In the video, the intricate relationship between dopamine, activities, and stress is explored. It analyzes how stacking activities that trigger dopamine release, such as training while listening to music or using stimulants like caffeine, can lead to a "crash" afterwards, affecting motivation and energy. Additionally, the discussion extends to dopamine fasting and the practice of managing dopamine levels to maintain balance and well-being.

The conversation also covers the impacts of stress and cognitive perception on performance. By understanding stress as a potentially positive component that can stimulate enhanced performance, individuals can learn to use it advantageously. Techniques for managing stress and maximizing productivity, such as deliberate cold exposure and setting mental baselines, are highlighted.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. aperture [ˈæpərtʃər] - (noun) - The opening in an object or device (like the eye or a camera) that lets in light. - Synonyms: (opening, hole, gap)

So, somewhat paradoxically, when pupils are big, your visual aperture is narrow.

2. cognitive appraisal [ˈkɒgnɪtɪv əˈpreɪzəl] - (noun) - The mental process of interpreting and evaluating a situation or environment. - Synonyms: (assessment, evaluation, interpretation)

And that, I believe, is remarkable, because what it says is that our cognitive appraisal about stress, which we all are going to experience in life, right, elevated heart rate, narrowing of visual focus, you know, shifting of blood away from the periphery

3. debilitating [dɪˈbɪlɪˌteɪtɪŋ] - (adjective) - Causing weakness or a reduction in strength. - Synonyms: (weakening, exhausting, enfeebling)

Our cognitive understanding about what stress does impacts whether or not our physiology goes down the direction of debilitating or enhancing effects of stress.

4. intrinsically [ɪnˈtrɪnzɪkli] - (adverb) - In a way that is essential or fundamental. - Synonyms: (essentially, inherently, naturally)

If you are somebody that can engage in these intrinsically joyful activities for you...

5. modulate [ˈmɒdʒəˌleɪt] - (verb) - To adjust or regulate something to a specific standard or effect. - Synonyms: (adjust, regulate, control)

Now, of course, it's also going to be modulated by how bright it is in an environment because of the way these systems work

6. neuromodulators [ˌnʊəroʊˈmɒdjʊˌleɪtərz] - (noun) - Substances in the brain that regulate various physiological and cognitive functions. - Synonyms: (chemicals, neurotransmitters, regulators)

...start to trigger some of the pathways related to these hormones and these neuromodulators.

7. oxytocin [ˌɒksɪˈtoʊsɪn] - (noun) - A hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter; it plays a role in social bonding and trust-building. - Synonyms: (bonding hormone, neuropeptide, hormone)

Serotonin and oxytocin are molecules that make us feel good, make us feel soothed...

8. parasympathetic [ˌpærəˌsɪmpəˈθɛtɪk] - (adjective) - Referring to the part of the autonomic nervous system that conserves energy by slowing the heart rate, increasing intestinal and gland activity. - Synonyms: (relaxation mode, calming, restful)

...the neurochemicals that, broadly defined, promote relaxation and parasympathetic activation.

9. procrastination [proʊˌkræstəˈneɪʃən] - (noun) - The action of delaying or postponing tasks or decisions. - Synonyms: (delay, deferment, postponement)

To really say a single concise statement as to what procrastination is.

10. thermodynamics [ˌθɜːrmoʊdaɪˈnæmɪks] - (noun) - The branch of physical science dealing with the relations between heat and similar forms of energy. - Synonyms: (heat dynamics, energy transformation, heat transfer)

It takes time for you to heat up. It takes time for you to get uncomfortable.

A Complete Guide To Maximize Dopamine & Motivation - Andrew Huberman

So for every bit of pleasure that we get from pursuit and getting the thing that we were pursuing, the crash that comes afterwards feels painful. And all that we need to do in order to return to a baseline of dopamine, renew that resource, is to wait and make sure that we don't try and trigger yet more dopamine in that time. So you asked about, should I be taking caffeine in addition to training and blasting music? I always say people differ on this spectrum, but be careful about stacking dopamine. Training itself is a stimulus for dopamine release. Cold water is a stimulus for dopamine release. But if you start doing training cold water, listening to your, your favorite music, plus you're taking, let's say, some stimulant doesn't. Obviously, the stimulants we've been talking about are terrible, but some of the stronger stimulants out there used to be ephedrine back when I was in college, but now people taking adderall, actually, you can tell if somebody has a lot of dopamine and adrenaline in their system just by looking at them. Their pupils are big.

So, somewhat paradoxically, when pupils are big, your visual aperture is narrow. That just has to do with the so called accommodation of the eye, the optics of the eye. So, remember, big pupils means somebody is high on their own. Dopamine and adrenaline could be drug induced, could be situational, et cetera. Small pupils are going to be a relaxed state. Now, of course, it's also going to be modulated by how bright it is in an environment because of the way these systems work. But when you can see somebody wide eyed, well, dopamine and adrenaline also do something else. They actually trigger activation of the brainstem cranial nuclei that cause opening of the eyelids. They also cause an eyes up effect. When we get sleepy, what happens? Our eyes go down. When we're awake, eyelids are open and eyes are up. They might not be up like this. These relate to three different cranial nerve nuclei. For the future med students, you'll learn what these are. So it all makes perfect sense because nature is beautiful and the biology is laid out for us.

