Get Everything Done

Been awhile since I've popped on here! (Got to revisit calendars and deadlines)

Seems to me that in the doldrums of a hot summer, along with freelance work that has dried up in both a writers strike and an actors strike, what with YouTube at hand, pastries from the local coffee shop, the days rolling into the next, that I've completely lost touch with how behavioral psychology works, how peaks and valleys work, how challenges and rewards work.

So my inquiry has to do with optimizing dopamine. It's a simple way to bundle and frame the topic, even if you believe like I do that we are far more fascinating and complex creatures than this.

Here's a setup of a life hack: sometimes life asks us to do the adulting, even now when we are old enough to have our dessert first and our broccoli second if we were to so choose. With adulting comes saying "no". So how can we optimize the "no" such that the "yes's" feel like true rewards?

I could attempt to climb a bouldering problem at the gym now, or I could save it for my next session, such that when I return I will be jonesing to conquer that climbing problem (or to try the one trick that woke me up hollering "eureka!"). I could see that there's a muffin from my bag that goes well with my coffee, but I could say "didn't I say I was going to vacuum the floor? What if I did that first and 'leveraged' the enjoyment and reward from this muffin?"

Seems to me that the scanning has a criteria "what do I want to do next?". If we know anything about procrastination it's that we discount the future. It gives us satisfaction to think "I'll come back to this one because I want to do this first. Because starting this other thing now invites discomfort now." But what if what I really want is to feel the triumph, to witness the actual triumph of tackling the things that mean something to me, that feel like an accomplishment, that are worth celebrating? Well it might stand to reason that I really want to do the things I'm avoiding first, but our sense of ease and survival doesn't think that way.

If I make a lift purely of items of "what do I really want to do" then I've mitigated the priorities of that scanning process. But if I'm continually choosing the low resistance items first, working up the ladder so to speak, than what becomes of my sense of accomplishment? When do I reap the rewards of having taken a chance? When do I really return to those things that matter? Am I really feeding my rewards system with dramatic and contrasting experiences? The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat?

So I guess the subtitle could be "how do you overcome or reverse dopamine tolerance from just swiping on the next YouTube Cat Video, especially if it's continually what I want to do first?" ---or---"how do I fix my calendar, particularly my social calendar and not forget invitations, when I'd rather feel sorry for myself all weekend first?"

an important addendum: that life hack just as much involves leveraging the lows. using the lows as a springboard for the highs. Place one foot on a footstool and see how you spring yourself up from the ground. From outside observation, one might think that the power comes from straightening the muscles of the leg on the foot stool, but observe what you do, and try that if your groin muscles will forgive you for it.
Then observe what you've been likely doing all along: the power to bring the other foot up comes from the straight leg creating further spring from a downward motion first.

Just like getting the most thrill, our highs are contingent on our deliberately winding up the lows. Sometimes, therefore, when we're feeling down, we actually need to bottom out in order to get a grip on something to launch off from. Taking off the climbing shoes between climbs. Putting down the fork between bites, and yes, staying in all weekend can make a next Thursday night feel more special, or in my case make my Mondays feel incredibly special.

All this to say is that we can be equally scanning for ways to load the Spring...