Effective ways to reset hedonic adaptation
Hi friends,
Since last update I went on a couple adventures: one to Maine for my 10th college reunion, and one with my family to Tahoe to visit my brother.
Effective ways to reset hedonic adaptation
Sometimes I fall into a YouTube hole and emerge 4 hours later, angry at myself for wasting so much time. I’m sure I’m not alone here. The hedonic treadmill is something I definitely struggle with frequently. Dopamine fasting is a thing I see people talk about, but does it really work long-term?
Dopamine Nation is the best resource I’ve read about the neuroscience behind this. In it, Dr. Anna Lembke explains that pleasure and pain exist on the same continuum:
Science teaches us that every pleasure exacts a price, and the pain that follows is longer lasting and more intense than the pleasure that gave rise to it. With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases.
Getting straight to the point — “what is the best way to fix my dopamine level?” — the book offers two ways that stood out:
#1: Pain: this could be taking cold showers or doing Spartan Races. One example from the book is a friend group that organizes ice bath parties.
#2: Radical honesty: I was quite surprised by this. Lying releases dopamine. This habit can snowball until we lie just for the sake of lying. Telling the truth to others—and telling a truthful story to yourself—is a very effective counter against this slippery dopamine slope.
📚 Reading corner
Buffett’s advice is different: he tells the man to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.
Things I’ve been enjoying
📝 7 Absolute Truths I Unlearned as Junior Developer — Monica Lent
🎥 Top Gun: Maverick
Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.
—Brenda Ueland, journalist, editor, and writer (1891-1985)