The Science Of Screen Addiction & How To Stop - Dr K Healthy Gamer

1. 0:00 – 2:04

   Intro

   1. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:00

      What we're starting to see is that, like, individuals are losing control of themselves, and they don't even realize that it's happening. All they really see is that, like, this is not exactly what I wanna be doing on a day-to-day basis. I have goals, I have aspirations, I have things that I should be doing, but I can't seem to get away from a screen.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:20

      Dr. K, welcome to the show.

   3. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:22

      It's an honor to be here, Chris.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:23

      It's been very requested. You are one of the most requested guests that I've had on the show. Really, really looking forward to this.

   5. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:29

      I'm looking forward to it too. I, I love your podcast, love the, you know, blend of science and sort of, like, personal experience that you really put forward here, so huge fan. And-

   6. CWChris Williamson0:39

      Thank you.

   7. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:39

      ... honored to be here.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:41

      What- what do you say when you meet somebody at a cocktail party and they say, "What do you do?"

   9. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:45

      (laughs) Uh, so, you know, my stock answer's actually, like, "I'm a physician by training," or, um, or I say, "I work in digital mental health." So I, I-

   10. CWChris Williamson0:56

       Digital mental health.

   11. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)0:57

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:57

       I ima- imagin- I imagine that everybody knows what that is.

   13. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:00

       Well, so that's the thing, right, is it's l- it's, like, enough buzzwords to where it kind of, like, people don't usually ask questions after that. So I think it kinda depends on, okay, what am I really looking for? Like, do I wanna talk about myself right now? Um, sometimes I'll just say, "I'm a psychiatrist." That's true.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:19

       But you've updated yourself. You are a, uh, clinically trained psychiatrist who has brought himself into the 21st century.

   15. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:27

       I guess you could say that. (laughs) I th- I think maybe the, the 21st century has brought me into it, is maybe a better way to put it. But yeah, I, I think we're both kind of evolving together at the frontier.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:40

       Yes. So you spend an awful lot of time working with gamers, people that use screens a lot in a variety of capacities, getting them to improve their mental health, getting them to better understand what it is that their motivations are, why their brain works the way that it does, challenges they're facing, uh, explanations about mindfulness. From an outsider's perspective, what is it that most people don't understand

2. 2:04 – 14:47

   What Society Misunderstands About Screen Addiction

   1. CWChris Williamson2:04

      about gamers and screens and mental health and the relationship of how that all works together?

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)2:11

      Yeah. So I, I think let's start actually with, like, screens and technology. So if we look at technology, technology tries to engage us, right? But if we look at which organ does technology interact with, primarily it interacts with the mind. And so what I, I think, uh, what a lot of people don't understand is that our mind is being accessed or activated or triggered basically constantly all day every day in a way that we just haven't evolved to deal with. So if you sort of look at, like, the natural environment in which the human brain evolved, it's like a low stimulation environment, like go for a walk somewhere, right? And that's actually the baseline that we grew up in, that we evolved in. And so all of this high stimulation is, uh, is working on us in some way. And the thing about our, our, our minds is that if you really think about this principle of engagement, what does engagement mean? What are they engaging? They're engaging your mind. And as platforms get better and better at this, as video games get better and better at this, what we're starting to see is that, like, individuals are losing control of themselves, and they don't even realize that it's happening. All they really see is that, like, this is not exactly what I wanna be doing on a day-to-day basis. I have goals, I have aspirations, I have things that I should be doing, but I can't seem to get away from a screen.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:35

      There's something very ruthless about the fact that the more enjoyable and the better that screens and technology get at satisfying our, uh, desires, the more addicting they become, which means that although the felt present sense of how good it was may increase, the after the fact remembered sense of how much it's starting to intrude on our lives and our other goals outside of the screens, the worse it gets. It's kind of this, uh, double-edged sword.

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)4:07

      Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that captures it really well, Chris. So, like, that, that, too, if you w- kinda wanna take a step back, like, most technology, and especially video games, are designed to be fun, right? But the human brain's capacity to have fun, like why do we have fun? So if you look at human beings and animals, we have fun, we engage in play, and we engage in play to practice the skills that are useful for survival. And so what happens with video games is, is developers sort of figured out, "Okay, like, here's a game, like a role-playing game, like an RPG, and you know what we can do to make it more fun? We can make a persistent universe with thousands of other players." And so what video games, uh, uh, d- what developers actually stumbled upon is, like, another sort of psychological need, this need for community. And over time, exactly what you described is happening, is that as games become more and more fun, how do they become more fun? It's because developers figure out, "Okay, we can scratch, like, another psychological need." And so if you think about games, like, now there's, like, appearance and cosmetics, right? So we all want to look good. And since it triggers that sense of fun, what that sort of means is it's activating that circuit, the circuit that we have to want to be respected, to want to look good. Except now we can sort of satisfy it within a video game. And what we're starting to see is that, like, we can kind of satisfy some of these psychological needs in video games, although they're not, like, a complete satisfaction, but it's kind of enough. And so what, what's sort of happening is people are, like, starting to live their lives more and more, like, in the virtual world. And as they do that, they start to kinda get disconnected or fall behind in the real world.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:51

      What are the mechanisms that screens are working on? And is there any difference between the kind of triggers that video games are having compared with the triggers of other stuff, like, let's say, social media?

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)6:03

      Yeah, so, uh, I think they're very different. So I think if you look at why does someone get addicted to a particular thing as opposed to another thing? And there are even studies that sort of bear this out, like so for example, people on the autism spectrum are more likely to g- get addicted to role-playing games. And there's even data that shows that the more role-playing s- games you play, if you're on the autism spectrum, the more likely you are to have behavioral meltdowns. So within video games, we know that there's actually personality analysis, like University of Toronto has done a lot of really good research here, where they've sort of figured out, depending on your personality style, you're more likely to gravitate towards a particular game. And then once you move beyond games, if you start to think about social media, you know, people who are more sensitive to body image issues may gravitate towards platforms like Instagram and things like that. Um, and, and so what we're starting to see is that, you know, everyone's brain is a little bit different. Everyone's brain is a little bit vulnerable. Um, we all crave to have certain psychological needs fulfilled, and there are certain pieces of technology which will sort of fulfill those in a very shallow but kind of neuroscientifically important way, and those are the ones that we get addicted to.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:17

      Can you remember any of the other associations between the type of games that you like to play and the kind of personality that you have?

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)7:24

      Oh, yeah. I mean, so like there, there are some people who like to explore things, right? So th- there are people who, uh, if we kinda think about it this way. Let's say you, you take four trips over four years. Do you go back to the same place over and over and over again, or do you like to check out new places? Right? And there are different kinds of people. Some people are like, "Hey, I really liked that, you know, I, I love visiting the beach," or like, every time I go, "I'm gonna go to the beach, I'm gonna go to the beach, I'm gonna go to the beach. There's a new beach." And so some people are more exploratory, and, and so there are certain kinds of adventure games where you're kind of exploring open world stuff. They'll kinda get more into that. Other people are like optimizers, so you have these games like Factorio and things like that, where, like, people are really ... they, they derive a lot of pleasure out of taking something that's at 70% and bumping it to 71, 75, 78, 80, 81. And these same people, by the way, like, you know, companies like Google and Netflix will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that thing for their job. How can we optimize this particular widget on this particular app? So that depending on what your mind is interested in or excited about, some people also seek adrenaline, which is why they'll play games like first-person shooters, like Fortnite. Um, so different brains want different things, and that'll absolutely determine what kind of games you end up playing.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:42

      What happens to your brain if you use video games excessively?

   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)8:46

       Um, so in, in a nutshell, not good things, but I, I think a lot of people will wonder, you know, what is excessive? So this is where we have to understand that the reason games are fun are because they fulfill particular psychological needs. They, like, scratch certain itches. And what the biggest problem that tends to happen, I know everyone talks about dopamine, and we'll get to that in a second, but the biggest problem that we see is that once you start fulfilling needs in the game, then your brain sort of has this really tricky kind of situation, because if you try to fulfill that need in the real world, it's gonna be harder.

   11. CWChris Williamson9:25

       What's an example?

