How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

00:00:02.360 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.400 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

00:00:07.600 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:10.360 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:12.880 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:16.000 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.480 | Today, we're going to talk about

00:00:18.800 | an extremely important topic

00:00:20.660 | that's central to our daily life, and that's motivation.

00:00:24.440 | We're going to talk about pleasure and reward.

00:00:27.040 | What underlies our sense of pleasure or reward?

00:00:29.920 | We're going to talk about addictions.

00:00:31.680 | As well, we're going to talk about

00:00:33.720 | the neurochemistry of drive and mindset.

00:00:37.540 | But for now, let's just talk about

00:00:39.320 | the neuroscience of motivation and reward,

00:00:41.960 | of pleasure and pain,

00:00:43.560 | because those are central to what we think of as emotions,

00:00:46.560 | whether or not we feel good,

00:00:47.680 | whether or not we feel we're on track in life,

00:00:49.520 | whether or not we feel we're falling behind.

00:00:51.960 | So motivation is fundamental to our daily life.

00:00:55.960 | It's what allows us to get out of bed in the morning.

00:00:58.200 | It's what allows us to pursue long-term goals

00:01:00.560 | or short-term goals.

00:01:02.100 | Motivation and the chemistry of motivation

00:01:05.600 | is tightly wound in with the neurochemistry of movement.

00:01:10.600 | In fact, the same single molecule, dopamine,

00:01:14.320 | is responsible for our sense of motivation and for movement.

00:01:19.320 | It's a fascinating molecule,

00:01:21.400 | and it lies at the center of so many great things in life,

00:01:25.760 | and it lies at the center of so many terrible aspects

00:01:28.560 | of life, namely addiction

00:01:30.000 | and certain forms of mental disease.

00:01:32.200 | So if ever there was a double-edged blade

00:01:35.320 | in the world of neuroscience, it's dopamine.

00:01:38.120 | There's a fundamental relationship

00:01:40.040 | between dopamine released in your brain

00:01:42.320 | and your desire to exert effort.

00:01:44.600 | And you can actually control

00:01:46.560 | the schedule of dopamine release,

00:01:48.160 | but it requires the appropriate knowledge.

00:01:50.620 | This is one of those cases where understanding

00:01:53.040 | the way the dopamine system works

00:01:54.480 | will allow you to leverage it to your benefit.

00:01:56.680 | Let's get a few basic facts on the table.

00:01:59.260 | Dopamine was discovered in the late 1950s,

00:02:03.160 | and it was discovered as the precursor,

00:02:05.900 | meaning the thing from which epinephrine

00:02:08.780 | or adrenaline is made.

00:02:10.640 | Epinephrine is the same thing as adrenaline,

00:02:12.880 | except in the brain we call it epinephrine.

00:02:15.080 | Epinephrine allows us to get into action.

00:02:19.220 | It stimulates changes in the blood vessels,

00:02:21.480 | in the heart, in the organs and tissues of the body

00:02:23.760 | that bias us for movement.

00:02:26.320 | Dopamine was initially thought to be

00:02:27.960 | just the building block for epinephrine.

00:02:30.240 | However, dopamine does a lot of things on its own.

00:02:32.800 | It's not always converted to epinephrine.

00:02:35.800 | Dopamine is released from several sites

00:02:37.880 | in the brain and body,

00:02:39.300 | but perhaps the most important one for today's discussion

00:02:41.720 | about motivation and reward

00:02:43.640 | is something that's sometimes just called

00:02:45.060 | the reward pathway.

00:02:46.920 | For the aficionados,

00:02:48.000 | it's sometimes called the mesolimbic reward pathway,

00:02:51.320 | but it's fundamentally important

00:02:53.160 | to your desire to engage in action.

00:02:56.560 | And it's fundamentally important

00:02:58.880 | for people getting addicted to substances or behaviors.

00:03:03.120 | So how does this work?

00:03:04.520 | Well, you've got a structure

00:03:05.880 | in the deep part of your brain called the VTA.

00:03:08.480 | The VTA or ventral tegmental area contains neurons

00:03:11.960 | that send what we call axons, little wires,

00:03:15.320 | that spit out dopamine at a different structure

00:03:18.280 | called the nucleus accumbens.

00:03:20.200 | And those two structures, VTA and nucleus accumbens,

00:03:23.000 | form really the core machinery of the reward pathway

00:03:27.060 | and the pathway that controls your motivation for anything.

00:03:30.720 | You can think of them like an accelerator.

00:03:32.980 | They bias you for action.

00:03:35.560 | However, within the reward pathway, there's also a break.

00:03:39.220 | The break or restriction on that dopamine,

00:03:41.640 | which controls when it's released

00:03:43.280 | and how much it's released, is the prefrontal cortex.

00:03:46.360 | The prefrontal cortex is the neural real estate

00:03:48.720 | right behind your forehead.

00:03:50.240 | You hear about it for decision-making,

00:03:52.080 | executive function, for planning, et cetera.

00:03:54.920 | And indeed, it's responsible for a lot of those.

00:03:56.680 | It's this really unique real estate

00:03:58.720 | that we were all endowed with as humans.

00:04:00.820 | Other animals don't have much of it.

00:04:02.180 | We have a lot of it.

00:04:03.640 | And that prefrontal cortex acts

00:04:05.280 | as a break on the dopamine system.

00:04:07.600 | And that brings us to the important feature of motivation,

00:04:11.920 | which is that motivation is a two-part process,

00:04:14.700 | which is about balancing pleasure and pain.

00:04:18.300 | So when you're just sitting around,

00:04:19.900 | not doing much of anything,

00:04:21.360 | this reward pathway is releasing dopamine

00:04:24.800 | at a rate of about three or four times per second.

00:04:27.760 | It's kind of firing at a low level.