But if we start stacking behaviors, plus pharmacology, plus mindsets that increase dopamine, great. But what that means is that if you get a really big dopamine increase, well, then that afternoon you might not feel the drive to do the work. You might think, why am I sleeping in the afternoon? Why am I kind of less motivated? Nowadays, you hear, especially in Silicon Valley, about dopamine fasting you know, people, I don't even want to look at somebody else's face. I'm not going to eat any tasty food. I'm not going to do anything that stimulates dopamine. Sure, that will reset what you find pleasurable, but let's be realistic. The better way to do things would be to modulate dopamine, release, control it, make it work for you. And everyone's going to differ. So for some people, it's got to be music, the pre workout, the four cups of espresso, and someone screaming in their face that they have to do it. Well, for other people require fewer of those variables, but everyone needs to learn how they feel both before, during and after a behavior. I think the right amount of exercise is what you can do consistently and train hard, but that also allow you to perform unless you're an athlete and that's your and profession, to be able to do the other things throughout the day that are beneficial to you.

And of course, some people are training late in the day, and I have no problem with that. I got kind of attacked by the fitness Anistas recently, or whatever you call them online because I said, you know, training early in the day sets this dopamine pulse. Like training late in the day has been shown in these 19 studies. Sure, I'm sure. For when your body temperature is elevated later in the day, you know, lubrication of the joints and mental acuity, sure. But for most people who just need to get more movement are trying to maximize focus and productivity throughout the day, early day training is going to be probably the better option. But sometime is better than no time. But if you're training late in the day and you're getting a big increase in body temperature, and you're doing it under bright lights and you're drinking a pre workout, and you're wondering why you can't sleep at night, it's, you know, you don't have to be Sigmund Freud or a neuroscientist to understand that you're basically just have your body cranking your body temperature up. Hence a lot of these technologies. And here, this isn't a promotion. We don't, at least not now, don't have a relationship to anything. I won't even name them. There are a lot of technologies now about making your bed cool, this mat or that, this, you know, to cool down your body temperature at night so you can sleep.

So if you start thinking about this and kind of a rational structure, it makes sense. It also makes sense why for instance, after a big win, sometimes we feel a crash and we need some time to reset and that lower depression. Sometimes people make the mistake of going out and pursuing more dopamine. One of the areas that I have real concern about, just because I hear about it so often, and it wasn't an issue when I was growing up, is a lot of young guys in particular approach me because they're based on the questions I'm getting. They're watching a lot of really intense pornography. And that has, we know there are studies now going on at Stanford and elsewhere. Pornography creates a strong dopamine rush. These are very primitive pathways that in some ways can overwhelm the dopamine system. And then, you know, another thing is happening is a lot of young guys are getting all this arousal from watching other people have sex. And then they're in the real world scenario, and it's like, wait, you're no longer third personing this. You're actually in this scene and it's completely collapsing them. And so I'm not one of these anti porn people. I'm not here to judge. I'm just a scientist. I'm reporting the, I always say, I'm not a doctor, I don't prescribe things. I'm a professor, so I profess things. You can decide what you want to do with it or not. But if you, once you understand dopamine, that all makes perfect sense.

They're getting this enormous dopamine release from something that is external to them. And real life may not mimic the intensity of the combination of variables. Or people are exercising for a little while and it's all exciting to them, and they're taking tons and tons of pharmacology to do it. And then they kind of lose motivation. Remember, non infinite yet renewable resource. What's happening in the brain and body when we procrastinate? Oh, yeah. So procrastination is super interesting. There are actually some data that Adam Grant shared with me recently that people who procrastinate actually tend to be, have access to certain creative states that non procrastinators don't.

Don't start justifying the procrastination crowd. That's a dangerous line to go. Yeah, procrastination. I mean, what, the origins of procrastination are complicated and varied. To really say a single concise statement as to what procrastination is. But the way to overcome procrastination is to do something harder than the hard thing that you're putting off. That's very clear. Do something harder don't go clean your, like, suddenly if you want to do their taxes, clean their room, clean the garage, organize the gym, whatever, when they don't want to write a chapter in their book. But you have to pick something that's worse than writing the chapter in your book and do that for five minutes. That's the way that the dopamine reward system works and some of these stress systems work.

What would be an example? Give me a tactical example of this. I need to write a chapter on focus and tools for focus for my book. I'm finding I'm doing everything but doing that. Let's just set it kind of a fun example. I'll do anything but that. Okay, so then you have to find something worse than that. So for me, worse than that. Is anything involving a spreadsheet? Just the idea of a spreadsheet gives me hives. So I would force myself to do five to ten minutes of like, like real, like establishing a spreadsheet of my expenses and taxes related to, I don't know, some segment of my work life. I mean, I can't think of anything worse in that moment that doesn't involve physical or psychological damage. So doing that and then you'll see it will make writing that book chapter very accessible. It's a down, it's a downhill cruise from there, but people find themselves doing all these things that they would normally want to put off as a way to avoid doing the harder thing.

So it's about understanding that what is difficult and what you want to put off or do is a dynamic hierarchy. I think you think of it as dynamic subordination. You know, I don't know if that's bother borrowed from cosplay or from military or PSM. I don't know. I heard it someplace. But all the places that you mine for information, most frequently, no, it's raccoons and street. No, none of those. None of those communities are communities that I know very much about. But it was saying it facetiously. But the point being, do something harder than the thing you're trying to avoid. Avoid. Now, some people really like deliberate cold exposure for that reason, because, you know, and here I'm going to really, if I've taken heat, for no pun intended, for the deliberate cold exposure thing, now I'm really going to get behind it for the following reason. People who are really into exercise of various kinds, but not deliberate cold exposure, love to push back on people that do posts about deliberate cold. Oh, that's not doing anything. It's not much metabolic lift okay.