   12. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)9:27

       So let's say I wanna be number one. The problem is, like, in school, there's only one number one. But in a video game, and if y'all have played video games, you'll, you'll sort of realize this. Like, when you come back from ... Let's say you're down and you're losing in a particular game, and then you come back and you win. There's this adrenaline rush, and you love it. It's like one of the most exciting things in the world. And the problem is like, the, like getting that feeling of being like on the verge of losing and then coming back and winning, very hard to do in the real world. Incredibly difficult to do. And so these are all these kinds of experiences that we crave, this sort of like, you know, hero's journey of like the deck is stacked against you but you're gonna triumph, and this is what we love to see in our media, but, like, we can't experience that in our everyday life, right? Because I've got to study for calculus today. And there's no, like, triumph, like even if you sort of think about reward circuitry, and this is what game, game developers are really good at. So even if I get an A on the test, there's such a gap between taking the test and getting the grade back, that that behavior doesn't get reinforced. Whereas what we know from Pavlovian conditioning is that the faster you give someone the reward, the more likely you are to, you know, uh, im- reinforce behavior. And people wonder like, why is it hard to study? It's because there's no reward that you experience. And, and so I, I'm sorta ... I, I even forget what your original question was, but ...

   13. CWChris Williamson10:50

       I, well, I think that point's really smart, that you eat shit now with the presentation for work, with the studying for the exam, which is in a couple of weeks' time, and then at some point down the line, that one module of that one particular course will finally contribute to the degree that you get in two and a half years, or it'll, it'll get you the job r- raise that you need or the promotion that you want in a couple of years' time at ... maybe at a different company. So I think that's something that's very important. Uh, what I asked was, what happens to your brain-

   14. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)11:17

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:17

       ... if you use video games excessively. You said what you're doing basically is, um, you can create a feedback loop of satisfaction in the virtual world, which is incredibly difficult to replicate in the real world. I think that's what the point was.

   16. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)11:32

       Yeah. And, and, and that's kind of, I think, the core point, is once you start using it excessively, it becomes harder and harder to engage in the real world, and that's what we see when it rises to the level of true addiction. And then there are all kinds of other, like, neuroscience-based effects that we kinda see. So we'll see, for example, alterations of, like, dopamine reinforcement, so people who play a lot of video games will start to become a little bit more anhedonic, which means that their ability to experience pleasure sorta goes down. So if you play a bunch of video games, reading a book just won't keep your attention.... it becomes harder to, like, do sort of IRL stuff.

   17. CWChris Williamson12:11

       Is that the, some kind of dopamine set point or dopamine sensitivity that's being tuned down?

   18. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)12:17

       Yeah. So, that, that's probably what's happening. We don't, we, you know, we have a lot of inferential data on this, but no one is, like, doing brain, brain biopsy, brain biopsies of, of video gamers and seeing how much dopamine is in the synaptic cleft.

   19. CWChris Williamson12:31

       Lobotomize yourself, guys. Come on.

   20. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)12:32

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson12:32

       This is for science. Fucking hell.

   22. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)12:34

       But, but what we tend to see is all the clinical features. So, if you work with a gaming addict, you'll see, like, a lack of motivation. And motivation is primarily governed by, like, dopamine and the nucleus accumbens. Um, we'll see anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy particular things. And then other things that we tend to see is that a lot of addiction is not actually due to dopamine, um, sort of making things fun. So, if you talk to gamers, and I don't know if you've ever binged video games, but, you know, people can play games, I certainly have, for eight, 12 hours at a stretch. But if you ask that person, hour five, hour six, hour seven, "Are you having fun?" they're not gonna be having fun. If you watch them, they're not gonna be like smiling and laughing and triumphing. In, in fact, quite the opposite. What you're gonna see is that they're tilting more, they're getting more frustrated, shorter fused-

   23. CWChris Williamson13:22

       What's tilting?

   24. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)13:22

       Tilting is when you basically, like, get really, really angry and lose your focus in a video game.

   25. CWChris Williamson13:29

       Okay.

   26. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)13:30

       So, so in, in competitive sports, you know, people will like, if you lose, lose a point or something, you'll go and you'll be angry and then people will start to play poorly because you're not, like, focused.

   27. CWChris Williamson13:39

       Oh, it's like getting the yips in a normal sport, like baseball or whatever. The guy just can't hit-

   28. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)13:44

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson13:45

       ... can't, can't, can't hit the... Right, okay. So, we have this scenario in which supernormal stimuli have been able to create a overclocked environment for our brains to exist in. We are, uh, unfit for purpose. We have, uh, uh, an adaptive pro-... Or we have a mismatch, an evolutionary mismatch as it would be called, that what we're able to enjoy virtually is difficult to deliver to us in the real world. That means that the more time that you spend online, the more and more, uh, unseductive and unattractive, I suppose, the real world looks. Now, some of this is, uh, physiological in terms of the adjustments that we've got with dopamine sensitivity and stuff like that. But I imagine as well that a good chunk of it is just the story that you tell yourself about the kind of things that you can do, the, um, the capacities that you believe that you have, the habits that you've got, the routine that you're in. It's more than just physiologically what's happening. It's, like, uh, existentially what it's doing to you. So, given that

3. 14:47 – 25:39

   Can You Be Addicted to Social Media?

   1. CWChris Williamson14:47

      that's what's happening with video games, video games, you know, created to be compelling, uh, I, I think people kind of understand that there's a degree of entertainment there. Something that probably even more people have a problem with would be social media. Is there something diff- different happening to the brain, to our compulsion with social media? Is it right to even say that social media is an addiction? Is it a compulsion? How do you parse all of this apart?

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)15:11

      Yeah. So, I, I think social media is similar in some ways and different in other ways, I guess, no surprise, right? So, if we, once again, the, the, what's similar? So, the most similar thing is that platforms are developing things that are more engaging. It's just what they engage with varies depending on not only the specific type of game, but games versus social media. And even within social media, you'll see different kinds of engagement. So, generally speaking, social media engages with a couple of things. The most important thing that social media engages with is emotional activation. So, if you think about why does a human being switch from, let's say, Twitter to Reddit or Reddit to Twitter or Twitter to TikTok or Reddit to TikTok, what you tend to see is that if you're emotionally engaged, you're gonna stay on. And if you get bored, that's when you switch. But what does boredom usually mean? People may think it's dopamine, but it's not actually dopamine. Because a lot of people will use a lot of social media even though they feel really bad. And the best example of this is some people will, like, break up with their ex, right? And then, like, late at night, you're feeling bad about yourself and you start stalking your ex. That doesn't make you feel good. That's not dopamine. And then you see your ex out with someone else who's more attractive than you or maybe has a nicer car or something like that. And so a lot of people will actually, if you really tunnel down, and there's research into this that shows that what is the emotional experience of engaging in social media, it's not always positive. So, if you really look at, like, what kind of social media crosses your, your feed, it's stuff that's emotionally engaging. We're hearing about war, we're hearing about climate change, we're hearing about something... And some news organizations even, like, play into this, right? Where, like, fearmongering is a thing. And, and so what we start to see is it's really emotional engagement that social media, like, really captures. Um, and so the people who are kind of vulnerable to being emotionally engaged will, will sort of get caught up in social media. Another thing that we tend to see is that the human identity, and you kind of alluded to this existential point, so, like, social media allows us to create a virtual identity. And we can start to get reinforcement of, like, these years of millions of years of evolutionary circuitry through the internet. So, I wanna be well-respected in psychiatry, or let's say in, in, in a society. So, I became a psychiatrist or medical doctor. Then even then, as a medical doctor, like, there were times in my life where I was kind of thinking about, "Well, like, is psychiatry, like, is that being a real doctor?" How will I feel if I say I'm a neurosurgeon? Which my, my wife was like, "You should be a neurosurgeon." And like, what does she care? She wants to introduce her husband who's a neurosurgeon. And I was like, "Well, I've decided to do something close." It's in the same ballpark, but it's a little bit different. So, we all crave the approval of other human beings. And now social media quantifies that, right? Do people like me? Like, normally the human mind doesn't really know. Like, there's no way to measure it, right? You sort of feel it. But now I get 100 likes and someone else gets 200.And so what social media really does is captures a lot of that identity-focused kind of people who are concerned about being something, self-esteem. Now we have filters which sort of fix the problem and make the problem worse, which is oftentimes what we see in, in social media. So the more that I use filters, the better I feel about my presence on the internet, but each time I use a filter, I'm not accepting the way that I look in real life, and so it'll make the problem worse. Which is why I think we see some of il- a lot of this, like, extreme filter using, uh, usage that almost doesn't, you know, seems like it isn't real and people can kinda tell. Why do people do that? I think it's 'cause they kinda go down this rabbit hole.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:55

      The comparison between are you having fun now and are you still using the technology now is so interesting because, you know, I, I think about when I do get stuck dr- doomscrolling through something, and if I was to ask myself that question, you know, after 15 minutes probably or 20 minutes on any social media, I'm no longer having fun.

