Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. It’s the dopamine you get from reading. From planning. From learning. But never doing. Information gathering as sport. Jammed into neat little dopamine feedback loops that convince you that you're doing something productive and valuable. You're just one piece of information away from the big breakthrough. You'll start when your business plan is perfected. You'll meet your partner when you've scrolled through another round of profiles. You'll get that dream job when you have one more degree in hand. Your entire life will change when you realize the world isn't run by a bunch of geniuses. The world is being run by a bunch of normal people with abnormal bias for action. The answer you seek is hidden in the action you avoid. Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. Get your dopamine from action.

Raising dopamine won't fix your libido: - Some dopamine is required for libido, but driving it too high backfires - At high arousal you can't engage the parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, the one that produces physical arousal - The result is chronic pursuit with an inability to perform, in men and women - Amphetamine and cocaine users show this exact pattern: hyper aroused, unable to perform @hubermanlab

Breaking your session drops dopamine below baseline: - Finishing 45 min of writing with no phone and no internet gives you a dopamine reward you generated yourself - Break your own protocol at the 50 min mark to grab the phone and dopamine drops below where it sat before you started - Unexpected wins release the most dopamine of all but you can't surprise yourself with a behavior you planned Finish the block. The reward is internal and you are the one making it. @hubermanlab

What raises your dopamine 2.5x without a crash: - Cold showers and cold water exposure produce long lasting 2.5x increases in dopamine - L-tyrosine is a dopamine precursor. Caffeine increases how many dopamine receptors you have so the dopamine already floating around works better - Picture a wave pool. Consistent waves of decent size keep rolling up and down. One giant blast sloshes the water out and you have to take time off to reset - You don't crash from cold or caffeine. That happens when people push dopamine up with drugs @hubermanlab