How To Get Out Of A Rut Forever

The new year is right around the corner and we know how that goes.

We spend time working on our New Year resolutions.

Getting excited about our goals. About how this year is going to be different.

Excited that this is the year when things will change. Where you have your shit together.

We buy nice workout gear.

We start waking up early and going to the gym.

We tell our friends about our goals and how consistent we've been.

Then seemingly overnight the burst of motivation disappears.

It's been 6 weeks of consistent effort. Yet you're barely seeing any results.

You begin to question everything.

Question why you started.

Question whether the effort is even worth it.

You begin to feel demotivated.

You'd much rather lay in bed and watch TV than go to the gym.

This becomes your new norm.

You try to snap out of it.

Try to tap into that spark you had at the beginning of the year.

But nothing can help you escape the void that you're in.

The void of staying stuck at home and doing nothing with your life.

You're now in a rut and if you don't escape your life is just going to get worse and worse.

The question becomes how do we snap out of a rut?

How can I sustain my motivation to follow through on my goals?

The answer lies in learning how to manage a simple hormone in your brain.

A hormone called dopamine.

What is dopamine?

Dopamine is a hormone that is involved with reward and motivation.

It helps us focus, work toward goals, and experience pleasure.

Dopamine plays a major role in our reward system.

When you experience something pleasurable your brain releases dopamine to reward the behavior.

For example, let's say your ancestors are scavenging for food. They find a bush that grows raspberries.

They try the raspberries and experience a rush of dopamine.

This is their brain rewarding them for finding food. This motivates them to come back to the bush every time they're hungry and need to find food.

Having this reward system hardwired into our brains was necessary for survival.

But now our dopamine and motivation are getting sapped by artificial sources of pleasure that don't provide any value to our lives.

Things like:

• Junk food

• Social Media

• Drugs and Alcohol

• TV

All of these things bring intense pleasure in the moment.

Our brain rewards us for these actions. Making it easier to stay trapped in this destructive pattern.

There are two parts to dopamine:

1. You have your baseline dopamine levels. This is where your dopamine levels are without any stimulation.

2. Then you have your peaks of dopamine. This is when you experience something pleasurable.

When you are constantly flooding your brain with high dopamine activities, your baseline dopamine increases.

As your baseline increases, your peaks become smaller relative to your baseline. This means you experience less pleasure.

Think about the first time you tried something very pleasurable. It could have been the first time you tried alcohol, had sex, or played a certain video game.

At first, it feels amazing. It's the best feeling in the world.

Then over time, you become accustomed to it. It's not as pleasurable compared to the very first time.

When you're constantly flooding your brain with the artificial sources of dopamine your baseline increases significantly.

This makes tasks like working, going to the gym, and having a conversation with a friend very boring.

You're so used to being overstimulated that regular day activities begin to feel boring.

By learning how to lower your baseline dopamine levels things like working on a report could feel very pleasurable.

You might even get the same amount of pleasure as someone with a high baseline scrolling on TikTok.

This is why dopamine is so powerful.

So let's talk about how to reduce your baseline dopamine levels.

How to Reprogram Dopamine

Here's the bad news. The only way to decrease your baseline dopamine levels is to introduce more boredom into your life.

This is going to be very difficult at first.

I struggled with a lot of negative feelings when I first started doing this.

But after a few weeks, I noticed:

• I was more calm and less anxious.

• I had better ideas.

• My thinking was more clear.

• I was more motivated to work.

• My focus improved.

• I was more motivated to go outside and connect with friends.

So when you get started and are tempted to fall back to your old ways remember this: it will be worth it.

1) Be Aware of Your Vices

The first step is to get clear on where you get most of your stimulation from.

For some people, it's social media. For others, it could be weed or video games.

Get very clear on the activities you do that provide a lot of stimulation but little to no value.

By getting clear on the activities preventing you from fulfilling your potential, you can start making changes to reduce or eliminate these activities from your life.

2) Don't Indulge in Cheap Dopamine in the Morning

This step is very crucial.

You get cheap dopamine from actions that provide a lot of stimulation with little to no value.

It's essential you cut out all that dopamine first thing in the morning.

This means:

• No scrolling social media.

• No video games.

• No news.

• No drugs.

• No TV.