00:04:29.280 | If suddenly you get excited about something,

00:04:31.680 | you anticipate something, not receive an award,

00:04:34.900 | but you get excited in an anticipatory way,

00:04:37.880 | then the rate of firing,

00:04:41.360 | the rate of activity in this reward pathway

00:04:43.680 | suddenly increases to like 30 or 40 times.

00:04:47.020 | And it has the effect

00:04:48.800 | of creating a sense of action or desire to move

00:04:51.640 | in the direction of the thing that you're craving.

00:04:53.880 | In fact, it's fair to say

00:04:55.480 | that dopamine is responsible for wanting and for craving.

00:04:59.520 | And that's distinctly different

00:05:01.340 | from the way that you hear it talked about normally,

00:05:03.400 | which is that it's involved in pleasure.

00:05:05.080 | So yes, dopamine is released in response to sex.

00:05:08.440 | It's released in response to food.

00:05:09.980 | It's released in response to a lot of things,

00:05:12.560 | but it's mostly released in anticipation

00:05:15.440 | and craving for a particular thing.

00:05:17.760 | It has the effect of narrowing our focus

00:05:20.320 | for the thing that we crave.

00:05:22.200 | And that thing could be as simple as a cup of coffee.

00:05:24.400 | It could be as important as a big board meeting.

00:05:27.340 | It could be a big final exam.

00:05:28.640 | It could be the person that we're excited to meet or see.

00:05:31.760 | Dopamine doesn't care about what you're craving.

00:05:34.600 | It just releases at a particular rate.

00:05:37.200 | If we just take a step back

00:05:38.320 | and we look at the scientific data

00:05:40.380 | on how much the dopamine firing increases

00:05:44.380 | in response to different things,

00:05:45.680 | you get a pretty interesting window

00:05:47.960 | into how your brain works

00:05:49.800 | and why you might be motivated or not motivated.

00:05:52.300 | Let's say you're hungry

00:05:54.120 | or you're looking forward to a cup of coffee

00:05:56.640 | or you're going to see your partner.

00:05:59.520 | Well, your dopamine neurons are firing at a low rate

00:06:02.720 | until you start thinking about the thing that you want

00:06:05.400 | or the thing that you're looking forward to.

00:06:07.480 | When you eat that food,

00:06:09.520 | the amount of dopamine that's released

00:06:11.280 | in this reward pathway goes up about 50%

00:06:14.000 | above baseline.

00:06:16.060 | Sex, which is fundamental

00:06:18.060 | to our species continuation and reproduction,

00:06:21.780 | sex does release dopamine

00:06:23.980 | and it increases dopamine levels about 100%.

00:06:26.920 | So basically doubles them.

00:06:28.340 | Nicotine increases the amount of dopamine

00:06:32.220 | about 150% above baseline.

00:06:35.000 | Cocaine and amphetamine increase the amount of dopamine

00:06:37.700 | that's released a thousand fold

00:06:39.820 | within about 10 seconds of consuming the drug.

00:06:43.020 | However, just thinking about food,

00:06:45.980 | about sex, about nicotine,

00:06:48.720 | if you like nicotine or cocaine or amphetamine

00:06:51.740 | can increase the amount of dopamine that's released

00:06:54.520 | to the same degree as actually consuming the drug.

00:06:58.260 | Now it depends, in some cases, for instance,

00:07:00.800 | the cocaine user, the addict that wants cocaine

00:07:04.080 | can't just think about cocaine

00:07:05.920 | and increase the amount of that's released

00:07:07.900 | about a thousand fold, it's actually much lower,

00:07:10.160 | but it's just enough to put them on the motivation track

00:07:12.760 | for it to crave that particular thing.

00:07:15.100 | Now there are reasons

00:07:15.940 | why you would have brain circuitry like this.

00:07:17.860 | I mean, brain circuitry like this

00:07:19.060 | didn't evolve to get you addicted.

00:07:20.900 | Brain circuitry like this evolved

00:07:24.460 | in order to motivate behaviors toward particular goals,

00:07:27.620 | water when you're thirsty, sex in order to reproduce.

00:07:30.860 | These things and these brain areas and neurons

00:07:33.900 | were part of the evolutionary history

00:07:36.780 | that led to the continuation of our species.

00:07:39.420 | Things like cocaine and amphetamine

00:07:41.780 | are disastrous for most people

00:07:43.380 | because they release so much dopamine

00:07:45.580 | and they create these closed loops

00:07:47.360 | where people then only crave the particular thing,

00:07:50.500 | cocaine and amphetamine,

00:07:51.820 | that leads to those massive amounts of dopamine release.

00:07:54.620 | Most things don't release that level of dopamine.

00:07:57.980 | And nowadays there's a ton of interest in social media

00:08:00.880 | and in video games.

00:08:02.460 | And there have been some measurements

00:08:05.220 | of the amount of dopamine released.

00:08:06.900 | Video games, especially video games

00:08:09.140 | that have a very high update speed

00:08:11.200 | where there's novel territory all the time.

00:08:13.460 | Novelty is a big stimulus of dopamine.

00:08:15.840 | Those can release dopamine

00:08:17.100 | somewhere between nicotine and cocaine.

00:08:19.820 | So very high levels of dopamine release.

00:08:22.740 | Social media is an interesting one

00:08:24.820 | because the amount of dopamine that's released

00:08:26.660 | in response to logging onto social media

00:08:29.020 | initially could be quite high,

00:08:30.880 | but it seems like likely that there's a taper

00:08:33.540 | in the amount of dopamine,

00:08:34.840 | but and yet people still get addicted.

00:08:36.860 | So why?

00:08:37.700 | Why is it that we can get addicted to things

00:08:40.220 | that fail to get to elicit the same massive amount

00:08:43.580 | of pleasure that they initially did?

