The most important neurotransmitter: Dopamine

We are probably all addicted to sitting down and mindlessly watching videos, playing our favourite games, and scrolling through social media for hours. And, in fact, we can do so without any thought at all and with extreme concentration. But, perhaps, just an hour of studying, exercising, or building a side project makes us procrastinate till the very end.

Yet, we know with certainty and logic that studying, exercising, or building our side projects will yield us returns in the near future. Is it the case that we are tuned to not do anything productive at all? Given the choice without consequences, we are much happier picking the brainless and least effortful actions. It just takes too much out of us to exert effort upon something that is hard to do.

Do you sometimes ponder over why others are just able to get out of bed early, study for hours on end, keep an exercising routine, or to do so many things on the side?

According to psychology, our brain contains a brain neurotransmitter and it’s called Dopamine. Most of us may know it as the mood, reward, and motivation neuromodulator molecule. Dopamine gives us the motivation and drive to acquire or do something. Many lab experiments on rats being infused or rejected of dopamine (in 1985, 1988, 2006, 2009, 2018, 2020) shed some light on how dopamine motivates us to do things.

Rats experience surges of dopamine were frantically trying to pull levers for no tangible reward until they died, scurried around intensive and elaborate mazy labyrinths, and have sexual intercourse until they were on the brink of death. It is as if they are on an overdose of drugs, refusing to eat, drink, or sleep – just being in a frenzy of what they are doing till complete exhaustion – kind of like those individuals who study for 15 hours a day in the library.

Yet, the study that shed light on the true effects of dopamine would be on rats with their dopamine being inhibited. They just couldn’t get up to do anything. They were dispirited, lacking all motivation, and basically being like a potato. To these rats, even just a few steps to food or water is as good as asking them to run a marathon. Nothing was even worth getting up for and life appears meaningless. Yet, when food was being placed directly in their mouths, they were enjoying their meals! Basically, dopamine is the key driver for our motivation and will.

Our mind makes decisions and sets our priorities based on the estimated amount of dopamine we will get from completing a task. We would probably not feel motivated to act on a task that releases only a small amount of dopamine. On the other hand, we will be extremely motivated to complete a task that we deem will produce lots of dopamine. We may even feel that the task is the best in the world.

For instance, we are highly motivated and excited when we have our favourite foods placed in front of us – such as that of desserts, fried food, and scrumptious indulgences. However, the abovementioned food may cause long-term harm to our health. We place emphasis on the short-term rewards and choose to forsake the long-term detriments to our health.

Similarly, we are unable to see the short-term effects of exercising or studying and would therefore find it hard to motivate ourselves to complete these tasks day after day. In fact, we may develop a vicious spiral downwards. An obese person may find it hopeless to exercise at all since the end goal of being slim one day may take a good 3 to 5 years. Students with perpetually low grades may feel even more dejected and thus give up all will and not adopt a study strategy to further improve the chances of pulling up their grades.

Our monkey brains are not able to dissuade ourselves from carrying out harmful activities and we can observe that from drug addicts, incessant smokers, and binge eaters. These activities release lots of dopamine, and it encourages us to pursue doing it more despite us knowing the long-term consequences to our health. In fact, the more random the reward, the higher the dopamine kick. That is also why gambling is such a highly stimulating addiction and we get hooked to it so easily! Losing more money and adopting the mindset of the gambler’s fallacy further enhances the expected dopamine reward later on – further pulling us down the rabbit hole.

We are also predisposed to adopting tolerance for bodily changes. For example, frequent alcohol drinkers develop a tolerance for alcohol and thus require more alcohol to become drunk or feel the high. However, the harm done to our body has multiplied considering we are consuming more alcohol. Our brains get used to having high levels of dopamine and develop a dopamine tolerance the more we do that particular activity – we are less motivated to do productive activities even if we originally felt the urge to do them since they release low levels of dopamine. As such, we fall back on mindlessly scrolling through social media, watching videos, or playing games since they make us “relax” and produce huge amounts of dopamine to keep our focus on them. Addicts with withdrawal symptoms experience a lack of dopamine for their previous highs and they cannot enjoy low dopamine behaviours anymore.

It's the same as our experience in investing. Most of us that think we are experienced in the world of finance may feel a dopamine high. To exacerbate matters, people exposed to investments may have come across articles of high returns from more risky asset classes such as that of Forex, Commodities, and Cryptocurrencies, or even more risky instruments such as that of Options. The standard disciplined long-term investing way just doesn’t cut it in giving us the dopamine. Unlike our less financially savvy predecessors where a 2% 10-year fixed deposit would drive high dopamine levels for them, we are too obsessed with unrealistic double- or triple-digit percentage gains on our portfolio in the shortest amount of time possible.

However, do take note that although these are alternative ways to invest and grow one’s wealth, they can be equally dangerous with a misstep as we escalate our holdings in these riskier means of investing. In this game of long-term wealth building, we have to be mindful of our dopamine tolerance in seeing the growth of our investments. Alternative asset classes may reap some profits right now but remember the idea of survivorship bias and that a broken clock is always right for two seconds in a day. Short-term pleasures and success may not be a long-term benefit for us.

To combat this phenomenon, and to reset out dopamine receptors, we have to stray away from our usual excitement. I believe most of us have heard of the story of a rich man that wanted to find the porridge which an elderly woman gave him while he was starving. However, even the best restaurant chefs aren’t able to replicate the flavour he was looking out for. The very reason is that this rich man is too used to good food on a daily basis such that his dopamine tolerance is way too high. However, as he was starving, anything – even a plain bowl of porridge will give him a surge in dopamine levels. And true enough, a chef asked this rich man to starve for a day, and the simple porridge he served fits the rich man’s palate – much to the surprise of the rich man.

Similarly, in investing, although we may not be able to stop entirely the alternative investments we delve in as investments are not for a day or two, let us always be mindful of the potential risks we are undertaking. We shall only indulge in the high dopamine reward after the low dopamine action. Just like how we may try to incentivise exercising with a cheat day or encourage studying by giving us a good meal at the end of the day, perhaps placing a portion in alternative investments should only be carried out once we have set aside our portfolio for safer wealth accumulation. This way, we can enjoy the benefits of diversification at the same time!

A good rule of thumb would be 80-20. 80% low dopamine behaviours for 20% of high dopamine behaviours – just like how 1 hour of study is followed by 15 minutes of social media or games. Doing so also builds the discipline for us to achieve our goals safely as our dopamine levels are maintained under control!

If you're interested to chat on this topic or to exchange ideas, please feel free to drop me a message on Telegram @elijah2212, LinkedIn, or through email elijah.thj@gmail.com!

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