Are you a library person or a cafe person?

And how can we use that to tackle bigger problem such as addiction!!

I am someone who can get my work done only in silent environment i.e library (with some solitude if possible). But some of my friends (and I am sure you might also know someone) who sits in noisy environment and goes into zen-mode focus while getting the work done. I personally feel it’s impossible (at most times) to sit in those environments and getting work done (working in cafe ☕, canteens etc;). It’s also true the other way i.e these friends of mine (at most times) find it difficult to focus in a silent environment (eg: library 📚) and they need some background sound to work; either in form of music 🎶 or some noise 🔊.

Some of us can only work with music/noise present (a cafe person) while others can focus only if the surroundings is silent (a library person)!! And (as you will see), it depends on the state of the mind. Image credits: https://krisp.ai/blog/communicating-in-noisy-environment/

So, why exactly is this happening? And can we leverage this to our advantage to tackle bigger issues — Addiction!!

The Go/ No-Go circuit

In layman terms, our brain has over 100 billion neurons and they are connected in various mysterious ways. We can assume that a subset of these connections form a “circuit” (or pathway) and a circuit roughly mimics a behavior that can be easily explainable/interpretable.

Now, 2 such circuits that are helpful for this blog are, “Go” circuits and “No-Go” circuits. They are aptly named: the “Go” circuits nudges us to move towards pursuing an action 🏃🏻‍♀️ and the “No-Go” circuits inhibits us towards pursuing an action! 🥱

How these (roughly) work?

Part 1 — Dopamine

I believe if you are reading this blog, you might have read my previous blog on our old friend Dopamine (if not, do check it out!). Here’s a one-liner that’ll be relevant for this post:

Dopamine puts us in “exteroception” mode i.e to move and experience the external senses. In short, dopamine is what makes one motivated to pursue something!

Now, Dopamine as a chemical (neurotransmitter/hormone) needs to act on something on our brain (cells); and that’s known as a “receptor” i.e the one that’s able to respond to these chemicals. So, the cells/ones that respond to dopamine are called as “dopamine receptors”.

Part 2 — D1/D2 receptors

These group of cells are present in various parts of brain. They respond when dopamine acts on them and produce different results. To be precise, if Dopamine is attached to D1 receptors (which form a part of “Go” circuit), we focus and pay attention to that item and move along to pursue it. On the other hand, if Dopamine is attached to D2 receptors (which forms a part of “No-Go” circuit), it suppresses the urge/action i.e we ignore to do that thing.

Dopamine on Go-circuit → We pay attention on that item, Dopamine on No-Go circuit → We ignore to do that item!

Alert mode → Be silent (and) Calm mode → Make some noise

So, the key takeaway is “When you are alert, you need to work in silence. Even the slightest noise will make you focus on that/distract you, so you tend to prefer working in calmer environments. On the other hand, when you are in a state of calm/tranquil, you need something running at the back to make sure you will be focused. If not, you might fall asleep 😴”

This explanation (unknowingly) worked in my case — When I want to get my work done just after I wake up (~calm state), I usually have some background music on. On the other hand, if I am already too focused on brainstorming, I try to be in a silent environment for my thoughts to flow naturally.

Having trouble to focus — Sleeping in classroom

A fun question — Have you observed that your focus mode is a bit different when you are hungry?

When I am slightly hungry, I am the most focused. If I am too much hungry, I can’t really focus on anything and if I am too full/satiated, I feel sleepy. In fact, I usually doze off in the class; especially the one immediately after lunch. Most of us agree that this has to do with the quantity and type of food we have for lunch, but that’s not the entire story. In short,

Eating 🍔 brings us to state of calmness 🧘🏻‍♂️ while Fasting 🍽️ brings us to state of alertness 🚨.

And that makes sense if we look from evolution point of view. Hunter gatherers are awake/alert and does their work most productively only when they are hungry. But if they are too hungry, they can’t focus on their target. They sleep/relax after having a feast transitioning to calm state.

So, having low carbs (i.e replicating fasting) helps us to be alert and thus learn better. But as discussed above, being too alert is also not good. So, if you are too alert that you are getting easily distracted, a trick would be to have some food which will reduce your autonomic arousal system (the alert system).

Beyond focus — Addiction

Now, let’s look at the main question — “Addressing addiction?”

Here’s my informal way of defining addiction — Addiction is nothing but the act of surrendering to ones impulses almost always!

Let’s take mobile phones as an example —Here’s what happens from lens of science: “Just few seconds before you pick your mobile phone 🤳, dopamine acted on your D1 circuit (or Go circuit) and thus you picked it up. Now all you need to do is to deviate the dopamine to act on D2 circuit (No-Go circuit) so you will not pick up.”

Almost always, we don’t have a real-purpose with our phone. We just pick up as we feel “bored” Image credits: HuffPost UK

Now, to be honest, almost always we don’t have a real-purpose with our phone when we pick it up. We just pick up as we feel “bored” or because of that “urge”. I believe we all experienced these situations:

• Waiting ⏳ in a queue/bus stop/scrolling phone while traveling/talking to others
• Not interesting content in TV 📺 /playing TV as a background noise while browsing in phone — Whenever I do this or see someone doing this, I either pull the phone away or switch off the TV.

At the end of the day, all these circuits are muscles, and it’s about retraining these pathways. I acknowledge that the process of retraining is no simpler by any means and requires time/patience 😕. And we do feel irritated during the process, but if we stick to simple routines and fight back this feeling of irritation, the end results will definitely look great i.e a more self-controlled/disciplined version of you.

• Pause for few seconds before acting on something ⏸️ — In most cases, this by itself will kill that urge to do something that’s not useful.
• While you paused, listen to your inner-voice 👂 — Be an observer of what your mind says. You don’t have to fight or act on it. Listening to it will make you realize that this action is not a necessity and just an urge.
• Keep yourself away from triggers at the first place — Remember this urge/trigger only acts for few seconds and all we need to do is to move dopamine to No-Go circuit in those seconds. The idea is to create some friction between you and the addiction.
• Have some distractors ready — Not always it’s possible to fight your mind with your thoughts. So, incases you can’t have a distractor ready!

Now this framework works for all types of stuff as for brain, it’s about redirecting the dopamine to No-Go circuits for any type of action. For the mobile phones example (which by the way, am not great in self-controlling), I try to keep my mobile away from reach while working. While I am not a big fan of timers, I think that distractor helps a lot of us to reduce the phone usage.

As another example to fight against, “eating junk food 🍕🍟”, I try my best to not have any junk food at home. So, even if I get that urge to eat, I can’t have it. And as a distractor, I try to plan/schedule my meals ahead.

I am not particularly great in self-control and do fight every day my smaller battles! And I lose a lot and that’s ok!!! What I try to be is be aware with information and act self-consciously whenever it’s possible. And having this information only makes me feel guilty the next time I surrendered to something! and eventually this loop should improve myself in some aspects.

1. The content for this blogpost has been inspired from the 8th episode of Huberman podcast — Optimize Your Learning & Creativity with Science-based Tools (Youtube link) and this excellent blog describing how to counterattack addiction using this knowledge.
2. For understanding more on the pathways from NeuroScience point of view, here’s a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/RzcXkvxXKEQ
3. I am not an expert (or a certified knowledgeable person) in this field. I just try to distill the ones I learn to informative blog posts, so incase you have a different experience/explanation or find some erroneous content, please let me know.
4. Addiction is a bigger problem and whatever I shared in this blog is purely for information purpose and not a medical advice as such!