Learn Language through the song - | English exercises

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- Let me know if this sounds familiar to you.

You just started playing a new video game.

Maybe you started playing it

because a friend told you it was fun,

or maybe you started watching

some YouTube gameplay videos about it,

so you decided to give it a try.

And at first, it feels kind of (beep).

You don't really get it, you're not very good at it,

so it genuinely feels tedious to play.

The experience of playing the video game is pain,

but you stick with it a little bit.

You suspect that maybe if you just put

a few more hours into it, something will click.

And quite often, something does.

When that click happens,

all of a sudden what was once tedious becomes addicting.

You discover the core gameplay loop

and that core gameplay loop keeps you playing

for hours and hours on end

until it's cutting into your sleep,

you're playing till 3:00 AM,

and your entire family leaves you

for someone who doesn't do that.

And if this situation sounds familiar to you,

then you'll have no problem

understanding the phenomenon of laziness.

Because in life,

we work hard at various things every single day.

We know we're supposed to put in long hours

of doing the right thing,

because we've been told by our parents, society at large,

or by ourselves that it's what we should do.

But the payoff for doing these things often feels lacking.

Like we don't really understand the point,

and when we don't understand the point or the reward,

we won't be motivated to do it.

And when we're not motivated

to do the good things we're supposed to do,

we think of ourselves as lazy.

But the fact is, you're not lazy.

You have seemingly no problem putting in long hours

towards things that you find enjoyable or fun,

but when you can't see the point,

you can't feel the motivation.

In other words,

if you haven't discovered the core gameplay loop,

you won't be incentivized to play.

So how does a core gameplay loop even work?

Why do some things feel addicting

and others feel super boring?

And what if there was a way to feel that same desire

and motivation that you might feel towards video games

or watching your favorite show,

but towards doing things that would improve your life

to a significant degree?

Well, there is a way,

and the first step is to understand

what's going on under the hood.

So here we go.

You are only motivated to do anything in life,

not because the thing is enjoyable,

but because you think it might be.

Now that might sound kind of funny, but it's true.

You're only motivated to do something,

not because it's enjoyable,

but because you think it might be.

A good example can be found in watching sports.

People sit down to watch their favorite sports team

in the hopes that their team will win the game.

But when your team is getting utterly brutalized,

it's not very fun.

But sports fans will typically watch anyways.

Why is that?

Why would you continue to sit there

and watch your team get scored on and lose badly

even if it isn't enjoyable?

Well, it's because it might be.

You keep watching, because your team might score.

It's the hope that keeps you glued to the screen,

even when the activity itself is in no way pleasurable.

This is due to a psychological phenomenon

known as reward prediction error,

and it's the reason why gamblers gamble, why smokers smoke,

and why "League of Legends" players exist.

You expect that the activity

that you sit down to do will be enjoyable,

and when circumstances don't play out

in the way that you expect,

this puts you in a state of dopamine deprivation.

Your reward prediction had an error,

and it feels bad, it wounds you,

and it makes you crave the antidote

that might just be around the corner.

It's almost like developing a habit

of cramming your foot into an extremely tight shoe

only to experience the eventual relief of taking it off.

We've been gaslit into believing that our return

back to baseline is pleasurable.

Here's another example.

If you and I were sitting on the couch

just chilling out together,

and I show you a funny meme on my phone,

you'd probably say, "Ha, that's pretty funny."

And then you'd go about your day feeling kind of the same,

maybe a little bit better off,

because I have a brilliant sense of humor,

but also because we shared a little moment

of human connection, a little shared experience.

But what you probably wouldn't feel is a restless agitation,

desperate for me to show you another meme.

(pair laughing)

- Okay, that's good, that's good.

- Yeah.

- Okay, next one. - What?

What? - Next one.

Again. - What?

Again.

- Okay. - Yeah, another.

- But that's exactly how you feel

when you're scrolling YouTube Shorts

or browsing funny memes by yourself.

Yeah? - Chinese-made playing cards.

- You like that one?

It's pretty funny.

Like, I think what's funny about it is...

- Just go next, just go next.

- But you know, like China, right?

It's a country.

- Yeah, China, China. And you have China.

But, like... - Oh, oh, yeah,

they can't spell.

- And the joke is that things that are made in China

are not good quality,

so it's like proving it. - Yeah, no,

just go to the next.

- Because when you're caught in a doomscrolling loop,

you're sifting through mostly unfunny videos,

which is slightly psychologically painful,

which makes you crave finding an actually funny video

to ease the pain.

The feeling of compulsion, the motivation to keep going,

doesn't come from anticipating pleasure,

but anticipating the relief of the agitation,

the agitation that was caused by participating

in the activity in the first place.

