HealthyGamerGG - Why Do I Get Motivated at 1 AM

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Dr. K Talks Motivation, sleep, and changing your schedule Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost as you get fatigued by like towards 4 p.m. 6 p.m. 7 p.m. It becomes like easier for you to start studying. And then you stay up all night. You pound caffeine. And then you kind of get into what I would call like the fatigue groove for lack of a better term. Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about why is it that you get a ton of motivation when you're going to bed at night? And why when you wake up in the morning like you don't actually do anything? Okay. So there are a couple of different dimensions that we're going to talk about.

One is like, so our question is why do we get motivated at night, but like not during the day. So we're going to start by understanding some stuff about neuroscience. We're going to talk about one aspect of psychology. And then we're just going to talk about a couple of general principles. This is almost more spiritual about clarity of mind and like where motivation comes from. And we're going to talk about behavioral calculations as well. Okay. So the first thing to understand, I'm going to tell you guys about an experiment.

Okay. So they took a bunch of mice and what they were doing is trying to assess, there's a part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens. And the nucleus accumbens is a part of our brain that actually manages reward and behavior. Okay. So it's a very dopamine, it's like a very, like it's one of the dopamine circuits in the brain. So a lot of times people are talking about dopamine, dopamine, dopamine dopamine, like dopamine is the reason that like I get addicted to video games. I need a detox off of dopamine. I'm in dopamine exhaustion.

We talk about dopamine. Everyone talks about dopamine. Doping, dopamine. So in the nucleus accumbens, there's dopamine. But the interesting thing is that all of this stuff has been oversimplified. So I'm going to add some complexity to it, but even I'm going to be oversimplifying. So they took a group of mice, and they basically did a really interesting experiment where they injected different stuff into the nucleus accumbens of mice.

So generally speaking, they took mice and they gave them two options of food. One is like a high carbohydrate, super tasty, like twinkie pellet. It's basically like a pellet that's like a twinkie. And the other is like a regular food. And they normally have to work a little bit harder. They have to like press a lever to get like the twinkie versus like the kale salad. Okay. So generally speaking, when you give mice this choice, what'll happen is they'll like they'll go for the twinkie. They'll go for the high carbohydrate nutrient dense food. And they'll eat it and they'll be happy little mice. Fat little mice too. So what some researchers did is they

injected a certain amount of dopamine blocker into the brains of these mice. Okay, so we're going to kind of go back to this for a second and let's see what happened. So I'm going to have to figure out how to draw this. So let's say you've got a mouse. And then the default is high energy pellet and then the other option is low energy pellet.

So normally, in the situation that, our normal situation, let's call it blue. So normally a mouse goes this way. They choose the high dopamine pellet. So then what researchers did is they blocked dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. So in the nucleus accumbens of mice, they took a dopamine blocker, and they blocked dopamine. And what they actually found when you block the action of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, is that mice will actually go this way. Okay?

So if we blocked opening, that's because these are a little bit harder to get. The other way you can kind of think about it is that they have no preference for the high energy pellet over the low energy pellet. And then they did something really interesting. They took a third chemical,

adenosine. And they actually blocked the action of adenosine in the nucleus accumbens. And what they found is that the mouse went back to the high energy palette. Okay? So now we're going to talk a little bit because like, you know, neuroscience is complicated, but, you know, most people who talk about dopamine

don't talk about it in a complicated sense. So there's three states that we can kind of think of in terms of dopamine and adenosine. Okay. So let's just talk actually for a second about what adenosine is. So adenosine is essentially a waste product in the brain. So we have a, we have this like the fuel of our brain is something called ATP and the waste product after we burn a molecule of ATP is to wind up with adenosine and we know we don't really I mean denisine does all kinds of stuff so I'm oversimplifying things but the other thing that we know is as you as the day goes on so like if we think

about you know time of the day in the denocene okay what happens over time as we go throughout our day is adenosine slowly climbs. And then we go to sleep. And then what our brain does is clear adenicine from the brain and then this is waking up. So as the day goes on,

we increase in our adenosine. So what I would kind of say, and if we kind of think about dopamine for a second, okay? So when you wake up first thing in the morning and you feel really excited to play a game, so let's say this is dopamine. And let's say this is time. I'm super excited to play a game.

