A dopamine detox to reset your life in 30 days

Because most of modern life has become a blur, and you're tired of it

This is for those times where life starts to lose its wonder and zest.

When you feel more tired than you do calm.

When you may not realize you’re using coffee as a security blanket.

When you start to notice dark circles under your eyes.

When you look back to a time where life felt seamless and almost magical.

Because there’s a harsh reality of living in today’s world.

By simply living, we take on risk.

But not the good type of risk.

The risk of binge tech (social media, streaming, gaming, and news).

The risk of simulated sexual stimulation (pornography and dating apps).

The risk of consumables (alcohol, drugs, junk food).

The risk of thrill-seeking (gambling, shopping sprees, or extreme spots).

Now - I’m not one to demonize your actions. I’m not a saint by any means. I’m just a guy that likes to study weird things and share what he’s learned (for money, sure, but also meaning. If I wanted to get filthy rich I’d start a religion).

Most people online love to put on the guise of perfection. They’ll be the first to tell you when you’re doing something that is slightly bad, yet when you look at their life, they usually aren’t in a mental, physical, spiritual, or financial state that you would want to be in.

You’ve done something that someone else thinks is bad at least 5 times this week.

That’s fine. You’ll live. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss.

Instead, I want to talk about this:

When you live in today’s world of convenient quick pleasures, and if you don’t want to become a monk (because if you did want that, it’s out of ego, which I find funny), you need tool to perform a “factory reset” on your life.

Humans create tools to solve problems.

Technology creates problems, but it also allows humans to do what used to be impossible.

If you do this at least once a year, for 30 days, you will buffer the consequences of modern life.

In other words, you will bring the childlike wonder back, allowing you to experience life deeper.

The Cheap Dopamine Epidemic

Your brain operates on a salience network.

Meaning, whatever provides the most dopamine becomes the most important.

I think you can already see how big of a problem this can become, but let’s have some fun and break it down.

As we’ve discussed way too many times, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that flow states (or the optimal states of human experience... pure enjoyment) require a specific skill to challenge ratio.

If the challenge of a goal is too high for your skill level, you get anxious. If the challenge is too low, you get bored. You wouldn’t fight a level 100 character when you are a level 1. Doesn’t make sense.

Overstimulation destroys the potential for flow states, or enjoyment, because it raises the bar for what you consider stimulating. Everything that is more boring than your phone, gambling, porn, partying, and the rest is automatically labeled as “boring” by your brain.

A “dopamine detox” has become a well marketed way of reseting your baseline for stimulation.

It works so well for 3 reasons:

1) Boredom is the gateway to novelty

Carl Jung, OG psychologist, harped on the importance of shadow work – confronting the uncomfortable aspects of ourselves we typically avoid.

Sitting with boredom does just this.

It activates breakthrough insights when the rational mind stops trying to solve everything.

It reveals our authentic desires beneath external conditioning.

It sets the scene for 3 flow triggers, making you more likely to enter a season of intense learning and building:

• Deep embodiment – being present with discomfort

• Novelty – boredom forces you to seek new, healthier stimulation

• Unpredictability – not knowing what will emerge from the void

You’re bored because you don’t have a quest.

You don’t have a quest because you’re playing someone else’s game.

Counterintuitively, the solution is to stop playing those games and sit with your boredom until your own game becomes clear.

2) The brain will upregulate dopamine receptors when deprived

Hedonic adaptation is your psychological thermostat.

No matter how high or low the temperature goes, it always tries to return to the set point.

This creates what psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill.” You’re always running toward the next source of pleasure, but the satisfaction never lasts. Each experience becomes your new normal, requiring more intense stimulation to achieve the same emotional high.

But when you deprive yourself of pleasure, the opposite happens. A hedonic treadmill reversal.

Slowly, then rapidly, simple pleasures become enjoyable again. You experience what Buddhists call the beginner’s mind.

You notice the detail in the sky when you’re on a walk outside. You notice the hint of rosemary in the well cooked meal. Life becomes electric, as it should be.

3) You don’t need motivation, you need clarity

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

– Naval Ravikant

When was the last time you created space for emergence?

That’s how reality works.

Through chaos, or a change in perspective of chaos, order emerges.

A dopamine detox creates space for sense-making. That is, processing and integrating experience.

In the Information Age, modern technology creates a “context collapse.” Our brain is only capable of processing so much information. Around 50 bits of information per second through our conscious attention.

If you were to binge on food every day for the course of a month, you would probably gain a decent amount of fat.

