No one is immune to burnout. Entering finals week, and following the end of the spring semester, I felt completely de-energized. I slept for nearly twice as long as normal, yet still felt dead. This week turned that around entirely. The question is, how does one conquer lethargy?

Proper diet and exercise are one of the first places to look. I have previously discussed the connection between the body and the mind. If you are feeling mentally sluggish, it is likely a sign that your body is not being properly cared for. These two habits work in conjunction to improve your physique or destroy it. When your body is healthy, your mind simply works better.

The next thing to consider is rather obvious: proper sleep. Insufficient sleep naturally leads to fatigue. However, a consistent sleeping window and a good wake-up time are just as important as the duration of sleep. Random late-nights make it difficult for the body to get quality sleep and rejuvenate itself.

Most people already know about the need to eat, exercise, and sleep properly, and yet they struggle to do so. Despite practicing and writing about good habits for each, for the last 2-3 weeks, I still failed to maintain these disciplines. Lethargy poisoned every area of my life.

 

During the stress of the last weeks of spring semester, I ate whatever was convenient, cut out workouts for time, and lost control of my sleep schedule. When I attempted to fix these habits after my finals, I lacked vigor, and fell short. My productivity fell by nearly three-quarters.

 

I thought that diet, exercise, and sleep were the source of my problem, yet I felt incapable of fixing them. They pointed to a deeper problem. My deterioration stemmed from a failure in the underlying magic which enables all discipline: dopamine detox.

 

My previous blogs this year focus on the what instead of the how. Dopamine detox is the how.  Dopamine motivates you to accomplish, but it can also propel you in the wrong direction by supporting addictions and enforcing lethargy. Dopamine detoxification entails forgoing the low-effort, powerful pleasures of the modern world in order to work on worthy achievements. To understand my demotivation, I needed to consider my dopamine levels.

 

Reflecting on where I had begun to fail, I realized that I had not been properly adhering to the single most important discipline in my life: brahmacharya. I had not cracked entirely, but the stress of finals week led me to begin edging, which is borderline cheating.

 

Edging is the practice of taking oneself near the brink of an orgasm without actually releasing.  That defeats almost the entire purpose of brahmacharya, because the dopamine is released in anticipation of release, not by the release. Even without losing much testosterone, by overloading on dopamine, I crippled my discipline and therefore my productivity.

 

As awkward as such a topic may be, I feel compelled to reaffirm the absolute significance of brahmacharya not just for men, but also for women. The problem with edging is not a heavy loss of testosterone, but the dopamine high, which affects all people. As this dopamine high is comparable with that of morphine or cocaine, it crushes your ability to complete arduous tasks.

For the first five days after correcting myself, I continued to feel rather lethargic, unfocused, and incapable. On day six I felt a resurgence, and ran my fastest distance run since early April. On day seven, I slept for half as long as one week prior, and felt ten times as energized. On day eight, I finished burning all fat accumulated during the month of May. The energy difference is staggering.

This month has reaffirmed for me beyond the shadow of a doubt that dopamine detox is the cornerstone to a joyful and productive life, and that brahmacharya is the core component of a detox. There is no skirting the line with this discipline; cheating brahmacharya only cheats oneself.

 

Go forth and conquer!