# Effective Journaling, Second Brain, Dopamine Detox, and more! | Two Minute Tuesday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP-4GUaw3Ts

[00:00] hey guys it's Dr Justin here I talked about a lot of different concepts and that overrated underrated video that I did and you wanted me to expand on some of those so I'm going to be spending two minutes to talk about some of those Concepts that you wanted me to expand on let's go okay Justin uh this comment is by hinduistic they said that they haven't heard you discussing journaling much if at all on your channel so they would love to see you grow in more depth about how journaling should be approached slash executed in order for it to be an effective tool generally generally speaking is going to be beneficial because it allows you to put your thoughts on paper and slow down your thoughts and make it a little bit more systematic and that's where I think the key is journaling is not in itself always going to be effective if what it does is that it reinforces a negative thought pattern or a negative spiral in order for a journaling to be productive by the way not everything has to be productive but in order for journaling to be effective and productive it needs to conclude with something that is
[01:02] putting you in a better State than where you started off with.
[01:04] so that's going to depend on the issue that you get.
[01:05] so let's say that there's an emotional problem.
[01:07] there should be some level of processing of that emotion.
[01:09] so here's an example.
[01:12] I had a terrible day.
[01:14] a terrible day it was so terrible I felt so bad about this.
[01:16] it was so bad I can't believe I had such a bad day.
[01:17] if you just journal and that's it.
[01:19] it hasn't left you in much of a better State other than the positive benefit of being able to vent it out.
[01:23] but if you want to take that to the next level we can go deeper.
[01:27] so how did I react.
[01:28] what are some of the tendencies that I had.
[01:32] what are some of the habits.
[01:33] what are some of the approaches.
[01:35] what parts was I in control of.
[01:36] what parts was I not in control of.
[01:38] in reflection what can I think about that I maybe didn't have the chance to think about at the time.
[01:43] so common strategies that we can go deeper into something is thinking about what are the things that we didn't notice the first time around.
[01:49] the reasons why something happened.
[01:51] environmental aspects of it.
[01:53] triggers to something or potential hypotheses on how we could avoid it or deal with it better next.
[02:03] time you could follow that structure for basically any event that you're reflecting on in your life it's a pretty broad transferable reflective practice.
[02:10] and if you apply that in your adrenaline then you should find that it's going to be a little bit more focused rather than just waffling for you know 20 minutes every day.
[02:19] cool just under uh johat abrio says great video but he wants some he wants you to go in more depth into why studying at cafes can be beneficial and how changing your study environment can help the learning process.
[02:32] the main thing is not the fact that it's a cafe the main thing is that you came to a number one new environment that has tied to it a certain intention.
[02:40] it's not like saying if you are at a cafe there's something about the cafe environment that doesn't magically makes you focus in like if you're there to meet a friend and then at this Cafe it doesn't mean that you should then use that opportunity to then study you're not going to get like a magically beneficial effect.
[02:55] the idea is going to a new location that's specifically puts you an environment where the reason you came to that
[03:03] environment was for another intention.
[03:05] and where you're free from potential distractors.
[03:08] so for me and for a lot of other people when you go to a cafe there's nothing else to do because you can only eat so much food and drink so much coffee.
[03:17] so if you're there with your stuff you set up and you're in an environment maybe you've got your headphones on there's less distractions and you're in an environment that's primed for your intention.
[03:23] same thing as going to for example a library or going to University or somewhere else to study that breaks you out of the script of potentially bad distracting habits that you might have at the place that you normally study.
[03:37] and the other thing is that the act of just changing your environment and just freshening things up is helpful for giving you a bit of a mental reset.
[03:44] it's very easy to get them a slump when you're trapped in the same room all the time.
[03:48] I used to work in an office it was in a semi-basement I used to spend like 12 to 15 a day in that.
[03:54] the very Act of literally getting up moving around going somewhere else and just changing things up is enough to give you a mental break reset recalibrate and then refocus.
[04:03] cool 20 seconds on that.
[04:06] doing great maybe you should shorten the tournament next time.
[04:09] okay.
[04:10] um slim Gunner says that it'd be great to see how to make the most out of a second brain system for higher order learning so it doesn't replace your first brain.
