Today we're going to talk about dopamine.
It's the evolutionary system within our brains responsible
for how we feel and it drives ambition, focus, and the desire
to pursue things outside of ourselves.
How well someone's dopamine system is working as the main
reason why some people seem unstoppable high achievers.
So how can you actually hack the dopamine system to maximize
motivation, forge focus and achieve peak performance in
every endeavour that you tackle? Now, most people think the more
dopamine, more stimulation and constant rewards equals more
motivation. But here's the twist.
It's not true. In fact, facing dopamine highs
all the time can kill your motivation, wreck your results
and even push you towards burnout, addiction and
depression. I've put hours into digging into
the science of this and what I found flips the usual advice on
its head. So in this podcast, I'm going to
break down my 4 top dopamine hacks that you can use to boost
motivation, sharpen focus and actually achieve your goals.
Now a quick introduction. I'm Terry.
I'm just an average bloke, but I have a deep interest in the
psychology of performance. And over the last five years
I've been putting this into practice.
I've set a world world record for the world's largest GPS
drawing of a penis. Yeah, that actually happened. 72
miles. I've become an award-winning
challenge athlete. And I've even built Rockman, an
online running and functional fitness challenge platform that
uses principles like this to push people past their limits
and help them become better. And if you want my list of my 31
favorite mindset strategies I've put together, there's a link in
the description below. All right, let's dive in.
Number one, protect your baseline.
Don't just chase peaks. Now you may think that more
dopamine equals more motivation, but in reality, spikes can drop
your baseline, leaving you flat and even depressed afterwards.
Protecting your baseline is the real key, and here's how to do
it. So basically, we always have a
level of dopamine running through our system.
This is essentially our baseline, and when we partake in
activities that spike or stimulate dopamine, we get these
peaks in the dopamine chemical. But it's not these peaks that
determine our satisfaction or enjoyment of that activity, it's
the peaks in relation to the baseline.
For example, if you get a spike in dopamine with some sort of
activity and you enjoy it, so you have a cheeky tug.
Then the next time you get a spike in dopamine, as it hasn't
returned all the way back down to baseline, it's got a shorter
distance between where it is until the peak, so therefore
there is a less satisfaction about it.
Now after major peaks of dopamine, we also experience a
crash and this can leave us below our baseline levels.
This is where we can start to feel depressed, low energy, a
bit like what's the point? You see, we only have a certain
amount of ready available dopamine within our bodies.
And if you use it all up in one big peak, then you're going to
run out and it's going to drop below baseline.
And that's where you're going to feel grumpy, Moody, lack of
energy, lack of effort, unmotivated, and it's going to
take time for that baseline to return to normal.
Think of it like a toilet. When you smash the flush the
first time it works, it's great, but if you smash it again soon
after, you're only getting sort of little dribbles.
And if you keep smashing it then you run the system dry, all your
dopamine is being used up is empty and there's a big
unflushed turd in the basin. This explains where you get post
event Blues. Say you've done a massive Iron
Man, or a marathon, or an ultra, or even a 5K.
It's all relative to the person, but once you've done it, once
you've achieved it, you sort of get that depression after and
it's because you've used up all your dopamine.
This could be a massive night out on the sash as well,
especially if you're using a couple of recreationals.
You use up all your dopamine. So then afterwards you do have
these crashes. You're going to feel grumpy and
depressed for the next few days while that dopamine level
returns to baseline. And if you keep smashing it
afterwards and you keep chasing dopamine highs to get back to
where you were, all you're doing is putting yourself further and
further under the baseline and into the hole.
And This is why a lot of people, people can become addicted to
certain activities. They get the high, then they get
the crash, then they're chasing the high again.
They go back to the activity, trying to get the spikes back
up, but there's no dopamine there.
And they just keep abusing, keep abusing because they need to get
back to that high, but their dopamine's gone.
So how do we solve it? It's through rest and recovery.