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)19:15

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:17

      I spoke to Huberman about this and I, I thought this was a very interesting reframe, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. He sees social media usage more as a compulsion than an addiction. In your opinion, is there a meaningful difference between the two? Do you believe that this is the case? Does it even matter whether it's a case or not?

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)19:38

      Well, I mean, w- what, what do you, what, how are you defining the word compulsion?

   7. CWChris Williamson19:42

      He said that it was more like a compulsive action to pull the phone out, to look at it, and to scroll, to cycle through all of the apps, because I can't remember his definition of addiction. I want to say it is, uh, continuing to use a stimulus long after the satisfactory nature of the stimulus has been completed, something like that. I'm gonna guess that you'll know the, the definition that I'm using.

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)20:08

      Yeah, so let, let's, let's talk, let's define things, okay? So let's start by defining what is an addiction. So the features of an addiction, first of all, is that it impairs function, so it causes you some kind of damage. And the problem with addictions is that they're solutions that fix a short-term problem, but damage things long term. So if we, we look at a lot of features of addiction, like let's say I'm addicted to opiates. And what opiates do is they make me feel good temporarily, but they cause me problems because let's say I'm stressed about work and I use an opiate or I use marijuana or something like that. My stress goes away, but it doesn't fix any of my problems. And if I, let's say, get high today and then I don't work on this project or whatever, like, I, I have one less day to work on it. So an addiction is, is usually a behavior that we engage in that despite the damage that it does to us, we continue to engage in it. Now, why do we engage in addictions? Usually, it's because they provide some kind of relief or reward. And if we look at social media and video games, they're sort of very similar to addictions in the sense that they suppress negative emotional circuitry, which by the way is why it's more than dopamine. So even if you play a game for eight hours, let's say I'm ruining my life, and this is an experience that I had firsthand, right, was failing out of college. And like, how could I forget failing out of college? I could play video games. So it's not even that the game is fun at eight or nine hours, but that sup- suppression of the amygdala and the limbic system is, like, kinda there. So we know that a lot of what makes video games addictive is, like, the fact that they push problems away temporarily, which is very similar to all these other substances, like if I get drunk, right, I'm not worried about anything. So in that way, y- you know, that's what an addiction is. Now a compulsion, at least the, the technical term of, like, a clinical term, right? So if we're talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder, in that way a compulsion is usually a behavior that we engage in that has some kind of effect on our cognition. So, so it, like, it, I have to do something to make me feel a particular way. And what I would say is there's absolutely like a habitual, that's maybe what I would use. There's absolutely a habitual or a conditioning aspect to technology usage, which they're very good at. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but this happens to me all the time where I will realize that I am not liking what I'm using, like, a, a particular device for, and then what I'll do is close the app and then open it right up again. So we are absolutely being conditioned, but i- this is also where if you kind of look at it, the circuitry is a little bit different. There's habit circuitry, there's dopamine reward circuitry, there's, like, suppressing our amygdala, and all of that stuff is active when it comes to technology usage. So I think it's kind of like all of the abo- above.

   9. CWChris Williamson23:04

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   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)24:21

       Yeah, absolutely. And why is it coming together so, so profoundly? It's really interesting because there's like, there's almost this Darwinian slug match going on right now between platforms. So if you look at like TikTok versus YouTube Shorts versus Instagram Reels versus whatever Google's gonna come up with at some point, or I guess they've got YouTube Shorts. Um, y- you know, so what are all these platforms doing? They're actually competing for your attention. The prize that they get is like your mind. And so like whether Google wins, TikTok wins, or Amazon wins, or whoever wins, the one guaranteed thing is that there's definitely gonna be one loser, and that's actually you. You are gonna lose control of your mind, which is exactly what happens. And even then, I don't think the platforms are evil. I mean, maybe they are, but that's, hasn't been my experience. I think it's just they have a product, right? And everyone wants their eyes on their product. And so what they're figuring out is how can I engage people by tapping into a different, you know, circuit of the brain? How can I help condition someone to use my app? So it's not just about dopamine, it's not just about emote, it's emotional engagement, it's dopamine, it's habit formation, all that kind of stuff. Even pings and notifications, they're good at that.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:38

       Given

4. 25:39 – 31:39

   Setting Healthy Boundaries with Gaming & Social Media

   1. CWChris Williamson25:39

      that we are hopelessly outgunned up against billion-dollar companies with machine learning algorithms, some of which are the most powerful ever designed in human history, and an entire team of software engineers behind every single button press, how can people set healthy boundaries around gaming and social media?

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)25:58

      So I think thankfully we've, we've got a lot of good answers. So I think this is where prior, uh, to going to medical school, I spent seven years studying to become a monk. And the cool thing is that like what the monks, if you look at sort of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and like meditation and mindfulness, they really figured out like how the mind works, and in a different way from like the West. So in the West, we sort of looked at a thousand different minds and we sort of said, "Okay, if we average them all together, like what floats to the surface?" But in the East, they had sample sizes of one. So they're like, "Okay, how can I understand where my desires come from? How can I get control of my desires?" A lot of that stuff is kind of baked in. And what I actually find is the most effective is starting with some of those principles. So understanding, first of all, that all of technology really causes one problem, causes you to lose awareness. So any time you get sucked in, and in fact, this is why we want to use technology, right? I, I wanna go into a video game and I wanna get sucked into the video game. I wanna binge-watch shows. So if you look at like HBO and Netflix or whatever, right? They, they like really want us to binge-watch and we love binge-watching. So if you look at the common element to all these things, it's a loss of awareness. So the more that we can cultivate awareness of things, the better off we'll be. And there's, there's good evidence from this from the world of psychiatry as well. So if you look at like addiction psychiatry, what we find is that if you ask someone who relapses, they'll say, "Yeah, I was sober for six months and then I don't know what happened. I just relapsed." But what you really discover and, and we sort of see this is that people who are vulnerable to addiction have a lack of awareness of their internal emotional state. And as emotional stressors rise and rise and rise, they like reach a particular threshold that causes them to relapse. So a big part of what we do clinically when we work with people is just raising awareness. And so I'd say the first thing if you wanna set a healthy boundary is like be aware of yourself. Why do you reach it, for it in the first place? Like, are there particular times of the day that you reach for it? Stuff like that.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:06

      Is there an emotional state that you find yourself in that causes you to get your phone out or to open up social media on your laptop or to start watching Netflix or to start playing a video game?

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)28:16

      Absolutely. So a, a simple example of this is like if you think about 30 years ago if I was trying to study, I would get distracted, right? I wouldn't be able to focus on the textbook. And that's okay. I would get distracted for like a couple minutes, I'm sitting in a library, I don't go anywhere, I don't do anything, my mind wanders, I lose five minutes, I lose 10 minutes. And then I come back to the text, I'm like, "All right, time to get back to work." Now what happens is even a 30-second distraction, I'm studying, I pull out my phone, and I click a button, and then my mind is sucked into this like, you know, pipeline of like attention-grabbing behavior, and five minutes becomes three hours. And so even a, you know, 30-second attentional lapse now costs me an hour of time.

   5. CWChris Williamson29:03

      Okay. Does that mean, therefore, that we just need, or the most robust solution to stop yourself from using computers and social media is to go places where you don't have your phone and you don't have video games? Is that the, is that the most robust tactic?

