🤩 Dopamine 101

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Hey there! Welcome back to The Flow by Flocus. If you’re new around here, welcome! 👋  You can catch up on our previous editions right here.

This week: It’s all about dopamine — what it is, why quality matters, and how to use it to build the life you want. Let’s get into it!

🧪 Dopamine 101

As you probably already know, dopamine is your brain’s “reward” chemical.

Not all dopamine is created equal, though — there are 2 types:

💎 High-quality dopamine

• Requires effort or exertion from you, includes activities that provide delayed gratification, makes you healthier and more resilient in the long term.

• Example sources: Exercise, nutritious meals, sunlight and outdoors, engaging in creative hobbies, time with loved ones, acts of kindness, personal development

🍿 Low-quality dopamine

• Requires little to no effort, includes activities that provide instant gratification, feels like a shortcut, easy to binge or overindulge, tends to be unhealthy

• Example sources: Social media scrolling, binge-watching, junk food, impulse buying, mindless gaming, excessive news consumption, push notifications

Here’s the kicker: the human brain is designed to chase “low-quality” dopamine to conserve energy and keep us safe. Unfortunately, this instinct does us more harm than good in modern times.

To complicate things even more, many sources of low-quality dopamine, like TV and social media, are also designed to keep us engaged for as long as possible.

The good news: Your brain can be rewired for healthier habits! But first, let’s explore one thing that makes all the difference to your dopamine — how you spend your free time.

📺 Leisure 101

If you’re like most of us, you probably seek dopamine in your free time, after you’ve finished work, school, and other responsibilities.

This is where you might run into trouble. Unstructured leisure time makes you more likely to seek (and binge on) low-quality dopamine.

It turns into a vicious cycle, and before you know it, you’ve spent countless hours scrolling your socials or binging Netflix instead of, say, practicing guitar.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using social media — everything in moderation (which we’ll talk more about in just a minute).

The bottom line? To cultivate high-quality dopamine, do more high-quality leisure activities. Like trying a new skill, crafting something, or exercising outdoors.

Scroll on for a step-by-step guide to set yourself up for success!

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Now, here’s how to integrate more high-quality dopamine sources in your life!

💎 How to Boost HQ Dopamine

Boosting your dopamine with high quality sources doesn’t have to be complex. Here’s a simple, step-by-step guide to get started.

🧼 1. Assess your dopamine intake

For this step, ask yourself 3 questions:

• How much happiness and fulfillment am I getting out of my non-leisure activities (like work, school, home, etc.?)

• How do I currently spend most of my leisure time?

• Are these activities moving me closer to my goals, or further away?

🪁 2. Make a leisure plan

Now that you know what you need to work on, it’s time to figure out how you’d prefer to spend your free time instead.

Ironically, the key for this step is to avoid over-planning. Pick 1 or 2 high-quality leisure activities to practice, decide the first baby step you need to take to do it, and schedule it.

Commit to taking that first baby step at the scheduled times, and design your environment in a way that makes these decisions easy and effortless.

🤏 3. Everything in moderation

Your brain and body are complex systems that require lots of energy. Spending 100% of your free time on high-quality leisure is going to burn you out fast.

So don’t beat yourself for those Netflix and pizza nights. The key is to make these activities the exception and not the norm.

Plus, you can boost any “low” quality activity by adding an offline social element — invite a friend to join you, make it a party, or start your own club!

🪅 Flocus Picks

A curated list of things worth sharing.

• Digital Minimalism (Book) — The concepts of “high-quality leisure” and “leisure plans” come from this Cal Newport book. If you haven’t read it yet, we highly recommend it!

• High-Quality Leisure Activity Examples (Article) — Need more inspo? Check out this list of high-quality leisure activities to try from Deprocrastination!

• The Dopamine Detox Trend Needs to End (Video) — Fads explains what the internet gets wrong about dopamine, why 24-hour dopamine detoxes usually don’t work, and why delayed gratification is the key to rewiring your brain

🖥️ Flocus: Your Personal Productivity Dashboard

Use Flocus to support both your productivity and quality leisure! Set up a customized timer to balance work and breaks, then unwind with dreamy backgrounds and relaxing playlists.

When it comes to smashing your goals and adding more fulfilling experiences to your life, dopamine and leisure go hand in hand.

Apply some of these ideas to your schedule this week, and let us know how it goes!

Until next Sunday,

Flocus Team