How to Leverage Dopamine to Control Your Motivation and Satisfaction

We often think about Dopamine as a drug or a hormone and nothing else of it. In serious cases, it can cause Parkinson or mental analyzation. And in this post focus, Dopamine can influence your attention, motivation, craving and desires.

Even though Dopamine is a chemical in our brain, there are things that we can do to regulate and leverage it to our advantage through controlling outside stimulants.

The goal of this post is to give you some basic understanding of dopamine and tools you can use to increase focus, raise motivation in seeking and building real things in life.

What is Dopamine?

Dopamine is said to be the currency that dictates your quality of life by Dr. Andrew Huberman. It gives you reward, energy to pursuit things in life. And like any other currency, it is essential that you understand where it flows and how to get in that flow.

Mechanic of Dopamine

Baseline and peaks

Dopamine can be released locally or broadly. All you need to know that there is a baseline and there are peaks. The baseline is how much Dopamine is being regulated normally and peaks is the rise of Dopamine level when there are outside stimulants that affects you.

Positive and negative system

Synthesized Dopamine is stored in little pouches and when it’s released into the system, it takes time to gain some more. Meaning if there is a big peak, there is a drop in the baseline after because there is not enough to maintain the normal baseline level.

The higher the peak, the better you feel. And in reverse, the lower dopamine level, the worse you feel. This is compared to the previous baseline, before the action. Take notice that you can get really high for the night, but then it makes you way worse for the next few days (assuming that you don’t do the activity again).

One more mechanic that you should know is you will need more and more Dopamine to achieve the same “high” because the baseline was raised through previous activity.

Let’s say you enjoy playing video game, as time progress, you will play that video game more and more. Eventually you don’t enjoy playing that game anymore, you just play it because you’re drawn to it (not because you enjoy playing it). And before you even lost interest for the game, you already lost interest in your well being, social interaction, etc.

How to leverage

Dopamine’s purpose

When talking about human body purpose, we should always look at evolution, what advantage does it gives us.

In the prehistoric time, humans need to go find food, water, shelter, mates, etc. But doing that exposes us to dangers such as predators, severe weather, competitions, and more. We need a mechanism that rewards us in the short term, gives us heighten sense of energy and focus to overcome shortcomings, trading for long term advantages.

Dopamine then will decrease because if it stays there, we wouldn’t want to seek resources again. And keep in mind that it’s hard to get resources this time and dopamine system is built for this (this is important).

In today’s world, it’s too easy to get instant high from dopamine from artificial sources such as porn, drugs, excessive amount of food, social media. This, in return, give you bad quality of life as it’s not congruent with how our system was coded through thousands of years.

Leverage

By now, you would have understood the mechanism of dopamine, how it’s depleted after a big peak leaving you in pain, depression, unmotivated after the high is gone. Using this knowledge, we can reduce unwanted Dopamine spike and increase dopamine for motivation, focus and energy.

Firstly, you need to reduce unwanted Dopamine. Pay attention to your daily life, what are your sources of food, sex, social interaction, etc. sugar, porn, video game, etc. I’m sure you’re smart enough to recognize if your daily intake is healthy or not, regardless of if your job requires it.

Secondly, you will want to restart the dopamine reward system in things that you want to do again. If right now, you’re procrastinating, having no motivation to achieve your goal, chances are your system is messed up. You need to take step toward your goal and remind yourself what are you accomplishing by doing what you do. Go against the grain of friction. Know that you’re rebuilding your system.

It’s a rather long process, especially if you’re addicted to Dopamine because it also affects time perception. I know there are 30 days fast program out there and the first week is the hardest as you’ll experience withdrawal.

ADHD happens to have the same symptoms, such as lack of focus, low motivation, etc. You can first try to control your Dopamine before going to the doctor or taking any prescription, which can cause you whole bunch of money and chemicals to your body.

How to not leverage

While rebuilding your Dopamine rewarding system, you should not layering multiple sources of Dopamine before or after the activity.

For example, don’t always listen to music, having pre workout before gym session. Don’t tell yourself I’ll finish this task then I’ll give myself my favorite dish. These will give your Dopamine but not the activity itself. Using smart phone during the session is also bad as it distracts you from doing what you meant to do.