Eradicating Our Dopamine Addiction
We are becoming dopamine addicts and it’s making us less productive and less focused.
You check your email once, you’ve got ten new ones. Nice! You get a little rush. You check it again ten minutes later, you’ve got three more, you check again five minutes later…nothing new. You plan to check it again in the next forty minutes just in case. What’s happening out there? Do you feel like you’re missing something? You open up Twitter, you’ve got a few @ replies. Nice! What are people tweeting about? You click on a few links. Your phone buzzes with a text message, you open that up. Facebook notification pops up, someone had a baby. You know how this goes. It’s an endless cycle, we’ve all been there. Many of us have become addicted to checking email, texts, and social media and as a result no longer control what we do, our inboxes and social media control how we spend our time.
I recently had the pleasure of hearing Simon Sinek (who is one of my favorite authors) talk about our increasing addiction to dopamine. Dopamine, as Simon pointed out, is a chemical which is produced in our brain every time we accomplish a task. It is supposed to keep us focused on achieving a goal or a vision. Make a list, check an item off the list, get a shot of dopamine. In the caveman times, when a caveman saw an apple tree he got a shot of dopamine, the caveman would move a bit closer to the tree, again — a shot of dopamine, and so on until he reached the tree.
Dopamine is why CEOs write down goals and vision statements. As you move toward these goals, mentors and advisors reassure you that you are moving in the right direction and every step of the way you get a shot of dopamine.
The problem is that all of us have learned how to cheat the system and get shots of dopamine without actually accomplishing anything. Gambling is a great example, every time you pull that handle on a slot machine you get dopamine. Alcohol is the same story, a shot of whiskey = a shot of dopamine, you want more, you repeat; you’re not actually moving toward a vision or a goal.
Addiction to email, social media, and texts work exactly the same. You need that dopamine, you need it badly. You’re driving a car, you hear that buzz in your bag. Ooooooo! Ahhh! You have to check it. You need to check it! What if it’s important? You need to check that email in the evening after dinner and every hour during the day. You “need” to check Facebook every day. You “need” to check Twitter to see what people are saying about you. You need that dopamine.
As a result of this endless search for more dopamine people are not as productive and focused as they once were. People are much more distracted. How am I going to respond to this email? What did she mean by that message? People’s minds are usually somewhere else. Nine out of ten times when I talk to someone at a networking event these days I can tell their minds are somewhere else. Their minds are going in ten different directions all at once.
When my grandfather went to work as an engineer in Russia in 60s he stayed focused on the goal at hand, finish project X. He was focused and solely dedicated to one thing and one thing only. As a result he got much more done. Sure there were distractions but not of the same magnitude as today. During his talk Simon sited that 60% of kids growing up have some form of ADHD.
This is not some bleak blog post that will end in counseling advice to tell everyone to stop using devices, email, and social media. We live in 2013, I get it, people want to stay connected. What I’m saying is that we cannot depend on our devices for dopamine. We can’t keep cheating the system.
I too am guilty of dopamine addiction. I love email and depend on it for a lot of my day to day work. I love instigating stuff, fast back and forths, and knowing what is happening everywhere. But I have found that all this stuff re-prioritizes my day quite a bit. For the past year I have successfully disabled email, Twitter, Facebook, and text message notifications on my phone and have kept it off since then. My life has been transformed. Not only do I find that there are a lot less distractions, I find that I stay focused on the right tasks that keep me marching toward my overall goal.
Again, I’m not saying that what I did is the magic formula for everyone. What I am saying is that perhaps it’s time to re-assess how much you check your email, text messages, social media and your devices in general and see if you’re cheating the system in order to get a rush of dopamine or you’re truly marching toward your goal.
Curious to hear all of your thoughts on this subject!
