It's midnight. Your face is radiated with the light coming off of the screen of your phone as you lie down on your bed and browse the internet. You come across something that you are really passionate about. It could be art, music, poetry. Or it could the tasks that you know you need to get done like finishing your homework or maybe tidying up your room. Whatever it is, you know that you do not do the activities as much as you want yourself to do. Suddenly, you are bombarded with intense motivation to do all the things you keep telling yourself to do. Your mind is overflowing with productivity juice that you cannot wait to utilize. But then you look at the time and realize how late it is. You tell yourself that tomorrow you will use the entire day to be productive and do all the things you need to get done. You go to sleep, pumped up about the next day. But when the next day arrives, you don't quite feel like doing anything anymore. You'd rather spend time on your phone and binge watch YouTube.
And the cycle continues.
We mentally make plans to do tasks all the time. But it's very rare that we actually get them done right away. We usually find ourselves procrastinating all the way to the deadline.
Do all these seem familiar to you? If you can relate to any of what is mentioned above, then you might consider following this method. It is called dopamine cleansing. The science behind it is so simple that it makes you wonder why you haven't thought of this before!
So, to start off, what exactly is dopamine? In easy words, dopamine is the chemical that is released in your brain whenever you're doing something that you enjoy. When you eat your favorite food or listen to your favorite song, dopamine is released. Every activity you do releases some amount of dopamine. The difference is that the things you love to do release way more dopamine than the things you hate to do (eg. studying). And with this method, you can easily make yourself study! (or anything else!)
Here's what to do-
Fix a day. And don't do anything at all. Literally. That's it. Turn off your phone and put it in the drawer. Pretend you don't have a phone for a day. For one whole day, pretend you don't own a computer, television, or internet connection. Don't read books. Don't sing. Don't binge eat the food you're craving. Keep it light and simple. Just spend an entire day with only your thoughts. You must allow yourself to get bored.
That's the trick. You'll get so bored that even the most tedious jobs, such as studying, will seem pretty exciting. This works because without the dopamine, your mind is a lot more neutral. You see things more clearly. This will help to actually accomplish the things you desire to accomplish.
And that's it. That's how you make yourself stop procrastinating and get all the tasks done. Do this once in a while to give your brain some rest and press the reset button.
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