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00:00:00.100 Speaker 1 [gentle serene music] This is Seeking Minima.
00:00:10.200 Speaker 1 So I'd like to talk about a concept that I call the dopamine ladder, and I have used
00:00:15.920 Speaker 1 this concept to dramatically improve my life and catch myself before
00:00:21.860 Speaker 1 engaging in some really destructive behavior. So here's how it works.
00:00:29.000 Speaker 1 Imagine a ladder, right? And every rung on this ladder represents a
00:00:34.700 Speaker 1 level of stimulation. Okay? So at the highest level of the ladder, you're gonna
00:00:40.580 Speaker 1 have activities that are incredibly stimulating, and at the lowest rung, you're
00:00:45.180 Speaker 1 gonna have very low-stimulating activities. So here, let's run through some
00:00:49.420 Speaker 1 examples. So at the very top, you're gonna have something like drugs, sex, rock 'n'
00:00:54.260 Speaker 1 roll. Ideally, all three at the same time, right? Right down from that, I don't
00:00:59.840 Speaker 1 know, roller coasters with supermodels. Right? You can walk down from here. Below
00:01:05.260 Speaker 1 that, I don't know, TikTok. [laughs] Somewhere beneath that, um, you have
00:01:11.120 Speaker 1 other things. By the way, by, by I mean stimulating, I mean dopamine-stimulating, so
00:01:15.420 Speaker 1 not necessarily sensory-stimulating. Right? So the prospect of a winner-
00:01:21.620 Speaker 1 winning lottery ticket is incredibly dopamine-stimulating, but it's just a piece of
00:01:25.740 Speaker 1 paper, right? It's not sensory-stimulating. So that's what I mean. Dopamine is the
00:01:31.460 Speaker 1 craving chemical, essentially. It has a lot of purposes in your body, and I'm not
00:01:35.500 Speaker 1 gonna pretend to know everything about it or go into great detail. But the purpose
00:01:40.320 Speaker 1 is it's the chemical that makes you want things. It's the ma- it's the chemical that
00:01:43.800 Speaker 1 makes you want to do things. Specifically, it's also the chemical that makes you
00:01:48.120 Speaker 1 crave things. So this wanting is not always good. Craving, in this case, I'm gonna
00:01:53.740 Speaker 1 say is wanting something addictive or not being able to stop yourself from wanting,
00:01:58.620 Speaker 1 even when it's self-destructive. Okay. So a little farther down the ladder, written
00:02:03.820 Speaker 1 down a couple here, we've got
00:02:07.540 Speaker 1 chatting online, you know, maybe cheap, vapid text chat. Then we have web
00:02:13.120 Speaker 1 browsing, TV shows, maybe trashy TV, and then, I don't know,
00:02:19.120 Speaker 1 something less trashy. Game of Thrones, right? It makes you pay attention. And then
00:02:23.220 Speaker 1 you've got really artsy TV. We've got movies. Then beneath that, we've got podcasts.
00:02:29.540 Speaker 1 Then beneath, on a rung beneath that, we have passion work. On a rung beneath that,
00:02:33.780 Speaker 1 we have fiction audiobooks, nonfiction audiobooks, really important
00:02:39.820 Speaker 1 fiction audiobooks that you know you should be listening to, but, eh, you can't
00:02:43.740 Speaker 1 quite bring yourself to do. Beneath that, you got a physical paper book. Maybe we
00:02:48.520 Speaker 1 got the Kindle right above that. You can kinda see where this is going. So you've
00:02:52.540 Speaker 1 got a big spectrum. Super stimulating at the top, really low stimulation at the
00:02:57.620 Speaker 1 bottom.
