You’re stuck in a rut.

Apathy, lethargy. Entire days wasted away on Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

You find yourself procrastinating on basically everything, coasting through life in a haze of mediocrity.

This isn't the life you want. You're dying to break free—to work hard, to improve your lifestyle... to get fit, find a better job, start a business, pursue a creative dream—but for whatever reason, it’s just been impossible.

The motivation to start, and more importantly, to persist, always seems out of reach.

And that's when you see it.

A viral TikTok video that explains exactly why you waste time, why you procrastinate, why you’re so stuck.

"Your issue? You're simply adrift in life, lacking clear purpose and direction.

You need to establish your WHYs behind the many WHATs of your dream life… until you do, you’ll stay stuck repeating the same patterns.Ask yourself: Why do you want to work hard and achieve your goals? Why is it so important? Why were you put here on earth?

If you make all that SUPER clear... if you turn your answers into visualizations, vision boards, motivational posters, affirmations… then—YES! You'll start to feel a burning drive and motivation to achieve your goals."

So you do all that. And for the first time in a while, you feel a flicker of hope and a tinge of eagerness to get stuff done.

Ready to take action, you open up a work program—but then it hits you.

The feeling.

That feeling.

That dreaded “ugh, I just don't feel like it” sensation.

You try to willpower through it, but not 5 minutes later, you're back on Reddit.Then onto YouTube.Then TikTok.

By the end of the day, you’re just back.

Back to your old ways. Back to where you started. Back to feeling like a pathetic failure.

What gives?

Hey there. Simon D here.

Thanks for checking out what I've come to call a Tap-Book. It's designed to be ADHD accessible, but honestly, pacing text this way makes reading long-form at lot less daunting and enjoyable.I hope you agree.

The content itself is several years in the making—research, prototyping, writing, rewriting, rerewriting—and I'm just stoked to finally bring it to you.

Anyway, the purpose of this thing is to provide an answer to that question. It's to break down the what gives? predicament into clear, digestible pieces that just make sense.

Specifically, we'll do a deep-dive on the three phenomena that I know have come to define your life:Doomscrolling, Procrastination, and Stagnation.

By the end of Part 1, you'll come to understand why 5 minutes on say YouTube, always leads to an all-out binge.

You'll understand why this casual whole-day time wasting repeats day after day, week after week.You'll understand why you always wait until the last possible minute to get critical tasks done—to say nothing about the creative projects, business ideas or lifestyle goals that would lead to an awesome life.

You'll also understand why these patterns repeat for weeks, months, and now years. Why you're seemingly content to let your youth flit by with nothing to show for it. Why you're okay to just stand on the sidelines, consuming crap you barely even enjoy, forever watching others do cool and interesting things.

And it's not what you think.

Your doomscrolling. Your procrastinating. Your stagnation.The reason you do that stuff; the reason you're stuck... it really is not what you think.

It's not because you're flawed, weak, or fundamentally broken.

It's not because you lack self-control or self-discipline.

It's not because you haven't found the right productivity method or habit forming app.

And it's certainly not because you're lazy, pathetic, idiotic, useless... the absolute worst human ever—all thoughts I've had myself a million times over.

No.

There’s other stuff going on here.

Deep stuff. Hidden stuff. Not-so-obvious stuff.

The first part to this book serves to expose exactly what's going on with you. We'll be digging deep to find the actual root causes of your time-wasting habits and chronic underachievement.

That'll be Part 1, The Problem.It's a 38 minute read of which, you can get about half-way through before hitting the 29$ paywall.I suggest you go through it. See if it resonates. See if you're able to see yourself in the examples. See if comes to redefine the way you see yourself and all your past failures.

From there we can get to a solution.Part 2 (The Solution) is a 22 minute read. It provides a systematic method that address these root causes head-on, walking you through the best way to break bad tech habits, while building up better work and lifestyle habits.

Best part is, you don't have to do any of this alone.

See the "?" icon that just appeared?

It's there for you to ask me anything.Like if something's unclear or whatever, just hit me up. Ditto for when (not if) you reach a sticking point or are unsure how to apply a step to real life.

It's a win-win, btw. Reaching out with questions or your personal struggles helps me learn how you, and others like you, struggle, which then helps me refine the method, improve the content, and add supporting material.

