For curiosity sake, I designed a quiz for my students last year where they had to figure out how much coffee I drink in a day.

It was a unit on measurement, so I provided them the dimensions of my mug, told them how many cups of it I typically drank, then had them calculate and do the conversion. I honestly didn’t know, but was curious.

The result: 2.1 litres a day!

No wonder I always felt groggy and perpetually spun out. My body had built up such a high tolerance to caffeine, that only the most extreme amounts had an effect–and it was a negative one.

I’ve discovered the same issue with digital distractions. The carefully designed addiction qualities of our connected world keeps us hooked until we’re constantly checking and don’t even know why.

Our dopamine neurotransmitters (reward sensors in the brain) are overwhelmed and built such a tolerance, it’s possibly to spend entire days indulging in junk (distractions and food) with only a small feeling of elation.

Without a need to be on any device right now, I figure this would be a good time for a low drip dopamine diet.

For me, this means limiting my digital distractions to three times a day and limiting each bout to fifteen minutes. It also means cutting out snacking between meals and my biggest nemesis: snacking before bed.

This is something similar to the digital minimalism experiment I participated in a while back, which had many positive outcomes. However, the critical error I made was not re-introducing technologies back in a meaningful way.

My avenue this time is to scale back severely, without cutting out what I deem is necessary. It’s goal this time is to find reward in the boring and mundane.

It’s those slow drip activities that lead to meaningful progress towards greater outcomes in life. Those things like exercise, eating healthy, deep concentration, contemplation and yes, even writing.

Time to sensitize those transmitters once again.