00:02:59.880 Speaker 1 I have found
00:03:02.400 Speaker 1 that human beings will rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine
00:03:08.140 Speaker 1 stimulation ladder all on their own. Now, those of us with ADHD [laughs] will
00:03:14.000 Speaker 1 tend to rise higher, faster, um, and that is a, that is a separate
00:03:19.680 Speaker 1 conversation. But this is a problem that all of humanity has. Now, what
00:03:25.560 Speaker 1 stops you from getting to the simultaneous drug, sex, and rock 'n' roll ladder is
00:03:30.540 Speaker 1 perceived penalty, right? You can't do that very long before you're dead, [laughs]
00:03:35.440 Speaker 1 a- as evidenced by lots of musicians. So
00:03:40.500 Speaker 1 there's a negative incentive not to go higher, but that's often not enough. So let's
00:03:45.600 Speaker 1 go ahead and remove the things that are obviously either unattainable or completely
00:03:50.420 Speaker 1 unsustainable, or we're just not willing to do them for some other moral, ethical,
00:03:55.240 Speaker 1 or it feels bad reason.
00:03:58.520 Speaker 1 All right, so now you're kind of, like, a couple rungs down. We tend to
00:04:04.220 Speaker 1 rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine ladder.
00:04:10.400 Speaker 1 By default, this is what we do as a species. This is just how we work. I'll go into
00:04:16.300 Speaker 1 a little bit more why in a second now, but just take me at my word for now.
00:04:23.320 Speaker 1 So what does that mean? It means, left to our own devices, we will rise to the
00:04:29.000 Speaker 1 TikTok rung, and we will do TikTok for as long as it is stimulating dopamine.
00:04:35.440 Speaker 1 And then when it's not, or we just can't take it anymore because it's hurting us in
00:04:40.480 Speaker 1 some way, then we'll move on to either something on the same rung if we can, or if
00:04:46.400 Speaker 1 we have to, something a little bit lower.
00:04:50.000 Speaker 1 Okay. Why does this matter? Who cares?
00:04:54.240 Speaker 1 Here's why it matters. The way dopamine works, and by the way, Andrew Huberman has a
00:04:59.700 Speaker 1 fantastic dopamine episode. Most people have watched it who care about the topic. If
00:05:04.460 Speaker 1 you haven't, I highly recommend it. The podcast is Huberman Labs. That's, I don't
00:05:09.780 Speaker 1 know, rung three or four on the dope.
00:05:13.820 Speaker 1 When you do something that's really highly stimulating, what happens is your
00:05:18.660 Speaker 1 dopamine spikes, and then it goes down. Way down. In fact, below
00:05:24.640 Speaker 1 your average, below your baseline. Remember, this is the chemical that makes you
00:05:28.020 Speaker 1 want to do things, makes you feel motivated. When it dips below the baseline, you
00:05:34.000 Speaker 1 feel like trash. You will feel depressed, completely unmotivated. Um, it just
00:05:39.920 Speaker 1 feels bad. A lot of things start going wrong. And what you will want is another hit
00:05:45.980 Speaker 1 to get you back up because you feel bad. You will literally have to stimulate
00:05:50.320 Speaker 1 yourself from the outside in. You can't really make enough of it on your own. You
00:05:55.700 Speaker 1 have to go do things in the world. You have to, to push the button. Your brain can't
00:05:59.980 Speaker 1 push the button itself. It has to have some external stimuli push the button for
00:06:05.820 Speaker 1 you. It has to have TikTok. It has to have a text message notification.
00:06:11.510 Speaker 1 Or, you know, ideally, it has something on the lower part of the, the ladder. So
00:06:16.390 Speaker 1 when you partake of things that are very highly stimulating of dopamine, you crash
00:06:20.950 Speaker 1 your dopamine well below the baseline, baseline. The more you whipsaw back and
00:06:25.870 Speaker 1 forth, the lower your average baseline dopamine gets. It gets lower and
00:06:31.590 Speaker 1 lower and lower and lower till you're just sort of bouncing off rock bottom here.
00:06:37.090 Speaker 1 There's a lot of people stuck in that, just sort of smacking off the rock bottom
00:06:42.329 Speaker 1 over and over again. TikTok, depression. TikTok, depression.
00:06:46.730 Speaker 1 [laughs] I gotta go to work. I guess I'll go to work.
00:06:54.970 Speaker 1 What's interesting is the moment you remove the highest rung of the ladder,
00:07:01.630 Speaker 1 what happens is ... Say you remove TikTok from your phone. "I'm done with this crap.
00:07:06.990 Speaker 1 I'm not doing it anymore."