That's about it for the intro stuff, but before we continue, I feel a need to address why you might be hesitant.You might not know what’s coming next.You might be worried that this is going to ask a lot from you.You might doubt whether you can actually do it.

So let me make things simple.

First, if you do decide to purchase the full book, I offer a zero-stress, no-questions refund policy.Try it. Explore it. If it doesn’t resonate, or if you’re not ready right now, just ask. No drama.

And if money is a concern, I'm open to sending you a discount. Just hit the "?" icon and explain your situation. I'll write back with a code.

Finally, I just want you to know this: just because this journey is long and challenging doesn’t mean it won’t be worth it.The goal here isn’t to turn you into this willpower warrior who equipped to fight a lifetime of temptations. Who then employs self-discipline techniques to wrangle themselves to do what they don't want to do.

That, to me, is not living.

No, the goal here is for you to build your best life—however you define it. It's a life filled with happiness, meaningful work, cool experiences, and sure, vices in whatever amount you deem best. Good shows, good games, good food... hell, good TikToks—whatever makes life richer is fair game. None of that has to disappear to live a richer life... but it can if that's really what you want.

That really is the aim of this method. You living your best life.

So, without any further fluff, let’s get straight to it.

Happy reading.✌️

PART 1 - THE PROBLEM

Chapter 1: Why you Doomscroll

You’re at your desk, doing some work on a project.

It's going okay, when you get the idea to take a break. You tell yourself:"Two minutes. Two minutes to check what’s new on Reddit, and then it's right back to work."

Two minutes soon becomes fifteen.

Fine. It happens. But let's pause the tape right there.If that was the end of it—if you thought, "You know, that was an interesting post and worth the extended time, but now let's get back to work"... and then you actually did get back to work, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, you decide to check TikTok—again, just for a few minutes—aaand an entire hour’s passed.

Why did that happen? Why does that sort of thing always happen?To answer, we’ll need to rewind this mental movie and take a closer look in slow-mo.

So, there you are, scrolling through Reddit. Then it hits you: you're wasting time. You resurface to the present moment. You look up and away from your phone and—there. Right then. Pause the tape.It's subtle as heck and easy to miss, but in that crucial moment… you felt something.

What was it exactly?

Perhaps guilt as you realized that you broke your promise to focus, to have a distraction-free work session.Or maybe you were irritated because fun time was over, and it was time to get back to work, back to the grind.Whatever the precise emotion, it just felt... bad.

Logically, this negative feeling should compel you to get the heck back to work. Like how the pain of a burn stops you from touching a hot stovetop again... the pain of wasting time should compel you to, well, stop wasting time.But that's not what happens. In fact, the opposite happens. You waste more time.

On the surface this seems irrational, but if we dig a little deeper, it actually makes perfect sense.

See, for you, browsing the internet is a vice. And the thing about vices—beyond their ability to entertain and gratify—is their unmatched ability to relieve bad feelings.

This may not yet ring true to you, so let’s fast-forward another hour to see the vice in action again.

Here you are flicking through... whatever, when you surface again for a moment. This time you throw your phone at the couch in anger.With the deadline looming closer, cortisol floods your brain. You feel stress. Anxiety. Panic. Doom.Your brain kicks off a barrage of self-criticism:

Why do I always do this?Why am I such an idiot?What's wrong with me???

All of that is uncomfortable. It’s overwhelming. It physically hurts.So what happens next?You get some sense knocked into you, right? You do the one thing that'll actually relieve the stress. You do the damn work.

Nope.

You get hit with intense compulsion to do something—anything—to escape the discomfort.And wouldn’t you know it… the very thing that can deliver just the right kind of relief... yeah, it’s still sitting right there beside you.

None of this means you're flawed or a bad person, by the way.

On the contrary. This is you reacting on a survival instinct. A survival instinct that kicks into high-gear when it senses a threat.Sitting down and doing the work? That takes time and effort, but you need relief now. That's cause, as far as your primitive brain is concerned, stress and anxiety mean you could die. You need the quickest, easiest, surest path to relief, and you need it now.

That’s messed up, right?

The cause of the bad feelings—the guilt, the stress, the anxiety… what's even behind much of the shame, depression, and regret that weaves in and out of your life—is the same thing that's incredibly effective at instantly relieving all those bad feelings.