But let's really step back, be honest with ourselves. The adrenaline, the pattern of adrenaline release over time from deliberate cold exposure is something that's very hard to recreate safely with other endeavors. You know, sure, a hard workout is going to spike your adrenaline and dopamine also, but is it going to spike it the way that deliberate cold exposure is? No. Also the amount of a mental barrier that one has to get over in a moment. Not, there's no, like three warm up sets like walk on the treadmill, zero to 100 pre workout. Show me the pre cold plunge drink that makes it easier. Okay. It's called willpower. Okay. And now, some people come to love deliberate cold exposure, but that's usually for how they feel afterwards. So I think there is so much utility to deliberate cold exposure. Now, do people have to do it? No. But deliberate cold shower, deliberate ice bath, deliberate cold plunge is a world apart from all the other self imposed stressors because of the speed of onset of the stress.

Yeah, yeah. It's even more so than a sauna. That's right. You get into a sauna and it takes time for you to heat up. It takes time for you to get uncomfortable. I mean, so it's a very potent tool because of the amplitude and the timing of adrenaline that it created. How you think about stress impacts the stress response in profound ways. So this paper, rethinking stress, the role of mindsets in determining stress, did a very simple set of manipulations. They had people in one group listen to a lecture that effectively was titled, the effects of stress are negative and should be avoided. And that lecture included information about how stress diminishes performance and how it can diminish health and vitality, learning and performance productivity. It increases uncertainty, et cetera. And all of that information is true. A separate group listened to a lecture entitled experiencing stress improves health and vitality. And again, that information is true.

Now, I realize that some of you are probably still asking, how can it be that stress diminishes health and performance? And stress also enhances health and performance. And the answer lies in two things. One, the level of stress, and therefore the level of hormones that are released in response to that stress, the duration over which the stress response occurs. But the key variable here is that our cognitive understanding about what stress does impacts whether or not our physiology goes down the direction of debilitating or enhancing effects of stress. Okay, so we've got a condition here where people are being informed very differently about what stress does. In one case, it's the stress is bad message. In the other case, it's the stress is good message. And there are many different experiments within this paper. But one of the more interesting ones, I believe, is where they looked at work performance, both in terms of performance of what they call soft tasks. So these are somewhat easier tasks as well as hard tasks.

And when you look at the group that was given information about how stress diminishes performance in the soft tasks. Okay, so the somewhat easy tasks, you don't see much change in their performance. As you compare the before the learning about stress is diminishing to after the learning. Whereas the people who learn that stress is enhancing actually experience some improvement in work performance, performance, even though the challenge that they're facing isn't that great. So again, what this means is that learning that stress can enhance performance by providing people true information about how stress can enhance performance can increase performance even in the context of stuff that's not that hard, not that stressful. Even more interesting is that when you look at performance on tasks that are considered hard and you compare the stresses diminishing group, meaning the group that was taught that stress is diminishing, and compare that to the stresses enhancing group, you see a really divergent response. The people that learned that stress diminishes performance did not improve at all, whereas the people that learn that stress can enhance performance, enhance their performance significantly.

Now, keep in mind, all they are doing is learning that stress can enhance their performance, and then they're given a task and they're performing better. So that's pretty spectacular, right? There's no training session that they went and did. They didn't practice these items that they were being tested on in between. They weren't given a bunch of, you know, drills to do, and they didn't take a lot of time to do it. They just heard a tutorial about how stress can enhance performance. And that, I believe, is remarkable, because what it says is that our cognitive appraisal about stress, which we all are going to experience in life, right, elevated heart rate, narrowing of visual focus, you know, shifting of blood away from the periphery. All of these things are characteristic features of the stress response that we love learn, especially in this day and age, because it's talked about a lot in popular culture that, oh, you know, all of these mechanisms were put into us in order for us to get away from the saber toothed tiger or the lion that's trying to eat us.

Let's be fair. The stress response is there for a lot of reasons, not just because of saber toothed tigers and lions I mean, that's kind of a story that we make up. The stress response is inherent not just to us, but to other species as a way to mobilize us either away from things or toward things. Right. We need to have somewhat of a stress response in order to engage in adaptive challenge. Yes, it's true that hundreds and thousands of years ago, those adaptive challenges probably involved hunting, but they probably involved social challenges as well. Do you think it was, you know, easy for cavemen and women to engage socially and, you know, kind of settle out their romantic interactions, etcetera? Do you think it was easy for them to raise children? No, of course not. The stress response is there for a variety of reasons, not just to get away from predators. The really exciting thing that's been discovered in the course of Ali Crumb's work and other work in the last couple of decades is that the stress response is neither good nor bad.

The stress response depends on whether or not you believe the sensations that you're experiencing, elevated heart rate, narrowing a visual focus, etcetera, are serving to enhance your performance or diminish your performance. And this study really points to the fact that just learning that it can enhance performance can enhance performance. Now, I know a number of you are probably saying, wait, but stress doesn't feel good, right? And oftentimes we experience stress under conditions where we're trying to learn or get good at something or listen better or do something, and it actually is diminishing performance. I think it's important to acknowledge that this study and studies like it are not saying that stress becomes pleasant as a sensation in the body, nor is it saying that it always leads to improved performance.