00:07:10.190 Speaker 1 What happens is
00:07:13.030 Speaker 1 trash TV is now suddenly very appealing. [laughs] "I guess I will watch this
00:07:18.910 Speaker 1 reality TV show. I just didn't have the motivation to watch it before, but now I
00:07:24.110 Speaker 1 will." Until you remove that rung. [laughs] You move one lower,
00:07:30.790 Speaker 1 right? I don't know, it's Game of Thrones, right? Cool. Finally. I'll go watch Mad
00:07:34.750 Speaker 1 Men. Something like it, right? I don't know. I'll watch Breaking, Breaking Bad.
00:07:39.350 Speaker 1 Until you remove that rung of the ladder. "Well, fine. I guess, I don't know, I'll
00:07:44.690 Speaker 1 go listen to a funny podcast." If you just keep taking away the rungs of the ladder,
00:07:50.110 Speaker 1 you cannot climb any higher. This is by self-restraint, essentially,
00:07:56.070 Speaker 1 for those of you who have it. And for those of us who don't, we have lots of other
00:08:00.250 Speaker 1 tricks that I will not go into in this episode. Suffice to say, if you are not
00:08:05.450 Speaker 1 allowed, for some reason, it's not permissible to climb higher on the dopamine
00:08:09.950 Speaker 1 ladder, the highest rung becomes very appealing to you. This principle is
00:08:15.910 Speaker 1 true no matter how low the highest rung is. That is why this is a
00:08:21.990 Speaker 1 fascinating tool and concept. So if you remove all the rungs above
00:08:28.390 Speaker 1 passion work, audiobook, thoughtful podcast, reading a physical book,
00:08:34.990 Speaker 1 doing my job,
00:08:37.350 Speaker 1 suddenly those things become incredibly pleasurable and very desirable.
00:08:43.370 Speaker 1 Because before, when TikTok was available way up here, you could not even dream of
00:08:48.510 Speaker 1 doing those things until the penalty for not doing them was so high that, "Fine, I
00:08:54.270 Speaker 1 guess I'll do my job."
00:08:56.830 Speaker 1 That's how that happens. When you have things lower on the dopamine ladder, they
00:09:02.590 Speaker 1 don't spike your dopamine very much. Whoop, whoop. It's very sustainable.
00:09:08.570 Speaker 1 It doesn't harm your baseline dopamine. In fact, that level of stability
00:09:14.250 Speaker 1 tends to make your baseline dopamine go up or recover to a healthy amount, to the
00:09:20.110 Speaker 1 point where you're just kinda motivated and happy and chill and good, like,
00:09:26.810 Speaker 1 basically all the time.
00:09:29.690 Speaker 1 So when you start taking those rungs out of the top, you can't climb any higher. You
00:09:35.390 Speaker 1 never spike your dopamine, so you never crash, so you're never totally exhausted.
00:09:40.370 Speaker 1 Your baseline dopamine's pretty much always good. You're never bouncing off rock
00:09:44.030 Speaker 1 bottom. You have a very chill, happy existence.
00:09:49.350 Speaker 1 But this isn't happen- this doesn't happen by default. Now, a lot of people have
00:09:54.150 Speaker 1 enough self-control to be able to do this, where they can have TikTok on their phone
00:10:00.630 Speaker 1 and not completely fall apart. Many of us cannot do that. So for those of us who
00:10:06.270 Speaker 1 can't, that's today's lesson. This worked really well for me. I just
00:10:12.310 Speaker 1 remove all the top rungs of the ladder. Not only, I remove the middle rungs of the
00:10:16.330 Speaker 1 ladder. I don't even, like, listen to podcasts except on weekends. I have rules for
00:10:22.010 Speaker 1 everything, and it seems insane from the outside, but this is why.
00:10:28.309 Speaker 1 Because my highest rung is so low, it's so low that the thought of practicing violin
00:10:34.690 Speaker 1 actually sounds kind of fun. Reading a book about the history of humanity or
00:10:39.630 Speaker 1 agrarian societies, oh, okay, I could do that. I never would have dreamed of doing
00:10:45.090 Speaker 1 those things before I removed the other rungs. Because if they were there, I would
00:10:50.570 Speaker 1 be chatting online. I would be watching a TV show. I would watch, I would just do
00:10:55.210 Speaker 1 vapid web browsing. Sure, I'll use social media.