It becomes a cycle. Distraction, pain, relief. Distraction, pain, relief.Which is bad in and of itself, but with each cycle, the consequences of time-wasting intensifies, and with it the drive for escape.

Before long, you're completely ensnared in a vicious closed-feedback loop.

I call it the Doomscroll Feedback Loop.

As with all addictions, the drug both causes and cures the disease.

The poison is also the antidote.

And that, dear reader, is how you end up doomscrolling.

Chapter 2: Why you procrastinate

In the above narrative, I had you first imagine yourself sitting there being productive with some work.

But maybe even that requires a stretch of the imagination, as being productive and motivated in any measure is hard to come by these days.So, what’s going on?Why do we often (always?) lack energy, drive, enthusiasm, motivation—not just for our school or job obligations—but also (and sometimes especially) for the things we care deeply about, like a fun creative project or a clever business idea?

Why can we not "just do it"—if only to prevent the inevitable stress, panic and ill-consequences of procrastination?

Recalling the prologue narrative, why doesn't setting grand goals, doing visualization exersises, and watching inspirational videos actually work for us?

Well... here’s the deal.

You're confusing inspiration with motivation.

You're assuming they're essentially the same when really, they're not.The word motivation has its origins in the Latin word for “to move”. Interpret this not as the will to move—that’s the domain of inspiration—but as the capacity to move.All the “why” stuff is important… but it’s the stuff of inspiration. And inspiration is the conscious intention to get your work done and achieve your goals. But you have plenty of that. More is not the answer.

Motivation, on the other hand, is the subconscious green light to expend energy on tasks. Without it, you'll feel blocked and unable to get any work done.

Imagine this with a car analogy.Inspiration is pressing the gas pedal—and you might be flooring it if you have a David Goggins audiobook going.

Motivation, on the other hand, is the car's fuel injection system.It's located way deep in the engine such that you have zero direct control over it. It includes an electronic console that “decides” to pump and inject fuel to the pistons, which, when ignited, is what actually propels the car forward.

Now, I’m not saying it’s unimportant to get clear on your "whys"—a car won’t go fast or far if the pedal is barely tapped.I’m saying… your fuel injection system’s been disabled. It’s refusing to release any fuel when prompted to.

And that there is your real issue. That’s what’s causing you to feel lethargic, uninterested, and demotivated. That’s what’s causing you to procrastinate to no end. And that’s what you need to fix before anything else.

Motivation Suppression

Us humans have serious survival needs. There’s the obvious stuff like food and shelter, but we also have psychological needs like love, intimacy, status, novely, fun, and connection.

Back in the day, the cost to satisfy those needs was egregiously high.It took boatloads of effort, time, and risk. We needed to be enticed to do the work; to be rewarded after paying the cost... otherwise we’d sit around and do nothing.

We therefore evolved a motivation-to-reward neural pathway: a system that subconsciously drives us to put in work, to take on tasks and missions when opportunities arise. This system has us expend energy, to put in hard work… all in the pursuit of survival-affirming rewards.

For the pleasure of food, you had to hunt.For the pleasure of intimacy and sex, you had to socialize and risk being rejected and ostracized.For the pleasure of status, you had to acquire resources and form alliances.

All of which took a lot of energy.But, if it all worked out, a satisfying reward wouldcome. And it was always just worth it, meaning there evolved to be a tight and fair balance between the reward and its cost.

But that’s all changed in a blink of an eye.

With today’s vices, we trick our brains into perceiving that these base needs are satisfied with virtually no work or risk.

For the pleasure of food, there's DoorDash.For the pleasure of intimacy and sex, there’s porn.For the pleasure of status, there’s social media.

Every single one of our physical and psychological needs can be “met” through the shortcut of a vice—a consumable product that can trick our brains into delivering a reward via artificial or vicarious means.Today’s tech, food, and entertainment industries have left no stone unturned.

For thrill and adventure, there are video games.For the gratification of acquiring knowledge and being part of an opinion-aligned tribe, there's Reddit and TikTok.For the satisfaction of contribution, there's slacktivism and virtue-signaling on Facebook and LinkedIn.

With these shortcuts, the time-to-reward is milliseconds.The energy cost? A thumb swipe.The risk? Zero.

Sounds amazing, right?