[04:22] a second brain system is not really very necessary for higher order learning and that's because the the fundamental principle behind higher order learning is in creating higher order knowledge structures so higher order learning as a process is about that deeply comparative evaluative thinking for example see the upper levels or five and six of blooms for ice taxonomy if you want to look at the knowledge structures that you're creating you're trying to create integrated relational knowledge structures for example look at the later levels of solar taxonomy those knowledge structures is what gives you expertise and what gives you Mastery when you have those types of knowledge structures that you created using higher order learning it means that that knowledge stays in your head and you can retrieve and use it the purpose of a second brain is for the type of information that either doesn't inherently or is very difficult.
[05:08] to always read.
[05:10] time consuming too fit into that higher order knowledge structure.
[05:13] it's the type of information that you want to offload.
[05:17] so that you can save those cognitive resources for the higher order learning.
[05:21] there are maybe a few use cases where that second brand could be a good supplement.
[05:24] actually the biggest one is that it gives you a sense of security.
[05:28] because you know that all the lower order stuff like the stuff you need to memorize the reference numbers the I don't know formulas drug doses all that stuff you could chuck it on your second brain.
[05:38] that could be used a reference you know instead of putting them on flash cards you can check them on a second break.
[05:43] in fact a lot of people use flashcards as a second brain to be honest.
[05:45] so that as a security step could be really effective.
[05:48] another thing could be if you want to create reference links for diving deeper into higher order points that you think are more likely to be forgotten.
[05:57] like you have integrated it but you just want to make sure that you've got a reference Link in case you want to go deeper into it.
[06:05] for example research articles and case studies and things like that.
[06:08] I think it's time.
[06:10] Cool, okay, so Thomas up on that, but this is a really big topic.
[06:15] And actually, to be honest, all of these are kind of big topics.
[06:18] So if there's any particular concept that you want me to go even deeper on, then let me know in the comments and I'll try to make a whole video elaborating on it.
[06:23] Nimarashi wants you to go in in depth about how you can do a dopamine detox.
[06:28] Oh, there's a lot of different ways that you can do it.
[06:32] Actually, there's a video that came out from the Cajun Koi guys, um, Mike and Maddie.
[06:39] I I think it's a video and they talked about like a dopamine detox routine and it's pretty good.
[06:42] Like I would recommend that.
[06:44] Do whatever you like.
[06:46] I'm quite into my photography, partially I think it's because I'm trying to justify the fact that I spend thousands of dollars on camera lenses.
[06:52] Um, but uh, you know, I I try to go like hiking and take photos and things like that.
[06:57] And a lot of the time if I'm out of the forest, I live in New Zealand.
[07:01] Okay, so there's a lot, there's a lot of forests in Little Mountain.
[07:04] You're usually off the grid, like you literally don't have signal.
[07:07] So it's kind of a great way for me to just get off the grid in that way.
[07:08] If you're not in that situation where
[07:10] you're really accessible uh it's not easy to get it physically Off the Grid.
[07:14] then just you know turning off of your phone making it so that you're not going to be inclined to pick it up again.
[07:21] you know putting it somewhere like sliding it under your bed or really just removing it out of sight and then putting yourself physically in an environment that is free from all of those dopamine hit type of things.
[07:33] so obviously you don't want your phone you don't want really I think any electronic devices around you except ones that are like life preserving like flashlights for like a locate a beacon or something.
[07:45] even like smart watches probably leave that at home.
[07:49] you really want to just eliminate all of that and then connect with something away from those artificial dopamine hurts that you enjoy.
[07:57] dopamine detox is not about removing dopamine from your system.
[08:00] it's not about doing things you hate.
[08:05] it's about connecting with that slower more natural pace of dopamine release that you'd find in a non
[08:13] artificially dopamine hitting world that we live in today.
[08:16] This Is Us diff lock slip lock I give up saying this name.
[08:19] they just would love if you could give a two minute deep dive into sleep and how you can optimize them.
[08:27] first of all understanding when you don't have enough sleep and then second of all understanding the value of sleep hygiene.
