How To Trick Your Brain Into Enjoying Completing Even The Worst Parts Of Your To-Do List
It's like giving a dog a treat for being a good boy, but for your brain.
vitapix | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro No matter how much we love our lives and our jobs, our daily to-do lists always include things we do not want to do, if not tons of things we don't want to do. It's perhaps the worst part of being an adult, other than having to have a job in the first place!
And if you're like a lot of people, those annoying, unpleasant tasks tend to pile up and not get done until they become a full-blown crisis (whereupon they usually take 15 minutes tops to complete and you feel really dumb for not having just done them already). What if there were a way to essentially bamboozle your brain into just doing them instead of procrastinating? It turns out there might be.
'Dopamine anchoring' is a psychological way to trick your brain into completing your to-do list.
Think of it sort of like giving a dog a treat for doing a trick or obeying a command, but for you and your addled brain full of excuses for why you should blow off that thing you hate doing. Good boy or girl, as the case may be!
An even better analogy might be parenting. Chances are, you've spent a lot of time negotiating with the tiny terrorists you created in order to get them to eat their vegetables or clean up their toys, and it often comes down to bartering, right?
That's essentially the kid version of dopamine anchoring, one of the internet's favorite productivity hacks that, for once, is completely backed by science, using psychology to basically hack your brain into doing all the things you feel like blowing off.
Dopamine anchoring helps your brain associate the tasks you hate with things you love.
In the simplest terms, dopamine anchoring is about pairing things that suck with things that are fun as a way to hack your brain into getting out of your own way. It's rewarding yourself for doing a hard thing, which may sound a bit infantile, but look, we all gotta do what we gotta do!
Dopamine is one of the many neurotransmitters in the brain, and it plays a crucial role in the brain's motivation and reward system. When you do something you like, you get a hit of dopamine, like a little dog treat from your brain. Of course, this is also part of how addiction works, so dopamine can be… well, a bit problematic.
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But it can also be leveraged to basically manipulate yourself into doing things you don't want to do by, say, making a rule that each time you go to the gym, you get to treat yourself to one of those $1 scratch-off lottery tickets you love. Or, each time you scrub the floors, you get to have your favorite meal delivered afterward. Whatever works.
This way, you get a hit of dopamine even though you're doing something you hate doing, which both motivates you in the moment and motivates you in the future, the next time you have to do it again.
Dopamine anchoring also works on repetition, strengthening the connection between good and bad over time.
Psychologists say repetition is the key to making dopamine anchoring actually work in the long term. Using the same reward with the same task each time bolsters the connection in your brain between the thing you hate doing and the thing you love doing.
Speaking to Glamour UK, psychologist Claire Thompson explained that this all plays on a psychological concept called the "mental anchoring effect," in which our brains slowly build associations between things.
It's similar to how the moment you smell evergreens, you think of Christmas, or the taste of chicken noodle soup reminds you of grandma's house, or whatever. These things aren't inherently related, but the connection in our brains is so strong that they are to us, basically, forever.
Dopamine anchoring swaps out the sensory element for a dopamine hit. It's something that feels good to you, makes you happy, and makes you feel rewarded. Keeping consistent about, say, listening to your favorite podcast while you go grocery shopping each week builds a positive association over time, so that it's no longer hard to drag yourself to the store.
"It’s a nervous system-friendly way to build motivation, focus, and emotional resilience," Thompson told Glamour UK. "It’s about reconnecting with small moments of joy and rhythm, so your nervous system feels safe enough to move forward." And on that note, I have to go. I told myself if I wrote this article, I could order McDonald's, and my Chicken McNuggets have just arrived. Thanks, dopamine anchoring!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
