How Dopamine Fasting Trains Your Brain to Enjoy Doing Hard Things
Protect your brain’s reward system from being hijacked by cheap dopamine spikes.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, drive, and craving. Dopamine is released when the brain anticipates a reward, such as food, sex, entertainment, money, success, etc.
You’ll feel lazy, unmotivated, and lethargic when you're in a low dopamine state. You’ll feel excited, motivated, and driven to get some stuff done when you're in a high dopamine state. That’s why dopamine is often called ‘the motivation molecule.’
We need dopamine signals to get into action to get that reward — which is what we experience as motivation or as a craving (for a chocolate chip cookie, for example).
If we then get that reward, more dopamine is released to reinforce feelings of joy and reward.
The Dark Side of Dopamine
Dopamine has both a good side and a dark side. The good side is that dopamine sparks the motivation and drive to improve ourselves, build a better life, or pursue certain goals. Without dopamine, we’d be couch potatoes who’d never create or achieve anything valuable.
But the dark side of dopamine is that our dopamine system can easily be hijacked. Artificial substances and modern-day distractions are purposefully designed to trigger an unnaturally high dopamine spike.
For example:
- Junk food (200% dopamine spike)
- Drugs (300% — 1000% dopamine spike)
- Nicotine (40% — 100% dopamine spike)
- Alcohol (40% — 200% dopamine spike)
- Gambling (500% — 1000% dopamine spike)
- Social media (100% dopamine spike)
- Porn (250% dopamine spike)
- Netflix or TV (100% dopamine spike)
- Video games (150% dopamine spike)
These artificial things like junk food produce an unnatural high spike in dopamine — making us feel good and rewarded without any effort. It’s easy, instant gratification.
It’s cheap dopamine. And cheap dopamine will ruin your life if you’re not careful.
When we can get maximum mental stimulation with minimum effort, we’ll quickly turn into couch potatoes who stop producing, creating, growing, and moving forward.
That’s why Naval Ravikant said, “The modern devil is cheap dopamine.”
Cheap Dopamine vs. Earned Dopamine
All that cheap dopamine floods the brain’s reward system, destroying our motivation to get things done, be productive, and pursue long-term goals. In other words, cheap dopamine makes us numb to earned dopamine.
Earned dopamine is the natural dopamine release that comes from healthy, more productive actions:
- Working out
- Pursuing a goal
- Working in a flow state
- Improving ourselves
- Making progress on a project
- Learning new skills
The problem is that earned dopamine is a lot less potent than cheap dopamine, while it does require more effort, energy, and time to obtain.
Looking from our brain’s perspective, why even bother with earned dopamine — which is less potent but requires more effort — when we can get cheap dopamine without having to do any work?
No wonder people struggle more than ever with low motivation and productivity.
Dopamine Spike → Dopamine Crash
Studies have found that, after a dopamine spike, dopamine levels tend to crash and drop below baseline. And the stronger the spike, the stronger the crash.
When dopamine crashes below baseline, you’ll have practically zero drive to get anything done. Remember, dopamine is an essential neurotransmitter for drive and motivation. When we’re in a low dopamine state, we’re in a state of low motivation and drive.
“Prolonged consumption of high-dopamine substances and environments eventually lead to a dopamine deficit state.” — Anna Lembke (author of Dopamine Nation)
So, when you start the day flooding the brain with cheap dopamine (e.g., scrolling through social media), a dopamine crash will follow shortly after.
Now, when it’s time to get to work, your dopamine levels have already dropped — leaving you feeling unmotivated to start on your tasks.
Instead, the brain will crave going back to that dopamine high again.
That’s why one of my most fundamental productivity rules is to keep the first 2–4 hours of the day free from highly stimulating distractions.
This helps me maintain a natural sense of drive and motivation to get stuff done and make progress toward my goals.
When dopamine drops below baseline, you’ll not only experience a lack of motivation, but you’ll also experience a craving for more instant gratification, as the brain wants to get that easy dopamine high again.
And that’s the danger of cheap dopamine; it triggers our brain to crave more and more of it:
- Once you start scrolling through social media, it’s hard to put your phone away
- When you finish an episode of your favorite series, you feel the urge to watch ‘one more’
- Once you had that first chocolate chip cookie, there’s a craving for more, and it becomes hard to stop
That’s why dopamine isn’t just called the ‘motivation molecule’, but also the ‘molecule of more’.
Once the brain has had that initial taste of cheap dopamine, it will crave more and more of it — setting you up for a distracted, unproductive day.
The Power of Dopamine “Fasting”
Dopamine fasting is a popular practice in today’s stimulation-overload world — and it can help reduce our addiction to cheap dopamine.
The name technically isn’t correct because fasting from dopamine isn’t possible and something you shouldn’t want (remember, dopamine is essential for drive & motivation).
Rather, dopamine fasting is about minimizing exposure to artificial sources designed to trigger cheap dopamine.
Dopamine fasting doesn’t have to be extreme. Even simple daily habits can be highly effective to reset your dopamine levels:
- No social media before noon (I use App Block to make this easy)
- No video games before completing all your tasks
- No Netflix/TV/YouTube before 5:00 pm
- No smartphone for the first 60 minutes of the day
- Go for walks without your phone
- Practice more offline habits (meditation, reading, journaling, etc.)
However, dopamine fasting can also be practiced in more drastic ways, such as:
- Schedule a phone-free day once a month
- Schedule a technology-free day every three months
- Go for 30 days without your number one source of cheap dopamine (e.g., social media, porn, junk food)
No matter which dopamine “fasting” method you choose, what matters most is that you regularly take a break from cheap dopamine.
Because if you don’t, your brain’s reward system will become desensitized to earned dopamine, destroying your motivation to be productive and work towards your long-term goals.
My Personal Experience
I’ve experienced the dopamine paradox myself during a particularly rough period in my life. Cheap dopamine had a complete grip on me. I gambled a lot, spent hours playing video games, and binge-watched a ton of Netflix.
My brain's reward system was completely flooded by cheap dopamine, and I had zero drive to do anything productive. All I wanted was more cheap dopamine and highly stimulating distractions.
But through daily dopamine fasting techniques, I’ve reset my dopamine levels and regained a natural sense of drive and motivation.
So, I can share from first-hand experience that we have to protect our dopamine system from being overstimulated.
Otherwise, the brain will keep craving cheap dopamine and instant gratification — and living a normal, productive life starts feeling dull, as explained by Dr Yildiz using the DeltaFosB concept.
