Let’s talk about how to make your brain WANT to work.
Our brain centers our decision making around dopamine, this means that our brain is constantly scanning our environment for higher dopamine-inducing activities that you can do instead of what you are currently doing.
So when you are working, and you are trying to focus on something, your brain constantly scans your environment for other higher dopamine inducing activities you can do instead of work
And when your brain recognizes an activity that provides more dopamine than work, your brain wants to do that instead.
This is why your environment is so important, because the more dopamine that your environment provides, the more willpower that is necessary for you to continue working.
And when you have less dopamine inducing objects in your environment, it is easier to continue working, and the less willpower is needed.
But, you can take this to another level. The reason why your environment is so powerful is because: if there’s nothing else that surrounds you, if there is no other activity that provides you with more dopamine than work, then your brain will gravitate towards working.
When you don’t have your phone, or any of your devices, and your environment is clear of heavy dopamine inducing objects, your brain will gravitate towards work. You don’t want any other stimulating activity to even be an option.
Essentially, you want to make working the most dopamine inducing activity available in your environment. In this scenario, you’re not constantly using your willpower to avoid another activity, because work becomes the activity that provides the most dopamine, so instead of constantly resisting something else, your brain will gravitate towards work.
And I can’t tell you enough about how powerful and life changing that utilizing this can be, this can really make work easy.
So while we can use our willpower to resist higher dopamine inducing things, we can also structure our environment, so that working and being productive is the highest dopamine inducing activity at our disposal, and we will gravitate towards work.
Hope this helps! cheers 🙂
How to make your brain WANT to work
byu/Several-Button-3113 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Several-Button-3113
5 Comments
**P.s.** This post is based on Neuroproductivity, which is NO-BS productivity (productivity using science) if you are interested I got this from moretimeoffline+com they only use productivity based on science, they have great free stuff there for entrepreneurs!
This is brilliant – thanks for this. I have often wondered why the mind favors one activity over another. Why would I want to be on Reddit rather than improving my skills or myself? One thing worth noting is that the more you start to learn and grow your skills in a certain area, the more dopamine is released by studying that area. I also use a timer in a simple Access database to track what I’m doing and for how long
Guess I have to send my sexy Brazilian wife away during the day….
This probably explains why monks got a lot of work done several centuries ago: copying manuscripts, watching the stars, breeding better plants, doing science of the time. Good share.
Thanks for this! So, in short – we just need to clean up our work environment, clear of anything that can distract us with cheap dopamine? I’ve read something similar in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, where he advises to make healthy habits as easily accessible as possible, and unhealthy ones as difficult as possible.