← Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Kwik Brain Bite Sized brain Hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik.
- [00:09]
B
Free your mind. Let's imagine if we could access 100%.
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C
Of our brain's capacity. I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear.
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B
I knew what I needed to do.
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C
And how to do it.
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B
I know kung fu. Show me. So what if your mood, your motivation, your, even your memory wasn't just based on your willpower, but on four powerful chemicals inside of your brain? What if the anxiety, the burnout, the distraction that most of us are battling right now actually comes from they're symptoms of a dose deficiency? Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Today's guest is here to change the way that we think about our mental health and mental performance. He's a neuroscientist educator, bestselling author of the Dosed Effect. In this episode, we'll decode how dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins shape your brain and most importantly, how to activate each one naturally using small daily habits. We always talk about S3s, right? Small simple steps you'll learn. TJ's protocols, why your phone may be stealing your dopamine, and what a dose optimized day really looks like. So whether you're feeling burnt out or just want to take your brain to the next level, this is the conversation you don't want to miss. So let's jump into it. Welcome TJ Power.
- [01:39]
C
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:41]
B
Yeah, our audience loves brainy conversations, so I love to geek out. And I'm sure this conversation could be hours long. I was mentioning that before we started recording. Our audience knows I love acronyms as a small, little quick mnemonic device. Maybe you could share the meaning behind the dose effect Dose.
- [02:03]
C
Yeah. So as you've shared, it's unbelievably convenient that these four chemicals that have such a massive impact on the experience we have in our lives happens to spell dose. And each of these chemicals has a very specific function for us in our day to day across the Internet and social media. It's quite easy to see these neurotransmitters as kind of quote unquote happy hormones. But they're much more than that. They have very specific requirements and benefits to us. Dopamine, the DN dose is all about our motivation and our ability to get ourselves to do hard things. Oxytocin connects us and enables us to experience the beautiful emotion of love. Serotonin really lifts our mood and also helps with our energy levels. And then endorphins is this fantastic chemical that can de stress our brain. And collectively, each of these brain chemicals is suffering as a result of the modern sedentary digital lifestyle that we now lead. And there are a lot of very useful actions we can add into our day to day that are going to help rebalance things when we come to the dopamine. Initially, as described, dopamine wants us to do hard things that feel rewarding when we're doing them and after we've done them. In comparison to as you shared their social media, whilst it entertains you, it doesn't feel deeply rewarding after you've done it. What does feel really rewarding is accessing flow state. I'm sure you know a great deal about flow state, as do your audience. Deep moments of being in focus for prolonged periods of time is amazing for our dopamine. And one of the things we now do across schools and colleges and universities and adults is actually something called finding your flow state using your feed. And what I mean by that is if social media and technology disappeared today, over the next few weeks, we'd all get pretty bored without our TVs and phones to entertain us in our downtime. And it's very likely we'd actually begin to engage in different activities like art or drawing or sewing or cooking or cleaning. And what's happening now in this technology era is we're spending a huge amount of our time watching other people in what could be our flow state on our social media feeds. And it's very likely the reason those videos keep reoccurring of people in nature, or the ones cooking or the sport, is because it's something your brain would actually love to engage with itself, itself. So a simple activity would be today. Look at the feed, find an activity that you could actually do in real life. And that would be something that could get you into flow state and elevate your dopamine.
- [04:17]
B
And it requires a little bit of effort. Yeah, because dopamine right now is very, as you mentioned, it's kind of very inexpensive in terms of time and energy and effort when people could just pick up their phone. Let's go to oxytocin. What's one way, Maybe a habit or some kind of protocol people could use for that?
