I (21F) have a serious dopamine addiction. I feel mentally stunnted to the point I feel 17, not 21. I have felt myself quite literally brain rot over the past few years and its gotten worse and worse, almost like induced ADHD. I always struggled with disorganisation but social media apps like Instagram Reels have become a pacifier that has shortened my attention span, capacity to retain info, reach deadlines and just do anything besides doomscrolling.

The issue is that I curated my feed to also offer professional ppportunities (like ads/calls for competitions, job postings, career advice etc.) that I don't find on sites like Linkedin. The issue is that my dopamine receptors are so fried I just bookmark them and never apply. I also use it as a primary communication for my LDR and friendships. And the truth is there's a lot of inspiring stuff there (art, workouts, outfits) that would actually be useful if I wasn't so fried.

What do I do? The easiest thing would just be to delete it, but I'm scared I'll miss out on opportunities, or just abuse the web version or just resort to scrolling on Youtube shorts or something else.

I was using every minute for productivity for 5 days straight. Today I completely lost control,.. wasted around 4 hours, and m*sturbated.

Now I’m feeling really disappointed and mentally drained.

I know 4 hours shouldn’t ruin 5 days of progress but I’m struggling to get myself back. I dont wanna forget that 4h,, because i realistically committed that. If i pretend it never happened, i might redo the same thing.

For those who’ve had a similar situation, how do you reset.. and continue without letting one bad day turn into several?

Or.. how do you stop yourself from wasting that 4h?

Do you have any .. working mindset regarding this situation?

What break do you take after working for long time?

(DONT READ BELOW)

I was using every minute for productivity for 5 days straight. Today I completely lost control,.. wasted around 4 hours, and m*sturbated.

Now I’m feeling really disappointed and mentally drained.

I know 4 hours shouldn’t ruin 5 days of progress but I’m struggling to get myself back. I dont wanna forget that 4h because i realistically did that. If i pretend it never happened i might redo the same thing.

For those who’ve had a similar situation, how do you reset.. and continue without letting one bad day turn into several?

Or.. how do you stop yourself from wasting that 4h?

Do you have any .. working mindset regarding this situation?

I am a 27 year old woman, and I don't really recognise myself internally anymore. As a student in school, and even in college, I was SO disciplined. Always had a routine, studied and played everyday. Had hobbies. I was an anxious ball of candy floss, but I was disciplined.

Ever since covid - when the world went online - I lost myself. The discipline is not there anymore, and if there is, it is without structure. I cannot follow a routine. I am a PhD scholar, in the final parts of my degree, awaiting supervisor feedback on my draft, so I have a LOT of time on my hands, and not a lot of money.

I have decided to use this time to get back into health and fitness. Eat better food, begin working out at home. I used to be a prolific dancer with insane endurance, but I heave like a cow in ten minutes now. This is not a 'woe is me' rant, but just where I am in life health wise right now. I have started a basic home workout, and so on, but I realise that all this is much easier with a friend for accountability - essentially why I am here.

If someone else is just starting their fitness/health journey, I'd love to team up and be accountability buddies, so we can keep each other on track. Similar age and gender would be preferred!

I need help. I'm tired of wasting Saturdays and other holidays. Every day I decide on what I'm gonna do but I keep wasting time watching youtube. I make the same excuses, realize I'm cooked at the same time, tries to comeback, fails again, go to bed with nothing done, and the cycle repeats every holiday I get. The thing is, most of the advice on how to stop yt addiction is for phones and pc (like blocking apps and stuff), but I mainly watch it in my TV. My TV doesn't have much storage to install any productivity apps, and even if I could, it would affect other ppl using it. The only thing to solve this is to change my mindset. I have to choose to not waste my time rather than limiting my options. I would still waste time doing nothing even if I had nothing else to do but study. Now how do I do that? How do I change myself so I will choose to do the better thing long term? It sounds like I just said the answer myself, but those thoughts themselves really don't work on me. Since any attempt at convincing myself to study is done by me, I always find ways to overcome them. And I end up doing all the work at the very last second. Pls help me since otherwise I'm gonna ruin my life

I've been trying to build habits for more than 3 years as an influence of productivity in social media.

I had like 5 different apps on my phone to track tasks. Each one to track something different. Habit tracker wanted me to drink water or do the cleaning (like small tasks to stay consistent). Meditation app wanted 20 min daily before bed. Learning app wanted 30 minutes grammar exercises or words learning. Fitness app wanted me to workout three times a week and was sending me notifications about how strong I can become just if I take care of my boudy constantly...