If you were to binge on information (social media as a prime example) every day since you’ve had the app installed on your phone, you’re walking around mentally obese. You don’t notice it because it’s become normal (homeostasis).

When you deprive yourself to the point of boredom, you’re almost forced to confront all of the problems that you’ve suppressed over the years.

It will be painful, but if you sit with it long enough, you’ll receive a burst of clarity that launches you into a new phase of life.

The Dopamine Detox Protocol

The ultimate goal isn’t to become an ascetic or a monk or go off and live in the woods and never experience modern pleasures again.

The goal is to develop sovereignty and agency: The capacity to choose consciously rather than react compulsively. The capacity to notice where your life is heading, generate new goals that align with a future you want, and act toward those goals without permission from anyone else. A periodic detox is a calibration tool to keep you on track every 6-12 months.

This creates the foundation for what our lord and savior Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi considers the highest human aspiration:

A life composed of flow states, where challenge and skill dance in perfect harmony, creating meaning through engaged attention and action.

With all of that finally out of the way, here’s the protocol:

1) The Pain & Gain Story

Before we continue, there’s a problem.

You’ve read this far.

You like what you’re reading.

You’re motivated to change your life.

But we all know that unless you set the stage for a shift in identity (because all lasting behavior change is identity change), you will give up in 2 weeks.

You need to create a visceral, emotional, and specific story.

Two stories to be exact: one for where your life will end up if you keep living in pain, and one for who you will become if you decide to change.

For this, I love using AI, because it can be difficult to dig into your own mind without getting stopped by some form of limiting belief.

Try this extremely extensive AI prompt I created to pull these stories out of your head.

Disclaimer: I programmed this to be pretty intense. It digs deep and tries to get to the root of your motivations. keep that in mind.

This is just one prompt out of 4 in Superhuman90 (a protocol to reset your life in 90 days).

2) Go Monk Mode

If you’ve never done this before, it will be difficult.

And if you don’t have a deep intrinsic reason to see it through, you will probably give up very quick. That’s why step one is so important.

For 30 days, you’re eliminating:

1. Binge tech (social media, streaming, gaming, news)

2. Unnatural sexual stimulation (porn and dating apps)

3. Consumeables (alcohol, drugs, junk food, “sweetness” in general)

4. Thrill-seeking (gambling, shopping sprees, extreme spots)

Now, if you’re asking, “Well what do I do with my time then?”

That’s the exact problem.

What do you mean what do you do with your time? You do what non-addicted people do.

You move. You exercise. You talk to people. You prepare your food. You learn and build toward your goals. And when you aren’t doing those things, you sit with the boredom until it’s no longer boring.

3) Walk 10,000 Steps A Day

It’s funny, but 10,000 steps a day was a metric created to market pedometers.

The sweet spot for walking is actually between 7,000-8,000 steps. That’s where most of the benefits are received. 10,000 steps just sounds nicer.

Why walk?

• For most untrained people, it’s a form of low intensity cardio.

• It improves digestion, blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity, helping you get and stay lean.

• You finally get some sunlight to unfuck your circadian health.

• It’s an undistracted time to learn something new (listen to an audiobook or lecture)

• You can resolve mental turmoil and reflect on your life

• You can generate ideas that can be put to use in your deep work sessions

Specifically, I’d recommend walking 20 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

That will probably put you close to 10,000 steps.

You’ll get morning light, afternoon light, and evening light which increases your sleep quality.

You’ll start dropping water weight and inflammation which makes you look significantly leaner in the first 7+ days of doing this.

4) Go To The Gym (Seriously)

When I look and feel terrible, I don’t want to do anything with my life.

I want to hide from the world.

I don’t feel confident in my actions.

So, I stop caring even more. I let myself go. I binge eat. I have zero discipline and simply feel worse.

I believe everyone should do some form of resistance training. Cardio is great, but so is a bit of muscle mass. And frankly, nobody wants to be told they “look like a runner.”

Men want broad shoulders and a v-taper. Women want the hourglass figure.

You will only create that physique in the gym.

And no, ladies, you will never get ‘too bulky.’

Dudes have been trying to get too bulky for their entire life. You don’t just lift a weight and gain 30 pounds of muscle.

Beyond that:

• 30+ minutes of exercise provides steady and sustainable dopamine release

• Physical movement is one of the most reliable flow triggers

• Create BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) supporting neurplascity

• Strength training lowers risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and early death + muscle protects against frailty as you get older

• More muscle = higher BMR = you can eat more without gaining fat

• Boosts mitochondrial density and efficiency = more energy

I don’t want to hear your regurgitated “but lifting weights is risky and you can get injured!”

