An Effective Way To Build Habits Using Dopamine Detox

I see a lot of people, including myself, struggling with habits that they badly want to quit or build but can’t break out of the loop, and they feel stuck with their bad habits like a part of themselves they can’t abandon. I’m very well aware of the feeling of being stuck, with disappointment and hopelessness in the moment when you start to think, “I keep messing up my habit and I can never quit it.”

There could be many reasons for failing: maybe you’re approaching it with the wrong identity, maybe you’re giving yourself the wrong environment, maybe your internal beliefs about yourself aren’t allowing you to abandon your old habits or build a new one, maybe the pain of separating yourself from your former patterns is too much, or maybe being the familiar past version of yourself is more comfortable.

However, I see there’s a bigger obstacle that sits in your way of being intentional with your habits in this digital age, and that is being consumed by stimulation.

Everyone has smartphones with perfectly crafted algorithms that are designed around your interests, to hook you one after another with each suggested piece of content that looks intriguing. Every hour ends with “just one more hour,” and accumulates guilt and stimulation. It becomes harder and harder to sit with one thought, and wires our mind to solve boredom immediately as if it’s a problem.

Boredom, I’ve always looked at boredom in a way that I need to avoid it, as if it’s an uncomfortable experience I don’t want to embark on, a disease that I need to cure instantly, like it just kills the joy of the moment, so I just pick up my phone, open Instagram where every next scroll stimulates me.

But there’s a problem to it: boredom is necessary for us to give ourselves time to think about the future, reflect on ourselves, and do things that are better for us, and if we never allow ourselves to get bored, we never give ourselves time to think about what’s critical, we never let ourselves reflect on ourselves, improve ourselves, and we never give ourselves the opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

Boredom is where the most precious ideas come from; boredom is what makes it possible to feel peaceful in a moment without having to run towards the next stimulation rush. Most important work is boring, management is boring, and it’s everywhere, but not allowing ourselves to be bored means you’re slacking off from your job of managing your life; That’s a recipe for a messed-up life.

As important as boredom is for reflection and attention in our day-to-day lives, it’s also important for the quality of life you’ll have and the habits you’ll build or quit.

When you’re bored and you force yourself to stay bored without fixing it and without distracting from it, you’ll push your brain to seek more intentional actions and mental clarity.

When you’re truly bored, your brain will see unstimulating chores like cleaning, exercising, or organizing as more appealing than doing nothing, eventually pushing you to do meaningful tasks instead of wasting it away on digital distraction or scrolling.

When you’re truly bored, your brain will naturally start thinking about your survival and goals for the long-term future and will plan the steps needed to reach them.

Tolerating boredom will train your mind to be more disciplined and to stick with boring routines that are meaningful for long-term goals instead of chasing instant stimulation rewards and wasting your time away.

Being bored will make it easier to do repetitions and make new habits that require intentional effort but are too unstimulating when compared to instant digital rewards.

Building or quitting habits might be a complicated process with multiple layers and many factors impacting it, but all this process happens when you’re intentional with your actions and beliefs, and you need to tolerate boredom to make it easier for yourself to be more intentional.

When you’re aware of the importance of boredom, it makes it easy to convince yourself to be bored when you’re fighting with inner thoughts: “Why can’t I just pick up my phone when I have nothing to do?”

The way to achieve boredom is a dopamine detox. If you’re not familiar with this term, it means taking an intentional break from all the overstimulating activities that feel too good and often become a source of distraction.

If you’re not sure what are overstimulating things you do in your life, start doing a boring task like cleaning or reading and then observe yourself, every craving and temptations you’ll have while doing that boring task is overstimulating, cause you only crave for things which stimulates you and you naturally want to avoid things that are unstimulating like healthy eating or exercising.

Dopamine detox is an intentional break from all those stimulating activities to give your brain some time to reset and get mental clarity so you can focus on more meaningful things that look too unappealing normally but are important, cause a bored mind will see those things as more appealing instead.

It can be taking a break from scrolling, social media, games, junk food, music, or any activity that you crave in your day-to-day life; pushing yourself to take a break from them will lead you to boredom and help you regain your mental focus.

Dopamine is the chemical that is released in your body that makes you feel good during that activity. It is responsible for making you feel good when you listen to music, get a like on your Instagram post, or eat junk food.

Dopamine has multiple important functions in your body; it is responsible for reward and motivation by reinforcing behavior, and it is also responsible for memory, focus, and decision-making.

When you start being more intentional with your dopamine releases, you can also start being more intentional with your behaviors and habits, and you can also improve your memory, attention span, and cognitive abilities. That’s the whole point of dopamine detox.

Let it be boring,

Let it be unappealing,

Start being more intentional.

---

Follow me on Instagram * Substack * Medium