The first thing most people do when they wake up is scroll on their phone. They look at texts, scroll social media, and look at the news.

You start your day off with large spikes of dopamine.

When it comes time to sit down and do work, your brain will get less dopamine than it did earlier in the day.

So you will have a stronger urge to go back to doom scrolling.

Even if you used willpower to sit down and do work you'll get less pleasure from the work compared to if you didn't spend time on your phone first thing in the morning.

When you first wake up, you have the highest reserve of dopamine so you want to use that boost of motivation towards your most important task.

Whether that's going to the gym, doing your homework, or working on your business.

Imagine what life would look like if you got your most important stuff done first thing in the morning.

You'll make progress toward your goals and life will be less stressful.

Make it a habit to turn off your phone before going to sleep.

Don't turn it on until you get your most important task done.

It's even better if you wait till noon to turn it on.

3) Take boring breaks

My favorite way to take breaks was to watch a good TV show and mindlessly scroll through social media.

I always wondered why it was so hard for me to focus after taking a break. I never felt rested.

The reason is the same that I described above.

Once you experience a huge spike in dopamine it becomes hard to follow that up with a task that provides less dopamine afterward.

Even though it may not feel like it, scrolling through social media and watching TV are highly stimulating activities.

So you're not giving your mind the break that it needs to feel rested and refreshed.

It's why so many people are in a constant state of exhaustion.

They're not giving their brain space throughout the day to rest.

When you take boring breaks you give your mind space to think and relax.

When you come back from a boring break you will get much more stimulation and pleasure from working on your report.

Here are some good breaks that you can do to help you rest:

• Meditate

• Go for a walk (without headphones)

• Do a workout

• Stretch

• Take a nap

• Take a shower

All of these things allow your mind to relax and wander. This lets your brain form new connections and build new pathways.

4) Focus on one thing at a time

If you want to get your work done fast and supercharge your focus, practice focusing on one thing at a time throughout the day.

People claim that they need to listen to music or have a TV in the background to do their work.

Most people can't even eat a meal by themselves without a screen shoved in their faces.

You would be far more productive if you worked without distractions.

Focusing on one thing at a time allows you to get into a state called flow.

This is where work becomes effortless.

When you are so absorbed in the tasks you are doing you don't realize how much time has passed.

This is a state of hyperfocus.

Unfortunately, many people aren't able to tap into this state because their minds are constantly being stimulated.

People have trouble focusing on one thing at a time.

Reducing stimulation and distractions is a shortcut to introducing more flow into your life.

You can only get into flow when you find the work that you are doing pleasurable.

Be more intentional about the tasks that you are doing and focus on one thing at a time.

Whether you're eating a meal, cleaning the house, or working on a report.

Do one thing at a time.

5) Schedule Entertainment

Now you might be thinking that all this sounds fucking miserable.

And at first, it is.

But there is a world where you can still keep up with your favorite TV show and be hyperfocused throughout the day.

That's by scheduling blocks for indulging in cheap dopamine.

Most people schedule working blocks on their calendar but most don't schedule time where they can indulge themselves.

This leads to overindulgence and less work being done.

We want to do the opposite.

Schedule some time during the day to watch your favorite TV show. Or mindlessly scroll through social media.

Ideally, this would be closer to the end of the day when you don't have any more work to do.

You still want to stick to rule 4 which is to focus on one thing at a time.

So if you're going to watch TV put your phone away.

Our attention has deteriorated to the point where people can't even focus on watching TV. They need to scroll social media as well.

So if you're going to indulge in cheap dopamine at least monotask.

If you want to take it even further cut out the cheap dopamine altogether.

The lower you drop your baseline dopamine levels the more sensitive you are to pleasure.

All the little things in life will feel much more pleasurable.

• Reading feels more pleasurable.

• Socializing with friends feels more pleasurable.

• Doing work feels more pleasurable.

It all depends on how important it is for you to get more pleasure out of the things that provide value to your life.

Motivation and discipline become irrelevant when you get pleasure from your work.

The alternative is to become numb to everything. Chasing that next high.

We're already starting to see that. We get massive stimulation from a little device in our pocket.

And it's only going to get worse.

Take time to think about the activities that bring value to your life. Cut out everything that does not.

Learning and applying this information has been life-changing. I hope it does the same for you.

Thanks for reading,

Ashvin