Depending on how far you go below baseline depends on the
high of the peak. The bigger the elation of the
activity, then the longer it's going to take for you to return
baseline. Now this could be a day, it
could be a couple of days, it could be a week, it could be a
month, it could be up to two months where you're feeling like
this. But the best way thing to do is
just to relax, understand that you need to let it return to
baseline and sort of avoid all activities that induce high
peaks of dopamine. It happens to me every time I do
a challenge now. I ended up falling off the wagon
because I've had the high of the event and then after the event,
when that event is gone, I chase dopamine through maybe junk food
and drink and other naughty stuff.
What I'm doing is I'm just putting myself further and
further in under that baseline. Nowadays I know what to expect.
I allow myself a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, no training, no going
out, just rest and recovery and let that baseline come.
You'll know when it's back because all of a sudden you'll
start to get your motivation back.
You'll start thinking what's next?
What challenge should I take on? You can also get stuck smashing
your baseline, say after a big night out on the weekend, you're
going to feel depressed. Then during the week you can end
up to eating junk food, smoking, taking nicotine, eating
chocolate, scrolling on your phone, all dopamine inducing
activities. And while you think you might be
taking a rest from the drinking, what you're doing is you're not
allowing your baseline level of dopamine to return because you
keep smashing it with other activities.
The best way is just to relax. Now here's some things that
increase your dopamine but also lead to crashes after.
And you need to think of your dopamine sort of like a bank
account. These activities are like payday
loans. They're quick, they're fast,
they put you into debt. So you might find this
interesting. Chocolate can spike your
dopamine by 1.5 X Porn, wanking, sex 2X binge eating 2X scrolling
on your phone. Mindless scroman less, but it's
more frequent and it creates compulsion.
Then you've got nicotine 2.5 X. Oh no that's good, I do love a
vape nowadays. Cocaine 2.5 X exercise will 2X
your dopamine. But there is a caveat to this.
It's only exercise that you enjoy.
If you don't enjoy it, you're not going to get the release of
dopamine. Amphetamines, meth, heroin
10X10X. Almost makes you want to think
about trying it, doesn't it? That must be one hell of a drug.
I'll tell you what, it's piqued my interest.
Now, caffeine, we must talk about caffeine as well.
Caffeine doesn't actually increase your dopamine that
much, but what it does do is it blocks the receptors to the
chemical, which tells you when you're tired, effectively making
your dopamine go further. Now, by all means, keep
partaking in all of these activities we've mentioned.
You're all adults here. I can trust you all right, But
the trick is not to abuse it. We talked about that rest.
We need to let our dopamine levels return back to normal.
So don't abuse it, pick it when it's needed, especially sort of
performance enhancing stuff like caffeine.
Use it when it's needed. If you abuse it, it's just going
to keep smashing that baseline and keep you under.
So what about some clean sources of dopamine?
Dopamine which is more sustainable and prolonged and
doesn't cause the crash? These are the healthy ways to do
it. If we go back to the bank
account analogy again, these are like your steady income.
You've got sunlight 1.3 to 1.5 times.
You've got the outdoors 1.1 to 1.2 times.
You've got socializing, which is 1.4 to 2 times, which is quite
strong compared to what we're just talking about earlier with
The Dirty ones. And I can't believe I'm saying
this, but cold water therapy you're in in an ice bath that
can 2.5 X your dopamine and it's a prolonged release.
It lasts for way longer than all the other ones at the top and it
prevents the crash. And I've always said this, cold
water baths are a bit like having a wank.
They may feel good, but you don't actually achieve anything.
But if you like a cold water bath, then go for it, get
involved. It's these are healthy ways to
actually manage your dopamine without causing the crashes.
And why does this matter to what we're trying to achieve here?
Because dopamine is for motivation.
If you're going to slam it into the floor, if you're going to
flush that bog and get rid of all your available dopamine, it
will demotivate you. It will put you into a place of
a lack of energy or a will or a drive to do anything.
So if we can control it and make sure that we're protecting our
baseline, then it's going to mean we're going to have the
consistency to perform and have motivation going on for a lot, a
lot longer. Now, protecting your baseline is
one thing, but we also need to know how to manage our peaks.
And then this next section I'll tell you how to do that.
Number 2 on layer activities and manage your peaks.
