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How to Reset Your Dopamine (And Change Your Life)

2024-11-01 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, TJ Power · recording, 17:55 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health, sleep and habits (also: Productivity and time, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

In the first episode of a four-part series with neuroscientist TJ Power, Ali explains how modern pleasures deplete dopamine and gives TJ's law of dopamine (take action when you wake) and four ways to control it: phone fasting, finding flow, cold water and a clear pursuit.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why understanding dopamine is important; TJ Power and the four-part brain-chemical series

  • ★★★ TJ Power says phones, social media, fast food and alcohol spike dopamine with instant reward, and people becoming addicted to these surges find it hard to do what actually matters to them. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali introduces neuroscientist TJ Power, who runs the Dose Lab on the four main brain chemicals (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins), and a four-part video series on them, starting with dopamine. — 00:00:40

00:01:09 — Part one: the law of dopamine, take action when you wake, and two questions for healthy dopamine

  • ★★ Ali says that in the brain's reward system dopamine is the major currency that motivates us, and as Homo sapiens evolved it motivated us to do things that kept us alive. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ TJ Power says our brains spent 300,000 years developing for a different lifestyle of hunting for food, building shelter, connecting with and fighting each other. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ TJ Power says the modern world hacks the feeling of hunting, connecting and building shelter with porn, TikTok, cigarettes and alcohol, which creates big problems with our dopamine baselines. — 00:01:45 · TikTok
  • ★ Ali explains that neurons make dopamine from the amino acid tyrosine via L-dopa, store it in vesicles and release it at synapses. — 00:01:45

  • ★★★ TJ Power says we make dopamine when we do hard things, the more the harder the thing is: the chemical evolved to be earned through effort. — 00:02:27

    “the chemical evolved within us to be earned”

  • ★★ Starting the day with exercise, making your bed or going outside builds up your dopamine reserves instead of depleting them, Ali says, and gives you more motivation for what you want to achieve. — 00:03:10

  • ★★★ TJ Power's law of dopamine: take action when you wake every day; as soon as you open your eyes, the most important thing is to get moving. — 00:03:10

    “the law of dopamine is to take action when you wake every day”

  • ★★ TJ Power attributes "rotting", a TikTok trend of people, particularly teenage girls, unable to get out of bed, to dopamine being so low from TikTok and sugar. — 00:03:40 · TikTok

  • ★★ TJ Power advises getting moving immediately on waking even if it feels horrible: the more horrible it is, the more dopamine you generate, because dopamine works on a pain-pleasure balance. — 00:03:40
  • ★★★ Ali's first question for whether something is good for your dopamine: how quickly does it give you pleasure? Natural pleasures raise dopamine slowly without a crash; instant gratification is unlikely to be healthy. — 00:04:09
  • ★★ Ali's second question: will this benefit me or someone else in the future? If yes, such as cooking dinner instead of eating out or a walk with a friend, it is healthy dopamine. — 00:04:38
  • ★★ If you struggle to focus and get distracted, Ali suggests nudging your balance away from instant gratification towards slower things that improve your life in the long term, without giving up all enjoyment. — 00:05:07

00:05:36 — Sponsor read for Ali's own Productivity Lab

00:07:04 — Action one: phone fasting, mornings, evenings and boredom

  • ★★★ TJ Power calls phone fasting, agreed times when you keep off your phone, the most effective thing in his research and training; the most important time to fast is on waking. — 00:07:33

    “having agreed times with yourself where you will fast quote unquote from your phone”

  • ★★ If you unlock your phone as soon as you wake up, Ali says the best thing is to charge it somewhere outside your bedroom and use something else as an alarm clock. — 00:08:02

  • ★★★ Straight after waking, Ali suggests three things in line with the law of dopamine: brush your teeth, splash your face with cold water and make your bed. — 00:08:02
  • ★★ Ali advises phone fasting for at least 15 minutes every morning and, ideally, 60 minutes before bed. — 00:08:02
  • ★★★ Ali, who struggles to keep off his phone at night, has used Opal, an app he is not affiliated with, for several months to block social media apps from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m.; he reads on his Kindle and goes to bed. — 00:08:32 · Kindle
  • ★★ TJ Power says the brain generates dopamine in a state of boredom, a restorative break, so reaching for the phone in every bored moment keeps crashing it. — 00:09:01
  • ★★ Ali passes on TJ Power's recommendation of a two-hour phone fast on Saturdays and Sundays, embracing boredom instead of always running away from it. — 00:09:01