I really want to play Dota. There's a new patch. The first game of Dota I play gives me a lot of dopamine, right? This is an oversimplification, but dopamine signal is a better way to put it. And then the more games of DOTI play, essentially my dopamine starts to go down. So this is why when you kind of look at like behavioral reinforcement, right? So this is why people will say like at the beginning of the day, like that's when you, like, if you're productive at the beginning, you're going to have a good day. Whereas if you start playing video games, like it's a lot easier to do work for two hours and then start gaming than it is to play for two hours.

and then start doing work. So our dopamine, generally speaking, like we get more bored of crap by the end of the day. We're excited to do things. But by like 7 p.m. 8 p.m. You're like, eh, if you've been playing games all day, you don't really feel like doing much, right? And then we go to sleep over here.

And then we kind of wind up back here when we wake up, if we're lucky. So if we kind of look at it, there are kind of three states of dopamine and adenosine throughout the day. And remember, this is a waste product, right? So we can have high dopamine and low adenic.

So this is in the AM. We can have low dopamine and low adenosine. We'll get to this state in a second. Or what we can have is low dopamine and high adenosine. Okay? And so if we kind of think about it, when we block, so this is a state where when we block dopamine

and we still have adenosine, remember we end up going for the low energy pellet, right? So when we block adenosine as well, then we end up either, either going for both or we end up going for the high energy pellet. So you can almost think about adenosine and dopamine as having antagonistic properties. So adenosine will blunt the effect of dopamine. Okay. So what is the dopamine counter? It is adenosine. Okay? Is the dopamine counter? So you guys may wonder a little bit about this and why this actually works. So like let me give you guys

kind of like an example. So if you guys ever like studied, like let's say you've got a final the next day, right? What time do you usually start studying? If you're like me, you don't start studying first thing in the morning for the final the next day. You procrastinate until 2 p.m. 4 p.m. You're like dicking around. You're like, I should study, I should study, I should study. And then once, oh, Gigi. Once 6 p.m. rolls around, you're kind of like, once 6 p.m. rolls around, you're kind of, you're kind of like, oh man, like, like it's somehow like easy, like as time goes on, you get like a little bit less distracted. And like then suddenly it's like easy for you to study, right? In the morning, it's actually like super

hard for you to study. But almost as you get fatigued by like towards 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. It becomes like easier for you to start studying. And then you stay up all night. You pound caffeine. and then you kind of get into what I would call like the fatigue groove for lack of a better term. Okay. So like the fatigue groove is like when you're actually like really functional, but you're kind of tired. And in a weird way, you can get into this fatigue groove easier than you can like at the start of the day when it's so easy to get distracted. Does that sort of make sense? It's almost like games are more tempting at like noon than they are at like 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.

and then like you kind of get tired and then it's sort of like you get into this weird fatigue groove and what I'd call that fatigue groove is essentially this this adenosine build up throughout the day so as like our day goes on and we kind of think about it this way

so like let's call dopamine green okay so dopamine kind of starts out high easy to get distracted video games and then let's call adenosine yellow and then like you kind of start adenosine over here and then like this is sort of like

6 p.m. And this is when you start studying. And then you study all night. You're kind of fatigued. And then like with 7 a.m. rolls around. Your exam is in an hour. And then you kick yourself, right? And you're like, man, if I had started like four hours earlier, six hours earlier,

if I only started studying a little bit earlier, I could have gotten so much more. But it was so hard to study so much earlier. And I think part of that is a denist. So it's interesting because what, you know, our ability to get distracted by stuff. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, I couldn't see this. So this is dopamine.

This is adenosine. And then, you know, so you start out with dopamine over here, high. And then over time, it goes down. And then with adenosine, let's call it yellow. And then it increases. And then this is kind of your 6 p.m. switch where you start studying. Okay. And this is also where like we can kind of think a little bit about night owls, right?

So there's actually like, there are a lot of situations where we can see people are actually more productive, like later in the day. And that may have something to do. with like adenosine production in the brain. And so then the question becomes like, what's the relationship between these two things? And it's that when we're vulnerable to our dopaminergic activities early in the day, like when you feel excited to play games, you kind of want to watch stuff, like it's really hard to work. And then once you kind of get into this like fatigue groove in the middle of the day, the dopaminergic pull decreases on its own. And then like adenosine, because remember adenosine has a blunting effect on dopamine, right? That's what the key thing

