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@ Creature
2025-02-07 18:30:02
Notes from Huberman episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-TW2Chpz4k
(Please watch the actual episode. These are my personal notes for myself that I took while watching it. Posting because they might be useful to tohers.)
Dopamine regulates: motivation, desire, pursuit, and pleasure. Also "pain" of lacking which is a quick drop of dopamine.
# Overview of how motivation and reward works
When you first have a craving for something your dopamine peaks in anticipation. This motivates you to go get it.
Right after the peak of anticipation, your dopamine drops below baseline, causing a "pain" of not having it. This motivates you to go get it even more.
When you finally get the thing, your dopamine either peaks (if the thing exceeded your expectation), drops below baseline (if the thing is disappointing), or just stays at baseline if it just met your expectation.
# Queues
We are always looking for queues as to whether or not we are on the right path toward the goal. We are setting a mindset as to whether or not we are confidant or pessimistic when it comes to achieving that goal.
Whenever we see a clue that we are on the right track toward the desire, the whole "anticipation (dopamine goes up) > (dopamine drops) as we feel the pain of not yet having the object of desire" cycle happens again.
There's a time delay between queue and getting (or failing) the reward. The queues that happen in between the initial desire and the end goal are added on to our reward prediction system. The queues indicate how likely or unlikely we are to receive the reward.
There are special circuits in the brain that learn how we achieve or don't achieve goals. "Reward Contingent Learning" (what lead up or didn't lead up to the reward)
Stimulus => peak
Motivation => drives you forward, pays attention to what happens along the way
Reward => peak or drop
Short gaps between stimulus and reward teach the system to expect short gaps. This is how addictions happen.
> The higher the dopamine peak and the faster it rises, the lower it drops below baseline afterwards. After it quickly drops below baseline, it takes longer to get back to the original baseline then it did prior. The peaks that are created from consumption of addictive thing leads to progressively lower peaks afterwards and deeper drops below baseline.
The drop below baseline triggers the desire for *more*.
Baseline can also be thought of as anything that raises your level of dopamine for more than one hour.
# Healthy baseline dopamine how to
* Enough sleep
* Non sleep deep rest
* Sunlight
* Movement, exercise
* Exposure of body (up to the neck at least) to cold water
* Nutrition: L-Tyrosine (an hour before important tasks and multi-tasking. Helps if you're fucked up because of stress) Also increases short working memory. Recommended dosage 500mg - 1g. Start w/ smallest dose 250mg-500mg (based on body weight). Pay attention if you experience a crash afterwards. Can act as a stimulant, so don't take late in the day.
# "Pain" and effort
"Pain" as in not a physical pain but emotional pain of lack that results from a sudden drop of dopamine (usually right after a peak).
How to get over the "pain":
* Wait with the understanding that it will get better. It can several days to replenish reserves of dopamine.
* Do something that is even more "painful" than the "pain" of procrastination.
>[!CAUTION]
>Rewarding someone for doing an activity they naturally enjoy actually makes you LESS likely to engage in this activity if the rewards go away.
>**Why:** The enjoyable activity followed by reward resulted in a bigger peak in dopamine which was followed by a bigger drop in dopamine.
## Motivation and Drive
Aim for effort becoming the reward in and of itself. Leverage both dopamine peaks AND drops to pull yourself out of **procrastination** quickly and become productive.
### Growth Mindset
Adopt the mindset that if you can't do something well, add a "yet" to it. (can't do it well yet)
When we expect ourselves to be able to perform well & we can't, that sets up a downward spiral of motivation because we are attached to the relationship between desire, motivation, and outcomes (reward prediction error: we expect a good result when starting to do something but get a bad one). This results in lack of motivation or depression.
### Overcoming Procrastination
* Do something that's harder, more effortful, or painful than being in that state, you will get out of it faster. This is NOT the tasks you do naturally wile procrastination (ex: clean the house, etc), because those tasks are actually EASIER than being in that state (based on how dopamine works)
* Force yourself to be even more uncomfortable. This will make your return to baseline dopamine faster.
* Ex: cold water bath. Something that is really uncomfortable (but not damaging)
* Do the thing for 3 minutes. This will pop you out of the dip in dopamine.
* It also teaches you that doing hard things is possible.
# Binding behaviors
Behaviors in which ppl bind their behavior around a particular addiction in space and/or time (ex: only engage in certain places or at a particular time)
# Takeaway
To increase motivation
* Try to find intrinsic reward of doing the task itself, rather than an external reward (during or after). Crave the hard work.
* Motivate yourself by looking for **evidence** that you are one small step closer to your goal and that reaching the goal is possible.
* If unmotivated & procrastinating: do something that feels even worse than sitting there procrastinating and doing nothing. (maybe literally do nothing like Dr. K suggests, instead of doing other tasks like doomscrolling or unrelated things)
#dopamine #motivation #procrastination #productivity