After the dopamine detox challenge
Focus and procrastination.
Last week, I wrote to you about the dopamine detox challenge. Today, I will let you know the results and aftereffects of the challenge. The week of the dopamine challenge was tough, using your phone for 1 hour a day was no easy task. It took everything I had to keep myself away from my phone. This was probably the toughest challenge I have ever faced so far.
The challenge was tough, but I managed to pull through and come out of it alive (a bit of an exaggeration). But after the challenge I saw an increase in my focus and the activities I did. Prior to the challenge, I would just spend about an hour or so in focusing on a task and would almost waste an entire day on my phone. Damn, I was so addicted to my phone now that I think about it.
Fast forward to a week after the challenge I am more focused and I think more about myself and my actions than I used to before. Before I used to mindlessly scroll through social media without a care in the world. Now when I scroll, I realize the effect it has on me and the damage it causes me by not doing the tasks that I’m meant to do.
I spoke to you about the dopamine levels going up when we use social media. After the challenge my dopamine levels become normal, I think. When I went to social media a week after the challenge, I felt bored, and it didn’t seem as interesting to me as before. I felt like I would much rather do the tasks at hand then go through my feed. A week of doing the tasks actually made me enjoy the tasks more than scrolling through social media.
The challenge has been quite important to me in improving my focus and helping me complete the tasks I would normally procrastinate about. Now I keep goals for each day and try to complete all of them. Before I would barely get one or two of the goals I had planned to do. But now I get more than half of them done and only one or two are left. I still have a long way to go before I complete all my goals for the day.
Learning never stops and every day we learn something new. After doing the dopamine detox challenge I came across a video where the speaker said that focusing on your work is simple. He said we had to eliminate all distractions such that, the only thing left to do is the task or to do nothing. You could stare at the wall, lie on the bed or procrastinate but you have nothing else to do than doing the task or being bored.
By being bored and having nothing else left to do you eventually reach a state where doing the work actually seems more interesting than being bored and you actually do the work. I believe this is what happened to me during the dopamine detox challenge I got so bored as I didn’t have my phone that I actually did the work instead of procrastinating.
This was mind boggling to me I never thought about it before. Make yourself so bored that doing the work you should actually becomes a blessing rather than a chore. Your mind always seeks for something to do and doesn’t like being bored and this tactic works so well as a result. Our mind is always working even when we are asleep. So making it so bored actually makes it do the work we want it to.
This was my finding on focus and procrastination from the last week. Hope I was able to teach you something new today. Do give the challenge a try if you like, you will be quite surprised with you
r end result.
That’s all from me today. Have a great day everyone!
See you in the next one.