about this rat study is that it demonstrated how adenosine is the dopamine counter. So adenosine is a waste product in the brain, and that sort of makes sense too, because the more that our brain does things, the more energy it uses up, and the more energy it uses up, the more tired it feels, and the less it feels like doing things. So since adenosine is the dopamine counter, as the day goes on, it blunts our ability to, like, respond to dopamine or be controlled by dopamine, and then we can start studying at like 6 p.m. after procrastinating all day. Okay, so that's the first thing. So the first reason why I think you can sometimes get motivated is because your motivation gets distracted by dopaminergic activities early in the day. And then as you start to get

fatigued, like you don't feel like, you know, the dopaminergic pull isn't there. You're not thinking about playing games anymore. You're not like, oh, I really want to do this or this would be kind of fun. And so as you're, as all of the desires and the dopaminergic controls start to fade into the background because of elevated levels of adenosine, then like the deeper motivation can start to shine forth because it's not just this dopaminergic crap anymore. Does that make sense? So that's one thing that has to do with neuroscience. So now let's talk a little bit about future discounting. So if we talk about, you know, what the real problem is, motivation is a feeling and it increases at night, right? So motivation increases at night. But now

here's the question. Does behavior increase at night? Right? So when you feel super motivated at night, do you engage in the behavior? Interesting, right? So when we kind of, when we go to bed at night, there's a really interesting thing about motivation, which is that there's no cost to motivation. So our motivation can like increase unchecked. It can spiral out of control. You're sitting there like late at night and you're thinking like, oh, tomorrow I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. It's going to be great.

It's going to be awesome. Like I have all of this motivation. And in our brain, there's no cost because you're not giving anything up. You're not actually doing anything. So it's like your motivation can like rise to epic proportions because there's no cost to the motivation. There's no balance to the motivation. now when you wake up the next morning, what's the situation the next a.m. Now you have a choice.

Motivation versus video game. So let's say that at night I think about, oh man, I'm going to write a novel. Right? So this is the other thing. Creative stuff, right? Happens a lot at night. I'm going to write a novel. So now I have a choice. I can write a novel or I can play a video game. and now suddenly there's a cost to the motivation. Right? So if I, if I, if I write a novel for one hour, have I written a novel?

No. Have I written 1% of a novel? No. There's no like cost benefit. Like there's no like, what have I done in an hour? So my brain is sitting there and it's doing this kind of goes back to this other calculation, like the behavioral calculation. And my brain is sitting there in the morning and it's thinking like, okay, if I like, can I write a novel now?

No. Like can I write a novel in an hour? No. Can I write a novel in two? Two hours? No. Can I write a novel in four hours? No. So can I actually write the novel in the morning? No. Now, can I play a game in an hour? Yep. Can I get a little bit of that? Can I get that dopamine? Can I get me a little bit that dopamine please? Man, sir? Thank you. Yes, please and thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Easy. So now in the light of day, when you actually have the opportunity to engage in the behavior, there's an opportunity. now because at night there's no opportunity cost. So your you're your you know your motivation can just fly through the roof because it doesn't cost you anything. It's like free. Like I can and then you get more inspired. You think about how great it's going to be. I'm going to have this

idea. I'm going to have that idea like this character is going to do this. We're going to do plot twist here. It's going to be like no one's going to realize what's going to happen. It's going to get picked up. There's going to be a bidding war between Netflix and HBO for my awesome new novel. It's going to be great. It's like Twilight meets Game of Thrones. It's going to be like the most epic thing since Harry Potter. It's going to be so awesome. There's no cost to any of it. Right? And then come the light of day, now suddenly there's a cost. Like, Twilight meets Game of Thrones. Holy crap, that's going to take a lot of work. Like, how do I even do that? There are going to be different vampire houses. Like, what's up with that? How's that going to work? It's overwhelming. I don't

know how to start. So let me just play a video game. At least that's easy. easy easy let me just do this so in your brain you have this behavioral calculation we've talked about the doubt march and doubt paper a lot right so if you guys remember that paper it's also on our discord and things like that there's a behavioral calculation that in in the night doesn't it's like it's like an equation that only has one side of the equal sign so it the motivation goes out of control because there's no cost but come the light of day now suddenly there's a cost it's like you're going to sleep at night and you're like man i'm going to wake up tomorrow I'm going to work out first thing.

And then you wake up tomorrow and it's like, am I going to work out right now? Because do you work out in the middle of the night? Like when you feel so motivated to write that novel, do you actually get up and write? Do you actually work out? No, you don't do any of those things. When the cost actually becomes part of the scale, so we've got a set of scales, right? And then like the motivation is just, you know, there's a ton of motivation over here. So it's easy because it's empty.