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)29:19

      Well, so I, I mean, I think it's kind of like a lot of different things, right? So we, we, um, I think it's first of all cultivating more awareness of, of the present and how you feel and what your triggers are. And then at, at the other end, there are absolutely environmental aspects. So one thing that, you know, I'll tell people is that if you're trying to get work done, it's a good idea to silence your phone or even move it to the next room. Um, uh, I, I, I'll tell people also like, for example, if I'm working with patients who are having trouble with sleeping at night, uh, to tell them, "Hey, keep your phone like at the opposite end of the room or even outside of your room." And then everyone sort of asks me like, "But what if there's an emergency? What if I get a phone call in the middle of the night?" And then I turn around and I ask them, "How many times have you gotten a call in the last two years that someone has needed your help within five minutes?" Right? And the answer is almost always zero, unless I'm working with a doctor, in which case like, you know, we have pagers still. Um, so I think there are absolutely kind of conditioning things or environmental things that you can do, using grayscale, being really aggressive with notifications, um, but also like the physical location of your phone.And this is the other thing that, that platform developers are really good in, getting good at. So, if you think about biometrics, the thing about biometrics and face ID is that it actually reduces the time to access your phone. So now, even like the three seconds that it used to take, or two seconds, to put in your code, now you just have to pick it up and it, it knows it's you-

   7. CWChris Williamson30:43

      Even that friction has been removed?

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)30:45

      Yep, that's what they're doing, removing all the friction.

   9. CWChris Williamson30:48

      Okay. So we have understanding your triggers, understanding the mental states that you get into, the emotional states that you're in, um, whether it's been a hard day at work, whether this is some sort of coping mechanism because things are stressful or you're just tired or whatever, what are the precursors that happen before you then descend into using technology in a way which, after the event, you reflect on and wish that you hadn't done? There are some environmental cues and factors that we can use, uh, distance being one of them, in that you can't use a screen that you can't put your hands on or see, uh, so keeping it away, sleeping with your phone outside of the bedroom. Is there anything else when it comes to good boundaries? What are the other longest levers?

   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)31:31

       Yeah. So I, I think the other thing to consider is that, so we think about this as like a problem that has a solution. We don't think about boundaries

5. 31:39 – 43:58

   Humans Have Become Intolerant to Boredom

   1. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)31:39

      as skills that are built up, right? So if you think about like a muscle, like a, "How do I lift more weight? I need to maybe do more weightlifting." And if you kind of think about, "How do I hold a boundary against a technology that is becoming more and more invasive?" you get stronger at holding boundaries. So what I'll do is I'll also give people exercises, and this largely comes from the meditative tradition. So you can like formally sit down and meditate, but there's a lot of exercises that you can develop based on the theory of meditation. My favorite thing to have people do is no more phones in bathrooms.

   2. CWChris Williamson32:15

      Hmm.

   3. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)32:15

      So like, everyone takes their phone to the bathroom now. And if you just like think about it, like if I like say that and people are listening to that, the instinctive reaction is going to be like, "Oh my God, don't take that thing away." But like, what are you gonna lose?

   4. CWChris Williamson32:30

      What am I gonna do while I'm pooping, Dr. K? What do I-

   5. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)32:33

      You're just, you're gonna do what human beings have done for millions of years prior to the development of technology.

   6. CWChris Williamson32:38

      Be with the poop.

   7. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)32:40

      Eh-

   8. CWChris Williamson32:40

      Just be with it.

   9. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)32:41

      So, so what's happened in our society as a whole is we have become intolerant of boredom.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:47

       Yes.

   11. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)32:47

       So if you want to get control over every bit of technology in your life, you have to learn how to not fear boredom and give yourself small doses of boredom. You know, don't take an audio book the next time you go for a walk or don't listen to music or something like that, right? And, and just start to like, pick particular discrete things. Don't watch things while you eat. Um, so, so there are all kinds of things that you can sort of set kind of cer- certain lines and then really practice those, and then your mind will literally become stronger, so your ability to restrain your attention and tolerate boredom will increase.

   12. CWChris Williamson33:24

       Is that something that you see reflected neurologically, uh, psychologically? Is this something that actually shows up in the literature somehow?

   13. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)33:32

       Oh, absolutely. So, so one simple exam- in so many ways. So let, let's talk about literature in different ways. So the first thing is, let's talk about, let's say psychological literature. So we know that, for example, people with ADHD have difficulty restraining their impulses, and they tend to get highly distracted. So we know that meditation, for example, helps people with impulsivity and improving focus. That we kind of know. If you sort of think about it, what is the practice of meditation? It's like literally practicing focusing. On a neurological level, we know that there are brain correlates with things like ADHD, like frontal lobe dysfunction. So the frontal lobes are our master control parts of the brain that- that they can sort of restrain and direct our attention. And so what happens when we do things like meditate or some of these practices is that we learn how to like, it strengthens our frontal lobes. And there's even data that shows that it, it strengthens sort of the inhibitory circuits of the brain, so our frontal lobes can go and put the brakes on a particular impulse. And then even if we're talking about old, old, old literature, so we're talking about the Sanskrit literature from like 5,000 years ago, there's this, this one thing, there's this one principle called ekatva abhyas, which means focusing on one thing at a time. And thousands of years ago, they were like, "Hey, here's a technique to focus on just one thing at a time. And you can kind of practice just doing one thing at a time." And so there's a lot of scientific stuff from everywhere from clinical literature to basic science literature to even like old stuff.

   14. CWChris Williamson35:09

       A lot of the work that I've done, a lot of the conversations that I've had, um, Adam Alter who wrote, uh, Irresistible, um, one of the ladies who is a lead researcher in I want to say it's, uh, cybernetics, is that con- uh, computer brain interfacing-

   15. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)35:27

       Mm.

   16. CWChris Williamson35:27

       ... stuff like that, uh, um, but from a psychological side, and every single person I've spoken to about attention says people believe that they can multitask. First off, you can't. Secondly, what you think that you mean by multitasking isn't multitasking, it's parallel processing, and you definitely can't do that. You can maybe task switch and lose a ton of focus whilst task switching, but you definitely can't parallel process. You can do one thing that you're focused on. You can drive and talk, but you're not thinking about driving, you're passively driving. One of the things I've considered throughout this conversation so far is, uh, we've spoken about the fact that social media and video games are very compelling. They cause people to be, um, uh, incredibly motivated to continue to do them, which can make the real world, uh, less attractive. One of the solutions to that, presumably, would be to take some of the principles of video games and move them into the real world, to gamify some of the things that you want yourself to do in the real world. You may have read Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson.

   17. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)36:30

       I, I haven't.

   18. CWChris Williamson36:31

       Good book. Very, very simple, uh, idea which is that after you do something that you want to do more of or that gives you, in the real world, a, uh, little, uh, trigger of happiness, you go for a walk, you complete a workout. Today, I managed to get (laughs) my email inbox down to zero. I got to inbox zero and it's been in three figures for months, for fucking ages. And we are tempted to immediately just go, "Right, well, I, I, I... Brilliant, that's done, now on to the next thing. What have I got to do next?" His advice is to sit for about one to two minutes and just allow yourself to kind of marinade in, "Wow, I, I did a thing. That was good. That was really good. I completed the workout, I went for the walk, I got up on time, I did the meditation, I got my morning routine, I got rid of 120 emails." (sighs) "That's nice." And then you can go about your day. So, uh, his... He comes from a neuroscience background. His argument... And he was the guy, I'm pretty sure, that coined, uh, "Neurons that fire together, wire together."

   19. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)37:35

       Mm.

   20. CWChris Williamson37:36

       So, if you want to do more of a thing, allow yourself to feel the reward from it, yet we do... I notice it in myself. I finally complete a task and it's, it's kind of like relief, but it's almost like bitter relief. I'm like, "Right, thank God that's done. Now on to the next thing." You go, no, no, no, you've just earned this period where you can sit and, and be all self-righteous and, and up on a high horse for at least a couple of minutes. Uh, so that's one tactic that I'm trying to use a lot more at the moment, which is allowing myself to kind of genuinely sit with a good experience, uh, and feel that for more than a nanosecond.

   21. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)38:15

       Okay. How's that working out for you?

   22. CWChris Williamson38:18

       Um, I need to do it more, but it is good. Uh, I've certainly been able to make myself feel more pleasure in advance of completing something that I usually don't want to do. So, let's say that I am, uh, going to go and do a hard workout or I'm gonna go do zone, zone 2 cardio, right? It's the most boring thing in the world. I know that at the end of that, I'm going to feel good. And because I've spent a good bit of time sitting with that good feeling, it almost feels like I've started to bring that feeling before I begin to do it, that I associate the activity of doing something, even though it sucks and it's kinda boring, because I know at the end of it, it's going to be good. I've managed to bring that feeling from the end to the start, which has reduced the activation energy to go and do the thing.

