After watching Civil Being’s video on Dopamine Detox and finding it revolutionary, I decided to implement the same. So on 9^th May 2020 my 50 hours of dopamine Detox started. I will be giving a detailed account as to what I did during the time when I abstained from my phone but before that we need to knows what exactly is Dopamine Detox. (PSA: I am not an authority on the facts stated below about the definition and benefits of dopamine Detox. These are sourced from the video above mentioned.)

Now let us put this to test and see how it fared for me (note these are diary entries) –

• 9^th May 2020
  • One of the biggest challenges of today was to wake up without an alarm. These few months I have become a morning person but it’d be the first time to wake up without an alarm.
  • I woke up pretty late, unsurprisingly – at 06.45AM. However I was rather joyous to wake up to the natural melody of the birds instead of my phone’s beeping. Then I had a lazy morning and did my chores slowly but mindfully since I had no TED talk/ podcast to listen to. I was astonished to find how pleasing it was to work without having to cram information once in a while.
  • After my shower, we had an admission to attend to and later we had tea. After this I did some studying.
  • Whilst studying, I decided against time-blocking my studies, i.e. setting a timer with a study goal (because I am experimental like that). The result was disheartening though. It took me all noon to complete one mind map with a breakfast, laundry and lunch break in between. So, my advise here would be not to let go of this method and have some sort of clock nearby to focus and get more done.
  • At around 04.00 I drew a bit and then the heat got better of me, so I slept. Later, when it was cooler I went to water the plants and play with Chitraa.
  • We had tea, I cleaned the kitchen, did some planning and later on chatted with mother and my sister.
  • Later I put on a face mask, memorized a chapter of carriage law and noted a few doubts to be resolved later.
  • At 11.00 PM I drew again and then went to sleep.
• 10^th May 2020
  • Woke up at 06.30 AM, went to study at 07.30AM and had tea at 08.30. then I helped with breakfast and ate at 10.30AM, after which I rested for a bit, did some laundry.
  • I arranged (read plundered) my art supplies and arranged them till late noon with a break to practice water colors, which was something I have been meaning to do since a long time. And now that I had no webtoon to distract me, I got cracking on it.
  • Later I read a few art books and procrastinated till night and didn’t study anything. But I did enjoy the rain and plan my week.

Here you may notice that I had done my Dopamine Detox days ago but I am writing about it now so that I could give you the detailed benefit of my experience and they are as under –

• Immediate benefits included mindfulness, feeling of awareness, consciousness and realizing actually how many things were happening around me. For example, till then I didn’t realize that there were so many different birds in our locality that produced harmony, or that the wind changed directions while blowing or that my plants are dying because of mealy bugs (okay that’s sad and plain negligent on my part)
• Weekly benefits – I stopped reading manga as much as I used to. Obviously this didn’t happen overnight and If you follow me on instagram (please do) you would know that I had the most unproductive week following the Detox and also had a mini break down. It was only the last week that I had actually been consistently productive and I will credit this to the calendar blocking technique I learnt here along with the modified dopamine Detox I recommend below.

So, yes, the my verdict is that dopamine Detox by itself is no magic that will make you the most productive person on earth nevertheless it can definitely help you become one. Will I do it again? Absolutely. But not the way it has been proposed considering a lot of my learning has to be from online sources (and the current #workfromhome situation). So what I am doing now is Daily Dopamine Detox in which I have no-phone block of time ranging from 1 to 6 hours using Forest app. For example, I don’t like using phone as soon as I wake up so after switching off the alarm, I will block it out for 3 hours, similarly, throughout the day we can have no-phone block time that will train us to focus better and use time more efficiently. What are your thoughts on this?

Until next post, HAPPY HUSTLIN’HON