To increase dopamine considerably. And why doing it all obsessively is bad.
Dopamine is your brain’s reward juice. It is the orgasm of your brain when you achieve something amazing. When you meditate for more than an hour, run a half marathon, workout in a gym intensely, win a huge business contract, get an award or listen to your music. It creates pleasure and it is purely biochemical. The cause is biochemical, the effect sometimes might be healthy or even addictive.
It gives you the kick you need, sometimes even making you amotivational for real things. If you are an entrepreneur, the major high you should get is by building your business, increasing cash flows year on year, winning big contracts and building your team. If you run marathons and get the dopamine you need, you wouldn’t take as many efforts required to build the business. Pain fuels action, not happiness. Happiness is the effect of the action. I observe rich people closely and the only dopamine they consider worth pursuing is the thrill of making money. They achieve it because they attach money making with the dopamine they get out it. Good entrepreneurs are damn focussed. They see business as a source of dopamine. They do not need alternative sources of dopamine. Many employers use incentives as a potential dopamine producer – encouraging reward-motivated behavior from their employees. In that way, the human body can be biochemically manipulated to produce the results you want. When you seek more pleasure, the dopamine threshold becomes higher. We call it hedonic treadmill, it is the tendency to quickly return to the stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative changes in life. It is like we keep walking on the treadmill to stay in the same place.
I do not believe in motivation or willpower. We all seek dopamine. Our brains search for sources of dopamine. People who are massively successful find their sources of dopamine through their areas of work. The Japanese say it is ikigai, meaning a ‘reason for being’. That creates a considerable level of happiness throughout our lives. If you relate what you do to dopamine, rest of things will be put together sub-consciously.
What makes you feel thrilled at work? Find that core and keep doing it.