dopamine increases focus it increases motivation and it increases drive essentially the willingness to get into action in pursuit of goals just like the rats that have dopamine or the humans that have dopamine pursue the ones that have depleted dopamine do not so this guy who is a real story uh was struggling in a major way so about three months ago he was watching a lot of videos online he was texting lives mainly playing video games video games video games video games but he wasn't really enjoying them as much anymore and one thing you see with people with adhd is they actually can focus if they're really interested in something right why because their dopamine levels are elevated and they're able to focus he heard about the dopamine system and ana's work and i talked to him and he decided to do what some people call it dopamine fast but for him that meant no video games and he did two weeks of no screens which at first i think was agonizing for him oh my gosh it's now three months later it's a little less than three months later i actually talked to his parent today working full-time off all adhd meds hmm has a girlfriend i don't know if that's related or not probably because he's got his life together a little bit more which is an attractive feature as opposed to someone who's you know spiraling out doing nothing living at home which frankly is an unattractive feature regardless of you know boyfriend girlfriend whatever yeah he's very focused on his work he's excited by things and he allows himself a short period of time each day where he plays video games and he enjoys them again like never before there is a simple explanation for this which is that his dopamine system is reset he's when you're constantly pursuing things eating highly palatable foods engaging in very stimulating anything any behavior that's very stimulating there's a drop below baseline and it takes an increasingly great stimulus high threshold stimulus in order to excite you so if people are feeling bored unmotivated unstimulated most of the time it's because they are over indulging in things that keep pounding this dopamine system but the but the baseline of dopamine is going down down down down now there are a few hacks that can actually help and anna talks about some of these in in her book the main thing is to if you are if someone is engaging in any truly addictive behavior or substance or a behavior that just doesn't feel like it's that great but you're finding yourself doing it compulsively like wow what are some examples texting instagram i limit my instagram time to two hours per day which itself just sounds like a lot i'm a grown adult and i spend two hours but i do a lot of work right i'm trying to put out content that's educational you're crazy sometimes i think to myself like i'm a grown man i'm saying two hours a day on instagram well that's a lot of where we spend our time now but if you allow yourself four hours a day on social media you'll probably find that it's you you're scrolling you're not even sure what you're looking for like what am
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