   23. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)39:05

       Yeah, so I, I think it's, it's really useful to try to do stuff like that. I think we see that a lot, for example, with like practicing gratitude, where a lot of people will skate over their wins and focus on their Ls. I think a big thing that people don't really realize is we're not wired to do that. So, if you kind of think about, you know, people who sit and relax after getting a W don't get to where you and I are, Chris. The people who say, "I got to inbox zero today. Good job. What's next?" That's what actually correlates with, mm, like material success. Right? And I see this a lot because I've worked with a lot of people who are like very high functioning, like entrepreneurs, like CEOs, people in finance, in medicine, and neurosurgeons and whatnot. And it's the people who drive themselves relentlessly forward that actually correlates with a lot of success, which is where h- this whole like sigma grind set kind of stuff comes from, is, right, like it's about grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. And that's also where we need to kind of stay- take a step back and really ask ourselves, "What is our brain wired for?" It's not wired for contentment. It's wired for survival. And so what, what... It, it's kind of interesting, right, 'cause you're working so hard to be like, to be able to enjoy something that you should do. And so it's kind of like you're in this e- relentless pursuit of like better. Right? So like, okay, I, I... Why do I need to exercise? To be better. And now I'm not happy with being better, so what do I need to do? I need to get better at being better. I need to learn how to be better. And so it's kind of bizarre, but sometimes I'll see this with a lot of the really successful people I work with. It's like now even happiness is something that I need to grind towards. And I'm gonna read books and I'm gonna understand neuroscience, but if you really kinda take a step back, it's actually a manifestation of the same thing. You're gonna grind-

   24. CWChris Williamson40:58

       When pe- pe-

   25. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)40:58

       ... your, your way to enlightenment.

   26. CWChris Williamson41:00

       People even use their rest and recovery days as part of their productivity.

   27. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)41:05

       Absolutely.

   28. CWChris Williamson41:05

       "Oh, well I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take this day off because it means that tomorrow I can come back harder and I can work even harder."

   29. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)41:10

       Ab- ab-

   30. CWChris Williamson41:10

       No, hang on, hang on a fucking second. That (laughs) , that is not, that is not what a day off is supposed to be. A day off is not supposed to be part of your productivity system to allow you to come back to work harder. There's this really awesome example of this and someone emailed me and said that I got it right. I thought I got it wrong, and this guy emailed who'd studied classics and told me that I got it right. In ancient Greece, the ancient Greek word for work translated as "not at leisure". So work was seen as an aberration. It was something that you did when you weren't doing the leisure thing. Roll the clock forward now. Leisure is the thing that facilitates work. It's not even the thing that you do when you're not at work. It's the thing which allows you to do more work.
6. 43:58 – 56:25

   Learning From the Most Online Figures

   1. CWChris Williamson43:58

      Speaking of high performers, you've spoken to some of the world's biggest streamers, people like Pokimane and xQc and Asmongold, MoistCr1TiKaL, et cetera, et cetera. Ludwig as well. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from speaking to people who are the most online, uh, that they've, they've won being online, they're the most online people on the planet? What have you learned from speaking to them?

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)44:21

      Um, wow. So, a couple of different things. The first is, it's not nearly as fun or easy as they make it look. So oftentimes, and I, I've worked with a lot of people, so, uh, you know, was in Boston for a while and working with people out of startups and stuff out of MIT and Harvard, and just really, really hardworking people. I've worked with people at like Goldman Sachs and Google and, and whatnot. And, and like, there are a lot of people who work really hard. I don't think people really appreciate how hard the people who are at the top are, and I don't think people really appreciate the balance of skills that's necessary to achieve that, so it's some amount of spontaneity and being able to have fun on command. So, these are people who are in the business of friendship, and I think the biggest thing that people don't understand is the level of sacrifice it takes to get there. So, what we see is someone who's huge and recognized and has all these sponsorship deals and presumably has all this money and things like that, but the levels of sacrifice... because what they really have to do is sacrifice just about every dimension of their life. So, what we sort of think about, even when I compare them to bankers, is like bankers get to go to work and have their professional relationships, and they get to go home and they get to have their friends. But what we really see with streamers is they sacrifice on every dimension. So, your friends will invite you or not invite you depending on what the collab will get them, right? And then if you turn some- so like even friendship becomes a part of your job, like the, the, the other thing that I think people don't really appreciate is that the human brain is not designed to deal with criticism from millions of people. So, if we think about like tribal structures, you know, if I grew up in a tribe of 300 people, how often am I gonna get criticized? And we have these different biases that people don't really think about, which is that even if 99 people tell me that they like me, if one person tells me that they don't like me, that's the thing that my mind is gonna clue in on. So now, you take these people who get millions of points of feedback and their brain is literally designed, and I've seen this as a streamer myself, where I can see tons of messages scrolling past faster than I can read them, but my brain can pick out the one thing that is actually damaging. It actually enters into my conscious thought, and this is where the brain is processing all kinds of infer- in- information that we're not aware of. And so I, I think people don't really get how hard it is, and the beautiful thing is that the people who are successful are the ones who are able to find some kind of balance. Otherwise, you just can't sustain it and you're like, you'll burn out and then... doesn't work. So, they're amazing, resilient in- individuals.

   3. CWChris Williamson47:12

      It's almost like a battle of attrition in that way.

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)47:15

      Absolutely, and most people don't... can't make it to the finish line. It's like a marathon that never ends.

   5. CWChris Williamson47:21

      There's a quote from Jason Pagan, one of my favorites, that says, "Your heroes aren't gods. They're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else."

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)47:32

      Yeah, I, I think that that's probably true. I, I think... but what I, what I see at the highest levels of performance is that you usually have to be good at a lot of things, and you can't neglect too much.

   7. CWChris Williamson47:43

      Because it's gonna come and catch up with you eventually.

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)47:45

      Absolutely.

   9. CWChris Williamson47:46

      You know, if-

   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)47:46

       Your health will catch up with you. Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson47:48

       But that's... so there's a, a, a guy in the UK who is a weightlifting coach, uh, sorry, a powerlifting coach, can't get that wrong, and one of my friends started working with him. He works with people for free. He's this savant programmer, unbelievably smart, but he's 78 or something, sort of old guy, and he gets unbelievable results for the athletes he works with. He doesn't charge anybody. He's already made his money. He retires. He works with people on invite only, and the programming is ruthlessly hard. What I realized was he was getting around about two to two and a half years of progress within one year of programming, but the reason that he was doing this was because he was absolutely battering his athletes into the ground. Now, what you end up with is a scenario where the athletes who end up surviving this, who don't get injured, who don't get burned out, who don't get too tired, who don't lose passion...... obviously are going to have made unbelievable progress because the programming's brutal. It's more volume, it's more frequent, it's higher weight, it's higher RPEs. And survivability bias or survivorship bias-

   12. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)48:52

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson48:52

       ... means that the only ones that do make it to the end, by virtue of the fact they've made it to the end, have unbelievable progress. What you don't get to see are the attrition rate.

   14. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)49:02

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson49:02

       It's how many people fell away? What's your churn? How many people got injured? How many people gave up on their passion? And this is a lens. I need to come up with a name for it. I need to meme this. This is a lens through which I see a lot of very difficult pursuits, that basically it- it- i- it does come down to a battle of attrition. And if there is somebody that can out-suffer you, if there is someone for whom, uh, they can go seven days without seeing sunlight but you can only go half a day without seeing sunlight, in some regards, they have a competitive advantage.

   16. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)49:36

       Y- yeah. So I, you know, I- I'd- I'd express a little bit of pushback on that. So I think that's a commonly accepted view, that the people who sacrifice the most get the most. But honestly, Chris, in my experience with lots of people and even myself, like so, you know, I did pretty well in medical school. I didn't study over two hours a day. Like I had col-... Like I tried it for the first month, where everyone else was like, "You know, we're going to go to class and we're going to stay at the library at 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night," and I was like, "I just can't do that." So I studied two hours a day and I did fine. And- and I think that there's this idea that being successful requires sacrifice, but I think there's a huge selection bias there. Usually, the people who are talking about the sacrifice they made to succeed are like, "There's a selection bias there." The people who are like, "Yeah, it was actually pretty easy for me," you don't actually hear from them. And so th- there's something almost like psychological, where I see that, you know, if you succeed and you made a sacrifice, it's very psychologically difficult to swallow that you didn't need to make the sacrifice in the first place. So- so-

   17. CWChris Williamson50:50

       Oh, wow.

