Day 4/30 Day 4 completed. I felt a lot more fresh and restored today, and managed to stay productive for most time. After the work day, I'll give myself spare time to recharge and rest on a daily basis.
A few days ago I started learning Spanish with Duolingo, an app that gamefies learning languages. I would consider this a productive endeavor and not some mindless time waster of a videogame, because I’m learning a lot. However, the way Duolingo is designed does seem to leverage the brain’s dopamine system: the app turns learning into a game with challenges, rewards, little ringing bell sounds and animations for completed tasks etc.. So I’d like to know what people on this thread think: is using an app like Duolingo compatible with the detox or should it be avoided?
Know how I learned English, I played a video game a long time ago called Planescape Torment, the whole game was VERY text heavy, I would get a dictionary in my hand and translate on the go, the times before google translate. Point is, I truly learned English, I mean, sure it was Engrish at first, but, vocabulary is 70% of the battle when learning a language. Maybe you can do the same with Spanish, just, use a book you might be interested instead of a game. In fact I plan to do it with Italian, I'm just trying to decide which book.
Like, I think a lot depends on your intention and what its actually doing to your brain. I would spend hours on a computer looking at porn nuking my brain. But I would (and still do) spend hours on a computer looking at jupyter notebooks, visual studio code, and an AWS console, and I'm definitely not getting a dopamine blast from any of stuff. Well, not much anyway lol. It's always a thrill when you figure a bug out. haha.
I don't see a problem, as long as you don't use it as some kind of instant gratification and escapism from other positive activities.
I recommend not engaging in them coz they can be dopamine inducing. But it depends on how you use it as well.
Good point I should get a book.. actually the reason why I quit using Duolingo after a while, because it’s just assignments and no explanations of grammar.
Checking in on day 10.. Thanks to everyone who replied to my question from yesterday! I’ve decided to continue using the Duolingo app for 15 minutes a day until I get a proper Spanish text book.
Day 6/30 I had an intense day of working/studying today, but don't feel exhausted like previous times. A think Dopamine Detox has a lot to do with it, together with NoFap overall lifestyle.
