There is a new wellness trend circulating social media known as the ‘low dopamine morning routine’. The idea behind this is to have a low-stimulation morning to help you maintain mental clarity and focus throughout the day.
The idea of removing highly stimulating activities for a period of time is not a new one. `It’s also practiced in the popular wellness trend called ‘dopamine detox‘. In the same way, it focuses on the hormone dopamine which is know in neuroscience for being the drive behind our motivation and desire to do certain things. This is an evolutionary mechanism that encouraged humans to carry out survival behaviours like eating, socialising, and mating. However, in the modern world we now have extremely stimulating activities available to us like watching tv and using social media. These activities are so dopamine-stimulating that they are becoming compulsive and even addictive to many people.
People have started purposefully removing excess stimulation from their mornings for this reason. Originally practiced by people with ADHD to support focus and limit distractions, people without ADHD have now starting using low-dopamine mornings to achieve the same benefits of focus and mental clarity.
The Dopamine Balancing Act
I recently started a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology and I’ve been working from home a few days a week to study and do all the recommended reading. It’s been a few years since I was at university doing my undergraduate degree, so I’m fairly out of practice when it comes to sitting down for a few hours at a time and really focusing on one subject.
The first few days I spent trying to do this I found myself becoming distracted. My brain wanted to do anything other than study, and I kept experiencing urges to just watch something on Netflix, scroll through social media, or get up and find a snack even if I wasn’t actually hungry. I had gone from spending time over the summer doing highly stimulating things, like consuming digital entertainment and going out to meet friends, and now I was suddenly attempting to do something much less stimulating.
How Dopamine Balance Works
Neuroscientist and dopamine expert Dr Andrew Huberman explains that contrast is the key to pleasure and pain. For example, when you don’t eat any sugar in your diet, fruit begins to taste amazing. However, if all you eat is chocolate, the fruit is unpleasant in comparison.
In a similar way, when you’ve fallen into the habit of scrolling through social media and watching tv all day, studying for an exam or going to the gym seems very undesirable. However, when you stop using digital entertainment for a few days, you remove that contrast and reset your mental pallet to enjoy studying and exercise again.
As a society, most of us are addicted to highly stimulating activities. We can easily lose our sense of control around things like watching TikTok videos and eating sugary foods, and the more we consume, the more we need to feel satisfied. This not only has consequences like wasting our time and negatively affecting our health, but it also means we can no longer focus on intellectually challenging tasks, or do difficult things.
Similar to that of a dopamine detox, the aim of a low dopamine morning is to reduce overstimulation from activities that are thought to lead to excessive dopamine release. It aims to reset your brain’s reward system and reduce dependency on certain activities or substances that may be contributing to feelings of addiction, distraction, or reduced motivation.
Why Create A Low Dopamine Morning Routine?
Unlike what the name might suggest, a low dopamine morning routine doesn’t actually lead to low levels of dopamine in the brain. We need dopamine to live our lives and continue to do the things that help us survive. What it does lead to, however, is a greater ability to maintain healthy levels of dopamine whilst doing seemingly boring but productive activities like studying, and it can help you enjoy those activities much more.
In a similar way to how people can become more or less sensitive to alcohol, either by consuming it often or very rarely, dopamine and motivation ‘sensitivity’ can be affected by our day to day actions.
When you wake up in the morning, you’re in a pretty neutral state mentally, but if you start your day by scrolling through instagram or watching tv, you’ve stimulated a significant dopamine response in your brain and sabotaged your mental state for the rest of the day. However, if you have a much less stimulating morning, the rest of the day will feel stimulating in comparison, and everything will feel much easier.
This is what I, and many other people, have been practicing to boost focus and productivity! Starting my day in this way really has helped study throughout the day much more effectively and effortlessly.
My Low Dopamine Morning Routine
1. Start The Day Without Screens
I believe that this is the most important aspect of the low dopamine morning routine. Scrolling through social media or watching Netflix right after you wake up sets the tone for the rest of your day. Your brain is immediately provided with easy stimulation which later makes doing any studying seem painfully boring in comparison.
It can be so easy to get sucked in to watching YouTube videos or scrolling through instagram in the morning. The content tends to be very engaging and easy to consume without having to think much at all. However, once you start trying to focus on a more difficult and intellectually demanding task, your brain has already decreased its sensitivity to pleasure and now needs more and more stimulating activity just to feel normal. Taking that stimulation away and replacing it with hard work can make it feel impossible to focus on that task.
On the other hand, starting the day without any digital input at all can feel very peaceful and even a bit boring, however, once you make a start on your difficult tasks, they will seem more stimulating and even interesting in comparison. You can always engage in digital activities like watching tv in the evening or once you’ve completed your work for the day!