- [04:39]
C
Yeah, Oxytocin is this connection chemical. It wants us to feel love. And one of the simple and unique ways we can do this is by experiencing more love within the local area that we live in via what's called fleeting connection. And there are a brief moments now that are being lost as a result again by maybe technology, maybe a variety of things whereby you're in a supermarket and you just go straight to the like self checkout and you scan your stuff and you leave. You got your headphones in, you're locked in in your own life. And then there's another moment where this evening you go and go to the grocery shop to buy some food and you go to a till with a human there and you ask them how their day's going and you make eye contact and you show genuine interest in that human being. Those brief moments of fleeting connection are very, very good for our oxytocin. And there's something that was just a given 10 or 20 years ago, or even more recently than that. And now our world is getting much more self like, kind of locked in on our own experience and bringing your eyes up on dog walk, smiling, nodding, saying hello, asking a barista in a coffee shop how their day's going, a cashier in a supermarket. These brief moments of connection in your local community are powerful. For that chemical serotonin, I would have to lean towards the quantity of daily sunlight exposure we're getting. I think it's become much more talked about in recent years, which is great. The research is so clear that sunlight is very crucial to how we feel. And it's such an obvious thing, like, oh yeah, I know, when I go outside in the sun, I feel a bit better. Despite it being obvious and despite the research being clear, the vast majority of us are still spending 10 to 12 hours inside a day. We're still spending very brief moments of time outside. And I have progressively become much more conscious of this, of just little moments where I leave the house, walk five minutes down the road and come back just so I'm consistently topping up this serotonin chemical. Serotonin is so important for our mood to stay stable, our energy level to remain good. And you can kind of think of it as like when you go outside, you're effectively like charging yourself, like an iPhone being charged by the sun, recharge the battery and come back in. And without intentional effort, it's very easy to sit at your desk from 9 till 6 o' clock and never see the outdoor world. Looking through a window doesn't count for our serotonin. So increased sunlight exposure. I like a basic rule of sunlight before social media in the morning. So I have to have Gone outside and seen some sunlight before I'm allowed to go on a social media app. That's quite a nice simple rule to live by. The endorphins is a great chemical. Originally, as humans were going through our extensive period of evolution when we experienced intense stress. It wasn't kind of little micro stresses that we have now. It was things like being chased by animals and starving to death and having to run and fight and hide and climb. And in these moments of extreme physical exertion, endorphins would release into our brain and have an incredible capacity to de stress our, our thought process and calm us down so that it would increase our chance of survival. Nowadays we're kind of getting stressed out. We're almost swallowing it into our sedentary bodies because we're not physically getting it out of us. This is also a big thing for, for kids with their iPads and stuff like that. They might scroll an iPad for a few hours, staying dead, still have the iPad taken away from them and suddenly this kind of like eruption of frustration and anger comes through them. But that's because they don't have enough endorphins in their brain to help them manage that feeling of frustration of not being allowed on their iPad anymore. They need more endorphins as a result of physical activity. I think a, a great base rule like obviously having a gym program is great. Cycling, running, swimming, everything, exercise is great for endorphins. But I actually think having a rule where every single day you commit to either 20 press ups or 20 squats when you wake up and never missing a day, you could do them in sets of five, you could do 20 in a row if you can do that. But having it as a non negotiable, where every single day you always do it, I actually think will lead to more consistent endorphin activation across your life. So 20 press ups, 20 squats every morning I think is a great baseline.
- [08:25]
B
What's your relationship with technology? Do you put borders and boundaries around that? And can we really retrain our brain to crave what's good for us instead of what's easy?
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A
Real quick as you feed and fuel your mind with this information rich podcast, it's just as vital to feed and fuel your brain and your body with high quality nutrition. And you know, I'm always looking for the best, simple, quick ways to optimize my energy and mental performance. Nourishing my cells is something I take very seriously because we are only as healthy as our cells. It's where your energy, your Strength and focus come from. If your cells aren't working, nothing else works. So I started taking Timelines Mitopure every day. And I noticed a huge difference in my recovery after workouts, my focus, my productivity and my performance. It comes in soft gels, gummies and powder. Our family's favorite are the gummies because they taste great. Mitopure is backed by gold standard clinical trials shown to improve muscle strength, enhance mitochondrial function and support your brain so that you can think, focus and age better. Our friends at Timeline are giving you 20% off just for listening. Head to timeline.com'quick to get started. That's timeline.com forward/kwik. Now back to the episode.
