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During the process of designing
and building the Marble Machine X,
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I’ve teached myself a lot of new skills, but
there is one skill to rule them all
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and that is focus.
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During the past years I’ve been thinking a lot
about how to achieve goals and how to focus,
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and in this video I want to share
with you my thoughts on this topic.
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For very long periods in this build,
I have been very dissatisfied with the progress
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and my own performance.
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I have constantly been thinking about
how I can improve my efficiency.
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Years and years of thinking have now
condensed into my home-cooked theory
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on how to achieve your goals and improve
your focus in two "simple" concepts.
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I put "simple" in quotation marks
because the concepts themselves
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are very simple, but not easy to carry out.
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And even though this method is
specialized for my unique situation,
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maybe there are some general things in
there that can be useful for you as well.
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Let's get right into it.
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Let's begin breaking down the first concept:
how to achieve goals.
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When I was home in Sweden to celebrate
Christmas with my family,
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my sister told me about the goal setting theory.
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This is a very fascinating subject,
and I’m not well read on it at all,
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but my two key takeaways from
goal setting theory is:
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one, setting a goal can help you a lot;
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two, the nature of the goals you are setting,
is very important for the likeliness of success.
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So, before we even start to try to achieve our goals,
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we have to look at our own goals skeptically,
and scrutinize them, and see,
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are these goals good goals?
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We have to learn to set better goals
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and that's basically my advice for step one:
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set better goals.
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So, how do we set better goals?
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This is a topic for one billion self-help books,
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but I have found for me personally
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one breakthrough aspect,
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and that is to think about your goals
as externalized or internalized goals.
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Picture a tennis player preparing for a match.
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The player can either think:
"my goal is to win the match",
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or the player can think: "my goal is
to play to the best of my ability"
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"to give myself the largest chance
of winning the match".
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The first type of goal, "I am going to
win the tennis match", is an externalized goal,
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depending on external events out of your control.
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In such, it's a kind of a fragile type of goal.
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The second type of goal, "I am going to
play to the best of my ability to give myself"
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"the largest chance of winning the match",
is an internalized type of goal,
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depending only on stuff that you, self, can control.
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And herein lies the magic of internalized goal.
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We are already standing on
a firmer ground with our goals.
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We have formulated our goal in such a way
that we can actually do something about it.
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We are not dependent on external events
out of our control.
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So, that's my tip #1 about "how to set goals":
set internalized goals.
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The example with the tennis player
is from the book
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"A Guide to the Good Life" by William. B. Irvine,
if you want to read more.
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Another thing that helped me to set
better goals is to be careful about the size of the goals,
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is to be careful about how long-term
versus short-term the goals are.
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So, in my example, I want to go
on a world tour with the Marble Machine X.
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If that's my goal every single day,
I am failing every single day.
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no matter what I achieved during
12 hard hours working in my studio,
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I will have failed by the end of the day.
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So what I try to do, is to
break down goals into smaller steps.
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and I’ve taken this into the extreme.
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Before, I used to think in the morning:
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"Today I want to be finished
with the marble divider", or something like that.
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So, first of all, this kind of goal
is actually an externalized type of goal.
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I don't know, what kind of issues
will appear during the day,
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that will prevent me
from finishing the marble divider,
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and I will be failing at my work
yet another day and feeling frustration.
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And this has been most of the dynamic
throughout the build of both
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the original marble machine
and the Marble Machine X.
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I woke up, I’ve been setting myself an ambitious goal
and I’ve been failing to achieve it,
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which is demoralizing over time. I wanted
to turn this around and stop wasting
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energy on unuseful frustration.
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If I use the tennis match analogy for my workday,
how can I formulate a goal for workday?
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And what I’ve come up with is this:
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My goal is to stay focused for the whole
workday. [laughs]
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It's really simple as that.
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You've been listening to me talking for like
five minutes and this is like what I’ve come up with.