So motivation, easy. But now we start adding a cost during the day. And then suddenly this is gone. and then our motivation goes up or whatever. You know, this wins. And that's G.G. Okay? So next thing to consider.

So there's like a future discounting problem. There's an opportunity cost problem. It's not really, the future discounting is another one of these principles where like our brain chooses, the reason I call it future discounting is because our brain chooses an immediate gain over an uncertain long-term gain.

So like I can get some immediate satisfaction right now, but come the light of morning, like I don't actually know if anyone's ever going to bid war over this because I've been writing for an hour and it sucks. There's no plot twist. Like, I can't, you know,

there's no, it's not successful after one hour. But if I play a game, it's like, easy, done. So now what I want to talk a little bit about is almost what I would call spiritual. It's not really spiritual, but it's not scientific. And I think like the yogic folks

understood this stuff like a little bit better. And so what I'm going to talk about now about why, you know, this is the third reason why motivation is higher at night is shower thoughts. Okay. So if you think about shower thoughts, like what's so interesting about the shower? Like when you're in the shower, you're in this kind of like state of consciousness where you're not really distracted. You can't be on your phone. You can't really like do a whole lot with your mind. There's like no mental distraction.

And there's some amount of physical roteness. right? You're just like hopefully like shampooing yourself, cleaning your hair, things like that. And, and then what happens is like this combination of factors leads to profound thinking. And now we all let now let's look at the situation we go to bed. So like, you know, I mean, if you're on your bed, you're not going to have, I mean, if you're on your phone in bed, you're not going to have motivation. You guys see that? If you're sitting there watching something or browsing something, you're not going to feel an ounce of motivation. It's when you go to bed. It's when you put down your phone. there's nothing left to mentally distract you. So you're just sitting with yourself. There isn't necessarily like a physical roteness, but there is sort of like a physical pull or grounding, let's say. Maybe that's a better feeling, right? And so we see a very analogous situation to actually showering,

and then we result in like motivation and thinking. Right? This is a situation in bed. And so the reason I call this kind of like spiritual, in nature is because I think yoga, like the yogis and stuff were the ones that really looked at these different states of mind and figured out how do we cultivate this kind of state of mind. And so what we can see is that a lot of that motivation naturally bubbles forth when we are free from distraction, when we have no dopaminergic options at hand, and we are being with ourself. Right?

So this is like a phrase that we use where when you go for a walk in nature, when you shower, when you lay in bed at night. And the interesting thing is that even like technically someone else can be there. Like you can lay in bed with your partner or whatever. But as long as you guys aren't interacting, the state will come. So the reason I call it spiritual is because it's about like this is the angle where I think about cultivating a particular state of consciousness. So if you want that kind of motivation to hit you in other parts of the day, we already have figured out showering.

right? So this one is like there's even like shower thoughts is a thing. We see it when we go to bed at night, but you can actually cultivate these states by walking in nature, by doing away with the dopaminergic distractions, right? Because at the end of the day, this is going to increase dopamine. Or like when you're on your phone, it's going to increase dopamine. When you play video games, it's going to increase dopamine. And so this kind of goes back to like this state over here where these meditative practices this is actually the ideal state. So this is why if you really look at people like I, for example, do my most productive work in the morning,

where if I spend 15 minutes on my phone at the beginning of my day, if I sit down at my computer, my productivity is going to be like at 80% of what it was, sometimes even less. The longer I spend at my computer first thing in the morning, the more screwed I am for the day. Whereas most of my like thinking, my high quality thinking happens before

I hop on the dopamine train. So avoid the dopamine train. Okay. Takeaways. Number one, avoid the dopamine train. Number two, adenosine gets you off the dopamine train. So this is the fatigue groove. But the problem with the fatigue groove is that you're fatigued, right? It's not like adenosine. Like adenosine is a waste product. So at this point, like you're fatigued. So even though you can work, you're not as distracted. the quality of your work is going to be like 60 to 80%. Right? And so number three is like what you really want to cultivate, and this is like where kind of meditation comes in, is this state of mind. So this is the fatigue groove. This is when we get distracted.

And then this state of mind with low dopamine and low adenosine, where your mind is fresh, where it's super capable, and at the same time it's not distracted, it's not being dopaminergic. We're creating space to be with ourselves. where we're not on our phones. We don't have mental distractions. And oftentimes it can really help to have a physical roteness or a grounding activity.

