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Inside, I share the best methods that have worked for me and break down my process step-by-step from the ideation process to the software I use.

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When it comes to reading about what you love, there is one thing that I'm obsessed with:

Science experiments were done in the 1900s (cuz that's where all the good stuff is at).

And the other week I found one that caught my attention. It's called Skinner's Box.

The experiment was simple.

You have a pigeon. You put the pigeon inside a box. The box has a button when pressed, food comes out.

At first, the button worked as expected. So the pigeons knew, if they ever got hungry, they'd press the button and a set amount of food would drop.

But then Skinner would change how the button worked.

Long tap to get food, or double tap the button, or tap, pause, and tap again to get food.

At first, the pigeons didn't understand what was going on, but eventually, they got the hang of it and learned the new pattern.

So Skinner changed the button again—instead of having a pattern, he made it random.

Now the pigeons were confused.

They started pressing the button even after getting the food.

By the end of the study, pigeons were pecking the food lever up to five times per second “for as long as fifteen hours without pausing longer than fifteen or twenty seconds during the whole period."

They became addicted to pressing the button—just like a gambler in a casino saying "I'll land on red in the next try."

What Skinner realized: The more random the reward system is, the bigger the anticipation, the bigger the dopamine hit the pigeon (and humans) would get.

Dopamine: The Molecule Of Motivation

Most people don't understand dopamine.

They think it's only related to pleasure—but that's just surface-level understanding.

Dopamine is the motivation molecule.

In ancient times, dopamine was a signal telling us that what we’re doing helps with our survival—and we need to do more of it.

It pushes you to keep going even when things feel hard because it wants a reward.

Imagine sticking a carrot in front of a donkey.

The donkey will keep walking as long as it sees the carrot in front of him. Even if it was going through rough terrains. Because his brain is filled with dopamine telling him "Just take one more step and you'll get that delicious carrot then all your hard work will be worth it".

But if he does reach the carrot, he'll stop.

The same happens with us.

We get a boost of dopamine whenever we chase something. But this isn't a problem.

The real problem comes when we chase cheap dopamine.

Because now you don't have a reason to create goals and improve yourself. I mean think about it…

• Why would you talk to a girl, and risk getting rejected, and made fun of when you can just watch porn?

• Why would you train when you know you're going to feel sore when you can just watch a motivational video and feel good about yourself?

• Why would you want to go through the troubles of doing something that's hard to get dopamine when you can just open YouTube and watch videos on how to do it (but never actually do it) and get 1,000x the amount?

So you get addicted to cheap pleasures, and when you get addicted, you lose all motivation.

Then you start the downward spiral of feeling terrible about yourself, numbing that feeling with porn, drinking, partying, venting about your problems, telling people your goals, and enjoying the dopamine hit you get from it, until it wears off and the cycle repeats.

This is why most people get stuck in their lives.

The chemical that was supposed to motivate you to do great things, is now the reason why you're stuck in life.

Dopamine, Happiness, & Boredom

It doesn't take much to realize that the dream life you're chasing isn't what's going to make you happy in life.

Because when you have it, your brain releases dopamine (fake sense of happiness, pleasure, not contentment), but once it wears off, so does your happiness. So you become bored and miserable.

And when you're bored, your mind naturally starts seeking other ways to find dopamine.

This isn't a bad thing, again, that's just a signal from your brain telling you to survive.

But it becomes bad when you start chasing cheap pleasures.

Because it's like giving you painkillers for your problems, not a cure.

You feel good in the moment, but it's only temporary.

Relationships suffer because once you "get" your partner (hats off to the dopamine-fueled motivation), you no longer have a reason to stay with them. You were in love with the dopamine you were getting from chasing them, not with your partner.

This is also why you keep telling yourself "When I reach that goal then I'll be happy" but when you do reach it, you feel anything but happy.

Your mind tricked you into thinking that your goal is where happiness would be.

But when you do this, you're basically telling yourself that you'll be miserable until you achieve that goal—can you guess what most people do when they're miserable?

Yup.

They start chasing cheap pleasures in life.

We're Living Inside Skinner's Box

The paradox of social media:

We're more connected than ever, but we're more lonely and miserable than ever.

This isn't by accident. This is designed by social media apps.

They're spending millions every year to optimize their algorithms to give you the most amount of dopamine possible.

The "For You Page" and the scrolling mechanism (which simulates a slot machine) builds anticipation for "the next best thing" (which only increases the dopamine hit when you do find something you enjoy).

But even when you do find it, you keep scrolling—just like how the pigeons were pressing the button even when they already got the food.

After 6 hours of doomscrolling you’re tired, your brain is fried, and you have zero energy left to do anything that helps in improving your life (even talking to friends and family).

So what should you do?

Writing — Your Path To A Meaningful Life

The entire human brain is designed to procreate so we can survive (through our genes).

In ancient times, this was only possible through sexual acts.

But in modern times, we also survive spiritually (with our ideas). When you publish a book, your ideas live for hundreds of years and you survive by having your ideas talked about even after you're gone.

Socrates, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Isaac Newton, are just a few examples of people who still "live" today because their ideas are still talked about.

The process that I'm about to tell you is one that I always use whenever I feel my life is out of order and chaotic. Especially when I've gone down the 2 weeks of cheap dopamine consumption and get disgusted with myself.