In many ways, sure, our modern utopia of abundant, easy rewards is exactly that. Amazing...

But there are side effects.

On a societal level, we're seeing unprecedented rates of addiction, ADHD, anxiety and other mental health issues. Chronic procrastination and underachievement have become real societal issues.But without the frame of reference of what our lives were like before all these modern vices, we're left to blame it all on our apparent impulsive, lazy, and indulgent nature.

But that’s neither true nor fair.

Because we just weren't built for this world.More importantly, you weren't built for this world. You, the real you, isn't lazy. You, the real you, isn’t careless. You, the real you, doesn’t lack discipline or self-control.You're just being cognitively impacted by vices. And you're not even realizing it.

Hidden Consequences

We humans evolved in a world of scarcity. Conserving energy was a matter of life and death. We're thus super averse to expending energy without really good reason.I mean, it makes sense.A lioness is not driven to chase a herd of aggressive gazelles if she just ate a giant zebra steak. An elephant is not motivated to walk for hours under a hot sun to find a new source of water and plants if his belly is already full.These animals know it’s time to rest, to chill, to veg.

So, what do you think happens when you spend the entire afternoon indulging in your vices—consuming junk food, social media, video games, streaming content, porn—and experiencing all sorts of rewards?What message is your nucleus accumbens (the motivation center that guards the fuel injector of motivation) receiving from your parietal lobe (the area that processes sensory information)?

I know these regions of the brain communicate through electric pulses and neurochemicals, but I like to imagine them communicating via an endless series of office memos:

As a result of this messaging, the motivation center will squash any request from your cerebral cortex (conscious mind) to use up energy.

It just won’t let you do more work.

It doesn't matter if your conscious mind is flooring the gas pedal, demanding the burning of calories.It doesn’t matter if your conscious mind is stressed and panicking about the impending doom of reckless procrastination. About the consequences of neglected projects, assignments, or exams.It doesn't matter if your conscious mind is pointing to the potential for real, earned, satisfying rewards that come from actual life achievements, rather than fake, vicarious ones.

Your subconscious—the electronic console responsible for pumping and injecting fuel—is utterly convinced that you’re surviving exceptionally well, and that you need to rest.

Doing the work is simply non-negotiable.

Fml. You've reached the end of the free preview :/

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The takeaway is this: consuming vices do more—a lot more—than just waste time.Vices lead to a short-circuiting of your motivation-to-reward pathway.

They decimate the need for motivation and work to survive. They lead to psychological impacts, greatest of which is that near-constant state of lethargy—that dismal, “ugh I just don’t feel like it” sensation and mental state.And when you don’t feel like it, you can’t help burning away time—that is, until something external—some real and urgent survival threat like getting fired or expelled—reactives your dormant motivation system, and gets you to cram in the work.

And that, dear reader, is why you procrastinate.It's just that simple.

Chaper 3: Why you Stagnate

So, what's the solution to all this?How do we cure the disease of suppressed-motivation and lethargy, and all the procrastination it causes?How can we prevent the flywheel of the Doomscroll Feedback Loop from starting up in the first place?

It's obvious right? Trivial even.

Cut out the vices.

Log out of accounts. Delete the apps. Clean out the house.Stop with the artificial stimulation. Stop with the needless distractions.Just remove the source of all that stifles you into a life of stagnation.

Because, without vices, your world would finally open up to all sorts of amazing possibilities.

And it wouldn't even take all that long.After a day or two, you'll feel lighter. More clear-headed. Just all around better. And as that happens, your natural motivation will begin to creep back up.

From there, you'll start showing up to things. Give it another few days, and you'll start having some solid work sessions.Give it a few weeks, and you'll have formed some solid habits.Give it a few months, and you'll have achieved some solid goals.
[each has it's own graph]

None of it forced. None of it coerced. None of it through willpower or self-control.Just honest, natural flow towards real rewards and real benefits. Towards you living your best life.

Simple, right?

Well... not exactly. Cause this won't be your first rodeo, will it?

You’ve already made promises to quit or cut back on vices.You've already recognized that you barely enjoy them anymore—that it's hardly worth it.You've already suspected some brainrot-type impacts to your attention-span and emotional well-being.And, at the very least, you've realized that vices simply gobble up so much precious time... and, it'd be nice to, you know, not procrastinate recklessly for once in your damn life.