2. Practice Gratitude
Although practicing gratitude is not directly related to having a low dopamine morning, it does compliment the practice well.
Practicing gratitude has been shown to increase positive emotions, life satisfaction, and overall well-being (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). This can act as a healthy, sustainable dopamine boost to give you happiness and motivation in your day without the subsequent cravings and dopamine deficit associated with more stimulating activities.
You can also use activities like journalling, exercising, and reading to create the same steady dopamine response.
Something I’ve been using recently for my gratitude practice is ‘The 5 Minute Journal’ by Intelligent Change. I’ve really been enjoying the structure and the prompts it provides for you, and I keep it by my bed to remind me to do it everyday. If you’re looking for a way to incorporate gratitude into your morning, I highly recommend it!
3. Meditate
Meditation is the ultimate low-stimulation activity. It usually involves sitting quietly, without distractions, and simply noticing what’s happing in your direct experience.
Although meditation has lots of amazing benefits, many people would describe this process as boring. The mind tends to resist meditation as it starts to crave novelty and stimulation.
Getting my meditation done with a calm mind in the morning, not only feels easier than trying to do it after a long and busy day, but also sets the tone for the rest of the day for me to be mindful, focused, and content in the present moment. I’m currently using the ‘Waking up’ app by Sam Harriss which is by far the best meditation app I’ve come across! The app offers a 30 day free trial so I’d highly recommend trying it out, no matter your level of meditation experience. You can also read my article on how to practice mindfulness for more guidance.
4. Exercise
The opponent process theory:
Exercising is one of the most effective ways in my opinion to balance your dopamine levels.
In her book ‘Dopamine Nation’, Dr Anna Lembke explains how our brains’ reward systems can become unbalanced due to overindulgence in pleasurable activities.
Dr Lembke uses the metaphor of a see-saw to describe how pain and pleasure influence our behaviour. She explains that pleasure and pain are processed in overlapping brain regions, which means they work in a balance. When we experience pleasure, dopamine is released and the see-saw tips to the side of pleasure, and vice versa when we experience pain.
However, in order to sustain ‘homeostasis’, or balance, the brain wants the see-saw to remain level. Therefore, every time the balance tips towards pleasure, powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again. This unconscious, evolutionary response will ‘press down’ on the pain side of the balance to regain equilibrium. This is known in neuroscience as ‘the opponent process theory’.
Unfortunately, when the pleasure of the activity begins to wear off, the weight on the pain side of the see-saw remains and we begin to feel pain or discomfort. This then causes us to crave more pleasure and dopamine to relieve this pain and feel normal again. Therefore, we place more weight on the pleasure side, but the brain continues to compensate for this with more pain. This begins the vicious cycle of craving and addiction.
Dr Lembke suggests that, apart from limiting highly stimulating activities, there is another way that we can re-set the scale. If we intentionally do something uncomfortable to press on the pain side of the balance, the brain will compensate for this by pressing down the pleasure side. However, it’s important to understand that it’s not advised for you to physically injure or inflict pain on yourself for this purpose. Dr Lembke recommends engaging in activities like cold showers and exercise to gain the benefits of this response.
Once you’ve finished your uncomfortable activity, the pain will stop but the ‘slow burning’ opponent process of pleasure created by the brain will remain, leaving you will an overall feeling of well-being.
People who regularly engage in exercise and cold showers report amazing mood boosting benefits, as well as things like focus and mental clarity throughout the day.
5. Eat The Frog
Finally, once I have gone through the steps outlined above and I’m ready to start working for the day, I start by ‘eating the frog’.
‘Eating the frog’ is a productivity concept and time management strategy popularised by author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy. The idea behind this concept is to tackle your most important and challenging task, often referred to as the “frog,” as early in the day as possible. By doing this, you’re prioritising your most critical task and getting it out of the way before you move on to less demanding or less important activities.
The name comes from the strange analogy that, if you knew you had to eat a frog everyday, instead of putting it off and spending the whole day dreading it, you would be better off making it the first thing you do and getting it over with. If you start your day by tackling your most challenging task, it sets a positive tone for the rest of the day and helps you avoid procrastination and the stress that can come from putting off important work.
After I’ve completed this morning routine, I can spend the rest of the day in a much more laid back and enjoyable manner. Once I’ve completed my studying for the day, I can then spend my afternoons doing much less demanding tasks and enjoyable activities.
If you’re struggling to get things done in your day due to distractions and lack of focus, definitely try this morning routine out for yourself! Or even better, try creating your own low dopamine morning routine based on your own lifestyle and personal preferences. To read more about the science of balancing dopamine, I’d recommend Dr Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation. You can also the other dopamine related articles on the blog, like ‘How To Do A Dopamine Detox‘.