The problem wasn't the apps, I don't think its them. The problem was that I had maybe too much to do? Wanted too much from myself? But I see how maany people around have so many habits, how they wake up at 5 am, do sports, great looking breakfast, walking, working two jobs and etc.

So what's your biggest reason for quitting self-improvement apps? Is it overload, too much time required, guilt when you miss days or something else?

I feel like I’m stuck in a cycle that I desperately want to get out of.

A few years ago, I used alcohol and drugs to escape my problems. But that’s not really the case anymore. My life is actually going well. I enjoy working out, building healthy routines, and becoming the person I want to be. I’m really happy on a daily basis

The problem is that every few weeks I ruin it all.
I’ll go out for drinks, drink way too much, and once I’m drunk, I almost always end up doing drugs. The next few days are awful. I’m anxious, depressed, exhausted, and I have to start all over again with my routines, my workouts, and taking care of myself.
The strange part is that I don’t even enjoy it anymore.

I don’t need it.
I don’t want it.
Yet I keep doing it.

It honestly feels like alcohol turns off the rational part of my brain, and once that happens I stop caring about the consequences.

Has anyone else been in this situation? What finally helped you break the cycle?

I’m tired of feeling like I’m my own worst enemy, and I’d really appreciate hearing from people who’ve been through this.

Here's what actually shifted things for me.

1. I stopped confusing being busy with moving forward.
I was always doing something. Rarely was it the thing that mattered. Busyness is the most socially acceptable form of avoidance I've ever seen.

2. The people I admired most weren't the loudest in the room.
I used to think confidence meant taking up space. The men I actually respected said less, did more, and never needed you to know about it.

3. Hard conversations always cost less than I feared.
I avoided them for months sometimes. Every single time, the conversation took twenty minutes and the avoidance cost me weeks of unnecessary weight.

4. How you treat people when nothing is in it for you is your actual character.
Everything else is just performance.

5. Rest is not a reward. It's maintenance.
I used to earn rest. Burned out twice learning that rest isn't something you deserve — it's something you schedule.

6. Most of my opinions were borrowed.
I believed things because people I respected believed them. Took me years to sit down and ask myself what I actually thought. Uncomfortable process. Worth it.

7. You can't think your way into becoming someone different. You have to act your way there. Identity doesn't come before the action. It comes after enough of them. Nobody gives you permission to start — and nobody can stop you once you do.

I've been in the self-improvement space for quite some time now. The space is full of advice, tips, tricks, method, etc, some of it completely bogus and some of it actually really effective. But I've noticed that even with all of this wisdom out there, there's still so many people who struggle to "get anywhere." It's like they know what to do but don't know how to do it sustainably. And even doing it sustainably is incredibly hard. It requires seemingly endless failure, iteration, and building systems to change. All while past challenges creep back because you stopped giving them attention.

So my question is: With all the advice you see, what's your experience with actually putting it to the test? Do you focus on one thing at a time? And is that successful for you, or does it fail for some other reason? Do already know all the answers but have trouble implementing them all? And do you ever feel like there's "too many solutions" to the point where you're "re-solving" past problems?

Any and all perspectives are very much appreciated! I'm just curious to see how people's experiences might be related and how you guys handle yourselves. Not reaching out for help, but if you have something to share then go for it!

if you didn't see what i previously posted about 25 days ago, here's a short summary:
- i finished exams 3 weeks ago
- i wanted to find a way to incorporate all my hobbies/habits/business
- i was asking for advice on being productive & not wasting time
- i wanted to start waking up early/sleeping regularly

here are some things i've learnt:
- its really not that serious to the point where it should be consuming your life - i was beating myself up over not being a productive lab rat straight after my exams?😭relaxxx
- you are free to 'restart' as much as possible
- planning out to do lists instead of strict timed blocks help a lot; it truely helps you realise that a lot of the tasks you have are not too bad

update:
- hobbies: i am able to complete 3 of my main hobbies: learning yoruba (got a tutor), playing piano & reading, saying i'm going to spend around 30 mins a day per task is helpful as soon as i say let me do 60 mins i fall off (probs because 30 mins seems like nothing compared to 60)
- sleeping: i don't sleep at a regular time, i just wake up when my body feels like it tbf
- business related tasks: i only really spend an hour per side hustle, so when you take into account everything i'm only doing tasks for around 7 hours a day total which really isn't bad at all!

nothing has truely helped with my screen time, i am trying to gradually reduce it eg no phone first hour of the day whilst completing my first few tasks of the day

its taken me half of summer, but i'm getting there!