- [09:51]
C
You definitely can train your brain to orient towards the more effortful path in life. I definitely believe that's possible to do and we can go down that lane. There's great stuff on the anterior mid singular cortex, the AMCC that I love in terms of my general relationship with technology. I was about 8 years old when I saw an iPhone for the first time. And I thought, wow, look at that. I was sitting like a family occasion. I saw an iPhone and my brain was just like, whoa, that thing looks good. And by 11 years old, had an iPhone myself and have basically spent almost my whole life that I can remember inside this technology. So for me, it really has been such a big part of my life and something that for many years I was so addicted to. I remember the first time I experienced Instagram and getting like 10 likes on a photo from like girls in my school or something. My brain was hooked on validation, content consumption. And then obviously, as these platforms innovated, it became harder and harder to manage the addiction to it. Until about four years ago, I decided, right, I have to get this under control. I have to find a way to be able to utilize the incredible benefits that technology can bring to share a message, to connect, to learn, to educate, to have fun. But without frequent usage and frequent dopamine hits, I think the greatest challenge isn't just engaging with it, but it's the frequency of engagement that's really causing disruptions to our dopamine pathway. So for me, I do have really specific boundaries. I've had to, because I have a very addictive personality, I've had to put really kind of strong restrictions in place. So I have what's called social media moments. My fiance and I both have this at the same time, whereby the only times we're allowed to use Instagram are at 10am, 3pm and 8pm and there's a simple app called like Root. It's like one of those screen time blocking apps that can help us like to block the apps out so we don't have the temptation. And then at these times I'll allow myself 10 minutes at each of those windows and I'll watch a few videos, send some messages, post like just for this I posted a piece of content and 30 minutes a day total for me is the max my brain can take and still feel good. If I get lost in the doom scroll world of short videos, my mental health just really suffers. My, my motivation goes down and then I don't work as well. I'm not as creative, I can't be bothered to go to the gym, I can't bother to cook as healthy food. And it's so important to me to keep my dopamine as topped up as possible. And with that I have to be pretty careful with the consumption of content.
- [12:13]
B
I'm curious if someone's wearing a wearable that had a real time dashboard for like a dose dashboard, where would you see the most surprising spikes or dips in the, in the average person's day? And then my follow up question as I'm thinking about this in this thought experiment is, is it, would there be a fifth kind of bonus brain chemical that you'd want it to track also as well?
- [12:39]
C
Definitely there's a fifth and I'll come to that. Intense spikes with each phone check. Even if it's just sort of checking notifications and having a quick click through Your like your WhatsApp and email, that kind of thing would lead to a spike and any spike will lead to a subsequent crash. When any information can be incredibly good or incredibly bad, it creates more volatility within the dopamine pathway. So say for example, our email. We're all pretty hooked on our email. And email is actually not too dissimilar to slot machines and gambling in the sense that sometimes you open your email and you might have had some kind of big win. It might be that you're an entrepreneur and you've made some kind of sale, you might have had good news from your boss, you might have had a client said something that's great and, and you get this really positive experience. The anticipation of what might be on the email and then seeing it creates this big increase in dopamine. On the other side, just as in gambling, you can lose, sometimes you get negative news. You've lost a client, your boss is frustrated at something, you've lost money on something and that would lead to Significant crashes. So the phone has this unique capacity to spike and crash our dopamine with extreme nuance between the different things that we're doing on that. What I think is so fascinating is this glutamate chemical. This chemical that enables humans to make decisions. In each moment that we make a decision, a gluta glutamate molecule will cross a synapse and enable that decision to be made. Even as I sit here now and I'm deciding what to say to you, a couple glutamate molecules are crossing the synapse in order for me to make these decisions. And we are making a lot of decisions in the modern world with our phone. Specifically, when you're on your phone, you are rapidly making minor decisions at all moments with what you look at, watch, comment on, think about, email, WhatsApp, Snapchat. And it's very overwhelming. And building too much glutamate in our brain across the synapses. And you're seeing this effective, effectively, some kind of traffic jam across the synapse where a load of glutamate is sitting there because too many decisions have been made and therefore your thoughts can't actually process quite as effectively. And sometimes you'll reach that moment in your day where your brain feels so foggy you're actually struggling to even make easy decisions. You feel super overwhelmed. And we're underestimating that. This is because there's too much glutamate sitting in our synapses. So maybe the wearable might show, like, glutamate overload. Glutamate overload. And in that moment now, I really consciously think about it. For about six months I've been running this as an experiment. And I'll think, okay, I can feel my brain isn't working at the level of performance I'd like it to. I may feel a bit, like, annoyed or overwhelmed. And I'll think, okay, I've got to try and lower my glutamate. And that could include a nap. A nap is unbelievably good for getting the glutamate out of your brain. It could be walking to the local park and taking my shoes and socks off, just walking around on some grass, asked for 10 minutes. It could just be lying on the sofa and just looking out the window and dealing with the boredom and being okay with the boredom. But having moments where you're making very few decisions is very important in a world where we're making so many.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah, this is amazing. Mine also, I'm, like, thinking about, like, what another Acronym could be for five letters.