I don't want you to think that's the take home message. Sometimes it does. It can, as was demonstrated in this research paper. But oftentimes, as we know, stress diminishes our performance. It takes us away from the landmarks we want to hit. It takes us away from the grades we want to get. It takes us away from, quote unquote, showing up how we want to. Right. No one wants to have the blotchy skin and the sweating and the quaking of voice when we're trying to do public speaking and things of that sort. No one wants any of that. What's important to understand is that learning that stress is a way of mobilizing resources in the body does two things. First of all, it allows us to dampen or adjust the stress response in real time. And it allows us to understand that that stress response heightens our level of focus. In a way that allows us to pay attention to the things that are going wrong, in a way that allows us to make correction to those errors in the future. So if you think back to that study, that ERP study where they measured brain activity and they looked at people who had a fixed mindset versus people who had a growth mindset, and the people who had a growth mindset were paying more cognitive attention to what was happening during errors and after errors.

Well, this stress is enhancing mindset is very powerful because what it does is it shifts one's attention away from kind of somatic experience of, oh my goodness, my heart rate is elevated, I'm sweating, I'm quaking, I sound terrible, I feel terrible, I look terrible, etcetera, to a mode of allocating more of our thinking toward analyzing why things might be going wrong. And something else powerful happens when we embrace a stresses enhancing mindset as well. When we embrace a stresses enhancing mindset, it turns out that some of the very physiological processes that we call, quote unquote, stress shift in important ways. Some of those include the duration over which the stress hormone cortisol is released. And in fact, I don't even really want to call it a stress hormone because cortisol does so many other things as well, and it's not bad. You need cortisol. Believe me, you want cortisol, especially released early in the day and in response to acute stressors. What you don't want is for cortisol to stay elevated for long, long periods of time, time.

And you especially don't want it to interfere with your sleep. Okay? So much so that I think at times I wonder whether or not our philosophy on stress should be that stress is fantastic for us, except when it interferes with our sleep, right? And when stress becomes terrible for us is when it starts to be chronically elevated, and especially when it starts to inhibit our ability to sleep well enough and long enough.

Okay, so the point, point here is that when we embrace a stresses enhancing mindset, we are able to have shorter duration release of cortisol. We are also able to engage what's called increased stroke volume under conditions of stress. This gets a little bit technical, but the amount of blood that your heart can pump with each beat turns out to be a key metric of stress. When we are very stressed, even though we need to mobilize a lot of resources, somewhat paradoxically, our total stroke volume can actually be reduced. And we tend to shuttle blood and other resources towards the core of our body and towards major limbs and away from things like our brain and our periphery. So one of the key measures of how a stress response, quote unquote, is going is how much peripheral blood flow there is. And when we are more relaxed under conditions of stress, there tends to be more peripheral blood flow. When we are more anxious, more panicked under conditions of stress, peripheral blood flow is lower. And in a remarkable set of experiments, Ali crumb and colleagues have shown that when we are just taught that stress can be enhancing, and then we are placed into a stressful environment, either because we are imagining stress or we are experiencing real stress, and then our physiology is measured. What is observed is that the total amount of blood that the heart can pump with each beat is actually increase, peripheral blood flow increases, and our ability to maintain cognition to think clearly under conditions of stress increases. And again, the only manipulation here is a tutorial about how stress can be enhancing, which is essentially what I'm telling you right now.

The testosterone molecule and the dopamine molecule bear a very close relationship. So if somebody pushes, pushes, pushes really hard, wins, wins, wins. Yes. That will increase testosterone. Winning increases testosterone losing, decreases testosterone in all venues. So they look at this with, with day traders. Win, win, win more money, they get more testosterone losing. Okay, now, here's the interesting thing. I had an episode of the podcast with the great Robert Sapolsky, who wrote, why zebras don't get ulcers, the trouble with testosterone, etcetera. Let's talk about the effects of testosterone and DHT in the brain. The main effect of these androgens in the brain is to make effort feel good because of the way that testosterone and DHD bind to receptors and activate certain components of the amygdala. We always think of the amygdala as a fear center, but it's a threat detection center, and it has a lot of different parts, including parts that allow you to be forward center of mass in response to pressure.

So, am I suggesting people take exogenous testosterone? No. That's a personal choice that people can explore on their own if they want to do that. But if you've been pushing, pushing, pushing, and winning, winning, or just pushing really hard, and then you've experienced that crash, a lot of people need some time to recover in order to be able to come back and be able to work hard again. But here's what's really interesting. Not only does testosterone make effort feel good, effort increases testosterone. So this is the athlete or the student who's like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do anything. Getting into some degree of forward center of mass. I always say, I think I picked this up from a team guy. It's a very team guy language. You can either be back on your heels flat footed, or forward center of mass on anything. Getting into that forward center of mass mental orientation can start to trigger some of the pathways related to these hormones and these neuromodulators.

What you don't want to do is start using a lot of exogenous factors, caffeine or a lot of things outside of you in order to try and create those states, because then you're going to further deplete your dopamine and so on. When I think you went on Rogan at one point and I overheard a portion, I listened to a portion of the conversation where you said you had been working really hard, and then you went on vacation and then you got sick. Yeah. So this is interesting. That's the autonomic nervous system. That's happened to me, like, numerous times. Okay? So there's a very clear explanation for that and a very simple remedy, although it's not obvious, which is why many people experience this. Many people experienced studying for finals.