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My goal is to stay focused
for the whole workday.
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And, this is an internalized goal. This is
achievable within the same day.
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It's an amazing type of goal to set for myself.
This has turned my work around.
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Actually, no, this hasn't turned my work around,
because I’ve been having huge trouble to focus
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and this leads us neatly over to step
two: how to learn how to focus.
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[notes played on vibraphone]
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By the way, the reason I taped the funnel
was because my argon gas was out for my
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tig welder and Pascal - you're a hero
- Pascal found a new bottle, so now we have
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a new bottle and I can weld things
properly.
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[piano flourish]
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So, now let's start breaking down
the second of my two simple concepts:
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how to improve your focus.
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Working on such a long term project like
the Marble Machine X is very challenging
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from the gratification point of view.
There is very little instant gratification,
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it's all about delayed gratification
and long-term progress,
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and I have been struggling a lot with
maintaining focus and work efficiently,
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especially when I had to make repetitive
work. On the Marble Machine X there are
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38 channels, so there's a lot of
instances where I need to make highly
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repetitive work: I need to make 38 pieces
of this, so I need to bend 38 pipes,
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or something like that. And those instances
have been especially challenging for my
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focus, because the first pipe is okay, the
second pipe is okay. When you're down to
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the sixth pipe and you still have 32 to go,
your brain hates you. [laughs]
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It's like a war with your brain.
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Your brain is screaming
out of boredom. You don't want to make
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the seventh pipe, you want to do
something else, you want to set up an
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account on chess.com and learn how
to play chess; play five minute blitz games
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and improve my rating, you know.
Because, that's much more fun
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than bending the seventh PMMA pipe. So, I have
started to look at all these dynamics
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through the lens of dopamine, and what I
have found lately that really works for me
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and helps me improve my focus is to
deliberately reducing my dopamine intake.
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This for me is the key aspect on how to
learn how to focus and do more boring
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but long-term useful things.
Let's get into it.
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Just like with goal-setting theory
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I’m not well-read on dopamine but
it's described in the wikipedia article
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as an organic chemical that plays a
major role in the motivational component
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of reward motivated behavior. And then it
says something that highlights exactly
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what I find so fascinating with dopamine.
It says: "In popular culture and media,
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dopamine is usually seen as the main
chemical of pleasure, but the current
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opinion in pharmacology is that dopamine
instead confers motivational salience,
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and motivational salience is a form of
attention that motivates or propels
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an individual's behavior towards or away
from a particular object, perceived event
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or outcome. Motivational salience
regulates the intensity of behaviors
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that facilitate the attainment of a
particular goal, the amount of time and
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energy that an individual is willing to
expand to attain a particular goal,
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and the amount of risk that an individual is
willing to accept or working to attain
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a particular goal.” So the link between
dopamine and achieving goals is quite clear.
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Dopamine is responsible for
motivating us to achieve this or that goal.
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Let's take a very simple example.
When you're hungry and you cook like
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the best lasagna ever that looks like
Garfield picturesque, it comes out of the
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oven, you let it rest on the bench, you
put the big piece on your plate, and you
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put it in your mouth. Will you have
problem focusing on eating that lasagna?
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No. You are dead focused on that lasagna.
Why? Because your brain is giving you so
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much dopamine from putting that lasagna
in your mouth and you are loving it.
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Not a thousand horses can pull you
from the spot. Like your tendencies to
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procrastinate during the middle of a
wonderful meal is like zero. Why is that?
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If I understand things correctly, it's because
your brain is rewarded with a lot of dopamine
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for eating the lasagna, it keeps you focused
and you continue to eat.
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So the food example illustrates
the positive sides of dopamine
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where dopamine is telling us
what we need to do to survive.
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It's easy to see why evolution
has premiered a system like this.
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It's actually really really smart
but what happens when it goes wrong?