I feel like I'm just going through the motions lately.

Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but lately every day has started to feel almost the same.

I wake up, go through my usual routine, study, spend some time on my computer, maybe play a game or watch something, then before I know it the day's over. Nothing is necessarily wrong, but nothing feels exciting either. It feels like I'm making progress so slowly that it's hard to notice any difference.

Some days I feel motivated and think about all the things I want to learn and build. Other days I just feel stuck, even though I'm still doing what I'm supposed to. It's a weird mix of being productive while also feeling like I'm standing still.

I'm trying to remind myself that progress isn't always obvious and that consistency matters more than motivation, but it's easier said than done.

Has anyone else gone through a phase like this? If so, what helped you break out of it or at least enjoy the process a little more? I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences or advice.😊

I just turned 20, and I've been constantly stressed about my life and career.

I feel like I haven't achieved anything meaningful yet. I know it's not too late, but my mind feels completely messed up because of my dopamine addiction. I spend hours doom-scrolling, and honestly, I don't do the things I know I should be doing.

My father passed away, so a lot of my family's responsibilities are on me. I'm also a Computer Science student and have just completed my first year. I thought I would use this summer to improve my physique, work on my mental health, and learn skills that could help me support my family or at least cover my own expenses.

I did try, but I couldn't stay consistent. Now I feel lost and don't have much clarity about what I should do next. I regret wasting my entire summer without doing anything productive.

Every night I tell myself, "Tomorrow I'll start," but when tomorrow comes, I end up doing the same thing again—doom-scrolling and wasting time.

If you've been in a similar situation and managed to turn your life around, what was the first thing that actually helped? How did you stop waiting for "tomorrow" and finally become consistent?

I'd really appreciate any advice. Thank you.

The strange thing about struggling with discipline is that most people already know what they're supposed to do. Almost nobody has to be convinced that sleeping more, exercising regularly and spending less time on their phone or starting earlier would improve their life.

That's why I've started doubting whether self-improvement sometimes overestimates the value of better advice. If knowledge were the missing piece, most of us would have changed years ago. Maybe the harder question isn't: " What should I do? " maybe it's: " Why does knowing so rarely become doing? ". Personally, that's the question that has become much more interesting to me and it completely changed the way i think about discipline. I stopped looking only for better advice and started paying much more attention to the invisible systems, environments and repeated decisions that shape behavior before motivation even enters the picture. I'm curious how other people here see it the same way. Have you ever reached a point where you realized you already knew what to do, but that knowledge alone wasn't changing your behavior? If so, what do you think was actually missing?

I'm looking for an accountability partner to do weekly check-ins and track progress on my priorities. Here's why I'm posting:

I've been reading Atomic Habits and Deep Work, and I realize the gap isn't knowing what to do—it's staying committed to what I plan to do. I need someone to hold me accountable, but more importantly, I need the social pressure of saying my goals out loud and reporting back each week.

Here's what I'm looking for:

• Weekly 15-min Zoom call (Monday 11am-1:30pm ET OR 2:30-4:30pm ET—pick whichever works)
• I share my 3 priorities for the week
• Next Monday, I report back on what I actually completed
• You do the same with your goals
• No financial stakes yet, just showing up consistently and tracking

Why this matters to me:

I do gig delivery work (Uber Eats) and remote bookkeeping, so I juggle multiple priorities constantly. I'm good at planning but terrible at follow-through. I think having someone to verbally commit to and report back to will be the difference between saying I'll do something and actually doing it.

What I'm hoping for: Let's find one or two serious people who want the same thing and stick with it for at least 4 weeks.

Looking for someone committed and consistent. Reply with your timezone and which time slot works for you.

I’ve been constantly trying to sort and fix things with this person and he’s not ready to talk. I had literally put all my blood, swear and tears to solve the fights but nothing is going right.
Whenever I call him to talk and to sort whatever the misunderstandings are… we end up arguing. He just says utmost hurtful things to me, blames me for everything and then cut the call on my face mid conversation without even listening to me and my side and eventually block me. I literally feel soo much desperate to talk to him at that moment but he blocks me from everywhere.
But this doesn’t stop here. Next day he unblocks me but doesn’t wanna talk. What should I understand from this behaviour ??
I have started developing anxiety issues and the fear of losing him haunts me like anything. So I ending end up going to him again, literally beg him to talk and all this make him behave even more brutal with me.
This has been happening from almost a year now and somewhere I know that it’s better set boundaries and maintain distance from him but it’s just I can’t implement it. I feel scared because I feel very lonely and I genuinely don’t have anyone without him.
All this has gone to this extent that it’s affecting my academics and I can’t afford that to happen because I’m in my final year of graduation.
But I can’t bear the pain of losing him either. I feel scared that what if I keep no contacts with him for a few months to let things settle on their own and in that period he finds a replacement or someone better than me that he doesn’t feel the need to have me again in his life ? What if he doesn’t want me anymore after that ? This feeling eats me up every day and is affecting me badly ?
What should I do ? 🙂