00:09:30 — Action two: find your flow, and why starting is the hardest part

  • ★★ On walks Ali avoids listening to audiobooks, podcasts or music on his phone and carries a pocket notebook and pen for journaling in a cafe or on a park bench; he likes to think it raises his dopamine over time. (hedged) — 00:09:30
  • ★★ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (quoted): Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quoted by Ali, writes that our most rewarding activities demand an effort one is at first reluctant to make, but once they give feedback on one's skills they become intrinsically enjoyable. — 00:09:59
  • ★★★ To get into flow, Ali says, balance challenge and skill: add an artificial challenge when a task is too easy, and reduce the pressure and importance you put on it when it is too hard. — 00:10:29
  • ★★ Ali says brain-scan studies of people in a flow state show the reward system and dopamine pathways are heavily involved. — 00:10:29
  • ★★ Flow is common in athletes, artists and scientists, Ali says, but anyone can experience it in mundane things such as cooking, studying and cleaning under the right conditions. — 00:10:58
  • ★★ TJ Power says it takes about 15 minutes on average to get into a flow state. — 00:10:58
  • ★★★ TJ Power advises recognising that the first 15 minutes of a boring task, such as cleaning a bathroom, are always the hardest because dopamine is at its lowest; after that you gain momentum. — 00:11:27
  • ★★★ Ali says starting anything is always the hardest part: procrastination is generally a difficulty in getting started with a thing rather than in doing it. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ When filming his videos, Ali spends the first hour procrastinating over the script, doubting it is good enough or will get views; once he hits record it slowly becomes fun. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ At medical school Ali found starting to study for exams really hard, but once in the flow, with Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter music playing, it became fun. — 00:12:24 · The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter (book series)

00:12:53 — Action three: cold water immersion and the pain-pleasure balance

  • ★★ Ali says cold water immersion has been shown to raise dopamine similarly to cocaine, but cocaine apparently spikes it in about nine minutes and then falls, while cold water raises it gradually over two hours. (hedged) — 00:12:53
  • ★★ TJ Power says a 1998 study by a psychologist (name as heard: Ceramic) first found that cold water immersion can raise dopamine levels 2.5 times. — 00:13:22
    • a number in question (doubtful): "2.5 times" — check against the recording
  • ★★ Ali traces the pain-pleasure balance to behavioural psychologist Richard Solomon's opponent-process theory of acquired motivation (1980): pleasure and pain are opposite states kept balanced like a seesaw. — 00:13:22
  • ★★ Anna Lembke (quoted): Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, in Dopamine Nation, pictures homeostasis as little gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. — 00:13:51
  • ★★ Anna Lembke (quoted): Anna Lembke writes that with repeated exposure to the same pleasure the swing to pleasure gets weaker and shorter and the after-response of pain stronger and longer, which scientists call neuroadaptation. — 00:14:21
  • ★★ Ali says the opposite happens with pain first, as in cold water: the body activates reward pathways, and with repetition the initial pain lessens and the pleasure comes sooner. — 00:14:50

00:15:19 — Action four: my pursuit, a clear mountain to climb, and time in nature to find it

  • ★★★ TJ Power's most sustainable way to use cold water: 30 seconds of cold at the end of every shower, for a natural rise in dopamine, motivation and focus. — 00:15:19
  • ★★★ TJ Power's "my pursuit": for someone addicted to modern quick-dopamine habits, the only way off them is something else to chase that you are willing to sacrifice for. — 00:15:48
  • ★★ TJ Power says he struggled a lot with modern addictive behaviours and had to clarify what he would chase instead of quick dopamine, which is where the idea of my pursuit came from. — 00:15:48
  • ★★ Ali says that with a goal firmly in mind, such as building something or supporting your family, everything you have to do feels directed and becomes fun; without one, the brain recognises the work as pointless. — 00:16:17
  • ★★★ To find your primary pursuit, Ali agrees with TJ Power: spend at least 60 minutes in nature every day without phone, music or podcast; past the first boredom, the question gets much easier. — 00:16:47

00:17:16 — The productivity GPS and the rest of the series

  • ★★ Ali feels most creative on walks in Regent's Park in London or sitting alone with his thoughts in a local coffee shop. — 00:17:16 · London
  • ★★ Asking yourself what you want to pursue leads to Ali's productivity GPS (goal, plan, system), a method he has been developing over the last couple of years. — 00:17:16 · GPS: goal, plan, system
  • ★★ Ali plans to make more videos about his productivity GPS on his YouTube channel. — 00:17:16 · GPS: goal, plan, system

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cold water immersion · dopamine · Flow state · law of dopamine · my pursuit · phone fasting · TJ Power

Also: People: Anna Lembke · Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi · Richard Solomon

Projects: Productivity Lab

Works: Dopamine Nation · Harry Potter (book series) · Pirates of the Caribbean · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Dose Lab · Stanford University · TikTok

Concepts: GPS: goal, plan, system · opponent-process theory of acquired motivation

Places: London · Regent's Park

Products: Kindle · Opal

Also centred on dopamine: How Dopamine Actually Works 🧠 · How much dopamine do you get from sex? · This dopamine study is mind blowing 🐀 · How to Control Dopamine (You're Destroying Your Mind)

Also centred on Flow state: Is Learning to Rap Useful? · 3 Tips to Achieve Flow State 🧠 · Being productive doesn't have to mean suffering 🤔

Also centred on TJ Power: 5 Habits for Happier Relationships - The Oxytocin Effect · 5 Easy Habits That Could Transform Your Life · Why You’re Overwhelmed - 5 Ways to Beat Stress

← Previous: 5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube · Next → 5 Habits for Happier Relationships - The Oxytocin Effect