Most of the harm in superstimuli comes from the lack of a need for personal effort to obtain the gratification (and the lack of a need to run any risk). Life for a person is supposed to be rewarding and gratifying (or at least to hold out a realistic chance of becoming rewarding and gratifying), but obtaining those rewards is supposed to take effort (and patience, discomfort and some risk or danger).
I personally have found that if I impose on myself the rule that I am not allowed any superstimuli till I’ve done at least a few hours of work that day, what superstimuli I do use seems to prove less harmful to me even though my brain knows that the only reason the reward consistently follows the effort is because of a bullshit rule I’ve imposed on myself as opposed to being an unavoidable property of the environment.
Also, if you can manage (e.g., during a vacation) to avoid superstimuli for a month, your motivation should return to almost-normal or almost-healthy levels if the superstimuli were the cause of the motivational problem because 30 days is about how long it takes for the “dopaminergic” circuits in the brain to return to their normal levels of sensitivity. I.e., a “dopamine fast” can be a good diagnostic tool if you can sustain the fast for a month or at least most of a month.
ADDED. For a while I was keeping my cable modem unplugged till 11 AM every day (and I don’t have any games or porn on my computer). That is not possible in some jobs I realize.
If we define when you usually wake up as 06:00 (regardless of what time everyone else thinks it is) getting light in your eyes between 23:00 and 05:00 tends to sap motivation (the next day and the days after that) via a mechanism well-explored by neuroscientists involving signals sent from the eye to the habenula and then on to the “motivational circuits”—especially blue light and especially especially UV light, which incandescents and fluorescents emit a little of, but LED lights emit none of (so if you might shine a light in the middle of the night, make sure it is an LED light, preferably a yellowish or orange-ish one).
The same exposure to light also makes it harder to get to sleep at normal or healthy hour the next night, which tempts you to keep a light on because lying awake in the dark when you should be sleeping but cannot is boring, which of course perpetuates the cycle.
Avoiding superstimuli and avoiding light in the middle of the night are the first interventions most people should try for increasing “dopamine and consequently motivation and drive”, but there are many other levers you could pull, and Andrew Huberman seems to be an expert on the subject.
Most of the harm in superstimuli comes from the lack of a need for personal effort to obtain the gratification (and the lack of a need to run any risk). Life for a person is supposed to be rewarding and gratifying (or at least to hold out a realistic chance of becoming rewarding and gratifying), but obtaining those rewards is supposed to take effort (and patience, discomfort and some risk or danger).
I personally have found that if I impose on myself the rule that I am not allowed any superstimuli till I’ve done at least a few hours of work that day, what superstimuli I do use seems to prove less harmful to me even though my brain knows that the only reason the reward consistently follows the effort is because of a bullshit rule I’ve imposed on myself as opposed to being an unavoidable property of the environment.
Also, if you can manage (e.g., during a vacation) to avoid superstimuli for a month, your motivation should return to almost-normal or almost-healthy levels if the superstimuli were the cause of the motivational problem because 30 days is about how long it takes for the “dopaminergic” circuits in the brain to return to their normal levels of sensitivity. I.e., a “dopamine fast” can be a good diagnostic tool if you can sustain the fast for a month or at least most of a month.
ADDED. For a while I was keeping my cable modem unplugged till 11 AM every day (and I don’t have any games or porn on my computer). That is not possible in some jobs I realize.
This seems like a particularly actionable version of common-sense advice! Thanks a lot, will try
If we define when you usually wake up as 06:00 (regardless of what time everyone else thinks it is) getting light in your eyes between 23:00 and 05:00 tends to sap motivation (the next day and the days after that) via a mechanism well-explored by neuroscientists involving signals sent from the eye to the habenula and then on to the “motivational circuits”—especially blue light and especially especially UV light, which incandescents and fluorescents emit a little of, but LED lights emit none of (so if you might shine a light in the middle of the night, make sure it is an LED light, preferably a yellowish or orange-ish one).
The same exposure to light also makes it harder to get to sleep at normal or healthy hour the next night, which tempts you to keep a light on because lying awake in the dark when you should be sleeping but cannot is boring, which of course perpetuates the cycle.
Avoiding superstimuli and avoiding light in the middle of the night are the first interventions most people should try for increasing “dopamine and consequently motivation and drive”, but there are many other levers you could pull, and Andrew Huberman seems to be an expert on the subject.