You may think that more simulation like music, caffeine,
pre workout makes you perform better, but in reality it can
cause huge crashes in motivation for the next day.
This is why you should look to unlayer your activities.
It's all about managing your peaks.
The higher the peak is directly relatable to the bigger the
crash. So if you can manage your peaks,
not make them too big, then you're going to mitigate any
sort of crashes in dopamine afterwards.
It's like when you take a pre workout, you knock back an
espresso, you put your tunes on and you go and smash out a leg
day. Now this is all good and you may
really enjoy that. But if you're doing that day
after day after day, you're only going to be smashing that
dopamine again, putting you on the baseline.
Now, if you love whacking the tunes on or smashing a pre
workout and doing a crazy leg day, then go for it.
That's all good. But you just need to know that
you need to manage it throughout the week because if you want to
main contain any sort of consistency with your training
or whichever endeavour that you're pursuing for longevity,
you need to be managing your peaks to by adding those little
add-ons to your session, you're making a bigger peak.
But if you can choose to do the activity without those add-ons
every now and then, then you're going to just protect that peak
and prevent the crash. 1 tactic I read about was a coin flip.
So you flip a coin before you'd start your session or whatever
you're doing to see whether you're going to have music or a
pre workout. That time, dopamine, love,
surprise, you've got to keep it guessing.
And why is this important? Because it gives you the
longevity. It prevents that crash.
It means that you can consistently aim at your targets
without falling off the wagon. Now, we talked about protecting
your peak, managing your baseline.
That's all great. But now let's talk about
actually achieving things and goals.
That's why we're here, right? And that's why #3 is use clear
goals and challenges to drive dopamine.
Now, you may think that getting fitter or getting stronger is
enough for motivation, but in reality, vague goals don't
trigger dopamine. Effectively, dopamine spikes on
progress towards a clear target. It needs specific and measurable
steps. The main dopamine system within
us as humans and all mammals is the reward system.
We release dopamine when we achieve a target or a goal or an
aim. This could be a challenge or a
target you've set out for yourself, a goal that you want
to achieve. It could be something work, it
could be something with your fitness, it could be something
in the house, or it could be something as simple as drinking
when thirsty or eating when hungry.
Our brain loves it. The more specific and important
the target, the more the dopamine high.
And this is evolutionary. It's what's kept us alive and
survive as human beings over all the years.
It's what motivates us to go out, seek shelter, seek food,
seek warmth, have sex, multiply. This is literally baked into us
as animals. For example, if you're doing a
pub quiz and there's no actual points or winners, then what's
the fucking point? The fun comes from achieving
points, from winning the quiz. That's what it's all about.
Now you may have also heard about the saying all wins feel
the same and they do internally because it all comes down to
context. James Smith, the online personal
trainer, said on a podcast that he had the same feeling of
elation when he hit 10,000 followers as he did a million
because context matters. So Mo Farah win an Olympic gold
might feel the same to my Nana struggling and getting to the
top of the stairs. And this also hinges on
deadlines and set dates in the diary in which he was supposed
to achieve these things. It's called the gold gradient
effect. When the deadline is months and
years away, there's no motivation at the start to
achieve it. It's only when the deadline gets
close and you have to knuckle down and get it done that the
motivation starts to increase. In fact, there was one study in
a university where electorate sets one big deadline at the end
of the year for 1/2 the group. For the other half, he split
that into three smaller deadlines throughout the year.
It was the second-half with the three deadlines spaced out that
performed better because they had shorter deadlines leading up
to the main one. With motivation created by
urgency. There's no point in saying I
want to lose 1 kilogram in 12 months, it's too long.
Give yourself an appropriate deadline that sparks that
motivation and you can use it by breaking bigger goals down as
well, because we need to see that progression, those small
wins along the way to keep the motivational fires burning.
I did it in my world record run where I tackled a 72 mile GPS
drawing of a cock and balls. 72 miles sounds impossible, it
sounds insane, but I broke it down every 45 minutes.
