | And it's a neuroscience explanation you may have heard before, but essentially our dopamine

00:02:10.000 | system which generates that urge to do something that's going to generate a reward.

00:02:16.840 | Keep in mind, we often get that a little bit wrong.

00:02:19.040 | I think in common parlance, we often think about dopamine as being a source of rewards.

00:02:24.440 | The dopamine itself is what makes you feel a lot of pleasure.

00:02:28.320 | Dopamine is what gives you that urge to do the thing that you think is going to give

00:02:32.560 | you the reward.

00:02:33.560 | It's when you have an addiction, it's the dopamine that makes it so irresistible to

00:02:36.840 | grab that cigarette because it wants the other rewards you're going to get when you actually

00:02:42.000 | smoke the cigarette.

00:02:43.840 | So what is talked about in this video is this common neuroscience explanation that the dopamine

00:02:48.240 | system is firing up to get those quick hit rewards of seeing the video that's really

00:02:55.360 | interesting, seeing the post that's a little bit scandalous, seeing the like number jump

00:03:00.280 | on something you did earlier, which gives you this big burst of people like me, they

00:03:03.840 | really like me.

00:03:05.340 | The dopamine system likes rewards.

00:03:07.520 | It wants rewards now.

00:03:09.140 | The internet has many rewards lined up.

00:03:11.640 | The system kicks in the play and you feel this irresistible desire to click, click,

00:03:17.640 | click.

00:03:18.640 | You do not get a similar dopamine push for I'm working for our 900 of 10,000.

00:03:25.960 | It's going to take me to finish this really big project because the reward's not proximate.

00:03:31.040 | And so what's going to win then?

00:03:32.560 | The complicated deep thing, part of your slow productivity push to do something big over

00:03:37.000 | a long period of time or Instagram or TikTok.

00:03:41.000 | And he said, yeah, your brain is wired to go for that.

00:03:43.080 | And that's a very hard, that's a very hard challenge to win.

00:03:46.320 | And now what I learned from this video is that, yes, he is right.

00:03:49.520 | There are lots of videos that talk about this same thing, quote unquote overstimulation.

00:03:54.740 | People are really feeling it.

00:03:55.840 | And I think young people are feeling it harder because they have more targets for their dopamine

00:04:00.800 | systems.

00:04:01.800 | They've more acclimatized their mind to all of these various rewards.

00:04:05.040 | They're very good at these various rewards.

00:04:06.680 | There's so much pulling at them that young people in particular are really finding.

00:04:10.480 | Yes, this is ruining my life.

00:04:11.800 | I can't do anything long-term, deep, cognitively useful.

00:04:17.040 | I'm getting bad grades at school.

00:04:19.720 | I can't advance in my job.

00:04:22.160 | I can't produce something that I really want to produce.

00:04:24.920 | Those of us my age or older maybe say I distract myself too much and it slows down me doing

00:04:31.240 | important work.

00:04:32.960 | Young people really do feel like it's ruining their lives.

00:04:36.120 | So what should we do about it?

00:04:37.120 | Well, I thought, well, I can offer my own advice here.

00:04:38.840 | I mean, this is something I've studied and written about for a long time.

00:04:41.960 | I kind of wrote the definitive book on the power of focus and why you should cultivate

00:04:46.960 | it.

00:04:47.960 | I've been thinking and writing articles and books about this for a long time.

00:04:50.200 | So I figured let me review here on the podcast my own very complicated multi-part system

00:04:57.880 | for combating online overstimulation.

00:05:00.220 | So get a pad of paper ready because you don't want to miss step nine or 10.

00:05:04.000 | There's a very complicated explanation for how you're going to have to very carefully

00:05:08.320 | navigate the online world.

00:05:09.840 | All right, so it's going to be very complicated.

00:05:11.120 | Are you ready?

00:05:12.120 | Okay, here it goes.

00:05:13.120 | Here's my solution.

00:05:14.900 | Don't use things that cause overstimulation.

00:05:17.240 | All right.

00:05:19.280 | I'm being a little bit facetious here, but honestly, the answer is as simple as that.

00:05:25.700 | Dopamine system is powerful.

00:05:28.020 | So don't give it the targets that it's going to fire up for.

