In this interview, Sam Parr talks with entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson, the founder of Tiny, about his unexpected burnout despite a highly successful year that included taking a company public, raising a fund, and acquiring businesses. Wilkinson describes how the shift to remote work during COVID turned his previously varied, social, café‑based routine into endless Zoom meetings and constant digital consumption, leading to anhedonia and a feeling of constant craving for social media validation. In August, he decided to take a month‑long "dopamine fast" by retreating to a cabin with his family and imposing strict rules: no phone, email, computer, podcasts, social media, news, or even non‑fiction business books. He recounts the intense withdrawal symptoms during the first few days—irritability, compulsive checking of his phone—and the subsequent discovery of deeper enjoyment in simple activities like reading fiction, watching sunsets, and listening to music. Wilkinson connects his experience to neuroscience insights from Andrew Huberman and Stanford addiction specialist Anna Lembke, explaining how dopamine drives craving and how constant stimulation diminishes pleasure, likening it to junk food versus broccoli. He concludes that the fast reset his brain, restored his motivation, and gave him a fresh perspective on work, social media, and the value of intentional silence.
Chapters
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.
Andrew is a great friend of ours, has this big business called Tiny where they own a bunch of different businesses north of $100 million-ish or so in revenue, took a company public. You're whatever, you're successful in terms of career and traditional sense of successful. You're a good friend. You normally come on a lot, but you just tweeted how you kind of like took off for all of August and you kind of bailed because you were kind of having a meltdown in which we all have had before, like a digital overload meltdown. And you just bailed, right?
Totally. It was really— it was bad. I mean, it's interesting to think about, like, I think this happened to everyone over COVID, like their life just shifted in a weird way. And my life just became crappy over COVID, which is weird because I had this amazing year. We took a business public, we raised a big fund, we got to work with all these interesting people, we bought some great businesses, I didn't die of COVID All these great things happened and yet, I was totally miserable. And when I look at it, when I kind of zoom out my old day, I don't know if you guys know, but I live in Victoria, Canada, and I didn't even have an office. So, I actually liked just working out of cafes. I would just go to the same cafe every day and I'd sit there with headphones on. 3 or 4 of my friends would always work there. So, it was kind of like cheers. There's always interesting people to talk to. And my day was just broken up into a bunch of chunks. So, any given day, I wouldn't really be on the computer or in one place for more than an hour or 2. And my day went from that to sitting in a house on my computer all day on Zoom and doing email. And it just kind of made me miserable. And so, when I look at what I love about business, I don't actually love— Doing business is great, doing strategy, coming up with ideas, all that kind of stuff. But the cool thing about business is you get to meet interesting people. Business is just a hack, right? So, if you're interested in health, you figure out a health business, you suddenly can meet all the most interesting people in that world. And I'm an extrovert. So, anyway, I was totally bummed and I started going on Twitter a lot because I was craving socializing. And I went from 20,000 followers to 170,000 followers. So, I got totally hooked into that. And a good day would be like I have a viral tweet or I go on your podcast or something exciting happens. A bad day would be I say something on Twitter, I get dunked on, I got misunderstood, or it doesn't do well. What a ridiculous thing. I'd tweet and it would only get 50 likes instead of 5,000 likes and it would throw my day off. So, I got to a point where I was just like, "Jesus Christ, this is totally ridiculous. I'm thinking about Twitter constantly. I'm checking Twitter constantly." And on top of that, email, checking stats, stocks. If I went to the bathroom without my phone, I feel like I feel— I'd feel like I was going to freak out. Constantly listening to audiobooks, constantly listening to podcasts, no silence. So I just like hit this weird breaking point August 1st where I woke up and I was like, I'm not stoked to get out of bed. I'm not depressed. Objectively, everything is fine. I'm like, I'm just like, I have like anhedonia. Like, I'm just not excited about anything. So I just said, fuck it, I'm just going to—
what's that word you just said? That was a good one.