This is why walking is really, really healthy for you or hiking. You can think a lot are awesome, really deep thoughts when you're going for a hike. If it's not physically intensive to the point where it's occupying your mind. So if I'm rock climbing, for example, like I'm not going to be thinking deep philosophical thoughts or creative thoughts. Because all of my mental focus is going to be on the actual physical activity. But that's the thing is that there are some activities like shower, or being in bed or going for a walk that have a certain physical grounding aspect that don't demand your mental attention so your mind can be free. And then you'll start to have motivation.

Questions. So what was number three? Oh, yeah. Seek out, you know, low dopamine, low adenosine states. And these states have these components that we talked about over here. right, which is no dopamine, distractions, physical grounding. And what was the room? Oh, yeah.

Like mental space, let's call it. And the other thing that you can do is like this is what we call being with yourself. And meditation helps a lot. So like don't start the first hour of the day, like don't use technology. That's the biggest thing you can do. Questions? I personally prefer showering in the morning, but to each their own. Oh, my God, so many questions. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Okay, here's the... Okay, so Big Mouth Fringe says, what should we do, T-L-D-R? So here's the thing. I can tell you what to do, but you have to understand. Right? So here's something to understand. Behavioral change does not come with information transmission. behavioral change comes from understanding. So we see this a lot in addictions where people will say one day they'll wake up and they'll say, enough is enough.

And if you ask them, how did you quit alcohol? They just say, I woke up one day and I realized enough is enough. Now, I could tell them every day before that, enough is enough. You've got to stop drinking. And they're not going to do it. So the first thing you should do is understand this. The first thing that you should do is study yourself. The first thing you should do is see if what I'm saying is correct.

do you find the fatigue groove? What happens first thing when you wake up in the morning? Experiment first. Don't worry about doing because who the hell knows? Like this may not apply to you. Experiment first. Understand first. Explore first. See if you can find these three things to cultivate this kind of like motivational, you know, triad.

Of physical grounding, but not physically demanding stuff. Free of mental distress or mental space and to be free of mental distractions. see what happens in your day when for the first hour of the day you do not touch a piece of technology what happens in your mind what happens to your motivation right because at the end of the day if you want to optimize performance you don't need you don't want to use the crutch of adenosine and the fatigue groove to get stuff done that's what has you operating at 70% what are some good books to learn all this stuff and also more heavily focused on disorders there aren't unfortunately there aren't really books so that's why we built

Dr. K's guide because what I'm offering you guys is a synthesis of knowledge. I will link to you, however, two papers, which I think for those of you who are interested in adenosine, so there are a couple of references there. But this stuff, I mean, this is an amalgamation of books, right? This is not just books. This is the other thing. Is a lot of what I teach is not books. It's like scientific papers. So you can, what you have to do is like read a lot of scientific papers and like stitch things together. And the part of the, what we teach is like, you know, you can get a PhD in neuroscience. You'll learn a third of this lecture. You can get a PhD in psychology. You'll learn a third of this lecture. You can spend five years studying in India and you'll get a third of this lecture.

I don't mean, I just genuinely don't have like, it's not like this is in one book. Like the whole point is like this is an amalgamation of knowledge. What if my work is on technology, then don't work for the first week, first hour of the day. I'm serious. Just don't work for the first hour. Don't do your job, right? You can do your job later. So spend the first hour of the day cooking, cleaning, exercising, straightening up your place, running an errand, you know?

Good questions. How do Twitch streamers that are addicted to video games become successful then? Excellent question. Because their success is tied to the dopaminergic process. So this is a fantastic question, right? So if your material success is tied to the dopaminergic circuit in the nucleus accumbens, then you can be successful and do this. Easy.

The challenge is that for most of us, the dopaminergic hit does not lead to material success. So this is also where, I mean, they have their fair amount of suffering too, okay? So, but this is where if we look at like, you know, part of the job of being a success, Twitch streamers to spend time on Twitter, spend time on YouTube, spend time playing games. These are all dopaminergic activities. That's why there are successful Twitch streamers, because the world has evolved to a point where dopaminergic activities can be financially rewarded. Video games aren't a distraction anymore. They're now a job. And so what people have managed to do is give in to their dopamine, dopaminergic circuits. They've become successful on Twitch,

and they are a mess. They suffer on the inside unless they can learn how to set limits. Right? They like, they, like, internally like they're burnt out.