[08:34] um and I don't know if these are cliche and over overstated topics but I personally didn't really appreciate the value of this um so I'll focus on that.
[08:41] the first thing is that if you are chronically seat deprived it's possible that you actually do not know what it's like to be well rested.
[08:47] I legitimately didn't realize what being well arrested felt like until I quit medicine and did like educational entrepreneurship full-time.
[08:57] I don't nap during the day I don't wake up feeling well like I hate the world but also I don't wake up feeling like oh you know you know whatever I want to do like I never want to get up the feeling of just wanting to never wake up and the feeling like you.
[09:13] need to take a nap every single day.
[09:15] that's not actually normal.
[09:17] it's not really healthy.
[09:19] you're probably at some level sleep deprived.
[09:21] the danger of chronic sleep deprivation is that you don't really know the impact that it's having on you until you compare it directly with being well rested.
[09:28] I didn't know how inefficient I was being until I was well rested.
[09:30] so have you fixed that sleep hygiene.
[09:32] the Deep dive is going to be probably not doing it justice.
[09:34] I really recommend actually reading like a proper article.
[09:38] just search for Sleep hygiene rules.
[09:40] there's a book called why we sleep as well.
[09:42] I would really strongly recommend if you're sleep deprived chronically read that and properly invest in sleep hygiene.
[09:47] my Pro tip for anything rather than the Deep dive is to fully commit to it.
[09:52] don't just use little bits of sleep hygiene and little bits of of fixing your sleep because you know you've only got so much motivation.
[09:55] intensively focus on throwing the whole bus at it.
[10:00] do everything you can to optimize sleep hygiene for like three weeks and you'll see results.
[10:04] okay uh Richard would love
[10:14] to hear an elaboration on the zerocast.
[10:17] zerocastan is okay go watch a proper video or read up about the note-taking system but it's kind of adapted quite a lot from the original.
[10:25] but the original is that it's a relational card based note-taking system that tries to create relational knowledge structures and so from that perspective it's very good.
[10:34] it's actually a very well-intentioned system.
[10:36] it forces you to constantly be looking at relationships between ideas and there's lots of different apps that are based on Zero Custom now.
[10:44] so even though the original methods were based on literal physical cards now the cards are sort of more digital.
[10:52] the difference between that for example a flash card is that flash cards are more about retrieval practice whereas zero casting is not necessarily.
[10:57] zero casting is about having nodes of information that are connected together and different apps will try to facilitate this in different ways.
[11:04] so in the modern day there's actually quite a lot of flavors of zerocastin.
[11:09] some of them are more effective than others.
[11:11] the problem that I have with zerocast is actually not a
[11:15] problem I have with Zito casting as a system.
[11:16] the problem that I have is that zero casting is only effective when your ability to process and prioritize the relationships is done correctly.
[11:25] it's very dependent on your deep processing ability.
[11:27] so if you're someone that has only used to lower order learning and low order thinking and they're creating low quality relationships and connections then the network that they create using those little casts method will also be low quality and so they will be very limited in the benefit that they get from it.
[11:43] and this is the kind of problem I have with a lot of techniques is that if it's kind of like if you're too dumb you will fail no matter what.
[11:47] therefore I think the first step regardless of what method you're using is to get good at the cognitive skill of Higher Learning.
[11:54] uh and by the way I actually talked to a world leading instructor in zerocast and based in a university out of Netherlands that teaches little question and they also said that the main benefit only comes once you have a good depressing ability yourself first.
[12:08] okay so that was the end of the two minute Tuesday.
[12:10] if you is it even Tuesday.
[12:14] so that's the end of two minute Tuesday.
[12:15] Uh, again, if there are any topics that you wanted me to dive into more deeply, I found was actually really hard to keep it super, super concise.
[12:24] But if there's something you want me to explore in more detail, let me know in the comments and we'll make a full video on it.
[12:29] If you have any other ones that you want me to do two-minute Tuesdays on for my overhead underrated videos, go on that video and leave a comment and we'll chuck it in the next format of this video.
[12:38] Anyway, thanks for watching.
[12:40] See you next one.
[12:43] Foreign.
[12:45] [Music]