Drafting this here so far, before it leaves my brain.
In, Feel Good Productivity, Ali Abdaal captured very well, the idea that sometimes what we do with the intention of winding down at the end of the day, does not actually achieve that purpose . and instead he challenges his readers, to paint, go for a walk, or to find the things that, really give you the relaxation that you actually want. This reminds me of a friend of mine said about drinking water, she once said that sometimes people will consume food or other snacks when maybe all they want is to quench their thirst. So this reminds me of what Ali has said, that maybe sometimes we reach for doomscrolling, or binge watching Netflix, when we want to wind down, but what we really want to do is do nothing . Ali points out for example that George W. Bush has taken up painting. I looked online, he indeed captures the visages of others very accurately! Ali describes the low stakes rewarding environment you can create for yourself of a hobby, which pulls you in, gives your creative or exploratory brain a chance to look around but does not give you a dopamine hit which is going to leave you with a dopamine bust. Slow reward. But there is a fine line here where if your hobby starts to feel like work you will not enjoy it, not look forward to it. So a difficult balance to strike. One other anecdote he provided that has stuck with me for a while. Now is his anecdote about how LeBron James, buy some stat figures at least, is both the slowest and the fastest player in the NBA. What this means is that apparently is among the fastest people when he is sprinting on the court, but he also walks the most. And apparently in contrast, other players are perhaps constantly jogging in place and not really stopping. So I think with this anecdote Ali reminds us that in order to sustain an indefinite pace in doing what we love we just paying the rent, we also need to stop consistently. oh yeah and I think Andrew Huberman caused this “non-sleep deep rest”, so not napping, and maybe not even meditating, but just being still perhaps.
Ok I had to look this up because I forgot, but Ali’s concept of combatting “depletion burnout” was “CALM”, that is, activities that make you feel Competent, Autonomous, have Liberty and are Mellow. This also reminds me of this interview from Lex Fridman of Stephen Wolfram, which was maybe 5-6 hours. I think Wolfram looked more energized than Lex even though Wolfram is in his sixties and Lex around 40. And this is what they discussed, energy adding vs energy depleting activities. And Wolfram I find appears to have self-mastered how to keep his energy in homeostasis. Largely, I think it was, surfing curiosity, but also artifact production. For example, he had at the time, written an article from his own Transformers deep dive. More broadly, going back to the Tao of Seneca, I think perhaps this is where we put the “philosophy” into the “doctor of philosophy”, because Seneca kind of summarized philosophy as the deepest and most meaningful activity that man can pursue.
I have also been reflecting on Anna Lembke’s book dopamine nation. More on that later.
Accountability devices, although I have learned about the earlier in near Nir Eyal’s book Indistractable, I have finally started to apply them with Anna Lembke’s book. So I converted the lock on my snack closet into an actual keyed lock. And I bought a Masterlock pinned key safe lock, for key storage. (Im not recalling if she had used the actual phrase “dopamine detox”, but reminds me slightly of the concepts of this link too)
Speaking of accountability devices, this reminds me of Severance Apple TV series, where you surgically alter your brain to keep focused on work side of your life, such that your “severed” side at work doesn’t know about your personal life, so forget about blocking phone notifications, you don’t have a personal life to be notified about!