However , if you were to take that state of being unmotivated or procrastinating and actually do something that's harder than being in that a motivated state . In other words , doing something that's more effortful , even painful , you can rebound yourself out of that dopamine trough much more quickly . So , what do I mean , you wanna put yourself in a state that's worse than , or harder than the state that you're in or do something quote unquote , more painful .
And the way to do that is to either engage in some tangential activity , meaning an activity not related to your goal that puts your body into a very different state . So here again , I'll default to the obvious one , which is something like cold shower or cold immersion , which not only increases dopamine long term or over several hours rather , but for most people is experienced as pain , that pain causes a rebound out of that dopamine trough faster than it would occur . If you had just stayed in that a motivated state and waited for it to go away or done something like cleaning up that for whatever reason , felt like it required less friction .
So the key is to figure out something that for lack of a better way to put , it really sucks , really sucks and yet is safe . And by doing that , you step in the trough , you see in the slope of the trough , which we know brings you back to your baseline level of dopamine more quickly . Now , for some people that will be deliberate cold exposure through cold shower , ice bath .
But actually in that moment or in those moments , that's not the case or else you wouldn't be doing it . The reality is that the dopamine system works according to what feels hard or easy in the moment . In other words , if you're feeling a motivated , you need to do something and put yourself into a state that's harder than the state you're in .
And it has to do with this . You already know because I've told you probably a dozen times now that the depth of the trough after a dopamine peak is proportional to how high that peak was and how steep it was , how quickly that peak occurred . It turns out that not only is the depth of the trough proportional to that , but the rate at which you get out of that trough is proportional to how steep that trough is .