00:05:31.680 | You have to actually remove most of these sources of overstimulation from your life

00:05:38.160 | if you really want to start thinking and producing original thoughts at a high level.

00:05:44.680 | There's not these complex habits and careful ways of navigating your notifications and

00:05:49.800 | when you use this and when you don't use this.

00:05:51.960 | I'm telling you this as someone who thinks for a living and studies people who thinks

00:05:55.480 | for a living, the more sources of overstimulation you eliminate from your life, the easier.

00:06:01.880 | And we of course know this type of abstention approach is effective because we see it with

00:06:06.000 | other things that historically have hijacked the dopamine system and caused a lot of trouble.

00:06:12.920 | We do not tell people who have an issue with smoking, okay, we need to build a complex

00:06:17.420 | system of where you have cigarettes and where you don't, and you don't want to have it in

00:06:20.520 | the car, but you will have it here.

00:06:21.840 | And we're going to have an app that keeps track of how many cigarettes you've had and

00:06:26.320 | then try to restrict, then during certain periods, there's a time lock that locks off

00:06:30.080 | the cigarettes and you can't have it during that period, but you can't have it on this

00:06:32.600 | period and we do a week on, but you don't smoke on Saturdays.

00:06:36.680 | No, we just say you got to quit smoking.

00:06:39.560 | As the same with a lot of other addictions like this that people have trouble with, but

00:06:45.120 | we resist applying that type of clarity and abstention to online overstimulation.

00:06:52.120 | So let me get a little bit more granular about this.

00:06:56.560 | Social media, this is a big source of it.

00:06:58.780 | You got to just basically get this out of your life.

00:07:01.860 | If you have to have some social media for professional reasons, it should not be on

00:07:05.720 | your phone.

00:07:06.720 | It should be on a boring computer.

00:07:08.840 | It's something you should do on a schedule or hire someone to do on your behalf.

00:07:12.640 | It should never, ever be something you go to when you're bored.

00:07:15.880 | It should never be a source of distraction.

00:07:18.120 | It should be, I'm an author and I set up my Instagram post in a shared document on Google

00:07:24.840 | Drive.

00:07:26.200 | Here's the photos, here's the text, and I have someone who posts it Fridays and Mondays.

00:07:30.360 | Or if I have to do that, I log in the thing on my computer, I post it, and then I shut

00:07:35.240 | it back down again.

00:07:36.240 | All right?

00:07:37.240 | So if you have to use it professionally, it's on a computer, it's boring, you never use

00:07:41.040 | it as a source of entertainment.

00:07:43.360 | You don't scroll online news.

00:07:45.200 | Look, you're not an editor at Gawker.

00:07:50.760 | You just get out of that world of online news and discussion.

00:07:53.600 | You don't have to be a part of it.

00:07:55.320 | How do you keep up with stuff in the world?

00:07:56.720 | We talked about this earlier in this episode where I gave advice to Reading Guy.

00:08:01.560 | You know, subscribe to some email newsletters that you read when you can that gives you

00:08:05.120 | interesting perspectives.

00:08:07.000 | Listen to podcasts, maybe listen to a daily news roundup podcast if you want to be kept

00:08:11.280 | up with more current events.

00:08:13.840 | Or listen to something like Sager and Crystal's, their Breaking Points podcast where they go

00:08:17.840 | through 10 stories about what's going on in the world.

00:08:21.960 | Podcasts are fine, right?

00:08:22.960 | Because it's something you have to turn on and listen to.

00:08:25.640 | It's not a knee-jerk distraction that your dopamine system is going to kick into.

00:08:31.720 | No one is like trying to write and halfway through writing, they're like, "Ahh!"

00:08:35.080 | You can quickly turn on a podcast.

00:08:37.160 | TikTok can do that.

00:08:38.520 | Online news can do that.

00:08:39.520 | Twitter can do that.

00:08:40.520 | Podcasts are fine.

00:08:41.520 | Newsletters are fine.

00:08:42.520 | Maybe even print out the articles you like and read them when you get a chance.

00:08:46.000 | That's fine.

00:08:47.000 | You'll be informed.

00:08:48.000 | You got to get rid of all that online news.

00:08:50.240 | What about YouTube?

