Notes taken mainly from memory, please listen to the podcast to confirm
Andrew Huberman Podcast Episode 12 Notes how to increase motivation and drive
- Dopamine is released in anticipation
Dopamine makes u take action, usually towards some kind of goal
- novelty is key in motivation, and novelty e.g. the concept of a new task or a new reward will release more dopamine
- Dopamine is a substrate for adrenaline
- Nicotine increases dopamine by 150%
Dopamine is a double-edged-sword
There’s a crash associated with dopamine. Like the proverbial pleasure and pain hypothesis. There’s a release of prolactin after a dopamine increase
Prolactin makes us search for whats next.
Dopamine and food- dopamine is released but we want more and more because of prolactin
- Intermittent positive reinforcement is related to dopamine relase and is what makes social media and gambling addictive. A psychologist did some interesting experiments with pigeons back in the day and these principles are still used today to keep people addicted to certain behaviours.
- If you want to keep yourself or your team motivated, interimmitently reward success with some kind of celebration. For example, randomly, one in three times your team gets a scientific paper published, reward them – don’t reward them each time and don’t reward in any kind of a patten.
- serotonin makes us feel content, we need dopamine to find and try new things
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below is a video about skinner’s pigeon experiments
Just to emphasise, my Andrew Huberman podcast notes shown above are paraphrased and you should watch or listen to the show yourself for 100% accuracy.