I’ve shared Chase Hughes’ content before. Chase is founder and CEO of Applied Behavior Research, leading behavior expert, and author. In the video below, Chase describes a psychological self-assessment exercise called a Dopamine Map.
Here is a mock-up of what your dopamine map could look like. You can create this by hand on a blank piece of paper. Here are some guidlines.
- Positive vs. Negative: Divide the page vertically with a line, labelling the left half “Negative” and the right half “Positive”.
- Present vs. Future: Divide the page horizontally with a line, labelling the top half “Present” and the right half “Future”.
- Bad Sources of Dopamine: In the top left quadrant, list all the activities that you feel driven to do regularly but that don’t leave you feeling good afterward and don’t result in positive changes in your life situation.
- Good Sources of Dopamine: In the top right quadrant, list all the activities that you feel driven to do regularly that leave you feeling good afterward and result in positive for you and those close to you.
- Allocate Points: Now assign a numeric point value to each of these activities that indicates how “big” their dopamine hit is for you. The total points need to add up to 100 at the end so that you can see what percentage of your dopamine is coming from each activity. This will take a little recalibration to get the numbers just right. Take your time.
- How to Allocate Points: Here’s how Chase recommends you measure the size of a dopamine hit you get from an activity. (1) Proximity: how close/available is this thing? (2) Time: how much of your day does it occupy? (3) Feeling: am I motivated to do this thing?
- Add circles: Draw a circle around each source of dopamine. Make the size of each circle correspond to the dopamine points you allocated to that source.
- Plan Your Future Dopamine Map: Draft your ideal dopamine map. Who do you want to be? Do you have a positive role model or hero? What do you imagine his dopamine map might look like? It is realistic to have some negative dopamine sources. We all need time to cut loose and relax. But how much better to be the one choosing what those activities are instead of having these choices be driven by addiction or other out-of-control motivators.
Chase talks about trying to find ways to communicate with what he calls “the lower part of our brain.” He says that this is “the part of our brain that keeps us breathing at night, that keeps our heart beating”. He calls it the “mammalian” part of our brain. Unfortunately, we can’t speak to this part of the brain in English as it doesn’t understand language. Chase says that in order to understand how to communicate with this part of our brain, we need to ask “How can I communicate this to a dog?” So, you might think of imagery, emotion, and repetition.
Review your dopamine map daily. Simply performing this exercise and visualizing what motivates us can go a long way to raising awareness. Consequently, this awareness helps us be more intentional in our decisions throughout the day. After a month, of daily review, you might find that it’s time to redraw your dopamine map because there’s been a shift in the way you spend your time, energy, and resources.
Want More?
A lot of the advice in the video above comes down to developing a clear vision of where you want to be in a month, a year or even five years. I introduce you to a terrific exercise for further clarifying this vision here: What Is a Vision Board?
- What is Power Posing?
- Are Dopamine Detoxes a Scam?
- Plan Your Day the Night Before
- First Thing in the Morning
- Selecting a Morning Routine
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* Header image: Dopamine HD by Денис Харламов, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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