So let's talk about the optimal way to engage in activities or to consume things that evoke dopamine. How are we supposed to engage with these dopamine evoking activities in ways that are healthy and beneficial for us? How do we achieve these peaks, which are so central to our wellbeing and experience of life without dropping our baseline?

And the key lies in intermittent release of dopamine. The real key is to not expect or chase high levels of dopamine release every time we engage in these activities. Now, the smartphone is a very interesting tool for dopamine in light of all this. It's extremely common nowadays to see people texting and doing selfies and communicating in various ways, listening to podcasts, listening to music, doing all sorts of things while they engage in other activities or going to dinner and texting other people or making plans, sharing information, that's all wonderful.

It gives depth and richness and color to life. But it isn't just about our distracted nature when we're engaging with the phone. It's also a way of layering in dopamine. And it's no surprise that levels of depression and lack of motivation are really on the increase. There's something called dopamine reward prediction error.

When we expect something to happen, we are highly motivated to pursue it. If it happens, great, we get the reward. The reward comes in various chemical forms, including dopamine, and we are more likely to engage in that behavior again. This is the basis of casino gambling. This is how they keep you going back again and again and again, even though on average, the house really does win.

Everything that we've talked about until now sets up an explanation or an interpretation of why interacting with digital technology can potentially lead to disruptions or lowering in baseline levels of dopamine. There's a intermittent schedule by which dopamine sometimes arrives, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot, sometimes a medium amount, okay?

That intermittent reinforcement schedule is actually the best schedule to export to other activities. How do you do that? Well, first of all, if you are engaged in activities, school, sport, relationship, et cetera, where you experience a win, you should be very careful about allowing yourself to experience huge peaks in dopamine, unless you're willing to suffer the crash that follows and waiting a period of time for it to come back up.

What would this look like in the practical sense? Well, let's say you are somebody who really does enjoy exercise, or let's say you're somebody who kind of likes exercise, but forces yourself to do it, but you make it pleasureful by giving yourself your favorite cup of coffee first, or maybe taking a pre-workout drink, or taking an energy drink, or listening to your favorite music, and then you're in the gym and you're listening to your music that all sounds great, right?

Well, it is great, except that by layering together all these things to try and achieve that dopamine release, and by getting a big peak in dopamine, you're actually increasing the number of conditions required to achieve pleasure from that activity again. I can use a personal example for this. I happen to really enjoy working out.

I've always really enjoyed it. But in recent years, I noticed that if I was bringing my phone to my workouts, then not only was I a little bit more distracted and not focusing on what I was doing as much as I could have or should have, but also I started to lose interest in what I was doing.

It wasn't as pleasureful. I would feel like it just didn't have the same kind of oomph, and I was beginning to question my motivation. As I started learning more about this relationship between the peaks and the baselines and dopamine, what I realized was that some time ago, I probably experienced a incredible increase in the amount of dopamine during one of my workouts because I enjoy working out and I enjoy listening to music.

I also enjoy listening to podcasts. I also enjoy communicating with people. Those are all wonderful pursuits, but I had layered in too many of them too many times. And then it essentially wasn't working for me anymore. Much in the same way a drug wouldn't work for somebody who takes it repeatedly because their baseline of dopamine is dropping.

So at least for this calendar year, I've made a rule for myself, which is I don't allow my phone into my workouts at all. No music, at least not from the phone. It can be in the room. I might listen to a podcast in the room, but I don't listen to anything or engage in anything on my phone, no texting whatsoever.

And most of the time, I just don't even bring it with me for that period of time. It's only a short period of time. I'm not training that often. This is something that I think has been misinterpreted as people can't be alone now. People talk about, oh, you know, they can't walk across the street or they can't go anywhere, ride the bus, can't be on the plane without being in contact.

They can't handle just their thoughts. I don't think that's really what's going on. I think what's happened is that we achieved the great dopamine increase that comes from this incredible thing, which I personally enjoy being able to communicate by phone, by text, and exchange pictures and send links and these kinds of things, social media.

But then what happens is it doesn't have that same fulfilling aspect to it. And it tends to remove the excitement and the pleasure of the very activities that we are engaged in. So I know this is a hard one for many people, but I do invite you to try removing multiple sources of dopamine release or what used to be multiple sources of dopamine release from activities that you want to continue to enjoy or that you want to enjoy more.

And now you understand the biological mechanisms that would underlie a statement like that. It takes a little bit of working with. I know it can be challenging in the first week or so of not engaging with the phone during any kind of workout. That actually was really tough, but now I'm back to a place where I enjoy it that much more.

I also feel as if I conquered something in terms of the circuitry related to dopamine. I now understand why something that I enjoyed so much had become less pleasurable for me. And there's a deep, deep satisfaction that comes from understanding, okay, there wasn't anything wrong with me or what I was doing or anything at all.

It was just, there was something wrong with the approach I was taking, which was layering in all these sources of dopamine and dropping my baseline. If you want to maintain motivation for school, exercise, relationships, or pursuits of any duration and kind, the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine, if it's very high, doesn't occur too often.

And if something does occur very often, that you vary how much dopamine you experience with each engagement in that activity. So do like the casinos do, certainly works for them. And for activities that you would like to continue to engage in over time, whatever those happen to be, start paying attention to the amount of dopamine and excitement and pleasure that you achieve with those and start modulating that somewhat at random.

That might be removing some of the dopamine releasing chemicals that you might take prior. Maybe you remove them every time, but then every once in a while you introduce them. Maybe it involves sometimes doing things socially that you enjoy doing socially, sometimes doing the same thing, but alone. There are a lot of different ways to do this.

There are a lot of different ways to approach this, but now knowing what you know about peaks and baselines and dopamine and understanding how important it is not just to achieve peaks, but to maintain that baseline at a healthy level, it should be straightforward for you to implement these intermittent schedules.

(upbeat music)