- [15:30]
C
Yeah, I know. I don't know if the book would have quite hit if it was called, like, the Doge Effect. I don't know where it fits, but it could come.
- [15:37]
B
We have TJ at, like, our own community where we have our app, and there's a lot of conversation. I mentioned that we would be having this upcoming podcast interview, and it seemed like, based on people's questions or the challenges they're dealing with, if someone is listening and they're dealing with, it was low motivation, high stress, mental fatigue, and you're talking to that person, which I think a lot of people fall in one or more of those categories. Where would you recommend they start? Like, what's the minimum effective dose for getting back on track neurologically?
- [16:14]
C
So that was low motivation, high stress, and mental fatigue. So I tackled two parts of this. One is the brain is getting overly exerted with the high stress and mental fatigue. And the low motivation might be that we're consuming too much of this dopamine that's breaking our motivation system. So with the low motivation, I would be laser focused on your nighttime routine, ensuring that your phone no longer charges on your bedside table, and you start going to sleep as early as is humanly possible for you in your life, like, whether. Depending on your kids and your family and your setup and your work. But I think a late night is really what's killing us. Because we have the late night, we wake up fatigued. We're then more likely to go for the phone and the sugary breakfast. We then consume the quick dopamine. We break our motivational system. So an early night is just magic. Is going to. You're going to wake up with more discipline and willpower. You might make some smart decisions around, say, sunlight before social media when you wake, or maybe just simply like having a shower, getting ready for your day, making your bed before you go into the phone. So the motivational component, I would say it sits there. And that decision at nighttime to when you wake, on the other side of it, high stress, mental fatigue. I really think we need to think about what rest actually is for our brain because. And I've had a real battle with this. I have such a deep addiction to technology, which has led to me having to make so many changes to my lifestyle, try and manage my mental fatigue. And I've really struggled myself with kind of moments of intensive burnout and just, like, doing too much with my work. And then what I would find is whenever I needed rest time, it was always spent on the sofa, watching YouTube. And I thought, okay, it's longer form content, it's all right. It's like better than me watching social media. But I was never giving my brain actual rest, where it wasn't having to do anything at all, where it was just chilling out. And over the last eight days, we're now eight days into this, my partner and I have attempted eight days without a tv. So I carried the TV out of my lounge, which has been a really challenging thing to do. And this isn't something I say, like everyone else needs to get rid of a tv, but this is more of an experiment to see how it impacts me. And it's meant that in my downtime, like when I come off these calls or I'm eating my lunch, like, I've just got to sit there and do nothing. I've just got to like chill out and like look at the wall or like look out the window. If my partner's here, I could chat to her. And the impact it has had on the intensity and fatigue and stress in my brain from just having moments where my brain sits in nothingness has been really powerful. And I think I did this viral social media post recently called Meals, Bedroom, Bathroom, where someone had to attempt to not look at a screen when they were eating a meal, when they're in their bedroom and when they're in their bathroom for a day. So it seems pretty basic, like, not when I'm eating, not when I'm in the bedroom, not when I'm in the bathroom. And it's amazing how many people find it so, so difficult, myself included, to have the downtime off the tech. And I think if you have it, you might discover that whilst it's boring and sometimes you have like some thoughts that worry you and you think, oh, it'd be nice to switch off these thoughts in that downtime is where you'll restore the mental fatigue and where the stress level will actually come with technology.
