Self-improvement and growth are a big topic for me and I think it is everyone's duty to become the best version of himself. I try to read every day and with this blog, I want to summarize the books that I have read and say my thoughts about them.

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Devin Hasler


## 🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. There is no pleasure without pain
2. It is possible to release pleasure with pressing on the pain side
3. A long exposure to increased dopamine can lead to changes in your brain plasticity

## 🕵🏼Who Should Read It?

The book is applicable to everyone's life. Every person on this earth releases dopamine for everything they do or for everything they are looking for. Knowing what the pleasure-pain balance is has the power to improve everyone's life.

## ☘️ How the Book Changed Me

I found the book very interesting, as I am a big fan of more scientifically based books. Anna provides interesting real-life examples about the theories she presents from her psychiatric practice. It was astonishing for me to learn that we humans are basically not meant to be happy all the time. Due to the pleasure-pain balance, it is biologically not possible to be happy all the time. After reading this book, I now think differently about the phases of one's life where things don't seem to work as smoothly as in other times. I think of them as something human and not something that is bad.

## ✍️ My Top Quotes

> “Persons with severe addictions are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise, for they show us who we truly are.” Kent Dunnington
>

> “Any prolonged or repeated departures from hedonic or affective neutrality have a cost.” Richard Solomon and John Corbit
>

## 📒 Summary + Notes

The general topic of the book, as the name suggests, is Dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that bridges the distance between neurons, much like a baseball bridges the distance between the pitcher and catcher. Dopamine is known as the 'feel-good' hormone as it is responsible in our body for rewarding us when we achieve something. Although scientists have discovered that dopamine may play a bigger role in the motivation to get a reward than the pleasure of the reward itself.

The problem is that dopamine does not know if we do something to survive and preserve our race or if we are just lazy lying on the couch watching Netflix. Because our brain and our reward system are not made for the highly stimulating environment we live in, they suffer under immense overload. When we eat a fat Big Mac, our brain thinks we hunted the biggest animal on the planet and awards us for being so brave and feasting our body with so many calories and fats. What our body doesn’t know is that we have the potential to eat an unlimited amount of Big Macs because we left the era of hunting many centuries ago.

<img src="/images/blog/dopamineNation/dopamineMethology.png" alt="Dopamine as a Neurotransmitter explained" title="Dopamine as a Neurotransmitter explained" width="50%" height="auto" />

Dopamine as a Neurotransmitter

### Part 1: The Pursuit of Pleasure

As already mentioned, we live in a world with an abundance of dopamine-rewarding technologies and things to do. What we lack is the ability to cope with that and handle it. That is how we get addicted.

The definition of addiction is as follows:

Addiction is the continued and compulsive consumption of a substance or behavior (gambling, gaming, sex) despite its harm to self and/or others.

And why do we consume these substances or continue to engage in that behavior, you may ask? Because the consumption releases dopamine.

The problem is that these substances and behaviors are so easily accessible. We need zero effort to go from the couch to the fridge, and already we are able to consume as many calories as we want.

**********************************************The pleasure-pain cycle**********************************************

In addition to discovering dopamine, scientists also found that pleasure and pain are processed in overlapping brain regions. This means that pleasure and pain work in a balance. As a result, the balance does not want to be out of balance on either side for a long period of time. Because of that, it is biologically impossible to be happy all the time. Also, this implies that even if you only pursue things that make you happy, you will not be happier compared to someone who sometimes does something that they do not like.

### Part 2: Self-Binding

There are multiple ways to address a dopamine 'overdose.' The goal of all these methods is to reset the dopamine level to a normal state. One of the mentioned ways, for example, is to undergo a dopamine detox. This is a widely discussed topic, and multiple videos can be found on the internet about how to do that. In short, it involves the absence of highly stimulating activities or consumptions for a period of time. One method to achieve this is the method of self-binding, where you make it as difficult as possible to consume or engage in certain behaviour.

### Part 3: The Pursuit of Pain

Due to the fact that pain and pleasure work in balance, pleasure can be attained by pressing on the pain side. This is, for example, the explanation for the good feelings after a gym session or the hype after an ice bath. A study conducted on dogs found that when dogs were given small electroshocks, they whined, and their heart started pumping fast. However, after some time, their heart rate fell lower than the average heart rate before the shock. This meant that they were more relaxed than before the shock. Also, the repeated exposure to this shock led to a decrease in the shock, but the feel-good feeling lasted longer than after the first time.

Because of all these factors, we should manage our dopamine consumption much more, especially as a child. Overconsumption can lead to long-lasting changes in brain plasticity. That is why it is important to manage the consumption of dopamine, as it can lead to depression and a loss of motivation. I highly recommend reading this book as it contains much more information than it is possible to mention in this blog. I hope you like this blog and I look forward to to seeing you reading my next blog post.

Regards
Devin Hasler

A book about the problems of dopamine flooded world and the problem that come with it.

Dopamine Nation



## 🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. The 80/20 Principle can and should be used by every intelligent person in their daily life, by every organization, and by every social grouping and form of society.
2. The world is not linear, it is unbalanced: some forces are always more forceful than others.
3. Start to think 80/20 and start to use 80/20 Analysis

## 🕵🏼Who Should Read It?

This book does not have a specific target audience; rather, it offers something for everyone. The 80/20 Principle can be applied in any part of the world. Therefore, everyone should read this book to understand the principle and learn how to apply it to their specific circumstances.

