What two months without short-form content did to me: a surge of energy, sharper memory, new taste for ordinary things, and the book I'd postponed since 2019.
What happened to me over two months without social media?
For those of you who don’t know about my experiment, some quick context.
On 3 September I came across a YouTube video called “The Dopamine Pit,” and it made me realise that watching short-form content — reels and stories — was preventing my body from building up dopamine in any real quantity.
And that neurotransmitter, as it turns out, directly affects our level of motivation and our willingness to take on serious projects and tasks.
Giving up short-form content turned out not to be hard. In the very first days I felt a substantial surge of energy, and my cognitive function improved dramatically.
I started making decisions much faster and more easily. My memory improved. My brain began producing solutions on its own for tasks and projects I’d been chewing on for a long time — and those solutions were sharp and strong.
What surprised me most was the level of pleasure I began getting from ordinary things. A simple walk down the street, cocoa with banana milk, breakfast at a café, driving the car — all these everyday things started bringing genuine enjoyment and gladness.
I got the sense of actually being in the moment, with my thoughts not racing off somewhere else. A completely new level of awareness.
I remember that when I gave up sugar five years ago, my taste receptors cleared and I started perceiving the flavour of all food differently. This was a similar process, only what cleared were the “informational” receptors — the dopamine ones. The taste of life became something else entirely.
All of that happened in the first month, and I’ve already mentioned some of those effects on the blog.
But what happened in the second month genuinely astonished me.
My brain keeps producing good ideas every day, and my overall motivation only keeps climbing.
I thought: if something as simple as giving up short-form content produced results like these, what would happen if I deliberately helped my brain and trained it?
I started watching videos about improving cognitive function. I began doing simple exercises that activate both hemispheres. I got bloodwork done, found a vitamin D deficiency, and started correcting it. I fixed my sleep and rest schedule — going to bed around 11pm and getting up at 7am.
The first thing I do after waking is up to ten minutes of stretching that gets the whole body going. I drink a lot of water with lemon and take some supplements.
This unglamorous set of actions led to me finally working on the tasks and projects I’d been postponing for years.
These days, every morning from 8 to 9, I spend forty minutes writing my book. I already have my own method for it, and I may well devote a separate post to that later. But for me the simple fact of having started the book is an enormous win, because I’d been thinking about it since around 2019 and kept putting it off and procrastinating.
I’ve started working with my goals and strategy in a completely different way. I began noticing connections and details I used to miss entirely. My overall motivation went up several times over. My team and I started making new content formats. The blog began growing even faster.
There are many more effects from deciding to stop watching short-form content, but I think you’ve already gathered how delighted I am. “Dobby is free” at last, and now my brain can run in an entirely different mode.
If someone had told me three months ago that simply giving up the short-form content I watched for 40–50 minutes a day could turn my life around like this, I would never have believed them.
Have you ever tried spending some time away from social media?