00:08:45.660 | Being addicted to something isn't just about

00:08:48.180 | the fact that it feels so good

00:08:49.700 | that you want to do it over and over again.

00:08:51.180 | And that's because of this pleasure pain balance

00:08:54.900 | that underlies motivation.

00:08:56.300 | So let's look a little bit closer

00:08:57.460 | at the pleasure pain balance

00:08:58.620 | because therein lies the tools

00:09:01.160 | for you to be able to control motivation

00:09:03.100 | toward healthy things and avoid motivated behaviors

00:09:06.060 | towards things that are destructive for you.

00:09:08.100 | There are a lot of reasons why people try novel behaviors,

00:09:11.260 | whether or not those are drugs

00:09:12.540 | or whether or not those are adventure thrill-seeking things

00:09:15.620 | or they take a new class.

00:09:17.620 | As you'll notice, I'm not placing any judgment

00:09:19.940 | or value on these different behaviors.

00:09:21.800 | Although I think it's fair to point out

00:09:23.460 | that for most people,

00:09:25.140 | addictive drugs like cocaine and amphetamine

00:09:28.800 | are very destructive.

00:09:30.320 | Actually, we know that about 15 to 20% of people

00:09:35.380 | have a genetic bias towards addiction

00:09:38.580 | that you sometimes hear that the first time

00:09:41.600 | that you use a drug, you can become addicted to it.

00:09:44.140 | That's actually not been shown to be true

00:09:46.020 | for most things in most people,

00:09:47.620 | but for some people that actually is true.

00:09:49.620 | But in any case, the way that addiction works

00:09:52.780 | and the way that motivation works generally

00:09:54.940 | in the non-addictive setting

00:09:56.500 | is that when you anticipate something,

00:09:58.300 | a little bit of dopamine is released.

00:10:00.000 | And then when you reach that thing,

00:10:01.420 | you engage in that thing,

00:10:03.620 | the amount of dopamine goes up even further.

00:10:06.000 | But as you repeatedly pursue a behavior

00:10:08.860 | and you repeatedly engage with a particular thing,

00:10:11.200 | let's say you love running or you love chocolate.

00:10:14.420 | As you eat a piece of chocolate,

00:10:16.900 | believe it or not, it tastes good.

00:10:19.220 | And then there's a shift away from activation of dopamine.

00:10:23.720 | And there are other chemicals that are released

00:10:26.200 | that trigger a low level sense of pain.

00:10:29.100 | Now you might not feel it as physical pain,

00:10:31.080 | but the craving that you feel is both one part dopamine

00:10:35.560 | and one part, the mirror image of dopamine,

00:10:38.260 | which is the pain or the craving

00:10:40.180 | for yet another piece of chocolate.

00:10:42.420 | And this is a very important and subtle feature

00:10:44.780 | of the dopamine system that's not often discussed.

00:10:47.740 | People always talk about just as pleasure.

00:10:49.500 | You love social media, so it gives you dopamine.

00:10:52.140 | And so you engage in that, you like chocolate,

00:10:53.780 | it releases dopamine, so you do that.

00:10:55.280 | But for every bit of dopamine that's released,

00:10:57.780 | there's another circuit in the brain that creates,

00:11:00.460 | you can think of it as kind of like a downward deflection

00:11:02.840 | in pleasure.

00:11:03.680 | So you engage in something you really want

00:11:05.500 | and there's an increase in pleasure.

00:11:06.980 | And then there's a, without you doing anything,

00:11:11.040 | there's a mirror image of that,

00:11:12.460 | which is a downward deflection in pleasure,

00:11:14.460 | which we're calling pain.

00:11:15.740 | So for every bit of pleasure,

00:11:17.260 | there is a mirror image experience of pain.

00:11:20.140 | And they overlap in time very closely.

00:11:22.500 | So it's sometimes hard to sense this, but try it.

00:11:24.700 | The next time you eat something really delicious,

00:11:26.600 | you'll take a bite, it tastes delicious.

00:11:28.460 | And part of the experience is to want more of that thing.

00:11:32.220 | This is true for any pleasureful experience.

00:11:35.340 | Now, the diabolical part about dopamine

00:11:37.660 | is that because it didn't evolve

00:11:39.900 | in order to get you to indulge in more and more

00:11:42.540 | and more of something,

00:11:44.040 | what happens is that initially,

00:11:47.460 | you experience an increase in pleasure

00:11:50.780 | and you also experience this increase in pain

00:11:53.340 | shortly after or woven in with the pleasure

00:11:56.380 | that makes you want more of that thing.

00:11:58.380 | But with each subsequent time that you encounter that thing,

00:12:03.080 | the experience of dopamine release and pleasure

00:12:06.180 | is diminished a little bit.

00:12:08.060 | And the diabolical thing is that the pain response

00:12:12.340 | is increased a little bit.

00:12:14.420 | And this is best observed

00:12:15.980 | in the context of drug seeking behavior.

00:12:18.160 | The first time someone decides to take cocaine or amphetamine

00:12:21.180 | they will experience a huge dopamine release

00:12:23.580 | and they will feel likely very good.

00:12:26.760 | However, the next time they take it,

00:12:28.100 | it won't feel quite as good

00:12:29.860 | and it won't feel even as good the third time

00:12:31.860 | or the next time.

00:12:33.280 | But the amount of pain,

00:12:36.060 | the amount of craving that they experienced for the drug

00:12:38.740 | will increase over time.

00:12:40.240 | So much of our pursuit of pleasure

00:12:42.220 | is simply to reduce the pain of craving.

00:12:45.500 | So the next time you experience something you really like,

00:12:47.800 | I don't want to take you out of that experience,

00:12:49.460 | but it's really important that you notice this,

00:12:52.340 | that if there's something you really enjoy,

00:12:54.700 | part of that enjoyment is about the anticipation

00:12:58.120 | and wanting of more of that thing.