And then it ends. Getting sick, taking care of a loved one round the clock. The person either gets better or sometimes dies or whatever it is, and then the caretaker gets sick. Why is that? Well, we always hear that stress compromises the immune system. Nothing could be further from the truth. Stress activates the immune system. Think about it. How would your immune system, your spleen, and youre other immune organs of the body know when it's under pressure? Well, you could have some foreign bacteria or virus in your body, but when you are in a mode of go, go, go, the molecule adrenaline triggers the release of killer B cells and t cells from the spleen. It's when you relax. Now you need to get your sleep, but it's when you finally experience that symmetric swing back of the seesaw. So you go, go, go, boom. And then you completely relax, and you're hanging on me, and all of a sudden, you get the sniffle and the rest of the thing. This is, there's a beautiful study done by that was done in response to none other than Wim Hof. Believe it or not, there's a really beautiful, quality scientific study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where they had two groups of people. One group meditated, the other group did Wim Hof type breathing.

So what we call in the laboratory cyclic hyperventilation. So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale 25 times. Forceful inhales and forceful exhales. Then hold your breath. Lungs empty for 15 seconds. Repeat for about three rounds. What does that do? Why do you heat up adrenaline? It's such a generic thing. It's adrenaline. You could have gotten into an ice bath. Adrenaline. You could have someone shout in your face, adrenaline. It's just adrenaline. What did they do? They injected both groups of people with E. Coli. Injected them with E. Coli. One group gets nauseous, vomiting, and feel sick. The group that does this cyclic hyperventilation, wim HoF, also called tummo type breathing. Far fewer symptoms, if any, including lack of fever. So why? Well, they were able to combat the. The attack of this bacteria. So if you're coming off of a hard bout of work and you're starting to relax into vacation, you would be wise to still get into some cold water.

You would be wise to still do some cyclic hyperventilation. Breathing certainly don't do those. At the same time, a number of people actually have died doing cyclic hyperventilation and then doing breath holds, because when you exhale a lot of carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is the trigger to breathe. This is really important. If you do hyperventilation and then you hold your breath, you can do a much longer breath hold than you could if you just started off without having done that. Why? You don't take breaths because of a need for oxygen. And although you do need that, you take breaths because of a buildup of carbon dioxide triggers these brainstem neurons, which have you do the gasp reflex. Okay, well, if you dump all your carbon dioxide and you're not a skilled free diver like markile or somebody like that who really understands that, what happens is you're swimming along, you're like, wow, I can really hold my breath down here a long time. Lights out. Actually, I'm aware of a few people in the military community who. Who dabbled with Wim Hof tummo type breathing and have died, and it's not good, I think it's not allowed, basically. It's certainly not encouraged, from what I understand.

So do it on land, away from water. And the idea here is that adrenaline protects us. You don't want it cascading out of control so that you can't sleep. You want to use things like non sleep, deep rest, and the appropriate timing of light and exercise, etcetera, to be able to sleep well at night, to reset all these systems. But if you go too quickly from go, go, go, go to complete relaxation, your immune system, your defense system, will crash, too. And so you're not gonna be able to fight off even the. Even the smallest or the, you know, the pettiest of viruses and bacteria. That's when you get the sniffle, you get sick, and like, I'm finally resting, what's going on? So you can taper out of those high intensity phases. There are actually, you know, guys in the teams other now that I think are aware of this and are starting to think about this for various effects, but in the mind, testosterone makes effort feel good. Adrenaline puts us into a mode of readiness. Dopamine puts us into a mode of motivation. And then there's the mirror side of all this, which are the neurochemicals that, broadly defined, promote relaxation and parasympathetic activation. And those come under the names that you probably heard them before, like serotonin, oxytocin, and the hormone.

Serotonin and oxytocin are molecules that make us feel good, make us feel soothed, not in response to things that we're motivated to go get, but in response to what we already have. So this might sound a little woo, but, you know, if you sit there and do a gratitude practice or you hang out with your dog and your kids, or you eat a meal, right, you're nourishing yourself with food that you are not in the process of having to kill first. You're just really in, you know, thanksgiving, a few moments of appreciation, simple things, the feel good that you experience, the love and kindness. Meditations, these kinds of things we know based on neuroimaging studies and blood draws and things of that sort promote the release of things like serotonin and oxytocin that nature has designed. Beautiful systems of pursuit and pleasure that are designed to oscillate and designed to keep us in pursuit and pleasure cycles. In relationships, typically, the dopamine phase is the early phase. Simultaneously in these cycles, oftentimes not simultaneously, typically, dopamine and serotonin are released always.

There's always some floating around our system at any moment. But typically, dopamine and adrenaline are associated with pursuit of things that are outside the confines of our immediate possession in our skin. And serotonin is more about the things that we have, the things, you know, seeing your kid, holding your kid, that promotes the release of oxytocin and serotonin. It feels amazing, right? These are the molecules that led to our evolution as a species. So I'm not diminishing one or the other, but they need to oscillate, right? An early relationship. There are times when people aren't sleeping very much. It's like a mental illness. It's a form of mania. You're so excited you don't need sleep, right. People are able to do all sorts of things at frequency and intensity that they find themselves two years later in a relationship and they love the person. It's very warm and cozy, but, well, unless they're going off on deployments and coming back, they don't have that reset of the system. So, you know, the ability to miss somebody reset that pursuit and desire system, these are powerful systems, and they don't just pertain to romantic relationships. This is also school.