This is the dopamine illusion,

and it's the core mechanic in a gameplay loop.

It's also the very thing that we need to weaponize

in order to make our real life activities

more motivating and addicting.

Before we dive into that,

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And thanks again to AG1 for sponsoring this video.

Okay, so how do we develop

the core gameplay loop of our lives

so that we feel motivated and mobilized

to do constructive behaviors rather than destructive ones?

Well, basically, only one thing needs to happen.

We need to feel more dopamine

towards the things that we want to do.

It's that simple.

It's that simple, because dopamine is motivation.

What if I told you that all of the dopamine

that you need in life is already inside your brain?

Most people are under the illusion,

the impression that things give them dopamine, right?

Like, they wanna play a video game

and that thing is giving them dopamine,

or they want to eat a nice tasty ice cream cone

and they lick it and they're getting dopamine from it.

But that's a little silly, right?

That's not how it works,

because the dopamine is already inside your brain.

Your brain just needs permission to release it,

and it releases it

based on whether or not you expect a reward.

Expectation is everything.

If you don't understand the point of what you're doing,

if you cannot even anticipate

or fathom any potential reward,

then you won't feel motivation towards that thing.

It's as simple as that.

So if you want to feel more motivated to do your work,

you have to ask yourself what's in it for you?

Do you even want to?

What can you hope to gain from doing what you need to do,

not just in the future, but now?

How would it make you feel to finally sit there

and get it done, do what you need to do?

Would you feel a sense of relief?

Maybe some inner peace?

You know, asking yourself these questions

might sound trivial,

but you probably know better than anybody

that you don't want to do what you don't want to do, right?

If something doesn't sound fun to you,

if something doesn't sound enjoyable,

you're probably gonna really drag your feet on it.

You're gonna procrastinate the hell out of it.

So simply sitting there

and imagining why it might be enjoyable

to do what you need to do,

you will get a squirt of dopamine.

You will feel motivated to do it,

but the question is, will you be able to feel that dopamine?

And if you can't, then you have to tackle the other problem,

dopamine desensitization.

And this is the part of the video

that you might not want to hear.

If you want to feel more motivated in life,

if you want to cure your laziness,

then you have to stop doing things

that desensitize you to dopamine.

Scrolling YouTube Shorts is not free.

Watching two people you don't know

getting intimate on camera for money

while you do nasty things to yourself is not free.

These activities that have you constantly hunting

and seeking and searching for the right clip

are overloading your dopamine receptors

to the point where they die off,

and that makes you less sensitive

to the natural motivation that's already inside you.

There's a very good chance

that you are motivated to do your job.

You are motivated to go to the gym.

Your brain is releasing dopamine just fine.

You just can't feel it,

because you're living with dopamine receptor atrophy,

and the cure is brutally simple.

You just have to stop,

and that's what the first half of the video is about.

Hopefully you now know that you're not actually addicted

to any kind of reward or pleasure,

but merely to the anticipation of reward.

Then you'll also know

that you're not actually missing out on anything

if you stop.

By stopping, you're just freeing yourself

from a mental prison you never enjoyed anyways.

So how long does it take?

If you stop engaging with this mental prison,

how long before your motivation comes back?

Well, in my experience,

there's both an acute instant benefit

that happens the day you stop.

And there's also a long-term benefit of about three weeks.

But I notice a huge difference between days

where I start the day by doomscrolling a little bit,

and then try to do work versus days where I don't do that,

I start my day off a little bit slower,

and then I somehow have more motivation

to sit there and do work.

It's like magic,

and I think this is because

our brain works in contrast, right?

If you start the day off with blasting your brain

and using all the dopamine that you have in your brain,

and then try to do something less dopaminergic,

more naturally dopaminergic,

it feels super boring and tedious.

So there's an acute instant effect

to not doomscrolling today.

And if you can go three weeks with this mindset

and this new lifestyle

of identifying the trap for what it is,

then you'll notice that after three weeks,

your motivation just starts flooding back,

like things that you thought were boring,

that you couldn't focus on for more than 11 minutes,

you can dive into

and you're not feeling restless or agitated

or wanting to do something else.

You're just calm and smooth.

When you achieve dopamine resensitization,

you won't need little tips and tricks

to stop looking at your phone,

because you won't want to look at your phone.

The benefits will be inarguable.

Normal, healthy things in your life,

work, exercise, learning, creativity, socializing,

will feel exciting and engaging and motivating to do.

And this isn't just wishful thinking,

it's a biological reality.

Solve your dopamine and you will solve your laziness.

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