00:08:51.240 | YouTube is tricky.

00:08:52.240 | Why is YouTube tricky?

00:08:53.240 | I think video is the future of independent content creation, but the recommendations

00:08:59.200 | and sidebar on YouTube can make it into one of these dopamine-inflamming sources of distraction.

00:09:05.280 | When it comes to something like YouTube, you have to use it one way and not another.

00:09:11.640 | This is maybe the place where I come closest to the navigation lines that you hear in a

00:09:15.920 | lot of these online videos.

00:09:17.560 | I do think YouTube is a source of information.

00:09:21.560 | YouTube has become more a source of entertainment, high-quality entertainment that rivals what

00:09:28.260 | you would get on TV, but it's also a giant source of distraction.

00:09:31.120 | How do we make sense of YouTube?

00:09:34.760 | Here's my YouTube strategy.

00:09:38.380 | In order to preserve YouTube as a way to look up instructions for things, which I think

00:09:42.080 | is a great use of YouTube, how do I change the oil in a Honda Odyssey?

00:09:47.200 | Look it up on YouTube.

00:09:48.240 | You can see a video of someone doing it.

00:09:49.660 | It's better than trying to find an article.

00:09:51.320 | To preserve that use of YouTube without it making a dopamine-inflamming system, get one

00:09:56.660 | of these plugins for your browser that you use YouTube on that gets rid of the recommendations.

00:10:03.680 | So what you can do is you can search for something.

00:10:05.040 | You can see the search results.

00:10:06.040 | You can click on a search result.

00:10:07.120 | You can watch it, but there's no, "Here's what's coming up next," or "What about this

00:10:10.500 | and what about that?"

00:10:13.040 | That one type of plugin alone makes YouTube into a fantastic library without it being

00:10:19.800 | something that you can use as a source of knee-jerk distraction.

00:10:22.480 | Because again, when you're working on something hard, if you have blocked YouTube, you go,

00:10:26.600 | "Oh, I should go to YouTube.com."

00:10:28.040 | You don't see anything.

00:10:29.040 | You have to search for something and find something.

00:10:31.280 | It's not a highly salient source of distraction.

00:10:34.440 | Now, what about entertainment on YouTube?

00:10:36.800 | Because again, I think this is actually important.

00:10:39.200 | I'm a believer that video trumps audio.

00:10:41.320 | The future of independent content is going to be video.

00:10:43.840 | I mean, this is like radio became a big thing until television was around, and then television

00:10:47.800 | just smashed the market share of radio.

00:10:51.080 | It was just so much bigger because humans like to see faces.

00:10:54.540 | Humans like to see visuals.

00:10:56.600 | And I increasingly believe watching a high-quality interview show on YouTube is better than 99%

00:11:03.720 | of the stuff that's on television or that's on non-unscripted streaming services.

00:11:10.960 | And I think that gap's going to close more.

00:11:12.600 | So how do you, for example, watch a show like mine?

00:11:16.620 | Or maybe you're a Lex Fridman fan.

00:11:18.800 | You want to watch his interviews.

00:11:19.940 | How do you watch these type of programming as a substitute for lower-quality television

00:11:24.720 | with, again, not having YouTube be a rabbit hole?

00:11:29.000 | And my answer here is television sets.

00:11:32.800 | I learned this from our YouTube guide, Jeremy, that increasingly televisions are becoming

00:11:37.920 | one of the most common devices on which this style of YouTube video is watched.

00:11:44.460 | So if you're going to look something up, you have a browser with a plugin that blocks the

00:11:48.640 | recommendations.

00:11:50.240 | If you're going to watch "independent high-quality content" on YouTube, you have it on the YouTube

00:11:56.160 | app and your Apple TV or Fire Stick on your television.

00:11:58.760 | And you watch it like you would any other television show in the same circumstances

00:12:02.320 | where you would watch television.

00:12:03.640 | I'm sitting down with a lunch break.

00:12:06.040 | I take out my remote.

00:12:07.320 | I turn on the TV.

00:12:08.320 | I go to the YouTube app.

00:12:09.320 | I search for the latest episode of whatever, and I put it on the TV.

00:12:14.140 | There's a lot of friction in using a television.

