How to Leverage 4 Key Hormones to Skyrocket Your Productivity and Focus
Hack your physiology to get more done.
Your ability to focus and be productive comes down to a delicate balance of certain hormones.
And unfortunately, our modern lifestyles are throwing this balance out of whack. But this means with a few simple changes, we can regain control.
Here’s how you can leverage 4 key hormones to boost your productivity and increase your focus.
1) Dopamine
Dopamine is the hormone of “more”.
It’s what pushes us to pursue something. While often referred to as a pleasure hormone, it’s actually related to seeking. Specifically, seeking out what we don’t already have.
When we see or hear about something we want, dopamine rises. Once we get whatever it is, dopamine drops.
Unfortunately, there are so many cheap sources of dopamine available today:
- Junk food
- Video games
- Social media
- Notifications
These are all negatively impacting our dopamine system and making it so much harder to get dopamine from things that will actually improve our lives.
Dopamine leads to motivation.
If you’re flooding your system with cheap dopamine, what do you think that will do to your motivation to do hard things like write an article or go to the gym?
What You Can Do
Your first step is to limit cheap sources of dopamine:
- Turn off notifications
- Reduce junk food consumption
- Avoid video games (and games on your phone)
- Limit social media use
Then, you need to hack your system to get dopamine from things that will help you grow.
- Set big, meaningful goals
- Break these down into small daily tasks
- Cross your daily tasks off as you complete them
- Measure your progress
When you can see you’ve made progress (got views on your article, made money online, decreased your body fat, increased your max squat) you’ll get a hit of dopamine.
This will motivate you to keep chasing this result.
2) Oxytocin
Oxytocin is a reward chemical.
It makes us feel good when we pursue something that fulfills a basic need.
It’s related to social behaviors and emotional responses, but also plays a massive role in focus, productivity, and resilience, and according to Steven Kotler, causes “our intrinsic fire [to] burn that much hotter.”
This increases your ability to focus.
Oxytocin also reduces our attention to negative and potentially threatening social cues — which means we can better focus on the task at hand, which will subsequently boost our productivity.
What You Can Do
- Spend time with loved ones
- Increase physical touch
- Pursue your passions and curiosities
- Play
3) Endorphins
Endorphins are a feel-good, pain-relieving hormone.
They lead to a relaxed kind of happiness. They also help reduce stress and boost mood.
Low endorphin levels can lead to depression and anxiety, as well as mood swings.
Endorphins help your brain stay switched on even in times of high stress, and reduce anxiety when trying something new.
What You Can Do
- Exercise
- Eat cocoa
- Laugh
- Listen to your favorite music
4) Serotonin
Serotonin is involved with sleep, mood, and happiness.
Leveraging serotonin will help improve each of these, which will have a massive impact on your ability to focus and be productive.
When your serotonin levels are balanced, your mood is stable, your focus increases, and you’ll be happier.
What You Can Do
- Increase tryptophan (an amino acid) consumption — turkey, eggs, cheese, salmon
- Exercise
- Get outside into the sun
- Remind yourself of your strengths
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