00:13:00.580 | And that's the pain system in action.

00:13:02.820 | And so we can distinguish between dopamine,

00:13:04.820 | which is really about pleasure

00:13:06.120 | and dopamine, which is really about motivation

00:13:08.260 | to pursue more in order to relieve or exclude future pain.

00:13:13.260 | Let me repeat that.

00:13:14.340 | Dopamine isn't as much about pleasure

00:13:16.460 | as much as it is about motivation and desire to pursue more

00:13:20.860 | in order to reduce the amount of pain.

00:13:24.580 | And we are now talking about pain as a psychological pain

00:13:27.560 | and a craving.

00:13:28.400 | Although people that miss a lover very badly

00:13:32.300 | or that really crave a food very badly

00:13:35.580 | or that are addicted to a drug and can't access it

00:13:39.620 | will experience that as a physical craving

00:13:42.780 | and a mental craving.

00:13:43.860 | The body and brain are linked in this way.

00:13:45.980 | It's almost, they'll describe it as painful.

00:13:47.940 | They yearn for it.

00:13:49.300 | And I think the word yearning

00:13:50.740 | is one that's very valuable in this context

00:13:52.780 | because yearning seems to include a whole body experience

00:13:56.820 | more than just wanting, which could just be up in the mind.

00:14:00.180 | So your desire for something is proportional

00:14:03.820 | to how pleasureful it is to indulge in that thing,

00:14:07.920 | but also how much pain you experience

00:14:09.700 | when you don't have it.

00:14:11.140 | And you can now start to let your mind wander

00:14:13.700 | into all sorts of examples of addictions

00:14:15.520 | or things that you happen to like.

00:14:17.640 | I'll use the example that I sometimes use on here,

00:14:19.580 | which is my love of croissants.

00:14:21.100 | The taste of that croissant makes me want

00:14:22.820 | to eat more croissants.

00:14:24.100 | Now, eventually blood sugar goes up,

00:14:26.100 | satiety is reached, et cetera.

00:14:27.540 | What happens then?

00:14:28.460 | What is satisfaction and satiety about?

00:14:30.780 | Well, that's a separate neuromodulator.

00:14:32.720 | That's about the neuromodulator serotonin.

00:14:35.420 | It's about oxytocin.

00:14:37.220 | It's about a hormone system

00:14:39.140 | that involves something called prolactin.

00:14:40.700 | So we're going to talk about all of those in the book,

00:14:43.540 | "The Molecule of More," wonderful book.

00:14:45.600 | Those were described as the here and now molecules,

00:14:49.260 | the ones that allow you to experience your sensations

00:14:52.020 | and pleasure in the present

00:14:53.340 | and for which the brain stops projecting into the future.

00:14:56.560 | So now let's talk about craving

00:14:58.820 | and these so-called here and now molecules

00:15:00.860 | and how those engage in a kind of push-pull balance

00:15:03.940 | that will allow you to not just feel more motivated,

00:15:07.140 | but also to enjoy the things in life

00:15:09.380 | that you are pursuing to a much greater degree.

00:15:12.140 | We have neurons in an area of our brain called the raphe,

00:15:15.060 | R-A-P-H-E.

00:15:16.780 | The raphe releases serotonin

00:15:19.720 | at different places in the brain.

00:15:21.300 | Serotonin is the molecule of bliss and contentment

00:15:25.500 | for what you already have.

00:15:27.120 | I've talked before about exteroception.

00:15:30.140 | Exteroception is a focus on the outside world,

00:15:32.960 | everything beyond the confines of your skin.

00:15:35.580 | I've also talked about interoception,

00:15:37.400 | a focus on things that are happening internally

00:15:39.460 | within the confines of your skin.

00:15:42.440 | Dopamine and serotonin can be thought of

00:15:47.320 | as related to exteroception.

00:15:49.720 | Dopamine makes us focused on things outside us

00:15:52.160 | that are beyond what we call our personal space

00:15:55.040 | where we actually have to move and take action

00:15:57.840 | in order to achieve things.

00:15:59.440 | And serotonin in general has to do with the things

00:16:02.200 | that are in our immediate here and now,

00:16:03.880 | hence the description of these as the here and now molecules.

00:16:07.280 | So it's interesting to point out

00:16:09.320 | that the body and the brain can direct its attention

00:16:13.240 | towards things outside us or inside us

00:16:14.920 | or split our attention between those.

00:16:17.080 | Just understand that dopamine biases us

00:16:19.440 | toward thinking about what we don't have.

00:16:21.600 | Whereas serotonin and some of the related molecules

00:16:24.260 | like the endocannabinoids,

00:16:26.400 | if you picked up on the word cannabinoid,

00:16:27.880 | yes, it's like cannabis

00:16:29.000 | because cannabis attaches to endocannabinoid receptors

00:16:33.240 | and the endocannabinoids are receptors and chemicals

00:16:36.120 | that the cannabinoids that you naturally make

00:16:38.280 | that are involved in things like forgetting,

00:16:40.640 | but you make these molecules that bind to these receptors

00:16:43.320 | that make you feel kind of blissed out

00:16:45.120 | and content in the present.

00:16:47.160 | So you've got these two systems.

00:16:48.360 | They're kind of like a push pull.

00:16:50.180 | And if you were to say, do the, you know, in the book,

00:16:53.240 | wherever you go, there you are.

00:16:54.660 | Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this meditation practice

00:16:57.320 | that's different than most meditation practices

00:16:59.300 | where you eat one almond

00:17:00.880 | and you focus all of your attention on the almond,

00:17:03.640 | the taste of the almond, the texture of the almond.

00:17:06.220 | That's really a mindfulness practice

00:17:08.540 | that's geared towards trying to take a behavior

00:17:11.200 | which is normally about pursuit.

