Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort | Huberman Lab Podcast

They say narcissists believe their own lies, do you think there is a way to lie yourself to procrastinate the bad habits ?

Thank you Andrew Huberman. You have made a huge difference in my life.

My name is Marcus, I am 39 years old and trying to achieve a big ambitious goal in business overseas. I know exactly what I need to do to achieve it, and I am just not doing it. So for the last 5 years I have been working on myself on a physical level to improve my body by not only losing 40kg of body weight but also kept going to improve my physical health through cardiovascular and strength resistance training.

I have through this process learned alot about myself, the friction, the peaks and troughs in dopamine, but above all - the difference and corralation between instant gratification and delayed gratification which I think is a crucial understanding of the tools I need to get me moving closer to my entrepreneurial goals in starting my business overseas.

This being said, I realised I needed to improve other skills with what I've learned through the gym in hindsight, such as willpower, focus and being able to create and work toward goals without losing momentum.

And I think that.. if I am able to leverage my dopamine levels correctly and in some way being able to intrinsically motivate myself as an entrepreneur the way I am in improving my physical health - then I am in a good position to look back at my life when I am 80 years old saying: I did my best.

Thank you Andrew Huberman.

Great...

Would've been nice to have found this a year ago...

Hats off to this great personality.

The mechanics of how to get yourself out of a dopamine 'trough' seems worth clarifying and unpacking. Maybe connect it to your conversations with Goggins?

For example, the following is confusing: you say that deepening the trough can speed up recovery of your dopamine baseline. But, one way to deepen the trough is to engage in an intense addiction activity... which will have the opposite of the desired effect! So HOW you deepen the trough seems critical. Why is that, what's going on there under the hood?

This needs to be taught in schools!

What about people with disabilities? I have listened to several of his episodes, including the recent one with Goggins, I haven’t heard disability mentioned. I would be interested in knowing as someone who suffers from both physical, mental disability, how that factors in motivation, and all the other stuff that Mr. Huberman talks about.

Thank you

500mg L-Tyrosin made a HUGE improvement in my ability to focus. Thank you!

Thanks so much your videos are helping me take my life back from depression and anxiety. I am in a Will power building journey cold showers every day.

I would love to see dr Daniel Amen in the podcast, especially when it comes to caffeine.

🍫Craving for things is our desire to relieve the pain (drop below Baseline) of not having those things 😫

The parkinson's doctor tells me I need more dopamine, so take my levodopa.

Like this scientific-based solution. I will give it a try on my next procrastination to see its effect.

I’m so glad I’m listening to this podcast now. Procrastination has literally ruined my life - it’s been going on for year and years. I really need to get this sorted

The yoga-nidra and body scanning part is closely aligned with Vipassan meditation practice. An understanding of the dopamine functioning is keeping me away from the ocassional smoke that I would have, So thank you for making me think and act differently already Andrew. Also, staring at sunlight, being in India I can now appreciate the gift of sunny days even more. Keep going. :)

Can you talk more about assigning subjective dopamine to situations, i am unsure about how to do so

from minute 21, SO if I desire a beautiful woman which is hard to get my dopamine will go up a little bit just to go drop even deeper than my previous baseline huh?, in conclusion: guys stop SIMPING right now!

So what happens when you're on medication such as Risperidone?

Dudeski... Generally you don't focus on your third eye in meditation.

This needs to be circulated in education circles. They preach reward, reward, reward, no wonder kids are very meh about working in school.

You're a huge help, Sir 🙌🏼

After my every vacation, I am empty and sad for months 🤭😂😂😂😂
When I tell people all this, every one was like you were exaggerating

This explains when I have caffeine as first thing in the morning, I experience crash in the afternoon for like 4 hours.. another coffee helps, but that crash comes back..
now I am afraid to have that coffee immediately after I wake up.. having it after one hour..
Slowly will bring it to 3 hours after waking up..

Instead of listening to songs, it’s good to listen to your podcasts during my household works… immense knowledge and Crystal clear explanation on the whole dopamine world 🤩

This is invaluable content. I read a similar book that became a guiding star in my life. "A Life Unplugged: Reclaiming Reality in a Digital Age" by Theodore Blaze