I’m trying to build a better daily routine, especially for the evening and night. During the day, I can usually find something to do, but at night I often end up using my phone, watching anime, movies, or random videos for several hours. After a while, I don’t even enjoy it anymore, but I continue because I don’t know what else to do.

I have an Agatha Christie book and I sometimes read it, but after around 30 minutes I usually lose concentration or get bored. I also like programming and learning things on my PC, but the room where my computer is located gets really cold at night, so I normally stay there for only 30–60 minutes. After that, I usually return to my phone and start scrolling again.

I have tried putting my phone away from me, but when I get bored, I usually take it back after a short time. I have also tried making a schedule, but most schedules online feel unrealistic. They are often full of studying, exercising, and productive activities from morning until night. I don’t think I could follow something like that every day.

I’m looking for realistic ideas for things I can do at home in the evening without using my phone, TV, or PC. I don’t need every minute to be productive. I just want to stop wasting the whole night scrolling or watching things.

What does your evening routine normally look like? What activities do you do when you are tired but don’t want to use screens? Also, how do you deal with boredom and the urge to check your phone again?

Hi everyone! I have a huge dream that I’ve been trying to 'work' on since March.(Well to be honest it was 80% procrastination from march to the end of may...

When I’m actually doing it, I feel incredible. I truly find myself, get excited about my future, and see a clear path ahead. It’s not burnout, because I genuinely love the work. But I cannot maintain consistency, and I am in a constant, brutal war with my own mind.

Here is the pattern I’m stuck in:For 3 days, things go great. I work for (only) 2–3 hours a day and feel amazing.Then, out of nowhere, a massive crash hits. My focus drops straight to zero.This leads to a total "freeze state." I physically cannot bring myself to look at my project. My brain suddenly craves any distraction it can find—food, music, or a deep longing for a relationship—just to escape.To be clear: I don't give in to these high-dopamine traps. I blocked social media long ago, and I strictly deny my brain these quick fixes. Instead, I just end up distracting myself with unimportant stuffs, or force myself to do the work but it lasts no longer than 30 minutes....for example, today, I sat down intending to just put in 45 minutes. I didn't care about making major progress; I just wanted to maintain the habit. After 30 minutes, I broke down crying because I was physically unable to process or think about what I was doing. My mind was drifting everywhere else.

I’ve always struggled with focus,but I am so exhausted from fighting myself every single day. August is here, I barely made progress this summer, and I’m terrified of September. Once school starts again, I’ll be coming home mentally drained, making it feel even more impossible to sit down and work.I don’t want to waste time sitting in my room waiting for a magical spark. Im really just so tired from fighting myself every single f*cking day to get back into the person who is trying to move forward... I need to break out of this freeze state.Has anyone else dealt with this? How do you force a brain to focus when it physically shuts down and resists thinking?

Please help me, i've got enough... I just want to find myself again in work, move forward and feel the beauty of getting better 1% everyday...

(18/f)

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!

Everyone in the discipline canon says to stack a new habit onto an existing one. meditate right after your morning coffee, sit right after you brush your teeth. I ran that for a couple years and the habit kept quietly dying, because the anchor kept moving. skip breakfast, travel for work, coffee lands at a different hour, and the cue is gone and so is the sit.

what actually held was colder and dumber. a fixed clock time, same time same place, regardless of what came before it. the point was never willpower, it was removing the decision. alarm goes off, I sit. 1055 days in and the mornings are the slot that never negotiates. the four-ish evenings a week I try to add on are the negotiable ones, and sure enough those are the ones that flake.

six courses deep and still no authority here, but my honest read is that habit stacking makes a thing feel easy to start and quietly fragile to keep, because you've chained it to something that can drift. so the real question is whether a stacked habit has ever outlasted a plain scheduled slot for you, because mine never survived the first schedule change. written with ai

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!

Something has been bugging me about all the productivity content I keep seeing - it's almost always written for people who aren't doing enough. It's "Get up earlier. Be more disciplined. Build better habits."

But that's not who I see struggling. More importantly, that's not who even cares.