I always, you know, I always did summer school because I had to do a lot of catching up to do based on the lot of catching up. But there's some value in taking a week off and realizing you are truly resetting all the systems for pursuit. And I hear from a lot of hard driving folks who are like, wow, once I understood dopamine, I realize why I'm so burnt out. People think of adrenal burnout. Guess what? There's no actual medical term adrenal burnout. There's adrenal insufficiency syndrome. That's a rare syndrome. But you have enough adrenaline packed away in your brain and body for three lifetimes. Think about what people used to go through. I mean, you talk about some of this on your podcast. You see the images of people, and you read the stories like, you can make it through finals, kids. So what happens, though, is we're in such modes of pursuit and overthinking. Overthinking. We need to learn how to switch back and forth on a regular basis.

What I call deliberate decompression or non sleep deep rest. Have a practice each day of ten to 30 minutes where you're not on your phone and you're in kind of a wordless state. You're just either yoga Nidra or you're just relaxing or not watching anything, not taking in any sensory information, not meditating, not journaling, just in a state of just trying to blank your mind and just watch how much stronger you come back in terms of your ability to focus and your motivation. That's one. I love. The phone, and social media has been very good to me, and I appreciate many of its feedback features. But one of the problems is we tend to fill our idle time with more sensory information, and that doesn't allow us to go into this deliberate decompression. It doesn't allow us to. You remember, I cut myself off, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, a movie is worth a million pictures. Now. I can scroll through millions of movies very quickly. And so the dopamine system is just a little bit overwhelmed. I don't think we need to be off our phones all the time. We just take some time to just deliberately decompress each state, any time of day, and you'll focus better.

So you're getting hit with that dopamine on, on Instagram. So at first you are, but here's how you know dopamine, and it's, this will give you a window into addiction. If you're, if you're not an addict, you'll be able to sympathize with, maybe even empathize with addicts of various kinds. When you first get on social media, you're excited. Maybe you or Joe or somebody has a new podcast out, right? You know, you're excited. Oh, I can't wait to hear that's dopamine. You're motivated. But if you ever find yourself doing a behavior and you kind of don't know why you're doing it, like, this doesn't feel any good anymore. It's like that. What is that Chris, now, he's a funny story there because of new stuff, but that Chris rock thing where he's talking about, like, you know when you're shanking somebody and your heart's just not in it, like, does this funny thing, right? I think it was him. You're sort of like that. Like, yeah, your heart's not it. Like, what? Why am I here? Why am I. What am I doing?

I'm not even getting any pleasure, but here I am like a rat pressing a lever. Well, that's the dopamine system has been depleted and so what you need is some time away from it. Could be ten minutes, could be ten days, and then it feels good again. True for relationships, true for exercise. You know, I believe in training hard and training often, but if you train too hard too often, you can't bring the intensity that you need to get the stimulus to adapt, and pretty soon you're either plateauing or getting worse. What does your morning routine look like at the moment? Morning routine is wake up. If I round about what time I'm waking up these days around 06:00 a.m. 06:30 a.m. i'm trying to go to sleep by about ten. 10:30 p.m. sometimes it's eleven, sometimes it's ten. I wake up and I have to be careful here because whenever I've described my routine in a little bit of detail. People always say, I can't believe you don't go to the bathroom. It's like, well, of course I put my pants on exactly right foot, left foot. So I want to be clear.

I take care of my basic functions, but when I wake up, I make a beeline for sunlight. So I'm going to get sunlight in my eyes for the, you know, I'll probably go into the grave saying this, so forgive me if people have heard me say this before, but the single best thing you can do for your sleep, your energy, your mood, your wakefulness, your metabolism, is to get natural light in your eyes early in the day. Don't wear sunglasses. To do it takes about ten minutes or so if you live in a cloudy area. If you're in the UK in the winter, yes, or the summer, or the summer, maybe you resort to some artificial light as a replacement. But as much as one can get, bright, natural, and if not natural, artificial light in your eyes early in the day, without sunglasses, contacts and eyeglasses are fine. Don't try and do it through a window or windshield. It's going to take far too long. This sets in motion a huge number of different neurobiological and hormonal cascades that are good for you, reduces stress late at night, offsets cortisol, a million different things, really, that are good for you.

So I get that. And. Yes. Is that walk, doing a little walk? Ideally that would be a walk, but sometimes we'll just go into the yard and have some coffee and, you know, soak in whatever sunlight through, through the clouds. If it's a cloudy, overcast day, it might be 2030 minutes. If it's a. It's a very bright day, it might just be a few minutes. But really, the quality studies on humans that have looked at this say, try and get as much natural light as you can in the morning hours, whenever it is that that is for you, especially the first 3 hours after waking. If you can work outside, great. If you can get near a window because as opposed to just in a dark conference room, that's better. But if you can get outside, that would be fantastic. So I get sunlight, I hydrate, I drink water, and then yerba mate is my favorite form of coffee. Excuse me, caffeine.

Are you waiting, how long are you waiting for? 90 to 120 minutes. What have you been doing in that? You've had your light in the eyes. What have have you been doing between that and the yerba mata in 90 minutes? I do everything I can to not do email, not do social media, and to take care of a few critical tasks. These days, I have this obsession with trying to do one cognitively hard thing a day, one and one physically hard thing a day. Now, it does not extreme physical, not David Goggins level workouts or anything, but in that 90 minutes, I'll typically try and read a research article, start to finish, or I'll work on a document that I might be doing a grant or research paper, or planning a podcast or researching a podcast. I try and get my brain into kind of a linear mode. I try and narrow that aperture because if I don't, the distraction that's created by social media and interactions with others can kind of wick out into the rest of the day. So I'm not necessarily trying to finish something in that time, but I try and do something challenging.