Because like they're just, they're stuck in the dopamine loops. They don't feel like they're in control of their life, all this kind of stuff. Not even music in the morning. I guess you can listen to music. How do I reset this cycle

from working all night? What I would say is that you should try to stay up and then like go to bed like at like 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. So in my experience, if you want to reset your sleep schedule. We've got a video about this, by the way. So if you look at the human brain,

insomnia and circadian rhythm, as a human being, it is easier to stay up when you are tired than it is to go to sleep when you are not. This is the key thing to understand about resetting your sleep schedule. There's one thing to understand. It's that staying up is easier than going to bed. So if my circadian rhythm is all off and I lay down at 9 p.m., I may stay awake for like four hours. and then there's like, Gigi, nothing I can do about it. Whereas it's way easier to stay up all night, right? Like it's easier to go to stay awake, 12 hours longer than when you should go to bed, than it is to go to sleep 12 hours earlier than, you know, you should go to sleep.

So it's really hard to wake up at 8 a.m. and like go to sleep at 10 a.m. Way easier to wake up at 8 a.m. and stay up until 10 a.m. the next day. I know I'm four pixels. I'm trying to figure out why. Okay, there. There we go. Okay? So I would say try to stay up until like, you know, 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.

and then you're going to be so exhausted that you should have no trouble falling asleep or hopefully it'll be easier. And then what will happen is you'll sleep for a long time and it'll be easier to wake up in the morning. So I'd say like go to sleep at like 6 p.m. 7 p.m. Stay up for like 36 hours. You have to be careful about, you know, driving and stuff. I wouldn't drive or anything like that. So don't do anything that's dangerous. because you're going to be heavily impaired.

And then what you want to do is, like, set an alarm for, like, 12 hours from, you know, when you go to bed. So, like, set an alarm for, like, 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. You may feel kind of groggy and weird when you wake up. But then that'll be, like, the first step in the right direction. And then you have to power through that day, and then it'll be easier to go to sleep at, like, 10 p.m. So that's how you fix it. Someone's asking, how do I avoid the dopamine train in the morning? it's so hard, yeah, you're absolutely right. It is very hard. So I think the biggest problem with

the dopamine train is your phone. So you really think about what is your phone for, right? What is the function of your phone? Why do we keep it with us? We keep it with us because of emergencies. What if there's an emergency? But like the likelihood of emergency is very, very low. So what I'd recommend for people who are trying to avoid the dopamine train in the morning is just keep the devices away from you. Like make the burden of the burden of, you. Like, make the burden of reaching your device very hard. Don't sleep with your phone in the same room. And it's like, what if something happens in the middle of the night

and someone calls me? Well, then like, or if you want to, I guess you can put it at the other end of the room and like keep it away from you. So it's not with you when you're going to bed at night. And it's not like within arms reach when you wake up in the morning. And the second thing is like just be aware.

Like as you wake up, understand what's happening. Like you want to go and you go and sit down at your computer. Like that's what you want to do every five. fiber of your being. You know, it's like, and be like, what the hell is that? Let me see how long I can sit here without going to the computer and watch that struggle within yourself. It's going to be like this serpent, like, uncoiling and like threatening you. And it's going to like pressure you so much. The pressure is crazy. And then your mind is going to find this like internal, like weird. You're going to trick yourself into thinking it's okay to do. You guys see what I'm saying? Like,

you're going to be like, it's not that big of a deal. Your mind is going to slippery twist this way and that to get you to the computer. If you just say to yourself, like, I'm not going to use the computer for an hour, your mind will go into absolute rebellion.

And it'll push you. It'll say, that's stupid. Don't do it. And when that doesn't work, it'll be like, it's not that big of a deal. Just do it. It's like, you can start tomorrow, like whatever. You watch what your mind does. It'll turn against you in every fiber of its being.

and that's the dopamine craving. It's like the addict that's looking for something and just be like, what the is this? It's crazy. Then the other thing that you can do, so you can struggle there, but you're going to fail if you struggle for too long. I'd say like, you know, brush your teeth,

take a shower if you can, whatever. Get dressed and just leave the house without your phone. Go for a walk in your neighborhood. Get dressed and just walk around the block. 15 minutes, 20 minutes. As you're walking around the block, think about, okay, I got to make breakfast, they'll make coffee, like whatever.

Go back and then like lay out a very simple plan. Don't overshoot it, right? Don't think about all the things you have to do today. Your goal is to make it to one hour. You're going to make your food. You're going to have your coffee. Then you're going to sit down and then then you pull out a to do list. Okay, what am I going to do over the next two hours?