00:17:13.480 | Normally feeding is we're going,

00:17:15.640 | we engage in feeding because of dopamine.

00:17:17.880 | We pursue more of a food

00:17:19.060 | because of that pleasure pain relationship

00:17:20.680 | I talked about before.

00:17:22.000 | The focus on the one almond

00:17:23.840 | or becoming very present in any behavior

00:17:27.160 | that normally would be a kind of

00:17:28.960 | extra receptive pursuit behavior

00:17:31.240 | and bring it into the here and now.

00:17:33.320 | That's a mental trick or a mental task

00:17:37.820 | that the mindfulness community has really embraced

00:17:40.580 | in order to try and create increased pleasure

00:17:42.820 | for what you already have.

00:17:44.380 | It's really trying to accomplish a shift

00:17:46.600 | from dopamine being released to serotonin

00:17:49.540 | and the cannabinoid system being involved in that behavior.

00:17:53.260 | Dopamine has the quality of making people

00:17:55.580 | kind of rabidly in pursuit of things.

00:17:57.740 | Drugs like marijuana, the opioids,

00:18:02.420 | anything that really hits the serotonin system hard

00:18:06.860 | tend to make people rather lethargic

00:18:08.760 | and content to stay exactly where they are.

00:18:10.380 | They don't want to pursue much at all.

00:18:12.780 | So you've got these molecules like dopamine

00:18:14.980 | that make you focused on the things you want

00:18:16.740 | and the things you crave.

00:18:17.780 | And then you've got the molecules

00:18:19.280 | that make you content with what you have.

00:18:21.420 | So the most important thing perhaps

00:18:24.620 | in creating a healthy emotional landscape

00:18:27.500 | is to have a balance

00:18:28.460 | between these two neuromodulator systems.

00:18:30.700 | So at about this point in the podcast,

00:18:32.540 | I'm guessing that some of you are thinking,

00:18:34.460 | okay, great, I want more dopamine.

00:18:36.140 | I want to be more motivated.

00:18:37.540 | I don't want to procrastinate as much.

00:18:39.620 | And I want to be able to experience life.

00:18:42.060 | I want these here and now molecules to be released as well.

00:18:45.100 | Well, there is a way to do that,

00:18:46.420 | but you have to understand the source of procrastination

00:18:49.800 | is not one thing.

00:18:51.380 | There are basically two kinds of procrastinators

00:18:53.540 | or so says the research.

00:18:55.620 | The first kind are people that actually really enjoy

00:18:58.860 | the stress of the impending deadline.

00:19:02.080 | It's the only way they can get into action.

00:19:03.900 | There are other procrastinators

00:19:05.420 | for which they simply are not releasing enough dopamine.

00:19:08.340 | For those people, there are a variety of things

00:19:10.260 | that can increase dopamine.

00:19:11.380 | I do suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or doctor.

00:19:13.780 | I've talked about mucunipurines, which is 99.9% L-DOPA,

00:19:18.780 | the precursor to dopamine.

00:19:21.200 | There are antidepressants like Wellbutrin,

00:19:24.220 | bupryron is the other name for it,

00:19:26.460 | which increased dopamine and epinephrine.

00:19:28.560 | However, if you think back to our earlier discussion

00:19:32.100 | about dopamine, dopamine, if it's very high,

00:19:37.100 | creates a sense of pleasure and the desire for more.

00:19:40.780 | So you can also become a person

00:19:43.180 | for which enough is never enough.

00:19:45.580 | The only thing that dopamine really wants

00:19:47.860 | is more of the thing that releases dopamine.

00:19:50.180 | And so one of the things that you can do

00:19:52.140 | in order to generally just be a happier person,

00:19:54.740 | especially if you're a person in pursuit of long-term goals

00:19:57.260 | of any kind, is the longer that you can extend

00:20:01.460 | that positive phase of the dopamine release.

00:20:04.260 | And the more that you can blunt the pain response to that,

00:20:08.020 | the better.

00:20:08.860 | And you can actually do this cognitively.

00:20:10.020 | I used to joke with my lab that when we'd publish a paper,

00:20:13.300 | I would get really excited,

00:20:14.900 | but I wouldn't allow myself to get too excited.

00:20:17.220 | What I wanted to do instead,

00:20:18.380 | and what I've still tried to do is try and extend the arc

00:20:21.680 | of that positive experience as long as I possibly can,

00:20:24.420 | simply by thinking back like, oh, that was really cool.

00:20:26.460 | I really enjoyed doing that work.

00:20:27.820 | I really enjoyed the discovery.

00:20:30.080 | I really enjoyed doing that with the people

00:20:31.860 | that I was working with at the time.

00:20:34.060 | What a pleasure that was.

00:20:35.700 | So you can extend pleasure without having to engage

00:20:38.300 | in the behavior over and over.

00:20:40.260 | That's extending the arc of that dopamine release.

00:20:43.020 | As well, it offsets some of the pain

00:20:45.380 | of not having that experience occur

00:20:48.620 | over and over and over again.

00:20:50.200 | Now, for the high performers out there,

00:20:51.740 | you're probably familiar with this.

00:20:53.340 | Many people who have a big achievement,

00:20:55.080 | their first thoughts are, well, now what?

00:20:56.980 | What am I going to do next?

00:20:57.940 | How am I ever going to exceed that?

00:20:59.140 | And indeed, many people who are very high

00:21:01.740 | on this kind of dopamine sensation

00:21:03.420 | and novelty-seeking scale are prone to addiction.

00:21:06.500 | They're prone to the rabid pursuit of external goals,

00:21:09.340 | of exteroception, to the neglect of these internal mechanisms

00:21:12.940 | that allow them to feel calm and happy.