I experienced great pleasure from battling through something mentally challenging, but that's something that I built up since my university years when I was about 19 or so, got serious about school, and really started to experience the deep pleasure of, like, I figured that out or like, that was really tough. I don't always succeed, but that's what I'm doing in that hour to 90 minutes. But I confess, sometimes will take a walk during that time and maybe talk through some things that are challenging, you know, or sometimes I get lazy and I'll miss a day of that cognitive challenge. Then I do caffeine about 90 to 120 minutes after waking. And even though I prefer to work out earlier, I generally will then do some sort of physical workout. I have a very consistent routine. I've done it for 30 years, where I weight train for 45 or minutes to an hour every other day. And occasionally I take an extra day off. And occasionally, due to travel or other commitments, I'll occasionally double up two days and then take two days off. Yep. So it's really boring.

You know, talk about workout schedules, but it's really simple. It's like, you know, I'll do a kind of pushing day rest, pulling day, upper body push up rest, upper body pulled rest, and then legs take two days off, something like that. Are you doing on the off days? Are you doing some sort of zone three? Always jogging or skipping rope. Those are my favorite forms of cardio, sometimes swimming. But typically I'll go running for 30 to 45 minutes or if I'm feeling a little bit lazier, because I always find the high intensity stuff to be easier than the long, drawn out stuff. I'll sometimes throw on a weight vest, a 30 or 50 pound weight vest and I'll go out for a shorter run or. I'm a big fan of knees over toes. Ben Patrick, I know you had him on. We were down in Costa Rica with him and his wife, who had the best time and learned so much. I'll occasionally do a backwards hill walk or throw on the weight vest for that. We sometimes will get bands, so there's a great way to combine this. We will sometimes get two people in one of these thick bands.

Do hill walks in the morning while getting our sunlight. Yeah, but that I don't really consider a workout. I consider that just kind of rehabilitate as a movement. So on the off days I'm doing cardio, and sometimes that's in the morning, sometimes that's in the evening. I do not like to weight train on the second half of the day because I like to be really caffeinated. When I weight train, I like to listen to loud, fast music most of the time. Not always. I keep my phone out or off of for most workouts, podcasts, maybe, if I'm running, but I really try hard when I'm working out to just focus on the workout and those workouts. The weight training workouts are always ten minutes or so of warm up and then no more than 40 to 50 minutes of really hard work. If I do train hard any longer, I don't recover enough to be able to come in a few days later. And when I train that way, I generally make pretty consistent progress. And you're taking yourself up until, what's that? Probably maybe 1030, 11:00 a.m. something like that? Yeah. And then I'll eat my first real meal. Now, occasionally I'll wake up really hungry if I eat that well the night before, but typically the after I train, I. Yeah, I'll eat.

I like oatmeal after I train. Oatmeal, fruit, some fish oil, protein drink, and then maybe 90 to 120 minutes after that, I'll have a real lunch. My lunch is pretty much the biggest meal of the day. If I have my way, it'll be a steak, a salad, maybe a little more starch, although I sort of got it earlier. Brazil nuts. That meal sometimes can extend longer and longer. I love being a feeding fan. I love to eat. Yeah. So I'll eat and then I confess, I usually will work a little bit more for about 30 minutes or an hour, typically email, and then I'll take a ten to 30 minutes yoga, nidra nap or a nap, and then come back, refreshed I really struggle with the naps, man. I come back after that, and my emotions are all over the place. I'm disoriented. Maybe it's because I struggle to fall asleep super quickly, and therefore I'm extending that period out for a little bit longer than I need. I probably need to try the yoga nidra thing, but for me, it's. I'm absolutely all over.

If I do that, I wake up and I don't know what day it is, and my emotions always feel a little bit out of whack as well. I wake up grumpy from naps sometimes I'm told, okay, there are a few times when I've woken up just really angry. I have no idea what that's about. I don't know any of the neurochemistry associated with that. Sometimes I wake up from naps. It's really pleasant. I'll occasionally do, if the nap is early enough in the day afterwards, I'll have a, you know, a nice double espresso and get back into work. That's the hardest part of the day, actually. If I was well structured in the early part of the day, it's that two or 03:00 p.m. the key is then to try and get something really useful done cognitively again. So some people might look at this and say, wait, you're working for an hour in the morning and 30 minutes here and an hour in the afternoon. When are you actually working? But it's really about the depth of the trench when you're working. I love to exercise. I know to some people this might seem foreign, but I love to exercise. I love to do resistance training. I love to run.

I am not one of those people that doesn't like the experience of exercising, but likes the feeling afterwards, quote unquote. I hear that a lot. I don't like to exercise, but I love the way I feel afterwards. I love physical training, and I love the way I feel afterwards. But I mostly love the feeling during. I don't know why I'm wired that way. I can't say that I'm somebody who likes to do hard things across the board. There are plenty of difficult things in life that I dread or that I'm sort of meh about. But for me, hard exercise, intense exercise of a particular kind, resistance training and running in particular, both give me a yum. Yes, I love this kind of feeling. And yes, it persists for me quite a long while afterwards, both for sake of the way that it changes my neurochemistry but also my sense of satisfaction. But I just simply love it.

