Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Going back to procrastination, I've heard you talk about some interesting visualization techniques where if a person's in a state of mind where they're, yes, they want to do this goal, whatever the fill-in-the-blank project is, or goal, then they can use a visualization technique. But if they were not, they could also do something, but they could use the pain and discomfort to help themselves get into that, do… actually do it. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Yeah. Tim Ferriss was right with fear setting. So there's a really fantastic scientist, professor at NYU, Emily Balcetis, who talked about this and continues to research it, which is that oftentimes fearing the worst or feeling negative outcomes, if we don't do something can be very beneficial as a motivator. So that's not to say, you know, fearing the worst-case outcome. It's placing some real time on fearing the negative thing that happens if we don't do something. Okay, so that's kind of unique to that case. As I understand it, visualization of positive outcomes is great as a motivator, but there are data that suggest that it might not sustain motivation over time. I think it's probably fair to say that having both in your toolkit is great.

Visualizing success can be useful in some contexts. Visualizing the negative effects of not staying in pursuit of a goal also can be very motivating. That's essentially what the data show. Now when it comes to the underlying circuitry and what's going on in the brain, that's a little bit harder to know. But what we do know is that the pain system and so called negative reinforcement and punishment, the psychologists really parse these carefully. So I want to acknowledge that I'm not using the exact operational definitions here, that the dopamine system, as I mentioned earlier, is also very tightly woven to avoiding punishment, to escaping punishment, to being under conditions of discomfort and then no longer being under conditions of discomfort.

So we could hypothesize or we don't know, but we could hypothesize that, for instance, if you imagine, goodness, if I don't do this, a bunch of negative things are going to happen, and that itself could trigger a certain form of internal arousal that would put you into motion for that, and that whole process would be rewarding. So that makes logical sense, at least in its kind of top contour, it makes logical sense. The other thing is that if we try and think about ways that we can avoid procrastination, we can go back to the dopamine wave pool, baseline peaks, troughs, and return to baseline kind of stuff that we were talking about earlier.

And there's some interesting ideas out there and data, although right now it's still being sculpted out in humans, meaning the experiments are still underway. It's a little bit tougher to do in a scanner to get at exact mechanisms, but I think there's enough logical basis and mechanism to propose the following, which is that if there's something you need to do, that you know you need to do, but that you're finding yourself very unmotivated to do, it can be useful to do something even more uncomfortable than waiting and procrastinating. I didn't say even more uncomfortable than the thing, I said even more uncomfortable than the thing that you happen to be doing at the moment, which is just waiting and procrastinating. So what would that be?

Well, we've all seen the opposite, where we have a deadline and suddenly we find ourselves cleaning our home, we find ourselves doing these things that are kind of low-level effort, that for whatever reason, if you think about, it's kind of wild. We weren't motivated enough to do a day before, an hour before, but suddenly we're motivated. It's almost as if the motivation circuits are sort of getting ramped up, trying to figure out what to direct it toward. But clearly that's easier than focusing and directing one's effort toward the deadline, the cognitive or physical effort of something else. So there's this idea that many people have put to good use, go do something that's really uncomfortable. Again, don't make it psychologically or physically traumatic.

But if you really don't want to exercise in that moment, that'd be a great moment to exercise, to engage those circuits. Remember, it's a generic circuit. There isn't a circuit for motivation for one thing versus a circuit for motivation for another. It's all just the general same circuitry just applied to different things. So I happen to hate the cold. I don't like doing cold. I love the sauna. I hate the cold. So for me, getting in the cold plunge anytime, ever, unless I'm getting out of a very hot sauna and I want cold, is like the least exciting thing to me and the thing I'd like to avoid most. So if I'm finding myself in a state of procrastination, so some writing, some whatever, posting, researching, et cetera, I will often do the cold plunge as a motivator.

Now, we need to be fair to the biology and acknowledge that when we get into cold, uncomfortably cold water, the catecholamines are released. Dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. We know that – there's this beautiful study in the European Journal of Physiology. You know far more about this work than I do, but I've spent some time with that paper and there's a pretty remarkable and significant long lasting increase in the three catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. So we can't know that it was the discomfort of being in the cold plunge itself that led to more motivation. It could be the discomfort led to the release of these catecholamines, which led to a different brain state which allowed for more pursuit of whatever this other task that one was procrastinating on.

But I think it's reasonable to assume that all that stuff together had a significant effect. We're not talking statistically significant. This study hasn't been done yet about evaluating procrastination versus cold plunge versus no cold plunge. That'd be an interesting study, but the point is the same three catecholamines involved the discomfort of one thing, leading to the post discomfort state of less discomfort, but elevated catecholamines, bringing one into a state of more motivation. To me it makes perfect sense, like it all holds up logically. And why cold? Well, cold has always provided… It's uncomfortable but safe. Uncomfortable but safe. Cold water exposure always deploys these catecholamines. It's sort of a core part of our physiology. There are probably other ways to do it. Exercise, et cetera.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exercise hard.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Exercise hard.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Going on a zone two run is not that uncomfortable. No, I think, like,

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Zone two is a cakewalk.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But going hard, doing hard HIIT on the Assault Bike, I don't want to do it.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Yeah, the Assault Bike. I do a Friday workout. For me, it falls on Friday, where it sounds so easy, but it always sucks to start it. 10 seconds hard pedaling on the Assault Bike, 20 seconds rest, 10 seconds on, 20 seconds off, and just do that eight times. Just get my heart rate just way, way up once a week. I never want to do it. I never want to do it. And then afterwards, you always feel terrific for many, many hours. It's wild.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: It has to be the catecholamines.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I definitely want to go into a little bit more on exercise and cold exposure and dopamine. So kind of, I guess, if I'm understanding this correctly, really, like, there's something about doing and embracing something that's more uncomfortable to you than just, I guess, sitting and waiting. And then you do it. And let's. Okay, let's forget the fact that cold plunge also releases dopamine. But let's say you do it and then you go back to your task and it's like, okay, you did this really hard thing. Is there like, a contrast now where it's like…

Dr. Andrew Huberman: I think it's actually that. And I think it's also just that the ending of the difficult thing creates an increase. We know this. The removal of pain creates an increase in the catecholamines that it's like the one – I'm interrupting myself. But from an evolutionary standpoint, if we go back in time, like, what this circuitry really evolved for, it's like you just survived the effort. You just survived something, which is a tremendous relief, which is a lift. But when I say it's a lift, as a biologist, I have to acknowledge it's a neurochemical lift. Dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, no doubt involved. Now, if you go too hard too long, you exercise too hard too long, well, then you get the post-exercise dip in energy and you might feel amotivated. But what we're really talking about here is generating a wavefront in that dopamine pool that then you can devote to other things.