🔥🔥🔥

- よく眠る（8時間）文字通り、ベースラインのドーパミンを回復させる。
- 早朝に日光を浴びる（10分、曇りなら2倍）
- 冷たいシャワーまたは水に浸かる（30秒から3分、シャワーなら頭に）（合計11.5分／週）
- カフェイン（早朝）
- やめたいことを30日間絶対禁欲する（苦しいが、やる価値はある）
- L-チロシンのサプリメント（早朝）（500mg～1gr）
- 運動：何でもいい。
- ドーパミンの働き：波のプールのように、スパイクが高すぎるとプールから水が落ちて、ベースラインが以前より下がる。
- 欲望→ドーパミンのスパイク→ベースライン以下のドーパミンの減少→渇望の引き金→自分の状態を示す合図（渇望していたものを手に入れるために正しい方向に進んでいるという感覚に正比例する）→ドーパミンのミニスパイク→欲しいものを手に入れた後、ドーパミンをベースラインに戻し、さらに手に入れたものと期待したものとの差を加える。
- ドーパミンの曲線の急勾配（時間的な速度をx軸、ドーパミン放出が増加する毎秒のドーパミンの量をy軸とする）は、ピークそのものの大きさと同じくらい、ドーパミンサイクルと、欲望しているものに対して私たちがどう感じるかにとって重要である。
- だからこそ、コカイン（あるいはその他の薬物）、自慰によるオーガズム、チョコレート、ファーストフードなどが危険なのだ。欲望からそのものを手に入れるまでの時間は非常に短いので、私たちはもっと、もっと、もっとと欲してしまうのだ。
- 私たちの脳が分類する「快-不快」には3つのタイプがある：「おいしい」（とてもおいしい、快）、「気持ち悪い」（とても気持ち悪い）、「どちらでもない」（どちらでもない）。
- また、こんな現象もある： ドーパミンが刺激されるご褒美を、「おいしい」と感じることをした後に与え、繰り返し、その活動をするたびに与え、その後ご褒美を与えるのをやめると（子供たちが暇なときに絵を描いたり、何かを書いたりした後にご褒美を与えるという実験があった。
- ある活動に本当に取り組み、それをすることで喜びを感じたいのであれば、その活動の前でも後でもなく、その活動そのものをすることで喜びを感じることを学ばなければならない。例えば、プレワークアウト、カフェイン、マテ茶、アルファGPC、L-チロシンなどを摂取する： もしあなたが、生きるためや基本的な機能を果たすために、毎日（できれば朝）カフェインを摂る必要がある人なら、少なくとも少しはカフェインを摂る必要がある人よりも、すでに先を行っていることになる。
- ドーパミンをピークにする活動や物質と、ベースラインのドーパミンを増やす活動や物質の違い
- ドーパミン・トロフの持続時間（トロフはピークとは逆に、トロフ自体の深さに正比例する。つまり、ドーパミン・トロフからできるだけ早く抜け出すためには（もしかしたらその前にピークがあったかもしれないし、単にやる気がなくなったり、先延ばしを克服したいだけかもしれないが）、私たちがすべきことは
- トロフィーを増やす：不快感を感じるような活動（重要：肉体的・精神的苦痛ではない。
- モチベーションの聖杯：努力のプロセスそのものに報酬を与えられるようになること。

In an odd way, the strategy to steepen the slope in creating more dopamine, it’s like frustrating yourself temporarily to achieve climbing that slope. As an artist, I’m often discouraged in starting a new work for a number of reasons, many of which are perfectionism and fear of failure. Those fears are actually perfect dopamine building hacks if I “just do it” and start working on something new regardless of lack of prep, skill, space, material, time, etc.

But what about adhd people with very low dopamine levels.... can they take tyrosine more frequently, or they need to live with their low dopamine baseline and there is nothing to do about it if we talk about supplementation. NOT all adhd people can tolerate medicines or get enough dopamine from sport :((

very informative however I do wish it included some visual diagrams during the initial descriptions of the dopamine pathways

please huberman can you explain: Feedback Cues & Reward Contingent Learning, “Scoreboard” in a simple way. it becomes very chaotic to understand. I hope you will explain it by replying to this comment, your content is mind-blowing. keep it up. love from India

I love all your podcasts. Thank you for doing this for the benefit of everyone 😊

After listening to all this, I'm going back to energy shots to get things going and get things done. Hopefully like coffee, early in the day so that sleep is minimally disrupted. Tyrosine, B6, choline in there as well as caffeine. Quicker and easier than coffee but bulletproof-style coffee with MCT/C8 works well too in a different way.

God bless you Andrew, thank you for all you do.

Thank you very much, Mr. Huberman! Thanks to your explanations and the techniques you described, I was even able to reduce my medication dosage and still be able to focus more. One benefits from your explanations, even if one is a doctor oneself! To all those with ADHD, give it a try! Best regards from Germany.

I’m going to do everything I can to fix my ADHD before I take literal amphetamines.

Cold showers
Sleep
Sunlight exposure
Exercise
NSDR
Tyrosine
Fish Oil

I was literally the happiest in my whole life like 2 weeks ago and I fckin crashed. I was super hyper, then boom crashed no dopamine no energy no motivation. I had everything and lost it, idk why

this video is easily top 10 wisest peices of information i have ever heard. its a real priviledge to be able to listen to andrew huberman, thank you sir, you are a real gift to humanity!!!!!!!

I don't understand why should anyone raise their baseline dopamine level, believe the reason for it wasn't stated in this video. Can someone explain? It would make sense if we equate a higher baseline dopamine level to higher motivation, but that's not the case, right? So what's the point?

Now I don't wonder anymore why I'am so excited to work in the heavy rain as a traditional farmer

Thank you very much, Sir Andrew

Anything u can do when unable to exercise? I was a beast exercising my whole life. Currently need 3 surgeries for injuries and unable to do so..any advice?

I have to be honest, I started getting interested in the whole dopamine topic since I watched his 1st podcast with Dr. Lembke, and watched other videos about dopamine, but unfortunately didn't get to quite understand the dopamine imbalance process... until today. Dr. Huberman always explains things so beautifully that just brings enlightenment.
In this case what he said about "Reward Prediction Error" gave me the big picture about dopamine, craving, anticipation, reward and addiction.
Thank you, Dr. Huberman.

Love it.

Just do it, now

Now I want a f sandwich