Terribly biased hit piece on Silicon Valley, here is my rebuttal: https://medium.com/@DrSepah/why-the-media-lies-to-you-about-...
If you want to seriously rebut the New York Times piece, find a serious article.
"You don't need to “do nothing” or meditate during a dopamine fast (unless you’d like to). Just engage in regular activities that reflect your values:
- Health-Promoting (exercise, cooking)
- Leading (helping, serving others)
- Relating (talking, bonding over activities)
- Learning (reading, listening)
- Creating (writing, art)"
-- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dopamine-fasting-new-silicon-...
It's been 38 days since I stopped smoking, and it seems that things are starting to improve. I'm able to work on my creative endeavors again in multiple short bursts. I've also massively cut down on porn consumption (from daily to biweekly on average, but trying to get rid of it all). As well as halved my newsmedia consumption (an avg of 10 hours a week down to 5, another thing I want to get close to zero).
I've been reading a lot more, mostly philosophy (stoicism, daoism), but also worked through some other self help books as well as some science fiction. Still playing lots of games but, Im using it as my support system for the time being. Eventually I want to get even games down to just a very select few titles.
It's am ongoing process, tempting to want to rid myself of everything but that would be setting myself up for failure, too overwhelming. Must ease into things. the benefits have been manifold, discipline, concentration, memory, emotional control have all improved, which cascade into fitness, eating better, getting work done, less procrastination, and my favorite: more time. Bill Burr said "a year sober is the longest year of your life" and it's true, the clock passes so much slower, which is great, life is starting to feel plentiful again.
Anyway, I digress. But what I did notice is that is all comes back to dopamine. Some activities seem to give it more sustainably, others supernormally. And by limiting supernormal stimuli, we should expect to see positive effects.
I'd recommend yoga in combination with weightlifting or HIIT training.
The "have to be fit to join" is a myth. You can go whatever your fit/fat levels are.
The mindset is "do what you can" and improve step by step.
If you're not already doing this, I'd like to suggest journaling this effort in detail. This will be an amazing journey to look back on. And in the mean time, when things are tough it's always nice to be able to see all your accomplishments thus far.
I made it about a month clean before I had a drink which pulled me back into everything else. I'm trying to clean up again. I want to re claim my attention and be able to mindfully focus my time on more productive and helpful things.
One day at a time, I guess.
Helping and serving others is not leading at all. And leading is not helping and serving others.
And while good leaders help on occasions, they are not serving not the bulk of that role does not consists of helping and serving.
You can:
* eat your normal breakfast while fasting from food
* engage in your normal lunch routines with friends while fasting from food
* have a hearty, family style dinner with your loved ones while fasting from food.
Why does this person require abuse of the term "fast"? Fast means to abstain, but the entire list includes point for point the opposite of "abstaining" from dopamine. Exercise releases dopamine. Learning and creativity release it. Helping others release it. It's not a fast, and anyone who calls it that is just lying (or abusing our language in a very doublespeak 1984 kind of way, "eating is fasting" kind of way)
This comes across as a ridiculous fad with better branding than substance.
Note that I neither defend the news media here, nor argue against news fasting. This particular study just isn't the final argument in the matter, in my opinion.
I just calculated it for this study: With an estimated small effect size (0.1), 95% confidence (α=0,05) und 1 degree of freedom you have guaranteed significance at n=197. Phase 2 of the study at hand had n=167, so almost guaranteed significance from the sample size alone.
The problem is that the confidence intervals are huge and their range covers the negative space, too. In other words: It is quite possible that a reproduction of the study would show negative results.
The original sin of the controversial title is what made it go viral, so it's the price to pay to get it to help more people.
To the rest of you: beware the PhD who insists that everyone call him "doctor". It's a huge red flag.
Is he being misleading?
For the record, I have all my clients call me Cam and only use the honorific online and when being introduced to speak. Step up and tell us your name, instead of being an anonymous coward.
Toxic Masculinity does not mean being male is toxic (i.e. harmful). It refers to specific ideas about what it means to be male or how men should act that are toxic. Like not sharing emotions other than violence, not asking for help, never admitting weakness, etc. If you think those things are silly and we shouldn't be doing them: great! But many people (especially men) hold onto these notions and that's what the term refers to.
I don't "hate men" either. I neither hate myself nor do I hate other men for being men. I do however hate that some people (including men) have very harmful ideas about what it means to be a man and that they mock and bully men and boys who don't conform to these ideas for "not being real men".
If it is the case, it looks like an attempt by some groups to shame and to dictate men, who value those qualities, that they must adopt the views of those groups on the male character and behaviour - seen, as usually, as only acceptable and morally superior.
I thought toxic masculinity is more about seeing men superior to women, telling sexist jokes and remarks, expressing an explicit sexual interest to female colleagues, etc. Anyway, it is a misleading and confusing term in general.