I had an energy gel and every 45 minutes that energy gel became a
little pit stop in my brain, a little checkpoint, a little
sugary treat, but also I was knocking a little milestone down
each time working towards that big goal.
If I had just the 72 mile goal to get, I don't know whether I
could have got it. So set yourself SMART targets.
These are specific, measurable, achievable, relatable to you and
what you're doing and what you want to do, and with a specific
time frame and a deadline and a date in the diary in which to
achieve it. Dopamine grabs onto that like a
junkie with a crack rock. And why is this important for
motivation and achieving goals? Because we're learning how to
design our goals specifically to induce that motivation, that
dopamine release. By doing that effectively, we're
going to give ourselves the drive in which to thrive and
achieve. And these are the principles and
the practices that we put into Rockman, my online challenge
platform as well. We set monthly four week
challenges that people can take part in anytime, anywhere,
without fixed schedules, without fixed locations, and without the
waiting around for a far off race day event to come round.
You can get stuck in right now, wherever you are and challenge
yourself. Give yourself that target, give
yourself that aim and then and satisfaction of actually
achieving that aim. And if you want to know more
about Rockman, there's also a link in the description below.
However, it's not all about rewards.
There is a secondary system within us that releases
dopamine, and this one is probably more important when it
talks about driving motivation. Which leads us on to #4 don't
reward before or after effort. Reward the effort itself.
Now you may think the rewards are key for boosting motivation,
but in reality it kills intrinsic Dr. The brain learns
to love the treat and not the work, and here's what you should
do instead. This is the lesser known
incentive reward system within us.
Basically, dopamine is released when we're working towards a
goal that we find deep intrinsic value from and enjoyment
something we want to do. We get real value from it
internally about us and who we are and our identity.
You don't actually have to achieve the goal, just working
towards that goal releases the dopamine.
And this dopamine actually warps time as well.
You may think that time feels the same no matter how you look
at it, but dopamine actually changes time perception too.
Chasing rewards stretches time out and enjoying effort actually
compresses it. Hence the saying, time flies
when you're having fun, so why shouldn't you reward before or
after and why should you reward the actual effort itself?
It's because your brain gets used to chasing the reward and
not doing the work itself. The whole reason your dopamine
is spiking is because of the rewards, and the rewards won't
always be there when they're removed.
Your motivation to do that task will diminish.
It will crash. You need to find the value and
you need to find the purpose within that activity to spike
that incentive reward system. So you're releasing dopamine
just through the love of doing the activity.
There was one study with children who enjoy drawing, and
what they did is they started rewarding that drawing and after
a while the children didn't care too much for the drawing itself.
They began only chasing the rewards.
And you get it in work. Say you love photography and you
love taking photos, but then it progresses into a career.
Now all of a sudden you're doing it for the money and the reward
and your passion for that project actually disappears.
Think of it like when every time you see your mates, you're
always having a pint. Well, you're not going to have
any motivation to see your friends when the pints aren't
there. Whenever I see my mates, we're
always looking to have a pint now because that is what we've
always done. There's no internal purpose or
meaning behind just seeing my friends anymore.
It's always accompanied with the rewards of the pints.
David Goggins has a good quote about music.
He says he never trains with music because one day that music
ain't going to be there. And it's true.
So you get to the start line of a marathon and you've been
training with music the whole way.
And then you look at your phone and the batteries have run out
on your Earpods. It could send you into a panic
because all of a sudden that reward isn't there.
That thing to help you get through isn't there.
And there was no love crafted for the activity itself.
So with the incentive reward system, again, it's not about
the rewards, it's about finding that intrinsic value within the
activity. And if you can find that, then
that's going to see you out longer.
And in terms of motivation and achievement, again, it's going
to give you that longevity and that motivation and drive to
keep working towards your goals. So that's it.
Protect your baseline, love the effort, set clear goals and
layer activities and use dopamine to make time work for
you. And if you want to dive deeper,
grab my free download of 31 mindset strategies in the link
below. And if you you're ready to put
all this into practice, you can check out Rockman, my online
running and functional fitness challenge platform built around
these exact principles to keep you pushing forward anytime,
anywhere. Thanks for watching.