What is Dopamine & how does it boosts Our Brain’s Motivation?

Consider it’s almost the end of your working day, and your motivation is severely lacking. Working your way through the long-to-do list next for you to complete at this point, even the thought of responding to a single email feels similar to running a marathon.

So, in this case, what do you do? If you’re like most of the people, you might give in to your unfocused state and peruse social media or YouTube. Or, you might just lay down your head on your desk and plead to the productivity gods for a much-required push.

Get your head up from your desk, because there’s a better way to improve your brain’s motivation. It all comes back to something called Dopamine.

So what is Dopamine?

Dopamine is much more than just a feel-good neurotransmitter. It’s more closely associated with motivation. It’s a brain chemical that doesn’t respond to rewards—it also urges us to seek them.

Without indulging in a complicated neuroscience lesson, it directly works like this: Your brain determines which activities lead to pleasurable sensations and discharges Dopamine to encourage you to act and acquire that reward once again. At this point, you’ll most likely undergo another spike in Dopamine.

Hence, assuming that Dopamine causes pleasure is an overly simplified view. Dopamine indeed does most of its work much before you sense that satisfaction. It’s the brain’s motivation neurotransmitter.

That can certainly have significant implications on your productivity. If you can take control of your dopamine levels, you can trick your brain into exploring a pleasurable experience (such as removing something from your to-do list) and support neuroscience to get more pleasurable things done. FOR MORE