Hacking Your Dopamine to Do Hard Things
Do you know what a doctor will tell you if you fracture or bruise a rib?
"Eh, it'll heal on it's own, just give it some time."
The armor that protects the important bits keeping you alive. They'll fix themselves, probably.
I destroyed one of my ribs on day two of a five day snowboarding trip. I relied on a steady supply of ibuprofen and snowboarded the next three days, obviously, but now a few weeks later my ribs are still recovering and I can't lift weights.
Not being able to lift sucks. Not being able to lift when I've been training to join the 1000 pound club sucks even more.
To maintain my fitness and sanity I've been doing cardio instead. I ran a marathon less than a year ago and love running but my body weight fluctuates too wildly depending on whether I'm strength training or marathon training.
As a happy medium, I've decided to become a stair-master master. Stair stepping workouts are mostly cardio but build more muscle than running.
I've learned that becoming a stair-master master boils down to how long you can deal with the pain and mind numbingness that is hours of climbing flights of stairs. It sounds obvious, but this is actually a fantastic opportunity for using dopamine advantageously.
Video games are, by definition, a waste of time. If you're trying to pass time they're perfectly designed for that, but "passing time" = burning up a resource you will never get back. Video games are a virtual crack that gives a great hit of dopamine and can be a fantastic escape from life, but passing time to escape life isn't really my thing.
Passing time to escape life isn't my thing, unless... I'm trying to make my brain forget that I'm climbing up 100 flights of stairs and burning 700 calories in an hour.
A quick Google search shows that League of Legends is generally considered the most addictive video game. The studio behind League of Legends created a more mobile friendly but equally addictive game named Teamfight Tactics which I consider virtual crack.
I only allow myself to play the game when I'm on a stair stepper but the results have been fantastic. I've burned ~9000 calories over 12 hours of game time / stair master time.
Watching TV or YouTube is a decent strategy too but I don't think it's dopamine rich enough to overpower the pain and mind numbingness that is stair stepping. It can probably overpower treadmill incline walking but to get through unlimited stair stepping I think you have to bring out Teamfight Tactics.
So, the results of my 1 month study are as follows: The stronger the dopamine release, the more pain you can withstand and calories you can burn. Dopamine hacking to burn calories and build muscle is way too underrated of a strategy. Try it.