But it never sticks, does it?

All your pacts, promises, and resolutions?They never last.You keep going back—even when you know better.

Especially when you know better.

Same old habits. Same patterns. Same loops. Same regrets. Same self-loathing.

The question is why?

Why do you keep reverting back to your old ways?Why are you stagnating through life, despite wanting to change?

Like a moth to a flame

The answer to this all-important question can be found by considering the life and times of...

a moth.

You see, during the day, our little moth friend hides and sleeps. It's at night that he comes out to find something to eat.But it's dark, and his little bug eyes don't provide the best vision. So he's come to rely on the brightest object in the sky for orientation, which is usually the moon.

Now, if we were to observe this moth, we might define—at any given moment—an action path. It's the path that best keeps him away from predators and moves him toward the most food.We might call this the "Appropiate" path.

Thing is, our little moth friend doesn't need to think about any of this. He’s not weighing pros and cons or consulting best-practices flowcharts.

No. Taking the Appropiate path—the one that’s best for survival—has simply come to viscerally feel right. It's what he prefers to do.

Millions of years of evolution has made the Appropiate path perfectly aligned with the Prefered path.

How do I know all this? Like, how do I know moths aren’t secretly skilled in critical thinking?Well, it’s because humans came along and introduced something entirely new to their environment.

We added artificial lights.

With these lights, nothing fundamental has changed.Food still needs to be found. Predators still need to be avoided. The moon's still happily glowing bright in the sky.The Appropiate path—the one that ensures survival—stays exactly as it was.

What has changed, however... is what feels right for the moth—what, to him, he prefers on a visceral level.

Artificial lights are brighter, warmer, and closer than anything else in the night sky. As such, they disorient the moth, causing it to fly in erratic patterns as its reference point—once steady for millennia—just won't stay put.All the while, he’s super confused. Because, at every moment, he's still doing what feels right. His looping feels purposeful. It feels like survival. It feels like his only way out.

But it’s not.It's the opposite. He's not acting with purpose. He's not surviving. In fact, he's at risk of collapsing from exhaustion or else getting tangled up in a cleverly positioned spiderweb.

Simply put: the Appropiate path—the one aligned with survival—has been wrenched apart from the Prefered path.

Millions of years of painstaking evolution... undone with the flick of a switch.

It’s easy to scoff at the irrationality of moths. It's like,C’mon man… clearly that bright, hot light isn’t the damn moon. Why don’t they ever learn and adapt? Moths are pretty stupid.

Okay, sure… but, are humans really that much better?

I know. Funny stuff.But let's back up a bit—add more context for that punchline.

Yes, us humans have big, complex brains.Yes, we can reason and forecast and plan.Yes, we’re more sophisticated than moths... but mostly in the way that we don’t use a physical point in the sky to orient our actions.Instead, we direct ourselves with a metaphoric one—one we might call our North Star.

Our North Star represents our highest ideals and values. It’s what we believe will guide us to our aspirational identities, to our goals and ambitions, to the most meaningful experiences and satisfying rewards life has to offer.

Having that kind of internal compass, oriented towards a better, more ideal future, is also a survival adaptation.We’re tribal by nature—so whether our goals are vain (like acquiring and displaying material wealth) or selfless (like caring for the vulnerable), it’s all to our species’ greater benefit.

So, through millions of years of evolution, the Appropiate path evolved to be tightly aligned with our Prefered path.

Which is great because humans, like all animals, are driven to act based on subconscious preferences—on quick visceral I want to do this type feelings—not on slow logic.We act on what feels right, not what’s rationally best.And that system worked beautifully for millions of years… that is, until we introduced something to our environment that’s as new, foreign and disorienting to us as artificial lights are to moths.

We introduced vices.

Vices are infinitely brighter, warmer, and closer than our faint and distant North Star.Because they promise survival rewards faster, easier and with less risk (see Chapter 2), they've come to pull our sense of we prefer to do completely out of alignment with what's actually appropiate.

And not unlike the moth circling a porch light, this gets us ensnared in endless dopamine-driven loops of wanting, approaching, consuming.

This happens because there’s nothing to pull us away. There's no real finish line. No sense of completion.On the contrary, it continues to feel more and more right—despite all evidence to the contrary—so we keep chasing and looping and doomscrolling until we collapse from exhaustion.

