Am I Mentally Lazy?

I feel like I almost never use all of my brain power.

At any given moment, it seems like I’m only 20% committed mentally to whatever it is I’m doing. As a result, I think that things tend to be done poorly or very slowly.

Take, for instance, my flashcard studying. I study a huge variety of topics via flashcards everyday, most notably (and most time-consumingly) Spanish vocabulary.

On a typical day, it’s a grind. I can barely focus, and it feels like I’m not activating my whole brain to be able to recall words and their meanings.

I know that I’m not using everything because every so often, I will be fully committed. I’ll just feel like I’m totally dialed-in, and I’m remembering everything perfectly and it just flies by.

But that’s not the norm.

And it applies to other areas, too.

Whether I’m working, or playing the guitar, or even writing a blog post, it sort of feels like I’m just barely there all the time.

Now, I’ve discussed in multiple blog posts (here and here; both private, sorry everyone else!) how I tend to hoard my attention span and use it very selectively. I think this is sort of the same thing.

Using brain power is exhausting, and it may be quite limited. So maybe I just hoard it all the time and that’s all that’s happening.

But I don’t think that’s the full story.

I’m pretty sure dopamine plays a big role. Try as I might, I often find myself constantly giving in to some form of technology addiction. Recently it has been YouTube videos and shorts.

It’s well-documented that these types of things (including and especially Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and others) give you constant hits of dopamine. While the amount of dopamine in your brain doesn’t necessarily change, your sensitivity to it does.

And if dopamine is no longer effectively getting me to do things or concentrate, the end result will be that I never fully can.

I also have more evidence about this in my own life. I recently spent 8 days hiking in Patagonia, and during that time I didn’t have any internet access. No internet meant no social media or mindless distractions.

And by the end of it, I was amazed at a number of things. One was that hearing music or other forms of entertainment was mesmerizing. It immediately captured my attention and I loved it.

And overall I definitely feel like I could concentrate better and generally felt better.

So that’s all the evidence I really need. I need to focus hard on avoiding all forms of mindless distractions and will see where that gets me.

To start, I’m removing the shortcut to YouTube from my phone.