00:21:14.980 | So for people that are very driven, very motivated,

00:21:17.960 | adopting a practice of being able to engage

00:21:21.180 | in the here and now, the sort of almond-type practices

00:21:23.740 | we talked about earlier of learning how to achieve

00:21:27.600 | a really good night's sleep on a regular basis

00:21:29.940 | through tools and mechanisms I talked about

00:21:31.980 | on previous podcasts, gives a sort of balance

00:21:34.740 | to the pleasure-seeking and offsetting of pain

00:21:38.540 | and the pleasure in the here and now.

00:21:40.580 | So pleasure is really two things.

00:21:42.260 | It's a joy in pursuit, but it's also the joy

00:21:46.580 | in what you have.

00:21:48.100 | The cool thing is you can actually regulate

00:21:50.800 | this whole system in a way that will steer you

00:21:55.100 | or lean you towards more positive anticipation

00:21:57.840 | of things in life and less disappointment.

00:21:59.840 | It's simply a matter of adjusting

00:22:01.380 | what we call the dopamine schedule.

00:22:03.980 | In order to understand how to control the dopamine system,

00:22:06.620 | how to leverage it for a better life,

00:22:08.900 | you need to understand the results

00:22:11.680 | of a very important experiment.

00:22:13.440 | This experiment was able to separate

00:22:17.780 | pleasure from motivation.

00:22:19.960 | It's a very simple, but like many simple experiments,

00:22:23.540 | a very elegant experiment.

00:22:25.820 | What they did, and this has now been done

00:22:27.380 | in animals and in humans, they offered rats food.

00:22:32.160 | It was a food that they particularly liked.

00:22:34.600 | And the animals would lever press for a pellet of food,

00:22:37.340 | kind of classic experiment.

00:22:38.660 | They'd eat the food, and they presumably liked the food

00:22:41.940 | because they were motivated to press the lever and eat it.

00:22:45.060 | Great.

00:22:46.020 | They took other rats.

00:22:48.860 | They eliminated the dopamine neurons.

00:22:50.720 | You can do this by injection of a neurotoxin

00:22:52.760 | that destroys these neurons.

00:22:54.500 | So they actually had no dopamine in their brain.

00:22:56.760 | They have no ability to release dopamine.

00:22:59.320 | And they gave them a lever.

00:23:01.760 | The rats would sit there and they'd hit the lever

00:23:03.440 | and they'd eat the food.

00:23:04.360 | They're still enjoyed the food.

00:23:06.660 | So you say, well, okay,

00:23:08.560 | so dopamine isn't involved in motivation.

00:23:10.440 | It isn't involved in pleasure.

00:23:11.800 | No, it absolutely is.

00:23:13.820 | They could still enjoy the food,

00:23:16.080 | but if they moved the rat literally one body length

00:23:19.820 | away from the lever,

00:23:21.580 | what they found was the animals that had dopamine

00:23:23.620 | would move over to the lever, press it and eat.

00:23:25.700 | And the ones, the rats that did not have dopamine

00:23:28.620 | available to them wouldn't even move one body length,

00:23:32.420 | one rat length to the lever in order to press it

00:23:35.900 | and get the food.

00:23:36.980 | Dopamine therefore is not about the ability

00:23:40.060 | to experience pleasure.

00:23:41.740 | It is about motivation for pleasure.

00:23:44.180 | And so many of you are probably thinking,

00:23:46.260 | wow, I'm not a very motivated person.

00:23:48.160 | Like you talked about the one kind

00:23:49.200 | of procrastination earlier.

00:23:50.360 | What about when I just feel kind of meh about life?

00:23:53.640 | Now, for some of you,

00:23:54.900 | there may be a real clinical depression

00:23:56.500 | and you should talk to a professional.

00:23:57.940 | There are very good prescription drugs

00:24:00.420 | that can really help people.

00:24:02.120 | There's also great non-drug treatments of psychotherapy

00:24:06.280 | and other treatments that are being developed

00:24:08.560 | in addition to psychotherapy

00:24:09.760 | and the various kinds of psychoanalysis, et cetera,

00:24:12.340 | that one can use.

00:24:13.600 | I think the data really point to the fact

00:24:15.120 | that a combination of pharmacology

00:24:17.680 | and talk therapies are generally best.

00:24:20.440 | And there are a huge range of these things.

00:24:22.000 | I know many of you are in these professions.

00:24:23.560 | We're not going to talk about that right now.

00:24:25.360 | There is a compound that's kind of interesting

00:24:27.360 | in the supplement space that isn't Mucunipurine L-DOPA.

00:24:31.360 | It's not L-tyrosine that isn't promoting

00:24:35.560 | massive releases of dopamine or even dopamine alone,

00:24:39.160 | but a combination of dopamine and serotonin.

00:24:41.760 | And it's an intriguing molecule.

00:24:43.520 | It's sold over the counter.

00:24:45.200 | Again, you have to check with your healthcare provider

00:24:48.800 | before you would take anything or remove anything.

00:24:50.820 | That's very important.

00:24:51.960 | But it's phenyl ethyl amine or PEA.

00:24:56.960 | PEA or beta phenyl ethyl amine releases dopamine

00:25:01.960 | at low levels, but also serotonin at low level.

00:25:06.640 | So it's kind of a cocktail of the motivation molecules

00:25:10.600 | as well as the quote unquote here and now molecules.

00:25:13.760 | And people's response to this varies widely,

00:25:17.640 | but many people report feeling heightened sense

00:25:20.840 | of mental acuity, wellbeing, et cetera.

00:25:23.240 | It is a bit of a stimulant,

00:25:24.960 | like anything that triggers activation of the dopamine

00:25:27.120 | and norepinephrine pathway,

00:25:28.760 | but it is an interesting supplement.

00:25:30.280 | So now let's talk about what is a dopamine schedule

00:25:32.480 | and how you can leverage this

00:25:34.580 | in order to have heightened levels of motivation,

00:25:37.480 | but not get so much dopamine that you're experiencing

00:25:39.720 | a crash afterwards.