Don't make your two-do list for the day. You're screwed. If you make a to-do list for the day, you're screwed. Do you know why? Because if it's two-do lists for the day, you don't have to start now. You can play games for a couple of hours. You can start at like 2 p.m. 4 p.m. 6 p.m. It's not a 2d.00 for the day.

Don't make a tutelous for the day. Just what am I going to do this next hour? What is the next right step? This is a meditation practice that I do myself. So here's my meditation for the day. It's going to be kind of weird. It's to ask yourself, what is the next best step? What is the next best step?

That's it. Ask yourself this question again and again and again. What is the next best best step? step. And the reason I include next and best is because sometimes, I don't know if this kind of makes sense. Maybe actually what I say to myself, what is the next best thing I can do? That's the, that's the practice. I realized I left a piece out. What is the next best thing I can do? And the important thing about that is it's not about what is objectively best. It is about what is the next best thing that I can do. So it acknowledges for a moment that you don't have to. You don't have

to be perfect. It acknowledges for a moment that you don't have to start studying for your test right now. But if I can't start studying for my tests, can I toss in a load of laundry? Can I do some laundry? If I can't do laundry, can I go for a walk? Okay, then it's a second walk. Chat, I cannot tell you guys, I will go for three walks during the day. And the reason I go for three walks during the day is because unless I go for a walk, I'm going to fall into gaming. But I can, like, physically I can force myself to walk 10 feet, put on my shoes, and walk out the door. And once I walk out the door, the desire to game disappears. You guys get that?

Like, the key to building a successful, like, action throughout the day or habit is not doing the whole action. It's just boarding the train to the easy part. because once I have never in my life taken two steps outside the door with my shoes on being dressed turned around and walked back in in fact at that point

it feels really awkward and difficult to do that I don't think I could do it so sometimes what happens in our mind is we think about what goal we need to meet it's not about the goal all you have to do is get far enough to like let the train take you the rest of the way

You just have to board the train. It's all about which train am I boarding? Am I boarding the Dota train or I'm a boarding the walk train? And then as you walk, okay, fine. You resisted for 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Come back, okay, let's eat something. So you sit down. It's just like, you know, when you walk inside, once again,

it's like a battle of wills for like five seconds. Do I go into like my room where the computer is or do I walk into the kitchen? That's all it takes. If I walk into the kitchen, then it's easy. I boarded the kitchen train. right and then in that way you will build up like the life that you want like one painstaking struggle at a time some days you'll win some days you'll lose and so it comes back to what is the next best thing i can do i've played two i've wasted two hours playing video games can i resist and can i

actually get up and go for a walk if you can't do it no big deal so this is your meditation what is the next best thing i can do what's next what i need to do Anything, any tiny thing that is the best thing that I am capable of. Let me do that thing. Got it? Do music or books help or hurt the dopamine doponergic system? Generally speaking, I think they're like positive. Because what they do is they get us away from the things that are like super toxic. Right? So like they get us away from games and stuff. Like so I think music can be very inspiring. Like you can use your music very judiciously. So I tend to use music very judiciously. I don't have it on all the time. I listen to music and I listen to it intentionally because music can put you in a particular mood. So before I stream, like I oftentimes listen to music to get in the right mood.

I'll listen to some like pudgions and stuff too, so like devotional music because that creates a certain move. Sometimes I'll listen to Kanye because that creates a certain mood. You can use music to cultivate a particular mood. So go for a walk for 15 minutes and like have like a, you know, a nice inspiring playlist. And then like you'll get back and you'll kind of do it. right? So for people who are saying, my work involves a computer. So here's a wild thing you can do. This is tough. You can have a different computer for your work and a different computer for your gaming. Okay. Now, even if you have one computer, so this is literally what I did. So for people who are struggling, so if you're like a programmer and you find that like it's really hard, okay, so let me let me think about how to say this. So, A lot of taking control of your life and doing the right things in the day is avoiding getting on the dopamine train. The second you pick up your phone and you open up Twitter or something else, you've lost 15 minutes.

You've lost an hour even. You browse and you browse and you browse and then like the sun goes down. It's a GG. The second you sit down on your computer, it's so easy to just open up a damn tab. And like all these browsers are getting smart. They know what you like to read. So the second you open up a tab, one click is all it takes. and then like it shows you stuff.

