Helping men maximize their potential in the world by fixing their relationship with screens.
War on Your Attention
Joined October 2024
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My truest form of therapy is crossing off a challenging task in my physical notebook.
No other activity gives at much relief as this.
One "dopamine trap" people get into is putting off things they want to do.
It releases a lot of dopamine to plan a bunch of things you will do in the future.
But it robs you of enjoying the present.
You should do the things that you think will improve your life immediately, and take an accurate assessment instead of over planning.
I work best in sprints.
A few days working dusk to dawn.
Then a few slow mornings at the coffee shop doing nothing meaningfully productive.
I can't have too much of either or my performance drops.
Blaming your unhappiness on the world changing is projection.
There are plenty of people who are taking advantage of new opportunities and enjoying the benefits of the modern world.
It's just an attitude problem and a signal something internally needs work.
Normalize deleting apps on your phone after you use them.
It's just too easy to waste time if you have easy access.
Experiments I'm Running in November:
- 5 minutes of celebrating other peoples success (especially people I naturally feel envy towards)
- Muting notifications until 9am
- Most challenging task 1st thing in the morning
- If I don't do a task, I delete it completely from my to-do list
The Dopamine Guy retweeted
most people think they need more willpower to break phone addiction.
you need to understand your nervous system better.
when you reach for your phone compulsively, your body thinks you’re solving a problem. you’re actually training it to need constant hits of artificial novelty to stay regulated.
the fix starts with recognizing the pattern: boredom → anxiety → reach for phone → temporary relief → cortisol spike → repeat.
break the loop by catching yourself in the anxiety phase. that 3-second window before you grab your phone is where change happens.
ask yourself: what am i actually trying to avoid right now?
usually the answer is: feeling uncomfortable with doing nothing.
and that’s the real work.
Phone addiction is cortisol, not a dopamine problem.
doomscrolling meets your unmet needs of novelty, connection, and excitement—temporarily calming your nervous system.
but because your phone doesn’t nourish you long term, cortisol increases. your bodies survival feels threatened because it believes it lost something.
the moment you lower overall cortisol, is the moment your phone addiction dies.
some practical ways to lower cortisol:
> dancing
> buteyko breathing
> daily breathwork
> eat enough carbs & sodium
> supp magnesium glycinate
> EMDR/bioenergetic exercise
> physiological sigh’s
> healthy social connection
> sprinting 1-2x weekly
save this for later + send to a friend who’s addicted to their phone lol.
If this is you, it's not too late to turn things around.
It's the sunk cost fallacy. Worrying and grieving about the time lost robs of you the opportunity to change your life.
It really is never too late to reinvent yourself.
Unironically acknowledging it like this guy did is the best first step.
Short form content is the new "seed oils".
Only people don't yet realize that their information diet is more important long term than their physical diet.
I would rather eat Mcdonalds french fries than 15 minutes of Reels, Tiktoks, or ragebait X posts on the trending tab.
If you are procrastinating rn, use the 1 Minute Method.
Write down the smallest possible task for whatever you are not doing.
Then set a timer and do it for ONE MINUTE.
One minute only.
Then stop and write down the next task again and do another 1 minute session.
Give a shot and watch what happens.
You should regularly be reflecting on wins, shortcomings that you overcame, and how far you've come (even if you feel like you have more to go, everyone does).
In fact, you should spend more time on this than you do on your losses.
Focusing on losses turns you into a loser.
Focusing on wins turns you into a winner.
We've slowly been boiling away as a society.
Behaviors that are killing the human spirit are being normalized.
Look around at everyone on their phones in public spaces.
Look at what they do in their free time (netflix, sit on Instagram).
We've been conquered by algorithms and short form content and people don't even realize what they've lost.
Having small easily completable tasks in the morning is non-negotiable.
It gets the dopamine flowing immediately.
If you get stuck on an uncomfortable task first thing, you are going to give into a bad habit right away and start procrastinating.
You'll never catch me going on a walk without a pocket notebook.
It helps me:
- Come up with ideas
- Capture better ways of doing things
- Solve problems
- Plan out projects
Just infinite upside to carrying one, like a free lottery ticket.
High social media use directly correlates with porn use.
If you're on an app scrolling long enough, it eventually leads to porn.
Instagram reels and TikTok ALWAYS start feeding in scantily attractive girls into the algo which triggers most men.
Not everyone has the luxury of changing big things about your life.
If you can't easily change cities, friends, people who you spend the most time with, then making micro changes to yourself is the best way to experience novelty and keep life interesting.
- Take different routes.
- Try out different clothes.
- Change your wake up time.
- Switch from coffee to tea for a month.
- Read a book you never thought you would read.
- Actually put in those 10 minutes on Duolingo.
You'd be shocked at how much changes when you consistently change the micro.
The Dopamine Guy retweeted
That's great advice honestly.
It's totally a mental thing to be panicking, rushing, when it's not going to make a difference.
You have to manage where you get your dopamine from.
The brain can only release it from so many activities during the day.
If you choose to get it from cheap sources, you will live a cheap life and never do anything meaningful.