Dopamine

A framework for outsmarting the mind.

Understanding dopamine can be done through this image:

Imagine yourself in this room.

Dopamine is a chemical produced in your brain. Dopamine is responsible for your sense of motivation and pursuit. When you think of an activity, dopamine will either fire or not fire, motivating you to do the activity or turn to something else.

Imagine yourself standing in this room for six hours. You would be bored out of your mind. Why? Because there’s nothing that releases dopamine in your body, or in other words, there’s nothing around you that motivates you to do something. What are you going to do, sit in a chair?

Now imagine a book was placed in the center of that room. Immediately dopamine would fire in your brain, which would motivate you to pick up the book and start reading. The book would be endlessly fascinating, a whole new world to discover outside of the monotonous room you have spent the last tide of your day in.

The framework to outsmart your brain’s desire for stimulation and motivate yourself to do the work you know you really want to do is not to listen to a pump-up song or watch a fiery speech or write down a five-step plan. It is to get as close to the above room with the book in it as possible, with the “book” being whatever task or project you want to work on.

You are removing other sources of dopamine so that the only possible source of dopamine, and thus, the only thing you can be motivated to do, is your targeted task.

This is why gyms work. Imagine you wanted to do some weight lifting today. Your solution would be to get to a gym, but remove other sources of dopamine in that process. No phone, no music. Plant yourself in the gym. You could sit there in the weight room for an hour, bored, dreading the workout, but eventually, you’d get so bored that enough dopamine would fire for you to pick up a dumbbell and start working out.

Your mission is to identify the projects you want to work on and then remove as much as possible around those projects so that the projects become your only source of dopamine.

Science says that you can tell yourself that it is the doing of the activity that you most enjoy and not the results of the activity, and over time, the doing of the activity will actually become more enjoyable. This means you can enter a positive feedback loop with your projects, which quickly compounds into an unstoppable drive and motivation, which leads to previously unimaginable bouts of growth.

You’re only presenting yourself with the option of your desired project, which means that project is your only source of dopamine, which motivates you to work on the project, and then while you’re working on the project, you tell yourself you are enjoying this more than anything else, which results in an even greater firing of dopamine the next time you think about working on the project, which starts the cycle all over again, except now, the motivation is even more powerful and the enjoyment even stronger.

The greatest killer to these bouts of growth is cheap dopamine. Dopamine that is quick, easy, and sizeable. TikTok, Netflix, scrolling Twitter or Instagram, YouTube, drugs, porn, and much more. They are cheap and you know they are cheap, but they win because their suppliers have successfully designed ways to hack your centers of dopamine. They know how to get you.

If you scroll TikTok for two hours before leaving for the gym, your workout will look like a zombie on a treadmill. Your dopamine has been fried, your motivation zapped, your zeal for your true priorities in life vanished.

The only solution to eliminate cheap dopamine is to remove their possibility. Delete the apps, throw up the site blockers, do what you have to do. Whittle down your environment to get as close to that empty room with a book in it as possible.

When you are working, hide your phone. Do not fill your work breaks with activities that are more dopaminergic than your true priority. Fill them with meditations, walks, breathwork, stretching, and other lowkey activities. Don’t spike dopamine prior to the task or after the task. Make the task itself your greatest source of dopamine. That’s your mission.

Two people are on a train. They both have phones. One phone has TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and the Books app. Which platform do you think they will turn to? The other phone only has the Books app. Think that person is going to be reading on their train ride?

You have to outsmart your dopamine if you want to make the progress your soul craves. This is a continuous battle. Your mind will tempt you with rationalizations, but it is your prerogative to identify your true priorities in life and eliminate everything else, over and over again. If your only option is to move the needle on your priorities, best believe the needle will be moved on your priorities.

Steve Jobs said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

That’s good, but Bruce Lee said it better:

“It is not the daily increase, but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”