00:12:16.040 | There's also a lot of routine and ritual built into televisions where that's not part of

00:12:21.280 | your dopamine cycle.

00:12:23.360 | When you're in your home office trying to write something, you don't rush downstairs

00:12:26.320 | and turn on the TV and go to Netflix and select a show and turn it on.

00:12:28.920 | That's too much overhead.

00:12:30.640 | The television you think about, "Oh, I'm going to have a meal.

00:12:33.120 | I'm taking a break."

00:12:34.640 | It's a big production to get it going.

00:12:36.520 | So you move high-quality independent media consumption to the television and looking

00:12:41.720 | up to a browser-protected, a plugin-protected browser.

00:12:47.360 | Now you don't have to worry about something like YouTube in your life being a source of

00:12:51.640 | distraction.

00:12:54.000 | Also throw in place better, less dopamine-susceptible entertainment sources to fill the gap that

00:13:01.760 | the highly salient distracting content is probably filling right now.

00:13:07.200 | And get back into music.

00:13:09.440 | Go see good movies and read about them before and after.

00:13:12.940 | Read much more books.

00:13:15.400 | High-quality streaming content.

00:13:17.440 | High-quality podcasts.

00:13:19.560 | Get your mind used to other sorts of much higher-quality content for the entertainment

00:13:25.440 | and distraction.

00:13:26.720 | The lower-quality stuff will begin to seem less palatable.

00:13:31.040 | Same thing happens with food.

00:13:32.040 | You eat a lot of junk food.

00:13:34.000 | It's really addictive.

00:13:35.000 | "My God, I just need chips and cookies and this makes me feel better.

00:13:38.520 | What else would I want to eat?"

00:13:39.800 | You stop doing it for a while.

00:13:40.800 | You start eating better food.

00:13:41.800 | You start cooking yourself.

00:13:42.920 | You go to the farmer's market.

00:13:44.080 | You're using high-quality ingredients.

00:13:45.840 | Everyone will tell you this.

00:13:46.920 | You start eating well.

00:13:48.320 | A Snickers bar or a Chips Ahoy seems weird.

00:13:51.080 | It's cardboard.

00:13:52.080 | It's fake.

00:13:53.080 | It's too sugary.

00:13:54.080 | You don't crave it anymore.

00:13:55.080 | So you don't break this connection to junk food by just white-knuckling and eating less.

00:14:00.840 | You replace it with better food.

00:14:02.080 | So that's the final part of solving overstimulation is introducing flooding the zone with much

00:14:08.040 | more quality stimulation so that you lose your taste for a TikTok video.

00:14:13.920 | You lose your taste for an inflammatory online article that someone tweeted and that you're

00:14:17.840 | scrolling through and then clicking the other links.

00:14:22.120 | So again, this is how I think you solve overstimulation.

00:14:25.900 | If you're serious about it, you get rid of most of the sources of overstimulation.

00:14:28.600 | You stop using social media, you stop doing online news surfing, you put in a lot of high-quality

00:14:34.280 | content and in the few places where you might need to encounter these worlds, YouTube looking

00:14:39.280 | things up or high-quality independent media, you have to do some limited social media for

00:14:43.240 | your work.

00:14:44.240 | You do so in a way that makes it so far from being a source of knee-jerk distraction that

00:14:48.280 | your dopamine system forgets about it.

00:14:50.600 | So anyways, I appreciated that video.

00:14:52.560 | Overstimulation is a problem.

00:14:53.560 | I'm glad people care about it.

00:14:55.240 | But let's just get blunt.

00:14:58.060 | Stop doing the thing that's ruining your life.

00:15:03.120 | Stop smoking.

00:15:05.140 | Stop eating the junk food.

00:15:06.480 | Replace it with something better.

00:15:07.880 | Let's not get too cute about this.

00:15:09.080 | Let's not get too fine grained.

00:15:10.820 | Life without the overstimulation really is a deeper life.

00:15:13.040 | It really is a more intellectually engaged life.

00:15:15.480 | It really is going to be a more successful life.

00:15:17.480 | You are going to produce ideas that astound you.

Dopamine Detox: How Overstimulation Is Ruining Your Life & How To Take Back Control | Cal Newport

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