How to make things addictive
- Opportunity
- Random win rate
- Predictable rewards are boring
- Quick Repeatability
Gambling
Most people gamble for fun, not to win money. It’s the thrill and excitement and anticipation that makes it addictive, not the monetary pay out.
It’s a money losing hobby, just like how you sink thousands of dollars to buy a road bike to experience cycling, gamblers sink thousands of dollars to experience the dopamine hit
Dopamine
Dopamine is generated in anticipation of an event, not during the event itself. This is why sometimes things don’t feel good when doing it, when the anticipation is thrilling
Breaking Addiction
Addiction happens when you are bored and have nothing stimulating to do. The lack of stimulation leads you to do a repeatable, non-deterministically rewarding event that has quick feedback, like drinking, smoking and drugs.
By immersing yourself in stimulating activities and hobbies, you can break the addiction
Metrics
Once you add metrics to measure a performance, all actions will indubitably steer towards optimising the metrics, and not in the the actual performance itself.
Status Matters
All humans are conscious about status which leads us into a scarcity trap to want more and to be recognised.
We’re very affected by how people see us, or rather, very affected by how people don’t see us and don’t acknowledge our status.
A large majority of our emotions are relative to someone else (envy, jealousy, anger)
Pride
Authentic pride is feeling proud when you accomplish something, even when no one witnesses it. Like running a 10k because you want to challenge yourself.
Hubristic pride is feeling proud for the sake of it, and all actions are done to make others notice you. Like running a 10k for posting on social media.
Overthinking
We tend to think that people judge us harshly for little mistakes. We think that other harp on our mistakes and generalise it to our entire being, seeing a misspoken word as a failure in life.
In fact, most people quickly forget what we said or mis-said. People don’t think about you as much as you think about yourself.
People are too busy thinking about themselves to think about you.
Fundamental attribution Error
When someone makes a mistake, we attribute it to their character. When we make a mistake, it’s due to factors outside our control.
Do you want to be Right or Happy
Read that again.
Do I want to look good or be a good friend?
Food
Fast food makes us fat because it’s fast. We eat faster than we feel full, so we eat more.
Slow foods on the other hand makes us consume food slower, giving time for the body to “feel” full.
Ultra processed food also has more calories per gram. So eating a 5 gram potato chip will have a lot more calories than 5 grams of rice, but the latter will make you fuller
Consumerism
We buy too much shit because we think that buying shit can help us solve our problems.
We’re sold on the potential of improvement of our lives, and the status gained from others by owning an expensive watch.
Rule of thumb: If you take more than 60 seconds to decide you want to buy something, you’re trying to justify your purchase. If you really need it, you would buy it.