Enjoyment, Pleasure and Focus

Why does sex with a stranger often feel empty, while sex with a loved one feel fulfilling?

Pleasure is an orgasm.

Enjoyment is love.

Drug addicts search for their next hit in pursuit of pleasure.

Athletes get enjoyment from practicing their sport for hours at a time.

Living in a society where language is simplified more and more, we sometimes lose nuanced definitions of words. Which means that we end up grouping terms together thinking they are the same thing. Well atleast I did.

Unfortunately, one of the main building blocks of the internet and current society is based on pleasure. Companies spend billions on creating bespoke attention-grabbing algorithms that trick us into finding the experience of using apps pleasurable.

Drug addicts seeking their next hit and the average person (me) obsessively checking their social media exhibit a surprising amount of behavioral similarities.

When was the last time you got lost in the endless scrolling of Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube shorts? Probably recently, but I bet that when you finished, your first thought wasn't "I can't wait to do this again." Even though in the moment, while scrolling, you might have been laughing at memes and finding the experience generally quite pleasurable. We get tricked over and over again, our brain’s defense mechanisism aren’t as robust as we would like them to be.

We all know that scrolling is bad, but for me, the worst thing about it is not the time wasted during scrolling. Rather, it's the way it makes me feel afterwards. I feel drained and unable to focus because I've been overstimulated. And no type of work can match the stimulation that I have just been bombarded with.

If I have doomscrolled, and in the following hour I try to do any sort of work, it is nearly impossible. Little thoughts distract me and I act upon them, I eat stupid food, I convice myself that right at that moment I need to go to the shops etc. All while I have work to do. I am simply unable to focus.

Unfortunately, I have wasted too many days because of this. One truth we can acknowledge is that time is our most valuable asset, and wasting it cannot be part of this process.

We are good at tricking ourselves with pleasure too. We rationalise that something is important and we need to solve it. The one I fall for is I love solving unexisting problems for future projects that have not even started. And while yes it is rational to think that in the future these problems might occur and will need to be solved, the reality is that I am chasing the pleasure that comes from solving the non existent problem. And while doing this I am distracting myself from the tasks that I currently have to do.

Shopping for camera equipment is an example of my non-existent problems. What happens is that in my head when I start developing a new project I overwhelm myself with problems that have not occurred yet. I then buy equipment, solve some of the "problems" which brings me pleasure, but really all I have done is distract my self from doing the real work. This cycle has caused me to abandon projects on more than one occasion.

So here is to less thinking and more doing.

Cheers.

Lots of love,

Koko

2x Podcasts this week.