And I feel like when people talk about the dopamine hits of social media, the data on this just don't square with the idea that scrolling our phone gives us dopamine hits. It gives us low-level expenditure. You know, I want to, on the basis of your books, I wrote something down a couple days ago.

I was thinking about our conversation. I was thinking, I've long believed that, you know, dopamine is a currency. We, it's the universal currency of motivation, right? It's what literally allows us to ambulate forward. It controls movement in the body. That's why people with Parkinson's who lose dopamine neurons can't move.

But in terms of mental movement, it's motivation, like movement towards something, redirecting our efforts and so forth. And I was thinking about this idea that we can either spend our dopamine, right, or we can invest our dopamine. And this is purely on the basis of your work. Awesome. And it seems like all day long, we can potentially spend dopamine.

Scrolling is spending. And it's the kind of spending we don't even notice that we're doing. We're sort of leaking. It's almost like leaking dopamine. We're not getting these big, quote unquote, dopamine hits. This is why I don't like the dopamine hit model. I don't log on Instagram and go like, wow.

Like, it's no, like, it's not like coming back from a misogy and going, I lived. It's not transformative for the next month. It keeps you in the rut of looking for more because it's like mental chewing gum. It's my dad. A long time ago, he said, be careful of the internet.

I said, why? And he said, it's just mental chewing gum. Wise, wise guy. Yeah, and he's a very regimented guy. And so we're always spending. But then there are these things that require effort that are in – we're still spending dopamine while we're doing it. Like, if you go do a workout, you're spending effort to do it, but you get something back on that investment.

So you're investing it. You're not just spending it. Yeah, that's great. And the other one, based on what you told me today, is reflection in states of boredom or meditation or, you know, for people that orient this way, prayer, whatever it happens to be. Or maybe it's even just leaving a social gathering and keeping your phone in your pocket and walking back to the car and just really thinking about the richness of that interaction.

Like, these little things that are disappearing in our lives these days, but that are so easy to recapture, that reflection is another way of investing our dopamine. And I think when we look at the neurobiological literature on dopamine, we're going to realize that, yeah, of course, addictions spend out your dopamine.

Drop your baseline. Your bank account is in the red, deep in the red. Yeah. It's a whole other discussion. But that most of us are spending, and then we reset each night with sleep. And then we spend the next day, and then we reset. And it's a life of, it becomes kind of a meaningless life.

And this isn't to demonize the social media platforms. They're pretty good at letting us numb out when we don't want to feel something or feel drama when we need to feel that, like, lift. Like, oh, my God, she did that. He did that. Oh, my God, the lawsuit got dismissed about these two people who are arguing about who said what and who did.

I'm like, how boring is it, really? Yeah. And how unimportant is it? But it's not boring because they've taught us how to make it not boring. Yeah, totally. And then you look at the comments, and it's like, blech. It's just, like, gross. It's like high school forever. Yeah. But the worst part of high school.

It effectively trains us to use it. So when I think about comfort crisis or scarcity brain, I'm saying it's really about how to invest your dopamine in effort and reflection as a way to capture more capability to lean into things. That's really, to me, what I like is the genius of doing hard things that you brought forward in the comfort crisis.

As I started today's discussion saying, I mean, it really changed my every day because I think so intensely now about, like, how can I introduce more pain to bring about more meaning as opposed to comfort, like, meaning in any case. So, yeah, I think you're really on to the two things that matter most, which are effort and reflection.

I love that language of spending versus investing. It's just, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. And the investing is usually things that are going to be a little more challenging, not as hyper-stimulating, things you maybe wouldn't necessarily want to do at first. And then once you've done them enough, you realize, oh, this has really changed me in a fundamental and positive way.

And hopefully you start to sort of crave them. Like you said, no, I love exercise, right? That's where we want people to get with all sorts of things that can enhance their life. And I think, too, I'll add here. So if you think about people who pile up money and pile up money and invest and invest and invest and they never spend it, maybe you also need to learn, okay, now that I'm doing all this investing, it's also okay to spend it sometimes, right?

And then I can really enjoy that because I've done all these things. And so I find with my own use, I used to sort of beat myself up if I was on, say, Instagram or whatever, just looking at nonsense. I like nonsense on Instagram. And I would beat myself up.

And then I realized, you've done all these things. Like you wrote for five hours. You got a workout in. You took your dog for a walk. You helped out around the house. You did all these things. Dude, watch a freaking dog video for 20 minutes. So it's fine. And then I could actually appreciate that more and like I didn't have the guilt around that, you know?

And it was like sort of the, all right, you've invested a bunch. You got all this money. Yeah, buy that thing you don't necessarily need, but it's a nice little boost, you know? The idea that we all have to become these sickos that love self-punishment and service to just building up more dopamine reserves, that's definitely not the goal.

I mean, I think one of the reasons that David Goggins is so popular is, well, there are many reasons. A, he is how he appears online. I mean, I've known David since before he had a book, since before his first book. He was exactly that way. He was exactly that way.

He's not playing a role, right? There's no acting. This is how he functions. That's great. It's a life that most people are not going to embrace. And if they do embrace it partially, I think it will benefit them tremendously. But he sort of embodies that. He, excuse me, he doesn't sort of embody that.

He embodies that. I think that being able to relax and enjoy things and really savor them is another source of, I won't say everything's investing, but there are certain things that might look like spending your dopamine that are actually investing them. And you described a beautiful one as walking with your wife, these long, these long hikes and walks, like real relating, in-person relating, I think makes us feel so many things.

I mean, there's so much science and psychology about this. I mean, we definitely evolved to, to connect to other humans. Absolutely. You know, so I, I don't think of it as meaningless relaxation to, to just connect with people and have a barbecue and just relax or just whatever they call it, like Netflix and chill can be a great thing if it's not the only thing.

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