Willpower and Dopamine

Written by Aiman Khan

Thumbnail Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

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Dutch athlete, Wim Hof, can stay fully submerged in ice baths and run marathons in freezing temperatures, shirtless. Navy seals famously undergo rigorous training beyond the pale of regular military programs. Top CEOs generally wake up at or before the crack of dawn so they have more hours to tackle multiple projects, while the rest of the world is still sleeping. You might even know someone in your own life who goes above and beyond to pursue more than their peers.

What is it about certain individuals that makes them persevere in the face of relative adversity? What is the basis of grit, and is it reproducible in others? Good habits have always been in the limelight of such discussions, and rightly so. But we often fail to take into account how these habits form and what makes them stick. Knowing the invaluable mechanisms that dictate what ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’ mean to you as an individual can help you hack into your brain. What lifestyle changes you make are entirely up to you, but at least you’ll have the agency of directing your brain rather than it directing you.

  

Willpower and Instant Gratification

Historically, philosophers have grappled with the concept of self-control. Gandhi famously said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Centuries before him, Socrates and Plato called it ‘Enkrateia,’ or power over yourself, with some Greeks idealizing it as the “foundation of all virtues.” Even the New Testament mentions it three times as ‘temperance.’

Maybe you’ve heard of the 1972 Marshmallow Test that has also recently picked up interest on social media: a marshmallow is placed in front of a preschooler who is instructed not to eat it, with the promise of more if they comply. Once the adult is out of the room, the real test begins. Will the child be able to delay their need for instant gratification? Or will they give in, and forego twice the reward? The findings of this experiment show that the children who were able to resist the short-term reward (i.e., eating the marshmallow when the researchers left the room) generally went on to have better life outcomes as measured by educational achievements, SAT scores, and other measures.

This delay of instant gratification is the underpinning of self-discipline, fortitude, or what we call willpower. But willpower is not something you are just born with: like your muscles, it grows stronger the more you train it. Training can involve anything from broad lifestyle shifts like cold showers in the morning, waking up early, or regular exercise down to more specific activities centred around deliberate self-deprivation like non-dominant hand exercises and fasting. At the end of the day, the methods you choose are up to your own discretion and creativity. Even simply making your bed at the start of the day is a great way to foster self-control, especially now that we are in quarantine. 

Limited Energy Resource and Decision Fatigue

Just like a muscle, however, your willpower can get fatigued if you overexert it. In the 1990s, Dr. Roy Baumeister conducted a  fascinating experiment on ego depletion, which involved asking participants to complete a number of mental tasks after they were made to exercise their willpower. Participants were divided into three groups: one that was instructed to eat chocolates, one that was given chocolates and radishes but instructed to only eat the radishes, and the last group, who were fasting. The people that had to eat the radishes performed the worst and gave up the earliest at the frustrating mental tasks. Having to resist the temptation to eat the chocolates seemed to have involved a mental cost which in turn depleted their willpower on their assigned tasks. This energy that feeds our willpower is still unknown and has been contested by some, but it gives us a glimpse at the effects of decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is why most of us are able to perform at a higher level earlier in the day, and why we make poorer decisions when we are overworked or overstimulated. Limiting your harder decision-making for right after you wake up might be one way to tackle the problem. You can also make it easier on yourself by eliminating distractions and temptations altogether. We all know we shouldn’t have our phones in front of us when we’re studying or working. Similarly, you could go so far as to uninstall apps or set a time limit for a short window of access. Furthermore, if you’re cleaning up your diet, don’t go through the snack aisles when you’re at the grocery – or better yet, go to a farmer’s market or an organic whole foods store which don’t even carry as many unhealthy options. How you streamline your decision-making processes is an individual assessment. You don’t have to take it as far as Steve Jobs and Barack Obama in wearing the same two outfits every day, but economizing your willpower and the number of decisions you make per day may lead to more productive choices.

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Dopamine and a Culture of Distraction

The neurotransmitter dopamine is involved with your pursuit of pleasurable activities, but that’s not its only function. When you are engaging in something that you find gratifying (like eating food, sex, or social interactions), dopamine is being released. Dopamine itself does not give us the direct experience of pleasure, rather it’s related to the desire or the motivation that follows your pleasures – the expectation of a reward.

Reward learning happens when we experience novelty. When the reward is greater than what you anticipated, dopamine signalling rises in the brain. However, the reverse is true for when the reward doesn’t measure up to your expectations. This  “reward schedule” is what slot machines take advantage of, and is why gambling can easily become an addiction. This is also why social media that relies on novelty like TikTok can be so addictive: you don’t know what you will get with your next swipe, but when the algorithm delivers something unexpectedly good, the reward pathway becomes strengthened. The association between the reward and the act of swiping is reinforced, driving you to stay on the app in search of the next good clip. These factors of novelty and variability were deliberately engineered into the algorithm to ensure maximum user engagement.

The good news is that we can train ourselves over time to anticipate rewards (even from the most banal of things). The bad news is that we need to first ‘reset’ our brains to their natural levels of dopamine, and de-program ourselves from the bad behaviours that our brains have come to associate with rewards. In essence, we need a dopamine detox.

A detox would mean that once in a while, you need to refrain from any activity that gives you immediate pleasure. That might include music, social media use, or video games. Allow yourself to be bored and restless for an hour or two without reaching for your phone, junk food, or console. Instead, you can use the time to cook, clean, study or just meditate. Teach yourself that it’s okay to do nothing. You can detox once a week or more, and depending on what you need. Moreover, what you detox from will vary. Over time, you can incorporate healthier activities into your detox time that naturally release dopamine like exercising, socializing, and eating the right foods.

You can also pair higher dopamine activities with lower ones. So, if you love listening to podcasts, try a couple of days a week where you only listen to them when you’re doing your dishes or vacuuming. If you love coffee, have it every time you’re studying. By associating these pleasurable activities with the non-pleasurable ones, you’ll be able to piggy-back on the increased dopamine to push you through your activity, all the while associating that behaviour with a reward. Over time, the behaviour will become pleasurable on its own so you won’t need to use higher dopamine activities as a crutch.

 

It takes 60 or more days to form new habits. To power through those first few months, you need a deep reservoir of self-control. While there’s still a lot of science to uncover about willpower and dopamine, research has shown that how we feel about willpower has an effect on our level of self-control. If you believe that that reservoir exists and can easily be tapped into, you’re more likely to keep pursuing demanding tasks. So, trust in your ability to self-discipline, and you’ve already won half the battle.

Claire Keenan