Time and time again, it's been the saving grace for giving me the motivation and clarity to achieve my goals and find meaning in my life.

But first I want you to understand something:

Social media isn't toxic. The way most people use it is toxic.

If you use social media the right way you can:

• Learn anything you want: Learn new information, challenge your beliefs, see different perspectives, and create your own argument and reasoning as to why people should do something

• Attract an audience: When you have an audience you can help influence people to live a more conscious life, which causes a butterfly effect on social media and creates your own little corner in the space of what we call the internet where you get to meet other people like you.

• Build an independent source of income: An audience is a business cheat code. When you have a group of people who you can help, you can ask for something in exchange for attention or money, after all, they'd be willing to do it because you helped them.

And the best way to do all three things at the same time is to write about what you're doing and believe in.

by the way, if you feel social media is toxic, then I'd highly recommend you to be ruthless with who you block and mute, and be conscious of who you follow and engage with until you train the algorithm to work for your benefit.

Cuz after all, the algorithm just shows you what you previously engaged with and liked.

Now let me share with you my process:

1) Start A Project

You feel anxious because you're living in the future.

You feel depressed because you're living in the past.

But when you have a project to work on and pour all your focus and attention into it, you no longer need to worry if things are going to work out. You only care about doing what's in front of you.

That's because humans thrive when they have a hierarchy of goals to execute on. Every goal you complete gives you dopamine, meaningful dopamine. One that's earned through hard work.

These goals give us a sense of control and clarity—which we love for obvious reasons.

Nobody likes the feeling of uncertainty. This is why humans create goals—they give us a sense of control over our future.

You can never actually have control over your life, but you can reduce the worry and uncertainty.

But a goal is an abstract form of what you think you want. You have a destination of where you want to be but don't have a path on how to get there.

This is why I love having projects, not goals.

Projects are structured. they give you a series of steps to take to turn your abstract goal into something tangible (but be careful to not fall into the mental masturbation of watching videos on how to do something and getting the fake sense of progress that comes with it and never actually doing it).

Just like a video game. You have to gather resources, craft new gear, train to learn new skills, and fight new bosses to unlock the next level—and if you get stuck on a level you open up a video to see how you can beat it and move on.

For me, the destination (my abstract goal) is to keep writing this newsletter for the next 10 years and inspire change in people's lives, but I also have a different project every week to help me reach my destination. Sometimes it's a newsletter, a thread, or a new micro offer.

But in early December of last year, I didn't have a project. I became anxious, uncertain, and didn't have any ideas to write about for this newsletter (that's why I didn't write anything for the last 2 weeks).

However, when I decided to work on a new project The Modern Creator, all of a sudden that feeling of uncertainty and anxiousness dissolved.

I started getting different ideas to write about. It's what is actually fueling my content for the next 2-3 months.

2) Curate Your Environment

A common piece of advice I see is people saying the first thing you need to change is your environment.

But how are you supposed to know what to change?

This is why I say you need a project first.

Once you have a project to work on and pour all your focus into, you'll naturally filter what needs to stay and what needs to go—because your mind is now thinking in terms of "How can I use this for my project?".

Every piece of content you consume gets filtered through that question.

Your "For You Page" now changes to something meaningful and isn't toxic, because you're no longer seeing the brain rot content that's being pumped every day.

When you start scrolling with intention. Your environment changes to one that helps you live with intention and purpose—not one that keeps you up at 3 a.m. in the morning scrolling YouTube Shorts or TikTok wondering why your life is so miserable.

3) Create & Build — Where To Start

I can hear you saying: "How should I choose a project to work on?"

Since you made it this far, I'm guessing you're a person who either 1) feels overwhelmed or 2) doesn't know what to do and feels lost (because for all of your life, you've been doing what other people told you to do, so when you started wondering what to do, you feel lost).

But the thing is, we're not living inside Skinner's box.

We live in the digital era now.

The new wealth is being generated on the internet.

You can talk about what makes you curious and be rewarded for it.

And the best way to start is by writing.

Why writing?

Because you don't have to be in front of a camera or be judged by how you look, you can reach millions of people with just a few taps on a keyboard.

So find a problem you're struggling with in your life. See how you can solve it. Create a predictable process for you to rely on time and time again. Write about how you solved (or solving) your problems. Put your process in front of a small fraction of people (your audience).

At first, you'll find it slow and boring, but that's exactly why you should be doing it—we live in a world where we're told to always go 100 miles an hour and never stop. But when you keep going at that speed, you forget what it's like to slow down and think about what you truly want in life.

So:

1) Create content you want to see in the world—the type that forces people to question their beliefs and programming.

2) Build products that would've helped you solve your problems faster—and you can be sure that it will also help others (because after all, we're all living the same life, it's just told differently).

The last thing that is left is promoting your offer in front of your audience and seeing how your ideas can change people's lives.

And that my friend is how you build a meaningful life.

Thank you for reading.

Hussain.

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PS:

If you were one of the people who joined the waitlist, let me know by replying to this email, cuz this is my first time building a waitlist, so I just wanna make sure that I didn't mess things up.

Here's the link again, so you don't have to scroll up :)

https://themoderncreatorwaitlist.carrd.co/

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PPS:

I wanted to write about dopamine for a long time but never knew how to tie it into social media until I read Skinner’s experiment...