– During certain periods of my life, I have a very difficult time focusing on pretty much anything important or difficult. During these periods, it seems almost impossible to break out of the social media limbo, where you’re just constantly switching between tabs, refreshing pages, kind of waiting for something interesting to happen, like for someone to post a cool photo on Instagram or something. You’re kind of waiting to be entertained. But if you actually have to apply yourself, it’s extremely difficult, borderline painful, to do so. And I’m pretty sure almost everyone can relate to this problem.
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of videos on YouTube giving you little tips and tricks as to how to focus better, including my own channel, but there are very few videos kind of diving in, talking about why it’s so difficult to focus on hard things. You know, like, what’s the deal? Why can’t we just sit down and do something important with very little strain? Why aren’t we motivated to do the things that would significantly advance us further in our lives? Because it’s not like we don’t want those things.
It’s just hard. So in this video, I want to dive into why we procrastinate, why it’s so hard to do important things, because knowing how this all works helps us carve out a long-term solution.
It can help us permanently solve this problem. And that may sound really ambitious, but I do believe it is possible. But, first we kind of have to discover a little bit more about our human brain.
So, weird thing about our human brain, our human brain; I’m really trying to convince you that I’m human; the weird thing about the brain is that it pretty much hasn’t changed for thousands of years. We share, for the most part, the exact same brain as our hunter-gatherer ancestors. And this is the type of brain that was evolved to scan vast valleys for the prospect of food or a fresh kill, and absolutely light up and get excited at the sight of an antelope, so you can gather your friends together and run after it, kill it.
This is the kind of brain that, as you’re kind of going through a berry bush and you find a juicy berry, you’re super excited. You eat the berry and it pretty much makes your day.
You know, it’s not really exciting stuff. There wasn’t a lot of stuff to do back then, but that’s just kind of the way it was. And the reason why we were motivated to go run after an antelope or eat a fresh berry is the same reason, wow, is the same reason we’re motivated to go on Facebook and, you know, check our notifications, go on Instagram, et cetera.
The reason why we’re motivated to do any of this stuff is because of a brain chemical called dopamine. Now, you’ve probably seen a lot of videos on YouTube, if you’re into self-improvement, about dopamine, but dopamine is kind of misunderstood, because most people think it’s the feel-good chemical.
It’s a brain chemical that’s released when you’re experiencing pleasure. It’s the reason why you experience pleasure, but that’s not exactly true, because dopamine is the motivating brain chemical. Dopamine is what’s released when you feel like you’re about to be rewarded, or when you feel like you’re about to experience something pleasurable. When your ancient ancestors saw the antelope frolic across the field, they got a squirt of dopamine, which motivated them to go kill it.
When you see a notification pop up on Facebook, you get a squirt of dopamine, which motivates you to click it.
And what this means is that dopamine is what controls your motivation. – Thank you, boys. Oh, did you get a big McChicken? – [Man] Yeah, you said McChicken. – Now, why is this important?
Despite the fact that we share the exact same brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we don’t live in that world anymore. We live in a world of super normal stimuli, through ferocious technological advancement and capitalistic ventures, or whatever you want to call it. We live in a world where things are designed to be as pleasurable as humanly possible. And what super normal stimuli does is it hijacks our natural reward pathways.
It tricks our brain into thinking we are about to do something so important for our survival that we have an almost irresistible urge towards doing that thing.
A good example of this is junk food. Food is integral for our survival, and high-calorie foods are usually even more important for our survival because, you know, they’ll keep us alive longer. The more calories, the longer we’ll live, roughly speaking. See, what junk food does is it’s mechanically engineered to be as high-fat, high-calorie as possible. So, when we get that beautiful, when we eat that beautiful potato chip, our brain remembers that.
And the next time we see a bag of potato chips at the grocery store, there’s a huge amount of dopamine that’s released, motivating you to go grab that reward, that reward that’s integral for your survival. So, we almost become slaves to our dopamine system. We almost just go where our dopamine system tells us to go. That’s why we get into kind of social media binge because our brain is telling us to stay on these social media sites, because there’s a chance that we might get a reward.
We might get social validation, or we might be able to look at something kind of stimulating and naughty.