This point is super important, so I’ll say it another way:With vices, the signal for reward—and therefore survival—is fucking loud. Louder than the quiet call of our North Star.

So it feels right to go after it. It lights up our dopamine pathways, then proves its worth with every instant hit of gratification.

With now years of repition and reinforcement, you've come to greatly prefer it over all other option, including what would be in the direction of your North Star values and ideals.

But the actual potential for survival benefit? It's non existant. Apart from the odd life-hack or whatever, there's no actual substance to gain.

Not only that, with enough time and repititon, it leads to to survival detriments.Chronic use leads to the financial risks of procrastination and underperformance. To the pain of stress and anxiety. To the physical harms of a sedentary lifestyle.

Vices lead to survival threats.

And so, just like our moth friend, we're biologically driven to eliminate that threat. So we circle back to our vices. Because doing so feels right. It's what we prefer to do. Which then amplifies the survival threat, so it feels more right, the preference amplifies, and we return once again.

Then again. And again. And again. Until...

Well, there is no "until".Some of us can spend our entire lives aimlessly spiralling around vices.

Why you prefer vices

You stagnate because you prefer the actions that make up a life of stagnation.

It's just you on your pursuit of happiness, just like everyone else out there.

That's the short of it anyway.

Now, you might disagree.You might say you hate your vices. That they're ruining your life. That they make you miserable and unhappy. That you've long ago lost interest and enjoyment in them, so saying "good-riddence" forever and ever is the most tantilizing idea ever.

What you actually prefer is a life of productivity and consistency. Of meaningful work and the active pursuit of goals. Of fun low-tech activities and outdoor adventure. Of real socializing with experiences with real friends.

You'd 100x prefer to follow a value-based North Star.You'd 100x perfer not live your current life—a life of isolation, misery, regret, and pain.

And that's true.But what you're neglecting to see is how you can have two incredibly strong preferences at the same time, even if they are in direct conflict with each other.

Like, you can prefer to never scratch mosquito bites because every time you do, you overdo it, and you bleed, and it makes a mess, and it's hella embarassing... but you can also prefer, in a monent of an all-consuming itch, to scratch the living shit out of a bite.

And you can prefer to have lots of vitality and rock hard abs and a super hot boyfriend or girlfriend... but you can also prefer eating comfort food while watching old shows and ingnoring texts from friends asking you to do stuff.

You can prefer each of the thousands and thousands of individual "Micro" instances of indulging that make up your current life of stagnation... while also hating their cummulative "Macro" effects.

At the core of this preference is one inescapable truth: today's vices are fcking good.

The reality is that the tech, media and entertainment industries are investing billions to make their platforms as enticing, enjoyable, and stimulating as humanly possible.

What they produce—or, to be more precise, what the hords of content creators they attract manage to produce—is straight-up good.Not all of it of course, not even some of it... but the top 1% of the top 1% that bubbles up through engagement and algorithms is inarguably enjoyable, stimulating, and fun even.You wouldn't indulge in it otherwise.Denying this reality, gaslighting yourself into believing you actually hate all of it, just isn't helping. (But that sentiment is understandable since it's always formed at the end of a binge... when you've exhausted all the good content).

Deciding to change

So the ambient glow of your distant values-based goals and aspirations are nothing compared to the blinding stadium floodlights of vices.

Yet you keep trying to avoid them because, well, what else can you do?

So, after making the standard set of promises and resolutions, you begin each attempt with the same self-help inspired message:You can do this.All it takes is to not do what you know is bad.Just ignore what you desire. Ignore how you feel. Ignore your primitive wants and preferences—it's all based on lies and manipulation; on mega-corporations doing all they can to hook your attention so they can sell more ads.Just make a plan and stick to it no matter what... you'll be happy you did.

So you try. You really do try, because you know in your heart of hearts that it'll all be worth it in the end. If you could just stick it out.

But what happens next?

Well, naturally, the first few days suck, right? You have to deal with the incessant onslaught of urges and cravings for what you'd clearly prefer using self-control and constant reminders.It's an uncomfortable, perhaps unbearable mess—like trying to bar yourself from scratching that throbbing mosquito bite, all while the ultra-marathon-running-ex-navy-seal author's yelling in your ear c’mon man, shut up and just don’t do it!