Yes, if you’re stupid with how you do it.

Go to the gym.

5) Do An Elimination Diet

I love health and fitness.

It’s been a massive passion of mine for the past 15 years (yes, when I was 15 years old I was obsessively tracking macros and calories).

I’ve tried every diet under the sun.

But I try to be as non-dogmatic as I can about specific diets.

That said, I do think everyone should commit to an elimination diet at least once in their life.

Why?

• It nearly guarantees a drastic boost in energy

• You’ll lower inflammation and drop water weight, making you look 10 pounds lighter (with a tighter jawline)

• If you actually commit to it for 30+ days, you will rewire your eating habits and potentially become disgusted at the thought of eating hyper-palatable foods

• You may find foods that create digestive problems, skin problems, headaches, or foods that just make you feel terrible without you noticing

To make this simple so this letter doesn’t drag on, try the vertical diet.

This is a renowned diet in the bodybuilding space created by Stan Efferding, and is always the “baseline” diet I return to.

It’s simple, most of the foods are tolerable for most people, and it is incredibly nutrient dense (which may solve deficiencies you didn’t know you had).

Again, if you want the training and nutrition protocols I use, along with AI prompts to help you dial in exactly how much you should be eating - Superhuman90 goes live on the 28th.

6) Build A New Project That Increases Your Potential

Read this carefully:

The best way to learn is to build a real world project and only search for information when you need it. How much you learn is directly correlated with how much progress you make on the project.

When you watch endless tutorials, you fill your mind with noise and chaos. Most of that information goes to waste. It leads to overwhelm, anxiety, and slows down how fast you learn.

When it comes time to build the project (the only reason you’re learning in the first place) you feel as if you learned nothing, and have to search for the information anyway. So, if you want to learn faster, skip the tutorial phase. Outline the project first.

Now, this confuses some people.

A “project” can be anything.

Your health can be a project. Your business can be a project. An image in Photoshop can be a project.

A project is simply a structured way of achieving a goal, or making progress toward a goal.

It’s a way to further narrow your frame of reference so your mind biases the right information as you learn.

As you read books, study tutorials, or have conversations, good dopamine will spurt into your brain to signal that information is important for the completion of the project. Your subconscious will munch on problems and send relevant ideas to your conscious mind.

This is what creatives call “shower thoughts,” when the Default Mode Network is active in your brain while at “rest.”

Darwin worked on his projects in focused blocks, then went on long walks. On these walks, his brain was at rest, and potential solutions to problems pop into his head.

Here’s how you start a project:

• Choose something to build that moves the needle toward what you want in life (from earlier - your pain and gain story)

• Create a note or document and brain dump everything that comes to mind

• Save 3-5 sources of inspiration that you want to emulate (if I’m creating a YouTube video as a project, I would save 3-5 YouTube videos I would want to create similar iterations of)

• Study those sources and break down their structure or characteristics

• Outline the project into sections, milestones, images, inspiration, and what you need to know

• Have a place to capture ideas that comes to mind, preferably somewhere you don’t lose the ideas or forget about them

Now that you’re ready to start, don’t start learning.

7) Reflect For 10 Minutes Every Night

Your brain is constantly trying to process your experiences.

When you don’t give it dedicated time, it hijacks your attention at the worst possible moments.

This is the Zeigarnik effect. Your brain holds onto incomplete tasks and unprocessed experiences, creating tension that drains your cognitive resources.

Reflection helps close open loops for the day, among other things:

• It is an act of metacognition, or thinking about your thinking, the highest form of human intelligence

• Builds a feedback loop for progress – after 30 days you’ll have 30 data points about what actually moves your life forward

• Transforms mistakes into data rather than regrets

• Reduces decision fatigue for tomorrow

Set a non-negotiable alarm for 9:30 PM (or 30 minutes before bedtime).

Use the 3-2-1 framework.

3 wins.

2 lessons.

1 intention for the morning.

Use a physical notebook. No digital rabbit holes.

Start with 2 minutes if 10 feels like too much.

The dopamine detox clears the noise. The walking creates space. The gym builds confidence. The diet optimizes your biology. The project gives you purpose.

Reflection is how you track mental and spiritual progress.

Thank you for reading.

– Dan

If you want to read more, here are a few of my products and other letters:

• 2 Hour Writer to learn a high-value skill for today’s world (if you need a project to work on).

• Superhuman90 if you want the full dopamine detox, training, nutrition, and lifestyle protocol.

• The HUMAN 3.0 letter - a map to reach the 1%.