   18. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)50:51

       ... it's- it's really interesting. There's like data behind this too. So the way that people value what they get correlates with the price that they pay. There's a study that was done, I don't remember exactly where, I- I- I'm slipping on the reference, but people actually asked people who joined fraternities in university, "How good is your fraternity?" And what it, what, uh, really interesting variable is that the more the fraternity demeans you, the higher the value of the fraternity, even though by some objective measures, like some people have really good connections. But one of the worst fraternities on campus, people were like, "This is the best fraternity." And what was their hazing process? They stripped them down naked, tied them all to trees, and then were urinated on by other people. And when you go through that sacrifice, you can't psychologically say, "Yeah, I didn't get anything for that. I just sacrificed a ton for nothing and I didn't need to." But l- really, the work that I do with people is all about, hey, actually, you don't need to sacrifice that much. Build a healthy, balanced lifestyle, get yourself into the flow state more often, and you can actually achieve just as much by paying half the c- the cost.

   19. CWChris Williamson52:04

       With nowhere near as much suffering. That's-

   20. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)52:06

       Absolutely.

   21. CWChris Williamson52:07

       This is a really, really important insight. I absolutely love it. I love the reframe. I love everything about this. I think as well, there is something around an incentive or there is a disincentive for people to talk about things not being hard on the internet. First off, if it wasn't difficult, then that means that it's less of a costly signal to you, so the achievement that you have is less impressive. Secondly, there is so much more criticism on the internet for you if it doesn't look like you had to go through th- "Oh, easy for you to say. Must be nice for you to say." Because if somebody else does find it more difficult or can't have theory of mind to understand that it could be done just through more of a flow state or less grinding or whatever, that means that you're gonna get criticized more. There's another, uh, lesson that I learned when I was on Rogan's show and I'd memed it into Rogan's Value Difficulty Conflation. Look at the car he's driving, look at the watch he's wearing, look at the girl he's with. That's unattainable to many people so it seems like it's valuable, but then you attained it and you realized, "Oh, this isn't valuable. This is just difficult to get," and there's a difference. There's a big difference. What's valuable is something that fulfills-

   22. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)53:14

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson53:14

       ... you intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, lovingly. Most smart people realize that there is value in stepping outside of their comfort and- and on the other side of discomfort is something valuable. We're told that things are difficult to attain because if they weren't d- th- w- we're told that worthwhile things are difficult to attain because if they weren't difficult to attain, they wouldn't be worthwhile. And this is how non-valuable but difficult things get slipped into our desires without us noticing. Attaining something worthwhile is often going to be difficult, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's worthwhile.

   24. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)53:47

       Absolutely. And I- I think the other thing there is that you've got to also think about the audience, right? So what resonates with the audience? What resonates with the audience is, "Hey, if something is hard for me, and you tell me it's super difficult and you achieved, that fits with my worldview, so I'm gonna watch you." Whereas if someone says, "Hey, this is pretty easy. This guy is taking stuff for granted," just like you said, "I'm gonna click off onto something else." So there's abs- absolutely a selection bias towards validating the difficult experiences that most people have. I think the big irony is that oftentimes, and if you just think about something that you've struggled with yourself, oftentimes once you figure it out, it's actually pretty easy, right? But people kind of ignore that and they just think that, oh, like y- you know, it's- it's kind of bizarre, but like they just think like, oh, this stuff is hard. But once you figure out, let's say, how to talk to girls, like you just kinda know and it's actually pretty easy.

   25. CWChris Williamson54:46

       This is-

   26. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)54:47

       But if you ta-

   27. CWChris Williamson54:47

       ... I suppose the, uh, the current trend of sigma grindset, monk mode, uh, suffering online as well, plays into this, right?

   28. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)54:56

       Absolutely, right? Because people think, like ... 'Cause w- what, what do people want? People want a guaranteed way to get to the top. They'll pay a sacrifice if you can guarantee success and that's why it's like sigma grindset. You just sacrifice everything you've got and then you'll get to the top. The big-

   29. CWChris Williamson55:11

       Uh, this is the same as the dude that coaches people, that, "Look, the, the ... You are either going to give up or you're going to succeed because the level of effort and discomfort that you're going through is inevitably going to bear fruits at some point in the future. However, the cost may be your sanity and health and longevity and, and well-being along the way."

   30. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)55:35

       Yeah. I mean, so I, I ... Like, that's a perspective, but I think honestly, like, I love being a clinical doctor because medicine teaches you some really hard lessons and the top of which is, you can fight really hard and you can still lose. Like, I've seen people die of cancer, I've seen people, you know ... And that has n- Like, this is the thing that I think a lot of people don't get, is that sometimes people are just gonna lose. Like, not everyone can succeed, not everyone can be a billionaire, not everyone ... And, and, you know, I, I ... it's kind of bizarre, but I think those people can absolutely be helped, they can absolutely move forward, but I, I, I think this sort of idea of, like, you know, y- you can either give up or you can succeed, but my question is can you succeed in, like, 10% of the time if you do it smarter?
7. 56:25 – 1:01:07

   Try Easy Before Trying Hard

   1. CWChris Williamson56:25

      you square the fact that even people that try incredibly hard will sometimes lose with not wanting to disempower people from, uh, or disincentivize people from trying hard and from starting things? "Well, if I try hard and I'm gonna lose, what's the point in even starting?"

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)56:42

      Yeah. So, so my, my thought is, first of all, don't try hard. Can you try easy? So if you really look at it, like most things, uh, uh ... Most human beings who struggle with something, it's actually like a gap in understanding. And, and so, like, even in the ancient, you know, Hindu and Buddhist texts, they say that Avidya, which is ignorance, is the cause of suffering. Like, if you just don't know how stuff works, right? So, like, I had a kid the o- um, one of my kids the other day tried to open a pill bottle, like, for their, her gummy vitamins and there's just a technique to open pill bottles. And she can try as hard as she wants to until she understands the technique. And once you have the, uh, the technique, it becomes easy. And there's even stuff with, with things like studying and things like that where there's a certain ... There's a science of spaced repetition, there's a science of concentration, there's a science of, like, health, right? If we take particular things and you facilitate your gut microbiome, it's like ... It's crazy, I've had some patients who have had inflammatory bowel disease for like 15, 20 years and no one has ever talked to them about, like, controlling their diet and, and supporting their, their gut microbiome. And they'll, like, do this stuff, so they went through, like, six months of treatment and then they're, like, they're cured, right? They have no, no symptoms now. And so I, I think the, the biggest thing that, that human beings really struggle with is not that, like, you need to try harder, and in fact I think that's ... It's such a ... I- i- if you really think about it, I'm not trying to throw shade on anyone, but you either give up or you succeed. That can be a really toxic mentality because if you're doing things wrong, what is that person gonna tell you to do? Try harder. And if you're still doing it wrong, try harder, try harder, try harder.

   3. CWChris Williamson58:21

      Try harder at the wrong things.

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)58:22

      Right? A- and I've seen this ... Once again, not trying to throw shade on anyone who's religious, but sometimes people are like, "Yeah, you didn't pray hard enough. That's the reason it's not working." And so you, you create a situation where it's like an unfalsifiable hypothesis that, that creates a value judgment on the person that, "Hey, if this isn't working, you gave up. You're a loser." There are quitters and there are doers, and you fall into one category. And, and the reason those things work is because it's really validating 'cause that's how those people feel about themselves in the first place, which is why they're listening to a life coach. Because if they're happily married with, like, two kids and, like, you know ... I mean, maybe they're sort of into the success stuff and, and things like that, but, like, a lot of those people just don't listen, you know, 'cause they're out, too busy living their lives. And so there's a lot of stuff going on here that we've just got to be careful about. And sometimes, I mean, I'm not saying that this stuff is bad. We'll encourage people to work hard and don't give up and stuff like that, and sometimes you gotta try, but I think there's, like, a differential diagnosis here where it's not that, you know, you didn't try hard enough. It's just one of the reasons why things may not be working out.

   5. CWChris Williamson59:29

      I have a friend, Aaron, and every time that we're in the gym, he's very well trained in movement, uh, and we were doing ... holding some Copenhagen plank, which for me absolutely wrecks. It wrecks my lower body, it wrecks my upper body. And he shouted from the other side of the room, "What would this be like if it was easier?" That was his cue. His cue to me was 'cause you, you're tense and everything's hard and you're sweating and it hurts and I'm breathing heavily and fuck, I hate this position and shit, my adductors are so weak. And he just shouted from the other side of the room, "What would this be like if it was easier?" And I think that's a, a cue and a question. Uh, Greg Mckeown talks about it as well in his second book. Just what, what would it be like if it was easier? What would this challenge that you're facing be like if it was a little bit easier?

