Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing dopamine. Dopamine is a topic that I've covered before on this podcast, and many people have heard of dopamine. Most people know that dopamine is involved in pleasure, to some extent or another. And nowadays, people are starting to appreciate that dopamine is also intimately involved with motivation, drive and pursuit. Well, today, you're going to learn that, indeed, dopamine is responsible for all of those things, but you are also going to learn that dopamine is critical for overcoming procrastination, for ensuring ongoing motivation, and indeed, for ensuring confidence. In fact, we are going to talk about the relationship between dopamine and motivation and confidence at the level of neurobiological circuitry, and we are going to cover tools that will allow you to leverage your dopamine in order to have maximum motivation to overcome sticking points, which include things like procrastination, but also by understanding the neural circuits in the brain and body that release and use dopamine, but more importantly, by understanding what are called dopamine dynamics. That is what gives rise to big peaks in dopamine or troughs in dopamine, or what's referred to as our baseline level of dopamine, which turns out to be our baseline levels of motivation and feelings of wellbeing. By understanding how those things relate to one another, I assure you that by the end of today's episode, you will be in a far better position to understand why you become amotivated, why you procrastinate, how to ensure motivation on an ongoing basis, and even how to leverage effort and the desire to become motivated as a way to do just that, to become more motivated. Today's discussion is not about psychology, although I will center around practical everyday examples and offer many, many tools that you can implement if you choose. Today's discussion is really about pulling apart these things that we call motivation, reward, pleasure, procrastination, and understanding them in terms of their dopamine dynamics. So whether you've heard me or others talk about dopamine before, or whether or not today is your first exposure to the topic of dopamine, today's episode is really designed to give you the biological and practical knowledge so that you can leverage your dopamine circuitry and your dopamine levels, as well as tools to adjust dopamine circuitry and levels in order to optimize mental health, physical health, and performance. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are the absolute highest quality. I've talked many times before on this and other podcasts about the critical role that sleep plays in allowing you to be awake and alert and have a good elevated mood throughout the day. Sleep is just fundamental to our mental health, physical health and performance, and there's no replacing great sleep. A key thing we all need in order to get excellent sleep is to have an ideal sleep environment. Helix mattresses are designed for your unique sleep needs in order to ensure that you get the best possible night's sleep. So if you go to the Helix site and you take their very brief two or three minute quiz, it will ask you questions such as, do you sleep on your side, your back or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold throughout the night? And they will match you to a mattress that's specific to your sleep needs. I matched to the dusk mattress, that's the one that works for me. And since sleeping on the dusk mattress now for well over two years, I've been sleeping better than I ever have before. So if you go to their site, you take the quiz and you figure out what's the ideal mattress for you. Just go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their two-minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress and you'll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. again, if interested, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $350 off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable device that tracks your daily activity and sleep, but also goes beyond that by providing real-time feedback on how to adjust your physical training and sleep schedule and other activities throughout your day in order to optimize your health. I've been working with Whoop on their Scientific Advisory Council to help advance Whoop's technology and mission of unlocking human performance, not just for athletes, but for everybody. As a Whoop user, I've experienced the health benefits of their technology firsthand. For instance, it tells me, of course, whether or not I had a good night's sleep or a poor night's sleep by giving me a sleep score. It tells me the percentage of rapid eye movement, sleep to slow wave sleep, but Whoop also tells me, for instance, whether or not certain activities during my daytime, such as naps or training or training of a certain amount of intensity, how that's impacting my sleep and vice versa. If you're interested in trying Whoop, you can go to join.whoop.com/huberman.