It’s the dopamine system that’s telling us and motivating us to stay there. So, what does this all mean if we’re bringing this all together? Basically, for most of us who have difficulty focusing and we find it really, really difficult to be motivated to do harder things, that is only because we have reprogrammed our brain to fall for this super normal stimuli rather than normal stimuli, natural stimuli, because it’s not that these natural rewards aren’t rewarding, they’re just less rewarding than the artificial super normal rewards. So, the long-term solution to be able to focus on boring things, is to reprogram our brain to remember that these things are actually pleasurable, and really good for us, and integral for our survival. And this isn’t just about a dopamine fast for a couple of days or something like that.
We almost need to reset our baseline long-term. We need to think about how much stimulation we want in our lives. What kind of super normal stimulus do we want to take part in? You know, I’ve noticed in my own life that when I’m camping for a long period of time, and there isn’t much to do other than figure out how to cook a fish over a fire, or set up my tent, or go for a walk in the woods, or go swimming, or lay on the sand, in these situations, little things like having a conversation with a sibling or a friend becomes immensely pleasurable.
It’s the same reason why people who break out of an addiction cycle, they stop doing their immensely pleasurable thing cold turkey, after a certain amount of time, they find an increased enjoyment out of life itself.
Pretty much everything in life becomes more enjoyable. They start to find motivation to do things other than their addiction. You know, it’s something that I also noticed during the quarantine, why it was so hard for me to find my work ethic again.
It’s because all that time inside made me an Internet addict. I spent so much time looking at screens that my baseline of dopamine and stimulation was so high that the more boring things became almost painful to do in comparison.
The disparity of stimulation became so vast that I felt physical pain trying to do harder things. So, if we’re able to find a way to genuinely enjoy the things that make our lives better, then what are we doing? Like, why don’t we just go and do that? I really want to challenge you guys over the next couple of weeks or months to really think about how much stimulation you want to invite into your life. You know, what’s actually adding value to your life?
And can you reduce the amount of super normal stimuli that you’re indulging in on a daily basis? You may actually find that by reducing your amount of time on social media or on YouTube, or eating junk food, or you name it, you may actually come to genuinely look forward to socializing.
You might actually look forward to reading a book. You might actually be motivated to go to the gym. There will be that dopamine driver pointing you in that direction, creating an irresistible urge to go to the gym, like, who would have thought that’s possible?
And it is as possible ’cause it’s science. One way that I’m going to make sure I stick to this over the next month, at least, is I made a list of a large amount of things that are fairly low-stimulus that I can do instead of doing a more stimulating alternative. That includes things like going for a walk, reading a book, talking with a friend, Skyping a friend, going to the gym. By having that list in your hand, you’ll have a automatic response to that urge to go do the thing, like, you know, eat a bag of chips or something. So, I’ll make a followup video on my second channel on how that all went.
I really encourage you guys to do the same thing.
And if you’re looking for more activities that don’t overstimulate you, then I’d highly recommend checking out videos on Skillshare and use it as an alternative to watching videos on YouTube, because YouTube is like candy. If you eat too much of it, you’re just going to feel not so good, whereas Skillshare is like a hardy steak dinner. It tastes good, and it’s good for you. For those of you who don’t know, Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes covering dozens of topics, everything from photography, to cooking, to coding.
Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. And that’s because their classes are extremely practical. I’m taking yet another cinematography class on Skillshare. And I find it really easy to just take what I’m learning on Skillshare, and apply it directly to my real-life pursuits. And one of the other great things about Skillshare is that it’s extremely affordable, especially when you compare it to online classes or workshops.
If you pay for the annual membership, it comes in at less than $10 a month. So, it’s kind of a no-brainer. And Skillshare is doing this awesome thing where the first 1,000 of you who clicked the link in the description below will get two months of Skillshare premium, absolutely free. So, make sure you click below and take advantage of that. Learn something new, explore your creativity, and have a great time.
If you liked this video, make sure to hit Like, because when you hit Like, the algorithm blesses me by shoving this video in front of other people’s faces, helping them out, which also helps me out, so it’s kind of a win-win for everybody.
If you’re lurking here, and this is the billionth time that you’ve seen my bald head, what are you doing? Hit subscribe already and make sure you hit the bell icon, so that you don’t miss future videos. And if you haven’t discovered my second channel yet, I will link that in the description. I’m posting kind of weekly and bi-weekly Q and A videos.
They’re super Mimi, super fun. And I’ll occasionally post blogs there as well, so make sure you check that out, but that’s kind of it for today.
Thank you so much for watching, and we’ll catch you in the next video.
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