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:00:14

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

      I think that's a lovely cue.

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:00:15

      And, and if you kind of think about, you know, like weightlifting, right? What's the point of a spotter? How much help ... How much energy does a spotter actually provide when you're on that last rep and you can't push it any higher, right? And the spotter just gives you, like, two fingers, just a tiny bit. And, and that's honestly what we've seen, is that people don't need to try a whole lot harder. What they really need is usually a tiny bit of help.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:00:40

      I can't stop thinking about a video from BroScienceLife. You know Don Mazzetti? He's, like, a comedian, does YouTube stuff. This channel's been around for forever. And, um-

   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:00:48

       I ... Yeah, I think I've seen a little bit of his stuff.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:00:50

       He d-... (laughs) He did a breakdown of all of the different gym archetypes, I can't stop seeing it, that he basically realized that, uh, sigma gym bros, he said, is gym emo, that s- sigma males are gym emo. And I was like, "Oh my God, I c- I can no longer unsee that." Um, so

8. 1:01:07 – 1:06:18

   Is There Evidence for Dopamine Fasting?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

      coming back to what we spoke about before, we were talking about dopamine. What are your thoughts on dopamine fasting? Is there any evidence for this?

   2. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:01:15

      Um, so I think that there is some evidence for it, I think some of it is pretty good, but the amount of bad explanations out there are really, really high.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

      What's the landscape of dopamine fasting then? What's hot and what's not?

   4. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:01:33

      Yeah. So, so the fir- the first thing is like, okay, you can't fast from dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, okay? So this is a, uh, and the other thing is like people, I don't think people get this, but, you know, Parkinson's disease is a deficiency of dopamine. It's the death of dopamine neurons in your substantia nigra. You couldn't move. You can't move if you're out of dopamine. So we don't wanna get rid of dopamine. Dopamine's not bad. It does all kinds of stuff for us. It's a neurotransmitter. So a neurotransmitter is just a chemical signal. It's like a letter of the alphabet. And people are like, "We're gonna remove the letter D." And it's like, wait, hold on, that destroys a lot of things besides dopamine, right? So, so you can't really fast from dopamine, first of all. Secondly, I, I do think that there's a lot of good, healthy stuff that comes out of dopamine fasts. So like, I think it's useful, right? So like, taking a break from technology is good for you in all manners of ways. But the whole point about technology is you can't... I, I, I mean, I actually wonder about this. There's some studies on naltrexone and stuff like that, but I don't think you can give someone a dopamine blocker and like cure them of their addiction. You can do it s- a little bit. So there's some evidence that even naltrexone and some of these things that interfere with dopamine signaling can help with addictive behaviors. But it's not like a one-to-one, right? So the other thing that I think people really need to understand is that technology affects all kinds of other circuits in your brain. So the, the habit circuitry in the brain is like governed just as much by the endocannabinoids as it is by dopamine. So I think that like a lot of the science stuff is kinda crap. Um, I think that if you implement some kind of dopamine restriction, which usually means technology, like I don't think people are sort of saying like, "You can't have dopamine." Like, stop laughing, right? And, and don't n-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:03:21

      Have you seen the most extreme version of dopamine fasting where you're not allowed to look other people in the eyes?

   6. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:03:27

      Uh, right? So, uh, and this are the people that, uh, here's, here's your value difficulty...

   7. CWChris Williamson1:03:32

      Conflation.

   8. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:03:33

      ... conflation again, right? Because, hey, if it's harder, it has to work. And then the, the... You're also engendering so much placebo there because it's like, "Wow, I like did this really thing and I must be amazing now if I succeeded." But, so I, I think a lot of the, like the scientific stuff is sort of BS. Um, and, and then the other thing to really remember about the science is most of the science is like extrapolated. So, so it, you know, like I said, no one's measuring dopamine concentrations in the synaptic cleft and the nucleus accumbens. Like, no one's doing that. Everyone's doing cross-sectional studies or observational studies, and so a lot of what I base my stuff on is clinical stuff. Which is also not really, if you think about it, data, right? We work with real human beings and the reason that we need clinicians is because you can do a scientific study about whatever you want, like you can do a cross-sectional study, but when it comes, uh, when it translates over into like application with human beings, it becomes a lot more complicated. So, generally speaking, I think that a lot of like technology restriction for extended periods of time is probably really good for you. Um, I think that there is, uh, probably a lot of principles of like dopamine tolerance, and like we mentioned, anhedonia and stuff, I think the, uh, the, the data behind that is pretty good. So I think the, the biggest thing that restricting yourself from technology does is probably does help you reset that tolerance some. Um, a- and, you know, mixed bag about whether people go through withdrawal or not. So, you know, some of it could be like more of a real neuroscience or physiologic withdrawal, but some of it may just be like, "I'm used to not being bored and my tolerance for being bored is so low now."

   9. CWChris Williamson1:05:07

      Mm.

   10. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:05:07

       Because that doesn't happen, right? We don't get bored anymore. Everywhere we go, we pack... You know, I, I remember seeing someone on an airplane who was on an international flight and they didn't bring anything. They just didn't bring anything. They were there for eight hours and just staring at the wall. Which, by the way, is a great exercise that people in our community do. We tell them, "Just stare at a wall for an hour." It's one of the most powerful meditations that people in our community do.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:05:34

       What are the outcomes that someone that looks at a wall for an hour get?

   12. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:05:38

       Man, it spans the whole range of things. Some people will like break down and cry, some people will have catharsis. For some people it'll be complete torture with no benefit. It's like a whole thing, right? But it's just, learn to be bored. And you know, the-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:05:53

       You thought that running a marathon was hard, stare at this wall for an hour.

   14. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:05:56

       Yeah. I mean, at least you've trained your muscles to run the marathon. Have you trained your mind to be bored for an hour? And the beautiful thing about that is once you can train your mind to tolerate boredom, you no longer fall into the pull of these things. Right? Because then you don't need to play a video game, because boredom's okay.

9. 1:06:18 – 1:22:50

   Why Porn Use is So Misunderstood

   1. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:06:18

   2. CWChris Williamson1:06:18

      What have you learned about porn use amongst young men and how they feel about it?

   3. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:06:23

      So I think porn use is one of the most misunderstood things from... This is just my opinion, okay? From a clinical perspective, from a psychological perspective, from a neuroscience perspective. So, you know, we, we've done a lot of work with pornography usage, pornography addicts. So I think the first thing to understand, a lot of interesting stuff came out from our internal research. We're hopefully gonna publish a paper on this within the next year or so, but it hasn't really been formulated yet.So, the first thing that's really interesting is that people who are addicted to pornography oftentimes get exposed at a very, very young age. We're talking about first exposure to pornography, like pre-pubescent most of the time. Second thing is that pornography usage has nothing to do with sexual perversion. So, a lot of people will think if someone is really, really addicted to pornography, they must be, like, really horny or, like, depraved in some way, or things like that. Generally speaking, my experience has been that pornography usage is really just a very powerful emotional coping mechanism. So, pornography usage will suppress a lot of negative emotions. And if you talk to people who use pornography, especially in an addictive way, what leads to usage is, like, feeling bad about yourself. And this is the big problem with pornography usage, which is that once you start to use it, it sort of engenders more shame and guilt. And in order to deal with the shame and guilt, you have to use it again, right? And- and it's just the kind of thing where if you, like, think about the societal stigma of someone's like, "Yeah, you know, like, I grew up and- and I was addicted to alcohol, like, and now I'm sober for 20 years." And it's like, "Good for you, man." And it's like, "Yeah, I'm a recovering pornography addict." And it's like, you know, you're not going to get the same ... You know, if you're dating someone and- and you're- let's say you- you have a brother or sister, and they're like, "Yeah, I'm dating someone who's, like, been sober for 10 years." Like, "Cool," right? Like, that's probably good. Like, not bad for your rela- ... "I'm dating someone who's, like, been addicted to pornography for 10 years, and they're- they're ..." You know, like, there's a lot of stigma associated with it, a lot of shame associated with it. I think it's really about emotional regulation. This is really interesting. So, there's research that shows that, um ... So, it really has nothing to do with sex, basically, which is what's weird. I mean, it can have sexual consequences and stuff and create problems in relationships. But there's a research that did a multivariate regression analysis on people addicted to pornography, which means they looked at which variable associates the most with pornography usage, and the number one variable was meaninglessness. So, the more meaningless your life is, the more likely you are to be addicted to pornography. And so what we've actually kind of found, which is really interesting, is when you work with people like that, helping them develop, like, purpose helps them actually ... Like, you have to have a reason to stop watching pornography. It's got to be, like, some kind of- ... You know, you have to go through that withdrawal for some greater good. And so helping people find purpose is, like, one of the biggest things that apparently helps with pornography.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:09:28

      What do you think it says that porn use doesn't seem to be actually that massive of a- a sexual trigger? It doesn't seem to be triggered all that much by ... It- it- it's triggered by things outside of sex, in a way. It's triggered by life circumstances, meaninglessness.

