The happiness of pursuit
Dopamine doesn’t work the way you think.
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Dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness, it is about the happiness of the pursuit. Dr. Robert Sapolsky.
Think of Christmas morning. You may not be a night owl, but you have no trouble getting up to open presents bright and early.
Or maybe you are on vacation and there is an amazing hike with a great view, and you are psyched.
Or maybe your favorite content creator just released a new idea just before you sat down to eat dinner.
Dopamine is not a pleasure in itself, but rather the pleasure of anticipation. the anticipation of Christmas morning can be greater than that actual event, the same with a date or anything.
Knowing this can be incredibly helpful for this reason, If you know that dopamine, which puts you in a state of motivation, is triggered to release when it is expecting something, that means that you can do something arduous and end it on a positive note. Your brain will begin to correlate the good feeling of the reward with doing something challenging.
Then, when you have a craving for the reward, your body will anticipate it and become ready and motivated to overcome an obstacle.
However, you must maintain nuance; if the reward is consistent enough, it may not seem special. Studies have shown that living things prefer alternating rewards rather than steady, consistent rewards. Think gambling and social media algorithms; you are fed a desirable outcome inconsistency and then fed something rewarding. The unpredictability yet promise of a potential reward keeps us coming back for more and more.
So one great example of this would be to get a bucket of ping-pong balls, of which approximately 1/3 have cookies written on them. when you complete a workout, you draw one ball from the bucket; if it says cookie on it, you can have a cookie. this will make your brain relate the work to a reward while keeping the reward variable and nuanced.
Alternatively, you can make the effort and the reward itself. I once had a period of getting up early, running, and finishing with a cold shower. this was very difficult to do, but when my alarm would go off, I would just remember the feeling of accomplishment I would have upon completing this routine. and hence the motivation would start to trickle.
The downside to that method is that you can often become dissatisfied with the feeling at the end of your routine, as you may begin to believe that you could do better.
This is what happened to me: I would wake up 15 minutes later than the previous day. Regardless of the fact that I still completed the same routine, I felt less upon completion since I didn’t wake up as early.
I suggest keeping track of every day and focusing on averages rather than peak performances. Also, add variability to your routine so that you are focusing on mental and physical difficulty rather than routine iteration.
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Originally published at https://korublog.substack.com.
