Archive of a gist. Original Post Date, November 24, 2021

Recently I learned that rewards and hedonism work separately in your brain. This means that something can be enjoyable but not rewarding, and vice versa. This threw me for a loop, as what's generally told is that both of these derive from dopamine. I started thinking about what that might mean for the issues I currently face. I have a hard time getting myself to work or even to do tasks that require high amounts of focus or energy input such as playing a video games, reading a book, or just standing still even.

I examined what it is I do on a daily basis often and I realized one very crucial thing: I'm addicted to behaviours that create constant micro rewards.

Let's break this down.

Boredom is a hard thing to face. When faced with boredom, your brain wants to find something to stimulate itself. I think this is pretty understandable. The problem, however, comes from the threshold at which you can get bored. Nowadays, you can go on the internet and find a simple loop that'll give you an instant hit of dopamine in seconds. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, etc, they're all fighting for this space of giving you micro rewards at the expense of damaging your tolerance to boredom.

Damaging your boredom tolerance results in your brain looking to easier and easier ways to get its needed reward system payout. Ways that require less effort or can be done quicker. Tolerance to boredom is important, because for the most part, in a person's daily life, we're bored. Even when engaging with something like a videogame that might be exciting and fun, we'll have moments of not enjoying it that much, maybe when walking from a town to another, maybe when trying to solve a puzzle, or waiting on an opponent to finish their turn. Hell, maybe the game is constant action, but the physical requirement to get said action is still higher than the zero a youtube video would come with.

And I think that's the root of the problem. For a long time I thought the reason I couldn't bring myself to work or play games often was simply an ADHD thing. You've probably heard me say "My ADHD got worse recently". ADHD does faciliate what I'm about to describe next for sure, but I've since gotten closer to the root of the problem. When examining what it is I do on a daily basis, and what behaviors I'm having my brain associate with "things to do when bored", I come to the grim conclusion that pretty much most of my time is spent on inane tasks.

• Scrolling through Twitter or Reddit
• Reposting memes I found via the last point (or sending them to friends)
• Watching YouTube
• Playing Granblue Fantasy
• More often than not, two or more of the previous at once

Granblue Fantasy (GBF), in particular, deserves a special mention. GBF is a boring and slow grindy game. It's designed like that on purpose, it hits the same notes as OldSchool RuneScape where the moment-to-moment is monotonous but you feel rewarded overall for the progress you make over time, coming at the cost of being a huge time sink. GBF can be played with very little player input as battles can be Auto-played by a rudimentary AI that just uses your characters skills as they come off cooldown.

You probably figured out already, but all of these points have the following in common: They are rewarding, but not demanding. And for the most part, unless some uncommon incredibly high quality video comes out on YT, not necessarily hedonistic either. By doing so much of this, I'm constantly giving my brain micro rewards over and over. I'm not addicted to any one thing in particular. I could probably quit GBF or uninstall Twitter just fine. What I'm addicted to is the effect all of these things have in common, the easy reward.

I took a long bath today and did some introspection. I stopped going outside regularly during the pandemic for obvious reasons, and I never picked it back up. When I do, I do so for a reason (have to go get groceries, pass by the post office, have an appointment, etc), and while I do, I'm constantly listening to music. When I go to the bathroom, I bring my phone. I eat lunch and dinner while watching YouTube.

Thinking about all these things made me realize one of the primary reasons my executive dysfunction these days is so bad is because my brain rejects the concept of boredom. I must be stimulated by something at all times, and that naturally makes it so doing things that aren't inherently constantly stimulating becomes difficult.

So, I'm detoxing.

I'm going to try a smooth transition rather than just trying to quit these things cold-turkey entirely. I do still think some low effort relaxation every day is okay. As a first measure, I'll be minimizing the amount of content fed to me. I've unfollowed/unsubscribed from a significant amount of the content I was engaged with, as such: