Something Kevin Durant (undisputed top 3 NBA player) said stuck out to me. It was the end of a workout. New trainer. Famous for being different and pushing the envelope. The session was tough, grueling even. As if Durant was a dirty gym towel, the trainer had wrung him out. And at the end of all of it, the trainer asked him if he enjoyed it. Durant replies, with sweat leaking down his chin, “No. I didn’t enjoy it. But I’ll do it because it’ll help me get better.”

He was in high school.

Greatness isn’t born, greatness is bred.

You see it everywhere.

Kobe Bryant waking up at 4 to get up 1000 shots before practice.

Steve Jobs working fanatically on a new idea.

Russian mathematicians locked up in their attics solving impossible equations.

But what separates them from us?

Why are some people locked in a state of mediocrity while great people are out doing great things everyday?

The short answer: their brains are charged with huge reservoirs of dopamine.

Dopamine is Why We Achieve

Dopamine is released whenever you predict a reward ie. hitting play on your favorite song or getting a notification on your phone. This is why you carry your phone everywhere … even when you’re in the house.

As you move towards the reward, your brain secretes dopamine to keep you focused.

Like cold is the absence of heat, boredom and lack of motivation is just a lack of dopamine.

Your brain feels like whatever you’re doing is not worth the reward or it feels like you can be doing better things.

The brain is a dopamine fiend, but it’s lazy. It will seek out the easiest path to get its fix. But this is not always aligned with our goals.

You’re hit with a deadline. You’re not enthralled with the work so you surf the web, check your phone, do your chores, anything to avoid doing actual work. “Easy” achievements.

Thing is your work becomes even more more boring as a result.

Dopamine Overload

Let’s take an extreme example to the paint the picture.

Cocaine.

It deregulates your brain’s dopamine stabilizers so you’ll secrete more dopamine than usual. It makes for some crazy nights, but when you go back to your crappy 9–5, everything becomes more dull. Nothing is the same anymore.

It’s a classic high peak, low valley situation.

After the cocaine use, the brain has to balance out dopamine secretion by releasing lower levels of dopamine for every other activity. Elongated use will eventually lead to “real-life just isn’t enough anymore.”

Quick. What do you when you first wake up? before you fall asleep?

Look at your phone?

Brush your teeth then look at your phone?

Real life just isn’t enough anymore.

I kid, but you get the point.

We’re bombarded everyday by easy, cheap doses of dopamine.

Video games, mobile apps, advertisements are all designed with neuroscience in mind. Grocery stores strategically place junk food where you enter and leave because they know it’ll cause you to buy more.

This all takes advantage of the fact that many of us go through life without any focus, without any goals.

Think about all the people in your life more successful than you. Are they really that much smarter than you? that much more talented than you?

No.

It all comes back to dopamine or just how strong your desire is.

The Rich Get Richer

Highly-creative people, geniuses create incredibly developed visions, they piece together connections normal people can’t see, they think at a higher level.

All byproducts of having huge dopamine reservoirs.

Higher dopamine levels have been show to lead to increases in focus, motivation or desire, and social function.

But what is even more amazing is how these highly-gifted people are able to acquire their surplus of reward juice.

They think and create, they don’t rest until they finish, all they see is the finish line.

And what happens is, by forgoing distractions, they get less dopamine immediately, but it builds up into a massive wave once they’ve achieved.

Having actually created something original, the effects last longer. You know it, it’s called pride.

And it builds. The rich get richer.

It’s the Journey, not the Destination

Then it’s not what we achieve, it’s how.

Do you read the Ikea assembly instructions or do you figure it out yourself?

Google search or do you really try to remember?

Nicolas Carr showed us in 2010 that The Internet is Changing the Way We Think (and basically making us dumb and unfocused). Quote:

“every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”

The easier we make it for ourselves, the dumber we get.

Quick Fix

The quick fix is that there is no quick fix, but here are a few things you can start doing to improve your dopamine efficiency.

No more junk

Phones, video games, television, mindlessly surfing the web. Personally, I still indulge in movies and television, but I make an effort to think and make new connections.

The key is to not let yourself fall into a habit of letting your brain take breaks. Focus is a muscle.

Challenge yourself

Daily. It doesn’t have to be difficult, but simple things like writing out math instead of using a calculator or trying to figure things out instead of going on Google will slowly acclimate your brain to delayed gratification.

Take risks

The key is to take risks you know you have a good chance at succeeding. This creates a feedback loop where you become more confident in your abilities and grow more acclimated to “danger.”

Risk-taking and delayed gratification go hand-in-hand. Entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, explorers, politicians, all share these two characteristics.

Set goals and break them into smaller goals

Dopamine is released everytime you achieve, but long-term goals can be difficult to manage because there is no reward in immediate sight. Break it down and write it down, everytime you pass a goal, cross if off.

This process rewards your brain for staying on-track and keeps you focused without being too mentally draining.

Meditation

Zen monks do some crazy stuff like meditate underneath waterfalls. If that’s not focus, I don’t know what is. They also have some of highest levels of free-flowing dopamine in the world.

You don’t have to be that extreme unless you want to, but regular meditation has been proven to increase dopamine levels by 65%

Know Yourself

As humans, it’s mind boggling to think we’re the manifestation of countless chemical reactions. But the sooner we come to grips with it, the closer we get to self-realization.