   5. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:09:48

      Yeah. So- so I- I think it's- it- this comes down to the neurochemistry. So, if we think about addictions, why do we get addicted to stuff? Because of the effect it has on our brain. And so if we think about, from an evolutionary standpoint, there are a couple of different things that will suppress our negative emotions and will also give us, like, a rush of, like, let's say, euphoric neurotransmitters. So, orgasm is one of these things. So, why does orgasm feel really good? Because it's required for the procreation of the species, right? So, evolutionarily, when orgasm feels really good, we're gonna have more sex, and that'll result in the continuation of the human race. The interesting thing is if you look at actually ancient yogic literature as well, they say that there's this, you know, state of bliss called samadhi, which is sort of the purpose of meditation. And there are a couple of interesting ways that you can get temporary samadhi and orgasm is one of them. So, this also is, like, one of the reason that tantric sex is a thing, and- and things like that, which is a- maybe a conversation for a different day, maybe a conversation for today. But I think we've known for a long time. So, why is pornography like this? Because orgasm has very specific, like, activation within the brain. And so now if you kind of think about it, let's say I'm feeling worthless about myself, I'm not doing anything in life, I'm kind of like sitting around, not doing anything. I'm tired of feeling this way. What is a switch I can flick in my brain that lets me forget everything, pushes my negative emotions away, and actually gives me a spurt of positive neurotransmitters? Which I'm not sure exactly what happens when people orgasm in the brain, but ... You- you know, and- and that's why pornography addiction exists. So, it's not really about sex.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:11:32

      That's so interesting that you have all of these different coping mechanisms, whether it be binge-eating, whether it be alcohol, whether it be cannabis, social media, video games, porn. What we- what we've done is increase the variety of ways that you can hide from your feelings.

   7. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:11:53

      Mm-hmm. Absolutely, and-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:11:55

      Uh, pick- pick your flavor of ice cream for today. What is it gonna be?

   9. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:12:00

      Yeah. All right? And- and there's- there- people have drugs of choice, which may be due to some amount of genetic vulnerability. But if you really think about it, I think about pornography addiction is the closest to substance use because of its hard-hitting, like, effect, right? So, if you think about getting high, there's discrete, like, chemicals that enter into your brain and, like, activate certain receptors. Whereas video games are, like, a little bit more global, but pornography is really, especially that arousal stuff and stuff like that, is a very targeted way to activate your brain in a particular way. More closely resembles a substance.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:12:34

       Downstream from pornography use, have you seen sexual dysfunction? Is this associated?

   11. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:12:38

       Absolutely. So-

   12. CWChris Williamson1:12:40

       Uh, so- okay. So, how is it that porn use isn't all that sexual, and yet downstream from porn use, you get sexual dysfunction?

   13. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:12:47

       (laughs) For a couple different reasons. So first, let's understand that sexual means multiple things within one person. So, there's a physical aspect to it, there's a neuroscientific aspect to it, there's a psychological aspect to it.So one thing that you tend to see is something that, (laughs) you know, uh, s- a, a term that I coined on stream one day, death grip syndrome, which is, if you look at men especially who masturbate when they use pornography, the physiologic stimulus, for lack of a better term, that men will use actually does not approximate the physiologic stimulus of intercourse. So to f- put it bluntly, I'm trying to avoid saying this, but, you know, not using lube and using your death grip hand feels different from a vagina. Like, that's just how it works. And, and so what happens is the, the body can acclimatize to this, right? Like, that's, like, literally what happens. So you get used to, you need a particular kind of stimu- You get conditioned to require a certain kind of stimulation to achieve climax. And so then w- sometimes what can happen when, when people engage in sexual intercourse is that they can't get that kind of stimulus to achieve climax.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:14:02

       They've de-trained themselves from being stimulated by real physiological interaction with somebody else's body.

   15. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:14:11

       Yeah, absolutely. Right? So they may be-

   16. CWChris Williamson1:14:12

       Unless they also have a very, very strong grip.

   17. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:14:14

       Right. So, so mentally, (laughs) and so there, there's interesting things, 'cause I, I've literally worked with patients where, like, the process of this is deconditioning. So we'll sort of say, like, you know, "Loose grip, lot of lube."

   18. CWChris Williamson1:14:25

       (laughs)

   19. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:14:25

       And, and that'll be frustrating for... I'm, I'm serious. I'm not, I'm, you know, I know it's funny, but like, seriously, 'cause you have to do that physiological deconditioning, and you have to try to approximate, you know, things like that. And there's all kinds of stuff that you can do with your partner and things like that too, so you can fix this. Sometimes you'll see, like, erectile dysfunction, just kind of straight up. Um, and then o- there are also, like, neuroscience and psychological impacts, right? So sometimes people will have so much shame for pornography that there's, you know, they have difficulty performing. They feel so guilty. Uh, there's all kinds of stuff, like does your partner know that you use pornography and things like that. So that can lead to, um, you know, a difficulty with sort of forming and maintaining erections, which is different from reaching orgasm, right? So there's a whole physiologic chain of things going on. And, and so we'll, we'll definitely see that kind of stuff. And then in some cases, what you also tend to see is that there's this principle called online drift on the internet, where since the goal is emotional engagement, how does a platform keep you emotionally engaged? They do it by serving up more extreme content. So if you look at your platform algorithms, if there's certain things that you search for, it'll serve you, like, tons of extreme stuff in that way. So if you watch one cute cat video, then you need to see cats doing cuter things to stay on the platform. And then cats are doing cuter stuff and cuter stuff and cuter stuff. We see this p- with pornography usage as well, where there, there's, like, a gradual, like, movement towards, like, hardcore pornography use, because you require more stimulus to your eyes and ears and things like that to get that same level of arousal. And if you do that, like, and if you require that really high level of stimulus of, of, you know, just, like, more, brighter, bigger, whatever, (laughs) and, and then where if you, if you have sexual relations with a regular human being, like, the stimulus is just different.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:16:21

       Yeah, if you're not able to recreate the zero gravity acrobatics that you've just-

   21. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:16:26

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:16:26

       ... seen on porn. Yeah, Mary Harrington calls that the law of fap entropy, which is whatever you start out wanking to will get progressively more intense over time.

   23. AKDr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)1:16:34

       Beautiful. (laughs) Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:16:36

       (laughs) It's the s- It's her second law of porno dynamics, I think, actually. Um, I, I really like the introduction of the framing and the story that you tell yourself around your porn use is massively con- contributing to what is going to happen out the other side of it. And I think that, again, you know, um, what would this be like if it was easier? Um, what would... There is a, a trend online at the moment that demonizes porn use, and it's because there is a nonzero number of people for whom porn use is destructive and can't control it. That has been used to cover all of porn use as, if you're using porn, this makes you susceptible to a, a whole suite of problems that are going to occur even if you do have a healthy relationship with it, because there are a, you know, a whole host of people that are able to use porn and have a healthy relationship with it and at least not have dysfunction on the other side of it. Whether it's healthy or not might be a, a little bit of a different discussion. But for the people who see their porn use as something which is worthy of shame, which is worthy of guilt, which is worthy of making them feel like less of a man, less of a, a, a appropriate partner, I can guarantee that you are somebody who does have a problem with porn use. Porn use is not good for you if that is the story that you tell yourself about your porn use. And it's so recursive and, and self-reinforcing, it's brutal.

Episode duration: 1:58:13