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Let's go back to the example where I’m
working on the Marble Machine X and I need to bend
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38 PMMA pipes. I’ve bent the
first six and I’m on my seventh pipe,
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and I cannot find motivation to do it. In the
corner of my eye I see my computer
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and I know that I have a whatsapp chat
with all my colleagues over there.
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What if someone has written me something?
Maybe they have a question? Maybe there's
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a problem I can solve? My brain is
rewarding me with dopamine on the mere
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thought of checking whatsapp. Let me
repeat this fact: the mere thought of
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checking whatsapp is more rewarding than
starting to bend the seventh pipe. I go
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over to whatsapp and I chat with my
colleagues and I do solve a problem or
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two on the chat, which is very rewarding,
gives me some dopamine. So then I’m
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rewarding myself again with a
five-minute blitz game on chess.com
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which I lose because of my pawn
structure, so then I play three or four
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more games, then I have a new goal of
learning how to have a better pawn
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structure on the chess board. So let's
play four or five more games so I can
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learn that skill and I only bent six
PMMA pipes that workday and I go to bed
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feeling frustrated and feeling under
achieved. So the Marble Machine X build
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stands still and I’m rated 600 in chess,
which impresses no one. So this is what
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happens when I let dopamine control my
behavior. How can we change that?
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So the way to turn this dynamics around
is to perform a dopamine detox.
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A dopamine detox will look very different
from person to person start by mapping
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out the behavior you want to change by
finding out dopamine inducing activities
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that are not helpful
for your long-term goals.
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One example from my work days is that I
used to listen to audio while working on
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the work bench. I mainly played youtube
videos. I put podcasts on and I had them
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going on in the background, which for me
was extra distracting, because every time
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I needed to record with the camera,
I needed to go over to the computer,
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pause the video, go over to the camera, press
record, record my clip, press stop on the camera
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and go back to the computer and
press play on the podcast again.
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And while on the computer it's easy to get
distracted with whatsapp and chess.com,
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so this really didn't work out well, and
I noticed that I couldn't stand the
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silence in the room. While working on
repetitive tasks,
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I couldn't stand just listening to my
own thoughts because it's just not
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beautiful. It's just not fun, you know, and what I
realized is that I… I was dependent
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on a voice in the room just to be able to
force myself to stand by the workbench.
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So I tried to reduce the distraction by
moving away from youtube and I started
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to listen to a Harry Potter audiobook
read by Stephen Fry, which is a big
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recommend for anyone. It's just amazing
but when I listened to the last episode
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a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to try to
challenge myself to see if I can work in
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silence, and since then, I’m not been
playing any podcast at all when I’ve
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been working, and it has been
absolutely amazing.
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[machine sounds]
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[snare drum sound]
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[notes played on vibraphone]
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Working in a silent room felt horribly
lonely in the beginning. I was like exposed
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to my own thoughts but after a few days,
I noticed how much more work I got done;
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it was an amazing difference. And if we
look at this through the dopamine lens,
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what I’m doing when I’m standing working
in a silent room is I’m training my
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resilience to cope with lower dopamine
levels by slowly making myself used to
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lower levels of dopamine. It's becoming
much easier to withstand the urge to go
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hunt for dopamine on whatsapp or chess.com.
So it's really a domino effect once
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you start cutting back, it becomes easier
and easier to cut back on all the
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dopamine. So the rules that I have for my
dopamine detox is as follows: I check my
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messages on my phone one time in the
morning and one time in the night.
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All other times during the whole day the
phone is shut completely off. I’m not
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watching any form of video content at
all, so if you stop watch Wintergatan
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Wednesdays through your own dopamine
detox, I can only congratulate you for a
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wise decision. So during these days I’ve
been overcome by boredom not knowing
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where to put myself, because I just want
to distract myself. So every time I feel
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that urge I just drink a little bit of
water, practice a little piano, take a
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short little walk, and then go back to
the workbench. And by the end of a day
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like that I have felt fulfilled. I have
felt like if I have just walked onto the
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stage of the world premiere with the
Marble Machine X with my fist punching the air
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every single day. By the end of the
day I shut off the lights in my studio
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knowing that I achieved my goal.
