This is the second part of the 2-part dopamine detox guide. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you read the first part of the guide before reading this one to get a full understanding of the entire topic.

Last time we discussed on the properties of a dopamine detox and the impact that bad habits have onto your life. Now we will talk about how to perform the dopamine detox and detach ourselves away from our vices.

In this edition of the Peak Performance newsletter, we will be discussing:

• How do bad habits influence the goods habits?

• The Visual POWER of a Dopamine Detox.

• How to perform the dopamine detox

Let’s begin!

How Bad Habits Influence Good Habits

Let’s discuss the differences in good habits and bad habits when it comes to their impact on our dopamine receptors and their correlation with one another.

To recap, bad habits cause your dopamine levels to spike up drastically due to the high amounts of stimulation, exposure to these stimulating activates overtime can cause your dopamine levels to get into this level which is referred to as higher than zero. In an ideal situation, zero would be your baseline of dopamine so in order to satisfy your wants, you would need to maintain and reach this baseline of zero. Pretty simple right?

But now what happens when your baseline is higher than zero because of the excess stimulation.

Note: Now, I do want to point out that changing your dopamine levels is a relatively long process, so indulging in stimulating habits from time to time won’t drastically change your baseline of dopamine, assuming that you are doing non stimulating habits most of the time. But for most people, it doesn’t seem like a long process due to the fact that we have been exposed to this type of stimulation for so long, so it is all relative to your experience and usage. This is just a disclaimer clear any misunderstandings when it comes to comparing long term vs. short term use of stimulating habits 🙂 

But let’s get back to the original question, shall we? When our base is higher than zero, multiple problems occur. Since your baseline is higher than zero, it is now going to take more stimulation or dopamine I should say to maintain that level. This is because your dopamine receptors build tolerance to the high stimulating activities, so it now needs more dopamine to be satisfied.

When this happens, people often experience a drop in motivation, because they now need more dopamine which will make it harder to do the hard tasks that you want to do. This is actually the main reason why so many people say that they are either bored or don’t want to do anything. it’s not like the task is boring itself, but it is based on the person’s dopamine receptors.

And the worst part about is that, once you cross a certain barrier, even the stimulating habits that used to be fun aren’t even fun anymore, because the demand is so much higher now compared to last time. You can refer to as a state where your dopamine receptors are fried. The baseline is now so unreasonable to reach that you will not be able to maintain the level of dopamine required for very long. People who are in this state often experience the worst side effects, like mood swings, loss in energy, loss in motivation, and even loss and passion or purpose.

Then again, this state does not last forever but that is only determined if your able to pull yourself out of that situation just through pure discipline. If not, you're going to be stuck in this infinite rut that gets deeper and deeper every time that you try to climb your way out of. That probably isn’t very ideal when you're trying to work hard and accomplish your goals.

The Visual POWER of a Dopamine Detox

Now with all of this in mind, imagine that life you could have if you first, had the discipline to keep going, but ALSO the sense of joy and passion because you went on a dopamine detox.

You can switch out motivation for dopamine in this one, since they mean relatively the same for the message that I’m trying to convey.

Now let’s be a little reasonable since motivation and a dopamine detox would be shown visually different in this graph, but I unfortunately I was unable to find a suitable graph for discipline and dopamine detox 😢

But we can still use our imagination here, lets imagine that a dopamine detox would be slightly smaller and have a smaller uptrend compared to motivation as shown in the graph. However, we can reasonably say that a dopamine detox would actually have the competitive edge in comparison to motivation because it is more consistent, similar to discipline in a sense. We can see that in the graph, motivation is shown to result in a huge spike in a person’s growth and potential results, but a dopamine detox would have smaller but more consistent spikes that are able to fill up this entire graph.

So according to what we’ve learnt, we can say that a dopamine detox would be the long-term version of what motivation is. We can state that motivation is just a sudden burst of energy/passion, high potential in growth, but unreliable. BUT a dopamine detox can be viewed as a state of being, or like a passive effect in a video game. It captures the essence of motivation while still having the consistency aspect of discipline as well.

So, the BIG QUESTION is?

What would happen if we combined our foundation of discipline in conjunction with a long-term dopamine detox?

I believe that it would look something like this.

This would be the growth chart of someone, from the beginning to current. We can see that they experience a slow rate of growth at the start due to their lack in experience, but slowly we see that it is growing exponentially in an uptrend. Obviously, the participant is going to experience some slips and falls along the wall, but if he stayed disciplined and was on a dopamine detox for the majority of the time, then it is DEFINITELY possible that his graph would resemble something similar to this. Discipline is a skill that you can level up and you reek the benefits of a dopamine detox the longer that you can stay on it.

