Dopamine management

I noticed something dangerous when I started writing a 100-word article every morning. Whenever I finished an article, I’d feel a dopamine hit.

It felt like I had really accomplished something. This sense of accomplishment was almost as intense as when I had been writing a 500-word article every morning.

My next instinct was to “reward” myself by getting another, even quicker, dopamine hit: checking Twitter, or even worse—email.

This is the danger of a tiny habit. The best antidote I’ve seen is to just have in mind already the next thing that I’ll work on. You have to withhold yourself from a sense of accomplishment in the first hour of your day.

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