I've been sick the last few days.

Fever got to 102.0. It's been a few years since I've really been ill. I rarely get sick, and while that might seem good, it means I have bad habits when I do (insert man becomes baby when sick meme).

If you're reading my newsletter, hopefully you've heard of the Shimmer Effect. Hopefully you're aware that the task of our time is to reclaim our attention from the dopamine dealers we call Instagram, Slack, Youtube, and yes, even email.

Hopefully you're aware that you're addicted, and that one of the best ways to track your addiction is how many times you picked up your phone today.

The average amount of pickups for an 18 to 35 year old American is 180-220 times a day.

And this is the statistic, that when truly grokked, heralds our generations apocalypse.

Let's break it down.

The average American is sleep-deprived. So let's say you get 7 hours of sleep. You're awake for 17 hours. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so you are awake for 1020 minutes a day.

If you check your phone 200 times a day, that means you're checking your phone every 5.1 minutes.

This is a catastrophe for human flourishing.

It takes about 10 to 20 minutes for a human to drop into deep focus.

Deep focus is required to get into what psychologists call 'flow state.'

The research on flow state has found it to be the most enjoyable & regenerative human state of consciousness.*
​(most is debated, but one of the best is beyond debate).

Every time you check your phone, you 'task switch.' Task switching resets your deep focus clock. Meaning, if you check your phone every 5.1 minutes, you will never get into a flow state.

The average person lives in perpetual distraction.

The average person rarely experiences flow unless their phone is dead, lost, or unreachable.

Before getting sick, I averaged between 50 and 60 pickups a day. Not great, but low enough that I can justify my addiction because I touch flow states multiple times a day.

However, getting sick has fucked me up. The first day of my fever, I checked my phone 142 times.

I haven't checked my phone 142 times in a day since before I wrote about the Shimmer 8 months ago.

Because the fever suppressed my prefrontal cortex, I got to witness the possession of the addiction. I got to watch my body pick up my phone and check social media for the 90th time knowing I wasn't going to see anything that was truly going to nourish me.

It was remarkable to get to witness my limbs possessed by an addiction with the fog of the fever blunting any extra judgements. I didn't catastrophize or flog myself. I just witnessed the possession.

It was eerie and sobering.

The fever broke this morning.

I'm feeling myself coming back to life. And I'm reinvigorated to sing the song of our modern apocalypse. With fresh gusto, I'm back to reminding you that you're addicted, and that there are things you can do about it.

Check out my Shimmer Series if you want to figure out on your own.

Join the Dharma Artist Collective if you want to do it in community.

For the month of March, DAC is offering a 7-day free trial.

This free trial will be available to the first 250 people to claim it.

I like to do unreasonable shit whenever I promote my Mentally Fit class, and so for the month of March, I will be hosting a 33 day Dharmathon in DAC.

Everyday at 11amCST, I and/or Graham Dern (DAC co-founder) will be hosting a 3 hour dharma sprint. We all will share the #1 most important thing we're working on, and then for 3 hours we all commit to either work on that one thing or to meditate. We will not be checking our phones.

If you've never done something like this before, 7 days can change your life. 33 days and you can find yourself in a new reality.

The last time we hosted a month long dharma sprint people literally published books and created new products. People created courses and got new jobs.

The skill of our time is learning how to claim and direct our attention.

Improving this skill improves everything in our lives.

If you want to train it with us, join us in DAC.

And if you want to get trained in this skill directly by me, join my Mentally Fit class. There are 15 spots left and enrollment ends March 15th.

PS. If you're really about waking up in this life time, you should track how many times you pick your phone up each day. It's okay if you don't, it just means you're not trying to wake up. Good luck.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​Turbotime - Doctor P, Flux Pavilion​

Book I Just Finished

Actually, it was a trilogy. The Mistborn Era 1 Trilogy is a masterpiece. As a complete trilogy, it is my #1. What Sanderson does with the characters and your heart as a reader is something I've never experienced before.

Absolutely magnificent. If you love science fiction, I recommend.

Quote I'm Enjoying

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
-Jim Morrison

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-Buckminster Fuller

“If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.”
-Emma Goldman

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”
-Albert Einstein

The Offer

DAC is offering a 7-day free trial to the first 250 people who claim it.

​Come train your focus with us.​