I achieved my goal of staying focused
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for a whole day. You compare that with a
feeling of someone who goes to bed
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failing to finish the marble divider,
and you have a completely different situation.
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This is what the dopamine detox
has given me. And if someone
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would have told me that I would be able
to assemble these eleven vibraphone funnels
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on 12 hours, I would have not believed them.
But with dopamine detox and a focused workflow
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I get maybe 10 times amount
of work done on one day.
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Wow. I’m going to call it a day, I started
at 6:30 in the morning in the studio
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so 12 and a half hours is enough,
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and I’m very happy with this,
so see you at the morning coffee
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for another focused working day. Cheers.
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Top o' the morning to ya'. [laughs]
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[clapping] Let's get going!
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Out with the old, and in
with the new.
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[turns on belt-sander]
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[Martin imitating belt-sander noise]
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[belt-sander noise]
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[Martin singing 'Take Me Home, Country Roads']:
West Virginia!
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[Martin now playing 'Take Me Home,
Country Roads' on his piano]
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So what I’m doing here is, I’m giving the
top of the wires, a continuous surface, so
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I can weld the top wire on. I think
if I look back on 2019, I’m gonna be…
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I’m afraid of what I’m going to see because
I was in a procrastination mess.
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It sounds a little cheesy but I’m still in
the beginning of this process
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but I already feel that I’m getting a larger
reward from smaller things. My brain is
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like seeing the world from a much more
naive place, if you understand what I mean.
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And most of all I feel like I’ve
developed an ability to pull myself back
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to focus whenever I’m distracted because
you will always be distracted. It's like I see
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through myself. It's like I see through
my own bluff, you know. –„No Martin,
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you do not want to play chess at chess.com,
just cancel the account and finish
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the vibraphone funnels instead, that's
what you actually want.” I don't want to
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sound too religious about it because of
course this is not a like one-step
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solution for all your problems kind of
thing, but not focus on the results of my
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work but focus on the quality of my
attention, the quality of my focus,
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has turned my everyday life around in a very
radical way and that's what I wanted to
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share with you today. So remember that
you can't change that dopamine will
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control your behavior, but you can
change what behavior you allow it to
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point you towards. Social media endless
scrolls are tailored to keep us addicted
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to them because they are giving you
dopamine. I think we're living in a very
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special time where we have devices that
prevent us from ever being bored,
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and I think slowly it undermines our
creativity. I have been a victim of this
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just like everyone else, and it's only
in sheer desperation of wanting to finish
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this machine that I got motivated to do
something about it. I want to thank you
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for witnessing me when I’m like a Mad
Max soldier driving straight into this
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fire cloud that is the MMX. It means the
world to have you to confess to every
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week, which has been an issue before.
So thank you so much for watching
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and thank you to everyone who are supporting
the project through youtube memberships
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and patreon. We're soon at eight thousand
people which is like quite mind-blowing;
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and thank you for listening to my
home-cooked ponderings about
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goal-setting theory, and dopamine detox,
and how it can help you achieve your goals,
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and to focus better and have nicer
work days and days in general.
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So good luck with everything you're doing
and see you on the next Wintergatan Wednesday,
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or not, if you're in dopamine
detox and then see you on the world tour
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premiere, which will come sooner?
[laughs]
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Last weld.
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Come on, don't screw… Oh, I screwed it up.
I screwed it up. [laughs]
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I can fix that tomorrow.
Oh yeah, I screwed it up royally. [laughs]
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Ok, time to stop.
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I didn't...
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I didn't burn through a wire the whole day
until the last, last... Wait, I can put it on.
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Ok, time to go to bed, Martin.
[laughs]
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I did it.
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I did it.