Meanwhile, outside the habit, life continues to swing from demanding and stressful, to routine and boring.But now…? Relief is denied. No YouTube. No Reddit. No video games.You're not allowed to do what you want; what you'd prefer.

You just have to just sit there and take it.

It all feels like an awful, pleasureless, annoying existence; a prison of continual self-monitoring and restraint.And so, you can't help but daydream about the little innocuous things that would give you a break from it all.

Your thoughts would inevitably arrive at :Is this what my life will be like now? Is this how it's going to feel? This feeling… this... sucks. You know, maybe don't want to quit after all.

But still, perhaps that post-it note you tacked on the bottom of your computer screen reminded you to power through with grit and determination. C’mon man just effing do it.The misery could be endured, the cravings resisted, the thoughts ignored. Never underestimate the power of will.

Problem is—with those thoughts endlessly pestering you, plus life delivering its usual gauntlet of stress, boredom, and dissapointments—your inner desire for vices only goes up with time, not down.

As you might recall from Chapter 1, vices are amazing at providing relief from bad feelings. It makes sense that the pain and exhaustion of resisting results in ever intensifying cravings for relief.

To make it beyond day 1, then day 2, then day 3, then day 573... you need to have more and more and more of an ability to resist.Eventually... you give in. No one (but that navy-seal author) has a limitless supply of willpower. All it takes is a convenient little rationalization to present itself:

Bah, 5 minutes on Reddit won’t kill me. In fact, it might make me less grumpy and fidgety, thus more productive.

And with that taste, the dopamine fueled hit—the feeling of blissful relief—feels better than ever.This further solidifies in your mind (literally, through the insulation of neural pathways) that your vices are wonderful, life-saving, beneficial things, and that life without them is not worth living, and that, well, what the heck was I thinking, anyway?!?

Eventually though, that first indulgence ends. Which leaves you feel vaguely guilty and frustrated.So you soon justify a little more. But that leaves you feeling worst, and well... you know the rest.

Here’s the grim reality: every time you try to quit your vices, you end up driving up your inner preferences for them. You end up deepening your addiction.

You need to do the opposite. You need to do what it takes to drive your preference down with time, not up.

Your ability to resist—your self-control, your willpower—it is what it is and there’s not much you can do about it. The preference side of things—what truly prompts cravings and drives irrational behaviors and compulsions—that can be manipulated to your advantage over time.

The key is to gnaw away at the mental wiring responsible for the preference towards vices so that one day you’ll be like:"Yeah, I see my phone there chiming with all it's easy titillation and gratification... but, eh, I'm good. I think I’ll pass. I’d rather just get to work."

No willpower needed.

That, dear reader, is the promised land. That's the mental re-programming that needs to happen in your life for any change to stick.As I said at the beginning, your problem is not your willpower or self-control. Your problem is your innate preference for all these hyper addictive modern vices.You need to drive your preferences down—not through learning a bunch of theory (you can’t think-out preferences), but through a reframed mindset and a focused day-by-day action plan.

That’s up next.

PART 2 - THE SOLUTION

Chaper 4: Step 0 - Change your mindset

Alright, so you’re a couple of taps away from getting what you're ultimately here for. But before we get there, I want to say a few things.

First, I hope everything you’ve read so far has landed well. I hope you’re starting to feel a small wave of relief—relief that your past failures, setbacks, and embarrassments weren’t really “your fault” in the way you used to believe. There were larger forces at play.And I hope that gives you enough room to offer yourself a bit of self-compassion, maybe even some forgiveness.

But I also want to acknowledge something honestly: that relief may only be 5% of what you’re feeling right now.The other 95% might be overwhelm; maybe even a deep discouragement given all that's stacked against you.

Of course I don’t want you to feel that way. I want you to feel like you’re in good hands—that you’re about to be equipped with a mindset (this chapter) and a game plan (next chapter) that directly tackles every cause, every obstacle, every biological and psychological force working against you.And you are in good hands. I’ve spent years wrestling this serpant to the ground, hashing out a solution to this exact problem.

But I want to be very clear: this problem runs deep.There is no quick, easy, pain-free solution.

So let's make that the first element of the required mindset: that it's going to be challenging. That it's going a long, bumpy journey, full of setbacks, frustrations and times of wanting to give up.

