How to increase chance of achieving your goals by 42% and balance🏆⚖
Balance and a stupidly easy thing to do
January 26, 2025
Hello, Dear Reader!
Nowadays, the word ‘balance’ has mixed reviews. Some say it’s the antidote for sanity, and some say it’s a barrier to success. But I have found balance is something that will come up naturally on a day-to-day basis rather than some glorified concept.
Let me illustrate. For example, you’ve had a day where you did nothing but indulge. Watch your favourite series and eat whatever you want because, why not? But after your indulgence high is gone, pain enters the scene. Now that you feel shit, you get alarmed that you have to clean your room today or do the revision. Whatever that may be, it’s naturally going to be painful in order to balance out the earlier pleasures. At least, it’s what I have experienced.
But science suggests something similar
Dopamine crashes after a peak, typically because the level of dopamine drops below the baseline level after a high dopamine-releasing event or activity. The extent of the drop is proportional to how high the peak was; more intense the peak, deeper the trough would be. This drop can lead to a subsequent decrease in mood and motivation until dopamine levels eventually return to baseline. Repeated engagement in activities that cause intense dopamine peaks may lead to an overall depletion of baseline dopamine levels, which can result in a diminished ability to feel pleasure or motivation from those or other activities, and it can take a substantial amount of time for baseline levels to recover.
To simplify it, if I eat a really good slice of cake moments before doing my revision, my motivation and mood to do the revision drop dramatically. If I keep doing that every day, the pleasure I will get from one slice of cake will drop, which means now I need two to feel something, thus destroying my motivation to study.
So, what’s to get from this? Pain first, pleasure after. Doing it in reverse is a recipe for regret.
The most stupidly easy life hack which does wonders
Well, January is about to end. I hope you all are still with your resolutions. If you are not, if you aren’t, there is a way to increase the probability of achieving your goals by 42%. That one way is…
Writing it down. Anywhere.
If you don’t do this, you are just dumb or your fingers don’t work.