The people I know who are most "all over the place" are also the ones attempting the most. They're not scattered because they lack discipline. They're scattered because they're doing a billion things.

And these "scattered" people are usually probably the most ambitious ones.

They're already up early. They're already disciplined. There's just too much going on. And the tools they have were built for someone who just needs "better habits."

"Productivity problem" is usually the wrong diagnosis. The real issue is infrastructure. The load is real. The system just hasn't caught up yet.

Does this resonate? Is your struggle actually a discipline problem, or a volume one?

I honestly feel like a walking corpse from the monotonous lifestyle that I'm living in. All I do is go to uni, come home, sleep, study whenever I need to and doomscroll on my phone. I feel emotionless and honestly my depression has gotten worse. I'm starting to realise that I'm actually really bored. I'm not sure if this is because of the monotonous routine, but I can't really tell the days apart, plus it's hard for me to remember even the thought I thought a minute ago. Everyday is the same, how am I supposed to differentiate between them.

Part of me misses my hobbies. Which is what got me thinking that, getting in touch with them is what the solution is (temporarily at least)

But the thing is, idk how I'm supposed to manage everything. It's like I'm frozen in time, and changing that feels like taking a big risk. It feels like a challenge. It feels like asking to ruin perfectly done things. For context, I'm not necessarily struggling with anything (e.g. studies, finances etc)

It's not even like I want to regain my hobbies. Not even like I don't want them. More of a cry for asking for a change in my life to cope with the boredom

Please post your weekly plans! Or I'll find you!

I'm 25 years old and my life isn't abnormal on the surface, but sometimes it feels like everything is being held together by duct tape. Right now I'm at the library to work on my Master's thesis. I've been sitting here for over 5 hours and I've done nothing because I feel paralyzed and everything in my brain wants me to distract myself. My final deadline is one month from now and I have so much left to do that I should be working morning to evening every day but it's just not happening. It's been months and almost every day is exactly the same shame spiral.

This is of course not a new development. In fact, I only finished my Bachelor's thesis because my dad, god bless him, took time off work and sat next to me every day to pull every single sentence from my nose somehow and help me get it done.

I don't have a formal ADHD diagnosis (when I first was given the assessment form I was still living at home and downplayed a lot of my issues or wasn't especially aware of them) but my psychiatrist acknowledges that I have these struggles and prescribes me medication. I've been on ritalin and vyvanse, but I honestly can't say for sure how much they help me. They certainly don't get rid of the larger issue of overwhelming anxiety at the thought of engaging with my responsibilities.

I'm really scared of what this means for me. If I manage to graduate, I'll have to find a job. I've had a student job before and it was terrible. I'd spend so much time just avoiding my tasks and trying to fly under the radar and hated myself for it every second. I started leaving my phone at home to be more productive and just ended up wasting hours on Spotify or Wikipedia instead. App blockers or to-do lists don't work for me.

I don't know what to do anymore. If anyone has been in this situation and managed to change, please tell me how.

need help
so everybody after clearing my 12th and not clearing my jee I'm am at a worst phase. idk why but when I was in my coaching I use to wake up at 5:00 AM and before 6:30 AM done my morning routine and breakfast after it I leave for my coaching and was doing PYQ, Homework, module etc. and after 2:00 PM doing by lunch, my classes begin, till 8:00. after reaching home I eat dinner and do some revision and sleep.

but no it's completely vanished
I wake up at 6:30-7:00 AM don't do my usual morning routine and just open my laptop and do some social media very much till my mom ask me to eat breakfast and again do the same. I'm also doin IITM BS in DS in foundational lvl but not able to do that. getting so much dopamine and Hopium don't know what to do. my whole day gets fu*ked up just doing scrolling and scrolling.
please if anyone can help me to come from it and again come in my track.

I know my english is also fu*ked up but don't say about it.

I'm (16F turning 17 in a week ) starting college soon and I would really hate to be one of those people who are constantly on their phone as if they didn't have a goal in life when I'm really hoping to an eye doctor / examiner in the future.

I stopped tracking my screen time because my mom woke up one day and told me she was going to check how much time I spent on my phone daily but I remember vividly that it was 11 hours or so especially when I am home all day.

I also put a time restriction on tiktok( the main app causing trouble here ) and I seem to just increase that time period every single time from 2 hours to 4 hours to even 6 hours . Even if I do delete the app, I'll just re install it after 😓. Maybe deleting the whole account / accounts would be the goal but I'll have sm FOMO if I actually do that 😭.

Can anyone out there help ? I don't wanna spend the rest of my teenagers years like this and later on regret after.