Mindset element 1: This journey will be long and difficult

Look. I'd rather be real with you.It's tempting for me to pretend like I have some magical solution—some method or technique I can just whisper in your ear, and poof everything is just fixed in your life.But I don't. And I'm 10000% convinced I won't ever, and that noone will, no matter how productive, accomplished or enlightened they are.The reality is your problem runs deep. Like really, effing, deep.And I mean that litterally: a scientist could probe the inner workinds of your brain and find thick, hyper-insulated, neural pathways associated with your procrastination and stagnation habits. And these pathways have been painstaknly formed and reinforced through years (decades?) of repetition.So, short of lobotimizing those parts of your brain (I know a guy), there is no easy, quick fix. Because of that wiring, your mind with resist change. It will have you bend back towards tried and true habits. Towards ways it's learned—wrongly of course—is the absolute best and quickest way to not effing die. It will sabotage you and your pretty-little-efforts to be the new you in ways that'll make your blood boil.(and there's no better cure to boiled blood than a sweet-sweet Netflix binge)So.You just have to accept and anticipate this.You just do.Because when life throws at you a fridgerator sized boulder at your face—and it will—you need to know it's okay to struggle. It's okay for everything to just colapse. To feel like you're back to square one.It's okay to want to give up.It's okay because all this junk is just part of the process. A process that will take takes weeks, if not months to really take hold and bare fruit.Slip-ups, failures, frustration... it's baked right into this method, amigo.Better get used to it.TAKEAWAY MINDSET: Localized slip-ups and failures don't mean the method is failing. They are part of the method.The timeframe for progress is measured in months, not hours or days.

Mindset element 2: This journey will iterative

It's natural to want and maybe even expect clean, linear progress.

But we're not baking a cake here. There's no simple recipe you can follow and get a pre-specified agreeable result.Instead you need to come to expect something looking more like this...

Mindset element 2: What actually counts

### Self compassion based weeningAverage out the iterative approach until the peaks and valleys are flattened out… you get a natural, unplanned weening.this is the method: to expect yourself to fail without sanctioning it. Every rep is your ticket to getting better. That’s what actually counts. It’s not the streaks. It’s the number of reps. reps are King.In a sense, this is exposure therapy. Whenever you can, you’re exposing yourself to the discomfort of rejecting a preference. And then you’re exposing yourself to the benefits of doing so fully slowly ever so gradually, and however, long it takes for you specifically, You’ll slowly build a preference towards less than less vices.### Accidental moderationMacro micro convergence- macro you might say that the best life is zero vice.
- Micro you will disagree constantly
- Mission is to find the middle ground truth for best life

Mindset Shift 3: Vices aren't bad.

I want to focus your attention on this part of the plot.There's some level that's best. Tug of war to discover (recording)

Mindset Shift 3: Preference shift

Changing preference recording

Mindset Shift 3: Moderation, by definition, sucks

If you eat a bite of office cake, and say that's enough because you don't really want more, that's not moderation... even if to the fat guy sitting next to you in accounting it is.REcording for rest.

Mindset shift 2: The destination is you living your best life (not becoming some Willpower-Warrior)

Just because this journey is long and challenging doesn’t mean it won’t be worth it.The goal here isn’t to turn you into a willpower warrior who constantly fights temptations for the rest of your life. That’s not living.The goal is for you to build your best life—one filled with happiness, meaningful work, cool experiences, and yes, vices in moderation. Good art, good games, good shows, good TikToks—whatever makes life richer. None of that has to disappear.

Chapter 5: Steps 1 to 6 Apply the Mindset to life

Part about I know I started this thing with a rant on why vision boards are bad.

Then set up decide once:https://chatgpt.com/g/g-p-691dc213da908191920ecfbf8369d5d0-dictate/c/6928eb81-464c-8327-bbd2-5578706c9445I've known people with grand ambitons and clear cut identities. Others are the opposite. years of vices has obliterarted any interest, passion, or belief in themselves.If ypu're the latter, just focus on vices. Keep it super simple. What, to you would be your best life.

Perspective change1. end goal (weight loss)
2. reps not streaks
3. belief about self-control (not self-control) - web blockers

Pay me

dont consume vices. thats it.

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