The Friday Focus is a weekly newsletter where we highlight:
A piece of content we love so you don’t have to doomscroll to find something interesting
A tip to help you reduce your screen time
A quote that has us thinking
To view all our blog posts go to getpresentapp.com/blog.
If you like these posts or have some recommendations of your own, feel free to reach out to us at contact@getpresentapp.com
(Short) Book We Love 📖
Dopamine Detox: A Short Guide to Remove Distractions and Get Your Brain to Do Hard Things - Thibaut Meurisse
In this short book (or maybe more descriptively, guide), Thibaut does a tremendous job of breaking down one of the biggest problems our modern society faces: dopamine overstimulation.
Okay, so if you’ve been reading our newsletters for a while now, then you know I’ve written a lot about the role dopamine plays in phone addiction.
Most people think the worst thing about phone addiction is the time that you waste. But I’ve found that how it impacts your life when you’re off your phone is even worse.
Our phone addiction has been intentionally engineered by hijacking our dopamine feedback loop. Dopamine is the mechanism behind all of our motivations, good or bad.
When we’re overstimulated with dopamine, all we can think about is getting that next hit of dopamine to maintain our baseline. We become a rat in a maze constantly looking for that next hit of cheese.
Instead of focusing on what matters, we constantly distract ourselves by grabbing coffee, checking email & social media, or walking around. A whole day can go by and you haven’t done anything productive.
In this guide, Thibaut not only breaks down the problem, but also gives you actionable tips for how to reduce the stimulation in your life so you can get back to focusing on what matters.
The best part: it can change your life in only a few days. How do I know this? It changed mine.
Tip to Reduce Your Screen Time 📱
Turn your phone to greyscale (black and white)
This is actually a great tip if you can stick with it.
One of the ways that social media companies activate a dopamine response in your brain is by using pretty, exciting colors. Every scroll is an exciting slot machine of content like you’re in Atlantic City.
So one way to fight back against this is by turning your phone to black and white mode. You can do this by going into Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters > Toggle On.
When scrolling social media, you’ll immediately realize it just isn’t as enticing. Something about it is just boring. Over time, if you’re able to keep it on continuously, you’ll find that you are less likely to go back for that dreaded doomscroll.
Quote That Has Us Thinking 🧠
“The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention.” - Dr. Gabor Maté