00:10:59.830 Speaker 1 Until you get to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, and it's all over. Because that's
00:11:03.830 Speaker 1 the kind of brain I have, and a lot of other people are like this sometimes, even if
00:11:08.270 Speaker 1 they're not like it all the time. Think about this principle the next time you find
00:11:12.550 Speaker 1 yourself just feeling, like, trash, unmotivated. Start removing rungs from the
00:11:18.170 Speaker 1 dopamine ladder. You know what the higher rungs are. Here's how you know.
00:11:25.890 Speaker 1 If you're thinking, "Ugh, I really don't wanna do exercise, cooking,
00:11:32.050 Speaker 1 chores, read that book, do that homework. I really don't wanna do those things,"
00:11:38.330 Speaker 1 that's because you have too many rungs above it. Just start knocking them out. How
00:11:42.570 Speaker 1 do you know what the higher rungs are? It's what you want to do instead. [laughs]
00:11:47.910 Speaker 1 Pretty much. And, uh, yeah, that's basically it. Whatever it is you want to do
00:11:53.450 Speaker 1 instead of the thing you wish you could do, that is a higher rung on the dopamine
00:11:57.730 Speaker 1 ladder. Just remove it, and keep removing them until, "Well, dang, this homework is
00:12:03.470 Speaker 1 actually pretty interesting. That book was pretty cool. I'm glad I read that." It
00:12:08.070 Speaker 1 works for me. It works for my kids. I see this every time with them.
00:12:14.250 Speaker 1 They will
00:12:16.918 Speaker 1 If video games are available, they'll play video games. If video game time is up,
00:12:21.918 Speaker 1 they will watch TV, like vapid TV shows. If they're not allowed to watch vapid TV
00:12:27.298 Speaker 1 shows, they'll watch longer, more thoughtful TV shows. If those are removed, they
00:12:32.098 Speaker 1 will watch movies, the kinds of movies they've seen before that are super familiar
00:12:37.838 Speaker 1 because they spike that dopamine. If I remove the Minions and more movies
00:12:44.518 Speaker 1 and I force them to watch something with a long plot line and characters that
00:12:48.678 Speaker 1 actually talk, they'll watch that. If I remove all electronics,
00:12:54.758 Speaker 1 suddenly playing with toys inside seems like fun. If I say, you
00:13:00.718 Speaker 1 can't play inside. I'm not going to play with you. You've been inside for too long.
00:13:05.798 Speaker 1 Get out of here. Suddenly, playing outside seems like a lot of fun. What's very
00:13:11.518 Speaker 1 interesting is whether it's them or me, we cannot even enjoy
00:13:17.538 Speaker 1 things on the lower rungs of the dopamine ladder. And that is really what you're
00:13:22.197 Speaker 1 giving up. If you insist on keeping your higher rungs, and if you don't have a brain
00:13:27.698 Speaker 1 like me, congratulations, I guess you don't need to worry about this video. But when
00:13:32.598 Speaker 1 I have higher rungs available to me, I cannot even enjoy the lower rungs.
00:13:39.798 Speaker 1 Sitting down with a book is painful. It's just straight up misery, right?
00:13:46.818 Speaker 1 But when reading a book is the only thing available to me, it's that or stare at a
00:13:51.098 Speaker 1 wall. Reading a book is pretty interesting. What's more is I
00:13:56.858 Speaker 1 actually enjoy it again. And not only is it healthier for me, but I like being
00:14:02.698 Speaker 1 able to enjoy reading a book. I like being able to practice the violin without it
00:14:07.898 Speaker 1 being painful to start, painful during, watching the clock. When can I be done?
00:14:14.598 Speaker 1 I just want to enjoy it. And I have found that removing all the rungs above where
00:14:20.518 Speaker 1 I want to spend my time to be one of the most effective methods of controlling my
00:14:26.258 Speaker 1 own motivation and happiness. I hope it works for you.