## ☘️ How the Book Changed Me

I already knew about the Pareto or 80/20 principle, but I had only tried to apply it to studying. I had never considered applying it to marketing, business, or anywhere else. The book improved my understanding of the 80/20 principle and opened my eyes to its presence in my surroundings. Now, I try to think more in terms of 80/20 and implement it in other areas of my life, not just studying.

## ✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

> “The universe is not a straight line.” Richard Koch
>

> “A few things are always much more important than most things.” Richard Koch
>

> “Progress means moving resources from low-value to high-value uses.” Richard Koch
>

## 📒 Summary + Notes

The 80/20 principle is a pretty known method for managing time. Most people have heard this principle before and associate it with the man Pareto, who was the inventor of the 80/20 principle.
What most people don’t know is that the 80/20 principle applies in almost any part of the world which is why it is important to talk about what the 80/20 principle really is.

### What

As mentioned before, the 80/20 principle was discovered by Pareto and then rediscovered by Zipf. Zipf investigated Pareto's principle further and applied it to people, goods, time, and many other things. One possible definition of the 80/20 principle is therefore:

“The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards.”

This for example means that 80% of a school project can be done in only 20% of the time. This means that if you have 10 Days to complete a school project, you can do 80% of the required work in only 2 Days.

### Whom

One of the best parts of the 80/20 principle is that it can be applied by everyone. In fact, Richard Koch said the following in response to the question of who can use the 80/20 principle:

“The 80/ 20 Principle can and should be used by every intelligent person in their daily life, by every organization, and by every social grouping and form of society.”

### Why

It is a big deal if a single method can be applied to everyone's life. But why is the 80/20 principle applicable in such a wide range of scenarios?
The most important thing about the 80/20 Principle is that it can help individuals and groups achieve much more with much less effort. The 80/20 principle can increase personal effectiveness and happiness. It can multiply the profitability of corporations and the effectiveness of any organization.

### How

How can you implement the 80/20 principle in your daily life? There are two applications of the principle: 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking.

#### 80/20 Analysis

The 80/20 Analysis is precise, quantitative, requires investigation, provides facts, and is highly valuable. It examines the relationship between two sets of comparable data. One set of data is always a universe of people or objects, usually a large number of 100 or more, that can be turned into a percentage. The other set of data relates to some interesting characteristics of the people or objects that can be measured and also turned into a percentage. An example of the 80/20 Analysis can look something like this:

<img src="/images/blog/the8020Principle/8020Analysis.jpg" alt="Figure 6 in the book - 80/20 Analysis Example" title="Figure 6 in the book - 80/20 Analysis Example" width="50%" height="auto" />

_Figure 6 in the book - 80/20 Analysis Example_

In a group of friends, it was measured which person drank the most beers and sorted in descending order. This set of data can now be used to create a bar chart, which is the type of diagram that best displays the relationships in the 80/20 Principle.

<img src="/images/blog/the8020Principle/8020Rule.jpg" alt="Figure 9 in the book - shows an 80/28 ratio" title="Figure 9 in the book - shows an 80/28 ratio" width="50%" height="auto" />

_Figure 9 in the book - shows an 80/28 ratio_

In this type of diagram, we can see the unbalanced ratio between beer drinkers. This diagram shows that 28% of the people measured drank 80% of all the beer.

#### 80/20 Thinking

The 80/20 Thinking is more fuzzy, qualitative, requires thought, and provides important insights. This type of application is used if there is no time to do an in-depth analysis of a set of data. 80/20 Thinking is for daily life and all the non-quantitative applications of the principle. As with 80/20 Analysis, we start with a hypothesis about a possible imbalance between inputs and outputs, but instead of collecting data and analyzing them, we estimate them. This helps us to spot the few really important things that are happening and helps us ignore the mass of unimportant things.

#### And then

When presented with data or a bar chart that displays the 80/20 Ratio, it is now possible to take action. This insight into income and outcome distribution allows for the reallocation of resources from the less productive to the more productive side, as well as the simplification of your product, company, or strategy. Another economically sound action is to outsource unproductive processes to individuals who are more productive in that particular area. This allows you to focus on your speciality and be more efficient and productive.

### When

The 80/20 principle is highly versatile and can be applied to various aspects of life. It can assist in daily life by increasing efficiency and productivity. In marketing, it can help identify the customers that should be prioritized. In business, it can aid in defining strategy, improving quality, reducing costs, enhancing service, facilitating decision-making, project management, and even negotiation.

The 80/20 principle can also be applied to personal connections and alliances. Make use of alliances with other people extensively, but limit your alliances to only 20% of people and to the 20% of them that are strong allies. Then, aim to connect your alliances to other individuals who also fall within the top 20%.

As you can tell by now the 80/20 Principle is a powerful tool which should be used by every person daily. Although the book’s taught principle is really important I gave the book only 3 Stars because I felt like most of the book’s teachings were a bit self-explanatory. Non the less I can really recommend reading the book if you don’t now the 80/20 Principle already. With that feel free to share your thoughts about the 80/20 Principle in the comments below and I hope to see you in my next blog post.

With regards  
Devin Hasler  



A book about the 80/20 Principle which can get your efficiency to the next level and improve your productivity.

Productivity

Dopamine Nation

The 80/20 Principle