If you frequent the ‘how to be productive’ part of TikTok, you’ve probably come across the latest ‘hack’ for staying focused and avoiding procrastination: starting your day with a low-dopamine routine.
According to the low-dopamine morning trend, the activities you do within the first 90 minutes of waking will determine what your brain craves for the rest of the day.
If, upon switching your alarm off, you immediately open Facebook or Instagram, then your first dose of dopamine is coming from your smartphone. So when you’re at your desk later on and struggling to concentrate, you’ll find it difficult to resist turning to your phone in search of another dopamine hit, warn the TikToks.
Instead, low-dopamine mornings are designed around tasks that are calming (or boring), rather than engaging. That way, your brain won’t feel the deficit in dopamine when you begin work.
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For example, reading the morning news can be swapped with an easy household chore, while your high-intensity workout can be replaced by a slow walk, yoga routine or meditation.
Here comes the but: the science behind low-dopamine mornings isn’t as straightforward as the trend suggests. Though it’s often referred to as the ‘reward chemical’, dopamine is much more complicated.
The neurotransmitter is involved in a whole host of processes in the body, including movement, attentional control, breast milk production, and forming associations between activities and feelings of pleasure.
These associations aren’t just limited to happy experiences. Unpleasant ones can also trigger an increase in dopamine, which is thought to reinforce an aversion toward the activity.
As such, a surge in morning dopamine in response to a harrowing news story could make you want to scroll less on your phone, not more.
Low-dopamine mornings often involve low-intensity exercise, such as walking or yoga. But these activities can increase dopamine levels in some, while the exercises that you’re advised to avoid (running or weight training, for example) don’t always lead to dopamine release.
For regular runners, spending 30 minutes on a treadmill was found to have no impact on the dopamine levels in their brains.
This isn’t to say that you won’t feel better if you spend your mornings not scrolling through social media or taking a walk outside. Spending time in nature has many cognitive benefits and light exercise is good for your heart, muscles and mind. But it’s not an activity’s impact on dopamine that makes it worth doing or avoiding.
To be more productive and reduce procrastination, it’s worth thinking about your behaviours individually. If you’re easily distracted by notifications on your phone or noise in the office, consider how you can set up barriers around your attention.
Switch off your phone, or at least put it out of sight. Use earplugs or listen to something designed to be in the background, such as relaxing music, rainfall or coffee shop noises.
If you’re concerned about your smartphone use, there is one element of the low-dopamine morning trend that you might benefit from: setting rules around when you use your device.
Often, we mindlessly reach for our phones whenever we’re bored, but making the mindless intentional can help us control habits, rather than feel ruled by them. If you decide on set times to use your phone, you can still get warm, happy feelings from watching cat videos on Instagram, but without the side helping of guilt.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Cara Saunders, via email) 'Is there any science to low-dopamine mornings?'
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