Or would it maybe look something like this?

Let’s say on the first picture that I showed you, on just discipline alone you would be jumping by 1 each time, sure your making consistent progress but it isn’t a whole lot. The picture above demonstrates the amount of progress that you would gain if you combined both your discipline, and you also went on a dopamine detox. Now instead of jumping by 1 each time, your now jump by 4 each time on most days. If you’re feeling extra motivated one day, you could imagine that you would jump by maybe 6 or 7 instead but it wouldn’t be very consistent. The numbers don’t matter in a real-world scenario, but the point is to just to show you the increase in progress if you combined discipline with the addition of a long-term dopamine detox.

Also, I want to reiterate, I don’t think that motivation is bad to use in the slightest when it comes to making results, sure you don’t want to rely on it, but this post is just a way to show you that there are many more ways than just using motivation. Or you can combine all 3 and get the ultimate mix of consistency, passion, drive, and motivation. That is completely up to you 😁 

Last Step:

How to Perform the Dopamine Detox

So now you’ve learned on the negative impact that bad habits have on good habits and the benefits of a dopamine detox. Let’s discuss on the actionable steps to take on how to perform the dopamine detox properly.

Hopefully you read the previous topics on this guide, so I’ll cut to the point and list out the steps that you need to take. Then I’ll break it down step by step in further detail. Here are the five steps to take in order to get on a dopamine detox.

1. Identify your bad habits and good habits

2. Set the gauge for your instant gratification usage.

3. Structure your routine

4. Reflect regularly

5. Progressive overload

1. What instant gratification habits do you consider are bad for you? Which habits do you consider are good? Write these down to figure out which ones to focus on and which ones to avoid and minimize for the detox.

2. Set a gauge for your detox, we can agree that it wouldn’t be realistic to perform a long-term dopamine detox that cuts out of the stimulating habits. Forcing yourself to go cold turkey will eventually stop working and lead you back to your old self. An example of gauging would be “I will only be indulging in instant gratification habits for ____ hours”. Reduce these hours overtime once you feel like you are mentally capable of doing so. If your confused on when you should reduce these hours, listening to your mental intuition is the best way to go. Of course, we want to limit these habits gradually, but our body is able to naturally adapt to the new range of stimulus. The most desirable goal for most people who really want to take self-improvement seriously is to have a gauge of 45 minutes. I would say that 2 hours is good gauge to start.

3. Structuring your routine will ensure that you are able to stick to these habits, create a timetable for yourself either on the Apple notes app or any type of noting taking software. Create two columns, the first one listing the time ranges and the second one listing the habit that you preform. I recommend that you list the instant gratification times later in the day so that you can focus on your work hours.

Here is my timetable routine on the dopamine detox that I’m currently on.

4. Reflect regularly, this allows you to consistently make progress overtime and prevent any mistakes along the way. Ask yourself these questions,

• What did I do good/bad today?

• What was my screen usage?

• What was the limiting constraint that prevented me from performing the detox as well as I wanted?

• What effects did I notice that I couldn’t see when I wasn’t on the detox originally?

• How could Improve for tomorrow?

  Write down your answers every day so that you can make it a conscious effort to improve 😎

5. This is similar to step 2, once you built up the consistency for your dopamine detox, you are now able to progressively overload from there. Instead of setting the gauge for 2 hours, try 1 hour and 45 minutes instead, the jump can be big or small. The most important part is that you’re making progress gradually overtime.

Author’s Notes:

Well, I hoped that you enjoyed this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, wrapping the endings to the 2-part series on dopamine detox. I sincerely apologize for the huge delay for publishing of this part. I was planning for it to be out by Thursday of last week, but I underestimated the amount time that I would need to write the following parts of this edition. My goal was to hit at least 1,500 words by the end of this edition, but I overshot and wrote 600 more words instead. Again, I want to apologize for the inconvenience that this might have caused, I will try to better estimate my writing durations for next time.

But hopefully, I was able to present you with some more value and knowledge than originally, and I hope that you were able to learn on how to perform the dopamine detox as a whole 😅 I became more aware that I have a bad habit of writing more than I need to for the week, so I try to tone it down a notch so that you’re able to receive more consistent posts in the future.

I still have a bunch of more topics that I want to cover on this newsletter, which includes more advanced topics that have been very beneficial for me currently. My next post will discuss topics regarding more on the productivity/philosophical side of self-improvement which have been on my mind recently.

Stay tuned for the next post, because I believe that you would benefit a lot from hearing about what I will discussing on the next edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter.

Important Note:

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I see you in the next one, peace 😎