league

I still don’t play ranked, and I try to stay cognizant of my addiction and whether or not I’m still having fun while I’m playing the game. I wish I could’ve quit the game overall, but leaving fun/my friends behind proved to be really difficult.

I had replaced league with other forms of procrastination (binged Westworld season 3 in a single day). I believe this is fine––having fun isn’t against human nature or bad in any way. The issue that I’ve been thinking about however, is when activities such as league end up producing so much dopamine that I don’t want to do any other activities, even fun ones.

This is a pretty relevant/relatable meme.

leaguememe

sophomore experiment

Over the past year (sophomore year), I had left my gaming laptop at home in an attempt to quit league. First semester, my motivation was high and it was successful––I instilled an important new habit of getting adequate sleep. Second semester came, however, and I started seeking out avenues to play league.

Overall though, I’d say it was a success. One of the things I noted freshman year was that since League is a game that produces an obscene amount of dopamine, regular “fun” activities that people in college do don’t produce as much dopamine relative to league. Thus, I’d probably rather just play league given a choice. Logically and biologically, why wouldn’t I? It’s more fun for the time spent (at least my body thinks so, even when I don’t).

Quitting league forced me, at least, to do activities I normally wouldn’t do, and my dopamine consumption faded to relative normals (still altered by things like youtube/social media).

I’m hesitant to say that quitting league all of a sudden changed my life, since I didn’t notice any direct changes from suddenly quitting. I didn’t all of a sudden notice huge dopamine changes from doing every day activities, nor did I suddenly experience changes in behavior as one would expect from quitting an addiction.

But, upon reflection, I can pinpoint exactly how it benefited me.

It fixed my sleep schedule. Prior to this, I had averaged around 5 hours of sleep for a couple years at that point––I hadn’t really realized this wasn’t normal/healthy. I kind of knew, but I didn’t know know, ya feel? Switching to 8 hours of sleep did wonders for my temper/irritability, my resistance to stress in general (getting busy didn’t instantly result in me feeling super stressed), and I’m sure it boosted my overall mental performance.

Things I learned: sleep and drinking lots of water is good for you––who would’ve guessed!

dopamine fasting

I’ve been doing some research on this recently since I was wondering how quitting my traditional forms of procrastination would affect me. Finding concrete reasons to quit is just another added form of motivation to help my brain actually do it.

When I do research on subjects like this, I try to find sources on both sides of the subject at hand. There are actually a lot of reasonable posts against the efficacy of dopamine fasting, and it makes sense.

Largely, yes, you have abnormal levels of dopamine from playing video games/consuming social media, but quitting these sources of dopamine doesn’t magically alter your biological balance. This is actually a good thing––we consume so much unnatural dopamine every day, it’s relieving to hear that this doesn’t cause physiological damage, like consuming something like crack cocaine would (even if it’s also addictive).

What I disagree with, however, is that just because there’s no physiological effect, there’s no benefit to dopamine fasting in general.

In my case of quitting league, having that source of easily accessible, large amounts of dopamine means that I’m going to crave it over and over again. Trying to fight it is an uphill battle, and it’s utterly unrealistic to think that it’s possible over the course of the long term.

Removing that aspect, or, “fasting” from it, is the only way my mind will then think, okay, now that that source is gone, I have to consider other ways to find enjoyment. Ultimately, maybe league is actually the best bang for your buck in terms of time traded for enjoyment (perhaps not atm), but it’s good to reset. My habits had formed around playing league, and forcing myself to take the break allowed me to rebuild these habits such that it was no longer sucking into time that I needed to work on essential tasks.

If you’re reading this, I encourage you to think about activities you might not even be aware of that’s taking control of your life, instead of the other way around! I personally believe that society’s pressure to make you feel guilty about being unproductive is pretty stupid (ironic since I have a productivity blog), but I do think it’s important to be happy and productivity can help you accomplish things that will make you happy in the long term. In the short term, artificial sources of dopamine is what your body craves, but be aware of when/how it takes control of your life and think about how you should react accordingly. Don’t just cut out every fun thing from your life, because that’s not going to work––do something realistic that’ll shape how the rest of your life will fall into place.

identity’s role

I recently watched this video on doing hard things.

One of the things that he talks about is changing your mindset. For example, I’m currently trying to build a reading habit. By saying, “hey, I’m going to try to build a reading habit,” my brain is reinforcing the fact that I’m not a book reading person. However, if I frame it as, “I’m someone who enjoys learning about the world, reading books is just an extension of that,” my brain won’t find as much resistance to performing such a task. At least, that’s the hope.

Reflecting on this, I can definitely see how this has already shaped a ton of habits in my life. It used to be hard for me to work on personal projects, since I didn’t think I was a programmer. I clearly never blogged regularly before, but now it’s a label I’ve placed on myself. I never thought about productivity on a regular basis beyond just “wow I need to stop procrastinating,” but now it’s become part of what I’m known for.

My secret belief is that everything in life boils down to some balance of “resistance versus motivation,” and this is no different. Changing your mindset here moves your habit from the resistance side to that of motivation––it becomes a mandatory part of your identity to do these tasks.

productivity update

I’m trying to start waking up early every day and remaining productive for the first 8-10 hours of the day (meaning no extended consumption of video games/social media). The hope is that it’ll break my current routine, which is filled with procrastination habits and instill it with better habits while I’m conscious of it. That, along with the mindset framing I talked about above, is what I’m attempting for the coming weeks.

newsletter

I’m going to start a newsletter so that people who read my blog don’t have to constantly/randomly check it to stay updated. I’m a little apprehensive, since an aspect of this blog which I like is the fact that it’s unpolished. Creating a newsletter could affect that, but a reason for me writing this down is to share my thoughts with others.

If you want to join my newsletter, message me wherever you can reach me or just email me at alexander.wang@columbia.edu and I’ll add you.