Like your homepage even have suggested readings for you, right? Like even phones nowadays have like this thing that you can't disable where if you swipe in one direction, it gives you a feed and then it's GG. So if you're a programmer or something, your job is on your computer, how do you avoid like falling into the trap of like the dopamine or your crap? How do you avoid logging into Steam or like, you know, booting up this video game or like pulling up YouTube or whatever. And so the thing that I actually did,

so like I would say you can have two computers if you can financially like afford that. Even when I was in medical school, I had one computer. But what I would, what I did have is like two desks or two spaces in my desks. So I had like two desks. It wasn't either like a folding table

and like a crappy desk. So you can actually get that. And what I would literally do is pick up my laptop and I had like my gaming station and I had my like working station. So my working station was a large desk where I had like books and stuff like that. I'd stick my laptop in the back. And when I was ready to play games, I would literally pick up my laptop, move to the gaming station,

plug in a proper mouse, plug in my like headphones or speakers or whatever. And then I'd like game at that station. And it was like I'd slide my chair over. And even that can make a big difference. So I think if your job involves your computer, as best as you can try to separate the two. So you can separate the physical spaces. So that is like an important part of like habit and environment. You can also create different logins, right?

You can have a professional login and a work login because that also centers your mind and sort of anchors your mind in a particular mode. You have professional login and gaming login. And you don't log into your gaming login until you're done with your work for the day. You like time things from like nine to five. There are these kinds of behavioral anchors that you can actually use that are the opposite of exactly what these developers use to get you hooked. right so like disable your feeds

like this is also where like you think about your phone like do you use your phone for work maybe get a second phone have one phone for work or one phone for you know personal stuff if you use your phone for work like this is the problem with having devices that do everything because the more our devices do everything the easier it is to slip from one thing into another

this is a problem for content creators too because since they do Twitter for professional reasons and they do Twitter for personal reasons, it blends one into the other. And so you're on Twitter for like six hours a day, like having fun and absorbing toxicity from like people on the internet. And then you're screwed. So separate things out as much as you can. There's a set of really interesting experiments that was done by, I forget who it is. There's a set of these like experiments that was done on rats to explore like dystopia and overcrowding.

I forget who it is. I think some sir or someone. So I think he's like some kind of like noble in England or something. So he did this experiment where he tried to create a rat utopia. Okay. And so what he did is he created a space where he gave the rats as much food as they wanted as much water as they wanted. And then he just saw what happened.

And basically like the rats like overbred. And then like they started like degenerating as a society. They started falling apart. So they would like eat as much as they wanted to. They started like breeding like. There were like all these like terrible things happening. Like rat mothers would have babies and they would just like abandon them in like the mess of rats. Okay.

And so like all kinds of like bad things were happening. The one set of rats. Yeah, it's Calhoun. Thank you. The one set of rats that retained their sanity were the ones that could block off their space from the mass of rats. So most of the rats would like congregate in this like courtyard where there was unlimited food and it was just like a cesspool. It's basically like the internet.

And then there were like some rats that sort of maintained like healthy family structures. They engaged in good grooming behaviors. They also like took care of their kids and stuff. And those were the ones that essentially like found corners of the world and walled themselves off. And like would

go out to eat and then would come back. So even within rats there's this kind of idea that the ones that could maintain some kind of boundary were the ones that were healthy. Now, a big criticism of Calhoun's experiments, which I'm falling into, is that people overinterpreted the rat utopia to like human dynamics, which is a little bit unfair. But I think we know from also like theories of psychology and stuff that like setting good boundaries, like having good

social media hygiene, having good technology hygiene, having good relationship hygiene, setting limits with your technology usage, setting limits with your narcissistic parents. All of those things can actually be really, really healthy. So learn to set limits, learn to set boundaries, use whatever tools you can to kind of set those boundaries. And that's what you should do if you're a programmer. What about some reading in the first hour? Is that also a no-go? I would actually steer clear of it if you can. So I would use the first hour of the day to like cook, eat, shower, exercise, do yoga, plan, laundry, some kind of should be, some kind of cleaning activity, some kind of exercise, just try not to stimulate your mind at all. Don't give it anything to distract it.

Take care of all the rote stuff. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference it makes. What if it makes me anxious? I don't know what you're referring to, Jonathan's, but that's okay. Right? So life cannot be the avoidance of anything that makes you, you know, you can't avoid all the things that make you anxious. It's just not going to work.