00:25:41.120 | And also so that you can experience heightened pleasure

00:25:43.680 | from the various pursuits that you are engaged in in life.

00:25:47.040 | And here's the key principle.

00:25:48.760 | Dopamine is very subjective,

00:25:52.840 | meaning you can either allow yourself

00:25:55.080 | to experience the pleasure of reaching a milestone

00:25:58.000 | of achieving or some craving or not.

00:26:02.120 | It's actually pretty powerful what one can do

00:26:05.040 | with the subjective system.

00:26:06.720 | In fact, I'm going to describe you an experiment

00:26:08.760 | that highlights just how powerful the subjective readout

00:26:12.400 | or the subjective interpretation

00:26:14.220 | of a given experience really can be,

00:26:15.840 | even at the level of pharmacology.

00:26:18.200 | And the title of the experiment

00:26:19.600 | is "Expectation for Stimulant Type,

00:26:22.520 | Modifies Caffeine's Effects on Mood and Cognition."

00:26:26.200 | This was done in college students.

00:26:27.800 | It's a fascinating study.

00:26:29.560 | What they did is they gave college students

00:26:34.200 | either placebo, essentially nothing,

00:26:37.920 | or 200 milligrams of caffeine.

00:26:39.680 | 200 milligrams of caffeine is about what's in

00:26:42.120 | a typical coffee, like a medium coffee

00:26:44.280 | that you would buy, a drip coffee.

00:26:46.160 | So they took 65 undergraduate students in college.

00:26:50.600 | They randomized them to either placebo or caffeine.

00:26:54.160 | And they told them that they were either getting caffeine

00:26:57.680 | or Adderall.

00:26:59.120 | Now, Adderall cognitively carries

00:27:01.880 | a very different expectation.

00:27:05.280 | College students know Adderall

00:27:06.720 | to be a much stronger stimulant than caffeine.

00:27:09.260 | They know it to create a sort of high.

00:27:11.560 | This is the way the students described it.

00:27:13.320 | And they thought that it would increase their level of focus

00:27:16.500 | and their ability to perform work.

00:27:18.200 | So what's really interesting is there was definitely

00:27:21.600 | an effect of placebo versus caffeine.

00:27:23.500 | That's not surprising, however, right?

00:27:25.200 | You take a placebo, you may or may not feel more alert,

00:27:29.000 | but you take 200 milligrams of caffeine,

00:27:30.480 | very likely you're going to feel very alert.

00:27:32.180 | But there was also an effect of whether or not

00:27:35.660 | the students thought they were getting caffeine or Adderall.

00:27:38.800 | The subjects receiving caffeine reported feeling

00:27:41.340 | more stimulated, anxious, and motivated

00:27:43.640 | than the subjects that received the placebo, okay.

00:27:46.040 | But the ones that expected Adderall

00:27:48.000 | reported stronger amphetamine effects.

00:27:50.040 | They performed better on a working memory test.

00:27:53.280 | And in general, they had all the increased cognitive effects

00:27:58.240 | that would have been seen with Adderall,

00:28:00.320 | but they were only ingesting caffeine.

00:28:02.760 | So it led to heightened performance

00:28:04.840 | simply because the students thought

00:28:06.560 | they were getting Adderall.

00:28:08.160 | And I think this is very important

00:28:09.520 | because I think that it points to the fact

00:28:11.440 | that the top down,

00:28:14.240 | the kind of higher level cognitive processes

00:28:16.160 | are impacting even the most basic fundamental aspects

00:28:19.640 | of say dopamine release or adrenaline release

00:28:23.420 | or epinephrine release in ways

00:28:24.720 | that can positively impact performance.

00:28:27.000 | In this case, it was a positive improvement

00:28:28.760 | in working memory and focus.

00:28:30.640 | So today we've talked a lot about the dopamine system

00:28:34.060 | and those kinds of schedules

00:28:36.000 | that will allow craving or addiction,

00:28:39.360 | but what's the schedule of dopamine

00:28:41.400 | that's going to allow you to maximize

00:28:43.440 | on your pursuit of pleasure and your elimination of pain?

00:28:46.960 | And we get the answer to that

00:28:49.560 | from our good friend gambling.

00:28:52.920 | The reason gambling works,

00:28:54.480 | the reason why people will throw their lives away,

00:28:56.680 | the reason why people go back again and again and again

00:29:00.440 | to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City

00:29:03.780 | is because of the hope and anticipation.

00:29:06.840 | Those are cities and places built on dopamine.

00:29:09.920 | They are leveraging your dopamine system.

00:29:11.920 | And as a friend of mine

00:29:13.040 | who's a certified addiction treatment specialist

00:29:15.680 | tells me that gambling addiction is a particularly sinister

00:29:19.060 | because the next time really could be

00:29:21.980 | the thing that changes everything.

00:29:23.440 | Unlike other addictions,

00:29:24.520 | the next time really could change everything

00:29:26.200 | and that's embedded in the mind of the gambling addict.

00:29:28.640 | And rarely does it work out

00:29:31.000 | in favor of the wellbeing of the gambling addict

00:29:33.320 | and their family.

00:29:34.940 | However, the intermittent reinforcement schedule

00:29:38.200 | was discovered long ago by scientific researchers.

00:29:41.420 | So this is the slot machine that every once in a while

00:29:44.060 | gives you a win to keep you playing.

00:29:45.980 | This is the probability of winning on the craps table

00:29:49.620 | or the roulette table or at blackjack

00:29:51.460 | just often enough that you're willing to buy tickets,

00:29:54.380 | head out there, play again,

00:29:55.940 | go downstairs again from your room

00:29:57.400 | even though you swore you were done for the night.