Now, years ago, I discovered that if I drink a cup of black coffee or an Americano or a double espresso or some yerba mate, that my workouts can be quite a bit more intense. I can run further. And then I also discovered that if I were to take a pre workout energy drink, or I took, say, 300 milligrams of alpha GPC and 500 milligrams of phenol ethylamine and perhaps even 500 milligrams of l tyrosine, and perhaps did that alongside the caffeine in the herbamante, then. Yes, absolutely. I really liked those workouts. I could be like a laser in terms of focus. I could exert even more effort, put on some music, and I could achieve even better performance. And then I also discovered that I could export that protocol of caffeine, yerba mate and various supplements to my cognitive work. So when I was studying or writing papers or writing grants or in the laboratory, when I was doing experiments with my hands in those days, you know, cutting brain tissue and staining it and working really long hours, and I discovered that all of those things, all of those behaviors compounded with my love of exercise and my love of doing science, and gave me these big peaks in what, to me, felt like even important experiences.

They felt, you know, unlike anything else. They were just so, so peak in their nature, which was great, and it did indeed enhance my performance. However, while it did not create a dependency for those different substances, caffeine supplements, etcetera, what I noticed was that in the days and sometimes weekends afterwards, even though for much of my career, I confess I've worked weekends as well, but I would notice that I'd experience a real trough in energy. I just would not feel that good. And then if I kept up those behaviors consistently, and I was consistently adding in these other, let's just call them what they are, dopamine releasing or stimulating behaviors and substances, that my enthusiasm for physical training or running or for doing experiments actually started to diminish. And this was really discouraging to me at the time because I started to think, okay, maybe I'm burnt out. Maybe I have adrenal burnout, which, by the way, doesn't exist. Folks, your adrenals don't burn out. There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome. You can overstimulate your system by way of too much adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine, but that's a separate thing.

There's no such thing as adrenal burnt out per se, but I didn't know that. So I thought, gosh, I'm really burnt out, when in fact, it's now obvious to me what I was doing. I was combining too many dopamine releasing or stimulating behaviors in substances for things that I already enjoyed doing as behaviors, namely exercise and doing experiments, anything related to science, actually. So what this means is not to avoid taking things or doing things that amplify your amount of dopamine, but to be very cautious about how often one does that and how many different dopamine stimulating behaviors or compounds one stacks, especially in terms of taking those things or stacking those things in and around behaviors that you already really enjoy doing. I was essentially just creating another version of the kids in nursery school or first grade with the gold star experiment. I was basically just doing the exact same thing. And when I realized that and I changed my relationship to those compounds, I didn't eliminate them altogether. But I started realizing, for instance, that I didn't need to double up on yerba mate and coffee every workout. Sometimes I would do one, sometimes I would do the other. Frankly, I always do one or the other.

It's rare that I ever do any kind of physical training without some caffeine first. And I do my physical training typically in the early part of the day. So that's fine. Doesn't interfere with my sleep. I might do a hike without caffeine, but if I'm in a weight trainer, I'm going to run. I tend to drink coffee beforehand or have yerba mate, or if I occasionally, meaning about once every third, sometimes every other, but usually about every third workout. I'll take 300 milligrams of alpha GPC, maybe occasionally, maybe every third or fourth workout. And these are resistance workouts, mind you, not running. I'll take 500 milligrams of l tyrosine or more. Typically 500 milligrams of phenyl ethylamine.

And very, very rarely, maybe once every two or three months, I might stack all of those things together prior to a workout. But of course, I'm always mindful to also include workout workouts or runs or bouts of cognitive work. So that could be grant writing, prepping for a podcast, et cetera, where I don't do anything prior, maybe just my caffeine, because I have a baseline level of caffeine that I use each day to function. Like many people, there's a baseline level of caffeine that just allows us to function if we're a perpetual user of caffeine. I talked a lot about this on the episode in caffeine, but the key here is be cautious. I would say be very cautious about stacking and layering in too many dopamine peak inducing behaviors all at once on a regular basis. The key point here is if you are somebody that can engage in these intrinsically joyful activities for you, these activities that you're really motivated to do, whether or not it's skiing or playing music or dancing, etcetera, without the need to layer in additional dopamine releasing mechanisms or compounds, well, then I highly recommend you do that, because then you are essentially making yourself one of those fortunate few that does not require additional stimuli and therefore can hold on to that pleasure, can hold on to that intrinsic pleasure and motivation to engage in these behaviors over time, which, frankly, there is no replacement for.

There is no pill or bottle or potion or motivational speech or podcast or book that can replace intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is perhaps the holy grail of all human endeavors and behaviors because it encompasses so much of what brought us to this point in our species evolution, and also what brings each and every one of us closer and closer to our goals. And if it's happening with enjoyment, without the need to layer in additional tools, well, then you have really tapped into the source. And when I say the source, I don't mean it in any kind of mystical way. I think it's quite clear by now that when we hear about Qi from eastern medicine, or we talk about motivation, drive and pursuit in western neurobiological language as it relates to dopamine, or we hear about the source, maybe in my podcast episode with the one and only Rick Rubin, incredibly productive music producer who has just an unbelievable track record in terms of creative endeavors, and he talks about the source, we're really talking about the same thing, which is this set of circuits within us that allow us to identify what we want and then lean into effort, and then to do that in a persistent way that allows us to reach our goals. And if we can do that with an intrinsic sense of pleasure, well, that is nothing short of magic.

Science, Technology, Motivation, Dopamine Management, Stress Response, Intrinsic Motivation, Success Chasers