Recently, I watched this video that came across my feed “WHY NOTHING FEELS INTERESTING ANYMORE (and how to fix it with neuroscience) ” by Olga Loiek.
She explains that the main reason something gets us excited is because the activity causes dopamine in our brain to spike. That is also the reason why we might feel the opposite way at present.
Repeated engagement in high dopamine content or activities that spikes it higher and higher can cause an overload to the brain. To maintain a particular level of dopamine, our body then lowers the amount of dopamine receptors that are active thus tackling the issue of high dopamine. However, this is inherently the issue as now in an idle state we have less dopamine receptors than normal and start feeling low.
How to Fix It:
- Dopamine Fast: Take a break (1 to 7 days) from high-stimulation behaviors like social media, video games, and binge-watching. Create physical friction between yourself and these platforms. This will bring the dopamine levels back to the baseline.
- Physical Exercise: Neuroscience shows that exercise is the most effective way to restore your dopamine system, as it increases dopamine production and receptor sensitivity.
- Engage in Deep Work: Actively choose one topic that interests you and spend 20 minutes exploring it through articles, books, or long-form content to re-engage your curiosity.
Thus basically, quit scrolling (something I have to do across various apps) and engage in focused engaging topics and go deep into it.
We are still allowed to read articles or watch long form content on topics, not the short form content or such alike content that gives repeated spikes of dopamine.
To be fair going through Hackernews / Lobsters or any such “community forum” (not algorithmic feeds) is good. If you can curate your own feed (such as on Bluesky), its also still better than relying on the algorithm. I barely reach for Instagram or Reels nowadays but that might have been replaced by Youtube, so need to look out for that.