00:29:59.140 | Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful form

00:30:02.700 | of dopamine reward schedule to keep you doing something.

00:30:05.980 | So we can export that, we can use it for good.

00:30:09.320 | If there's something that you're pursuing in life,

00:30:11.060 | whether or not it's an academic goal

00:30:12.900 | or a financial goal or relationship goal,

00:30:15.220 | one of the things that you can do

00:30:17.740 | to ensure that you will remain on the path to that goal

00:30:20.580 | for a very long time

00:30:21.860 | and that you will continue

00:30:23.020 | to exceed your previous performance

00:30:25.320 | as well as continue to enjoy the dopamine release

00:30:28.300 | that occurs when you hit the milestones

00:30:30.360 | that you want to achieve

00:30:32.140 | is to occasionally remove rewards subjectively.

00:30:37.140 | Let's say you set out a goal of making,

00:30:39.980 | I'm going to make this quantitative

00:30:41.100 | with respect to finances

00:30:42.260 | 'cause it just is an easy description,

00:30:43.820 | but this could also be in sport, this could be in school,

00:30:46.720 | this could be in music,

00:30:47.560 | could be in anything, creative endeavors.

00:30:49.420 | But let's say you set out a certain financial goal

00:30:51.660 | or let's say you want to get a certain number of followers

00:30:53.680 | on whatever social media platform.

00:30:56.220 | As you reach each one of those goals,

00:30:58.780 | you should know now that the amount of dopamine

00:31:01.240 | is not going to peak,

00:31:02.220 | it's actually going to diminish and make you crave more.

00:31:04.940 | The key to avoiding that crash,

00:31:07.580 | but to still keep it in healthy levels

00:31:09.140 | that will allow you to continue your pursuit

00:31:11.260 | is as you are staircasing toward your goal,

00:31:14.500 | you actually want to blunt the reward response

00:31:17.220 | for some of those intermediate goals.

00:31:19.820 | Now, I'm not telling you you shouldn't celebrate your wins,

00:31:21.900 | but I'm telling you not to celebrate all of them.

00:31:24.440 | Or as a good friend of mine who recently,

00:31:27.420 | fortunately for him, had a great financial success,

00:31:30.380 | he asked me and somebody else,

00:31:32.360 | a good friend of mine,

00:31:33.280 | who's very tuned into dopamine reward schedules,

00:31:36.080 | understands how they work at a really deep level.

00:31:38.200 | And he said, "I don't know what to do next."

00:31:40.040 | And we said, "Oh, well, that's simple.

00:31:42.120 | You should just give most of it away."

00:31:44.040 | And this wasn't a ploy to receive any of the money ourselves,

00:31:47.240 | this was really about reducing the impact of that reward.

00:31:51.040 | Now, hopefully giving him money away

00:31:52.720 | if you already have enough of it

00:31:54.280 | would be something that was rewarding in and of itself.

00:31:57.600 | But if you're a student who's pursuing goals in university,

00:32:01.200 | or you're an athlete who's pursuing goals,

00:32:03.960 | it actually makes sense from a rational perspective,

00:32:07.280 | once you understand these mechanisms,

00:32:09.520 | to hit a new high point of performance,

00:32:13.440 | or to get that A-plus or for you,

00:32:15.480 | if it's an A-minus, et cetera,

00:32:17.800 | and to tell yourself, "Okay, that was good."

00:32:20.200 | But to actually actively blunt the reward,

00:32:23.340 | to not go and celebrate too intensely.

00:32:26.820 | Because in doing that,

00:32:28.020 | you keep your dopamine system in check,

00:32:30.440 | and you ensure that you're going to stay on the path

00:32:33.000 | of continued pursuit,

00:32:34.120 | not just for that thing, but for all things.

00:32:36.160 | Big increases in dopamine lead to big crashes in dopamine,

00:32:39.960 | and big increases in dopamine up the ante.

00:32:42.820 | So you can lift what Las Vegas and Atlantic City

00:32:47.280 | and other gambling mechanisms

00:32:50.400 | and places have known for a long time.

00:32:51.800 | They lifted it from the scientists.

00:32:53.120 | You can now take it back,

00:32:54.520 | and you can start to leverage that.

00:32:56.200 | And you just make it intermittent.

00:32:57.680 | You reward yourself, not on a predictable schedule.

00:33:00.500 | So not every other time,

00:33:01.920 | or every third time, or every 10th time,

00:33:03.600 | but sometimes it's three in a row,

00:33:04.940 | then not at all for 10 days.

00:33:07.040 | So reward is important.

00:33:09.640 | Self-reward is critically important,

00:33:11.560 | but make sure that you're not doing it

00:33:13.560 | on such a predictable schedule,

00:33:15.840 | that you burn out these dopamine circuits,

00:33:18.760 | or that you undercut your own ability

00:33:20.840 | to strive and achieve.

00:33:23.520 | Hopefully you now know far more

00:33:25.520 | about the dopamine system, reward, and motivation

00:33:29.000 | than you did at the beginning of this podcast.

00:33:31.600 | Hopefully you also understand

00:33:33.280 | the other side of dopamine and reward,

00:33:35.480 | which is pain and the balance of this pleasure-pain system,

00:33:38.920 | as well as the molecules that we call,

00:33:41.840 | or that were described in the "Molecule of More" book,

00:33:44.360 | I should say, as the here and now molecules,

00:33:46.560 | things like serotonin and the endocannabinoids.

00:33:49.240 | Finally, I want to thank you

00:33:50.440 | for your time and attention today.

00:33:52.120 | I hope you learned a lot

00:33:53.520 | and that you learned a lot of possible tools

00:33:55.800 | that you could incorporate into your life

00:33:57.800 | as it relates to motivation and emotions.

00:34:01.280 | Thank you for your interest in science.

00:34:03.280 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials

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