I want to ask you a serious question, and I need you to be honest with yourself before you answer it.

Why haven't you launched that new service yet? Why haven't you put your prices up? Why does that marketing plan you wrote six months ago still sit in a folder on your desktop, untouched?

If you are like most of the business owners and professionals I speak to, your answer is probably something along the lines of, "I just don't feel ready," or "I need to do more research," or perhaps the classic, "I'm just waiting for the right time."

I am going to challenge that. I don't think you lack preparation. I don't think you lack resources. And I certainly don't think you lack ability.

I think you are suffering from a dopamine overdose. I believe that the news cycle and the device in your pocket are occupying so much of your brain's bandwidth that you have no confidence, no plan, and no ability to make positive changes in your life.

We are living in an era of unprecedented information access, but it has come at a terrible cost: our ability to think clearly and act decisively.

The Comparison Trap

Let’s get real for a moment. I talk a lot about confidence and personal branding, but I am not immune to the psychological warfare of social media.

I have noticed a distinct pattern in my own life. When I spend a little more time scrolling through Instagram, I start to feel bad. It is subtle at first, but it digs in deep. I look at the feed and see people who are better looking than me. They are younger than me. They seem infinitely more successful and so damned happy.

Logically, I know it is a highlight reel. I work in marketing; I know how the sausage is made. I know about the filters, the lighting, the rented cars, and the debt behind the smiles. But my primitive brain doesn't care about logic. It just sees "better" and makes me feel like "worse."

It makes me feel like rubbish. And that feeling of inadequacy leads directly to anxiety. When you feel anxious and "less than," you do not make bold business moves. You hide.

The only way I have been able to get around this is to implement a strict boundary. I have stopped scrolling Instagram entirely, with one exception: I am only allowed to do it while I am on the toilet.

True story.

By relegating the infinite scroll to a few minutes of biological necessity, I have taken away its power to dominate my day. It sounds ridiculous, but it saved my sanity.

The Adult Dopamine Epidemic

We spend a lot of time wringing our hands about what social media is doing to our kids. We worry about their attention spans, their self-image, and their social skills. And we should.

But while we are focused on the kids, we have completely missed the real dopamine epidemic—our own.

As adults, we like to think we are disciplined. We tell ourselves we are scrolling for "market research" or "staying informed." But let’s be honest: we are addicted to the hit.

Every time you pull down to refresh your email, check your LinkedIn notifications, or doom-scroll through the latest headlines, you are frying your dopamine receptors. You are training your brain to crave distraction rather than depth.

This is a disaster for leadership and innovation.

Innovation requires boredom. It requires silence. It requires a brain that isn't constantly processing new inputs. If you fill every spare second of your day with a podcast, a news article, or a social feed, you are leaving zero room for your own original thoughts to bubble up.

You cannot lead a business or a team effectively if your brain is in a constant state of reactive chaos.

It Is Not Just Instagram

Instagram is just the beginning. The visual comparison is toxic, but the "professional" and "informational" inputs are just as dangerous.

I have had to severely limit my news intake. Living in the Northern Territory, or anywhere in Australia for that matter, the news cycle is designed to keep you in a state of high alert. It is always a crisis. It is always urgent. It is always bad.

When you start your day with bad news, you are priming your brain for threat detection. You go into your business looking for problems rather than opportunities. You become risk-averse because the world feels dangerous.

And I have had to limit my LinkedIn intake as well.

LinkedIn has become a strange performative theatre. It is full of people shouting about their "hustle," their 4:00 AM wake-up calls, and their seven-figure turnovers. If you spend too much time there, you start to feel like you are failing because you haven't scaled to a multinational corporation by lunchtime on a Tuesday.

This constant input creates a paralysis. You consume so much information about what everyone else is doing that you forget whatyouare supposed to be doing.

Reclaiming Your Brain

So, if you are feeling stuck, anxious, or unable to execute your plans, I want you to try something. It is not a new app or a productivity hack. It is a subtraction.

1. Isolate the inputs.Identify the apps or sources that make you feel anxious or inadequate. Is it the news? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Instagram? Be honest about how you feelafteryou consume them.

2. Create physical boundaries.Don't charge your phone in the bedroom. Buy an old-school alarm clock. The first hour of your day sets the tone for everything that follows. Do not give that hour to Mark Zuckerberg or the ABC news desk. Keep it for yourself.

3. Embrace the "Toilet Rule" (or similar).If you must check these things, relegate them to the dead time in your day. Do not let them bleed into your productive hours or your family time.

4. Sit with the silence.This will be uncomfortable. When you stop scrolling, you will feel bored. You might even feel a bit of withdrawal. Good. That boredom is where the magic happens. That is where your business plan gets written. That is where your confidence comes back, because you are listening to your own voice, not the noise of the world.

The Bottom Line

You do not need more information. You do not need to see what your competitors are doing. You do not need to know the breaking news the second it happens.

You need your brain back.

Your confidence, your ability to plan, and your capacity to lead are all sitting there, waiting for you to clear the fog. Put the phone down. Step away from the news.

The world will keep spinning without your constant attention. But your world—your business, your life, your growth—needs you to be fully present.

Let’s get back to being effective, not just informed.