Anhedonia. It means like an inability to feel pleasure, right? Like nothing, nothing would get me pumped. Nothing would give me a hit. Like, you know, you know, when you like, you're always, you go on Netflix, you're like scrolling endlessly for the perfect thing. You just can't find it. That's how my life felt. And so I basically, you know, it was the middle of August. I live in British Columbia. It's super beautiful. And so, I just said to my wife, "You know what? I'm out for the next month. Let's just go off to our cabin. We'll go on some trips and I'm just going to totally check out." And I set a couple of rules for myself. I was like, "No phone, no email, no computer, no podcasts, no phone calls, no social media, no news." I couldn't even read nonfiction business books. So, it was pretty extreme. And I put on my Apple Watch, which has cellular. So, I was like, "Okay, if there's an emergency, I can get a phone call." and I put my phone in a drawer and I just disappeared. I went up to my cabin and hung out with my kids. And honestly, for the first like 3 or 4 days, it felt like there was like a bug in my brain. Like I was just like, so like, like something I, I itch, I couldn't scratch. Like just so irritable as being a huge asshole. I was like slapping my pocket every 5 seconds to check Sam Parr. I'd be sitting on the beach with my kids and I'd constantly be like, "Oh, I need to text this to a friend. I gotta take a photo of this," right? So, it was really weird, horrible withdrawal. But then, after like 3 or 4 days, I was like, "Holy crap, like, this is really interesting." I started reading fiction books and just sitting for hours, you know, enjoying a sunset, taking a silent drive, doing all this stuff. And I think it's kind of like if you eat junk food all the time, like you're drinking Coke and having burgers and stuff all the time, and then you eat broccoli, it doesn't taste that good. Your brain is primed for like these extreme flavors. And then if you switch to broccoli, you know, you don't eat those things for a month, then you eat broccoli. Broccoli is like orgasmic. It's amazing. And so anyway, I did this for 4 weeks and I was feeling really good and I came back to life. Like I kind of reintroduced myself into society and started going out and working and stuff. And it was really bizarre. Like, I, you know, would listen to a song that was playing in a cafe and it'd be like the greatest song I've ever heard. I'd read some random article and it would be like fascinating and I'd just be completely, uh, like just, you know, engaged with it. Um, and then problems I had to solve that would've pissed me off, like seemed like no problem and I was excited to solve them. And I was kind of going like, man, why, why did that work? Like, what was it about that? And at the same time, like around then I started listening to podcasts again and I listened to this podcast by Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab, which I'm sure you guys have listened to. He's amazing.
Yeah. He's, he's coming on the podcast.
Oh, amazing. That's, that's awesome. So he did this deep dive on addiction and he did it with this woman, Anna Lembke, who's a, Stanford addiction doctor, and I was like, oh, this will be interesting. It'll be about like heroin addiction or something and how they treat alcoholism. So I start listening to it. Those other people who have those other bad problems. Yeah, I'm not one of them.
It's fun to read about them.
Totally. I was like, I was like, oh, this will be, you know, maybe philanthropic. You know, I can help fund the heroin addiction center in Victoria or something. So anyway, and as I listen, I just go like, oh my God, like, you know, this is not, this is universal. Like basically the chemical of dopamine, the neurotransmitter is the thing that makes you feel craving and pleasure when you do things and it motivates you to do things. And I realized, you know, basically like she said, you know, something along the lines of if you eat chocolate cake once a month, It tastes amazing. And you don't really crave it that much. You don't really think about it that much. It's very pleasurable. If you eat it once a week, you know, it's still enjoyable, but it's not as good. And you start having cravings. You start wanting chocolate cake. If you eat it every day, your brain literally craves it and you're in pain until you eat it. And when you eat it, it's not even that enjoyable. It just makes the pain go away for a little bit. And she compares that to like heroin addiction or anything. And so, you know, here we all are, we're stimulating ourselves with social media 24/7. We're constantly taking these hits and the hits become less and less enjoyable. And she talked about, you know, she's at Stanford, so she's treating students and she talks about these kids that would come in and they're addicted to social media and video games and they have no motivation. And so she said, look, I basically recommend a dopamine fast for 4 weeks they can't do any of that stuff. They got to go walk in silence, drive in silence, have quiet moments, not avoid those things. And I realized that, you know, I'd basically done that, uh, for myself, and that's why I felt better. And I, you know, I was an addict. It's crazy.