- [19:10]
B
I've always looked at technology as a tool that we use, but if the. If technology is using us, then we be the. We become the tool.
- [19:16]
C
I think we are the tool as humanity right now on Mass, I think it's rare that people are really strategically using it. And it's just like even I just came back from London on a train and the train used to even just five years ago be a chance where you would just chat with people on your carriage. Everyone be talking, how's your day going? Everyone be like eating or drinking like a bottle of water, whatever it might be, and now it's just like 50 people on their short video feeds, headphones in, just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I look at it thinking no one knows this stuff. Like the mass of the world don't know this stuff. And they're all going to get home and be in a bit of a bad mood and not feel that good and can't bother to cook dinner and they won't know that the short video feed is just absolutely rinsed their dopamine chemical and then they're not going to have any dopamine for their evening. And it's just like in these moments whether we could talk or even if you could read a book, it's just these tiny, what seem like insignificant decisions are actually massive for how we feel.
- [20:07]
B
I saw a post on social media, I don't know who to credit to but it was a photographer that took photos, stills of oh, I think I saw that yesterday. And then they digitally removed the phone from their, from their hands. Right. So they're in bed or they're on the train but you could see them and it just, it was, it was disturbing to me. They all look extremely depressed but it was, yeah. It's interesting when we, we don't have the, when we're not conscious and aware and sometimes we're going on our programs and our routines. I'm curious with everything that you know about this, this subject matter and you kind of touched on some of the things but just as incur in your current state, what does your personal morning or evening and or evening routine look like? Knowing all you know on how to activate dose, you know, and how can someone listening build their own in something that's not incredibly time consuming?
- [21:07]
C
Yeah. So if I start with the evening one and then I'll flow to the morning one because it sets it up the evening one. The small decisions I'm making are moving my dinner to an earlier time is really significant because then it moves your whole wind down period. Earlier I used to always eat dinner at 7:30 and I've finished washing that up by 8:30 say and then it would be like 9 o' clock, I might have a shower and then I'm sitting down on the sofa at 9 to start watching TV which leads to a 10:30, 11 bedtime. Then you get into bed with the phone and it would delay it all. So if the dinner comes forward, everything comes forward. So that's a simple thing I do. I make sure my phone charges in this room. I'm in here on this shelf behind me it never would enter my bedroom. I almost see my bedroom door is like a force field that a phone literally cannot cross no matter what. And it's tough to get to that point. Like, it's a process getting comfortable with not having your phone in your bedroom. You have all these thoughts and justifications of alarms and all these emergency calls that you think you might get that never come. And it's really important just to like gradually experiment with it and see that, okay, maybe I am safe without the phone in my room. So that's the evening routine to me is just earlier dinner and phone out the bedroom. Those are the crucial steps. In the morning, I would always wake up. I always immediately go brush my teeth like as soon as I wake up because it's one of those like annoying, boring tasks. And anything annoying and boring is good for my dopamine. I'll splash cold water on my face. I then sit down on the sofa and do like a 10 minute breathwork activity. I find those really impactful on my mental health. I find just sort of like gets any tension out of me sometimes it gives me cool ideas for my work. And then depending on how much time I have, if there is available time to go for kind of a short walk outside or do some kind of workout, I will. And then the most crucial part of my morning routine is my first engagement with technology. Every day is my laptop, not my phone. And I'll always open my laptop as my first piece of technology. I'll open my WhatsApp and my email and I'll manage it on there. I can respond to everything much quicker. I can download the information much quicker. It's less overwhelming and there's less chance of me kind of getting tempted by clicking on all the random things phones have to offer. And it just creates much more intentional usage of tech. At that point, I normally just begin my work and it will maybe get to 10 o' clock and I'll have seen communication because I've got WhatsApp on my computer. But it gets 10 o' clock and I'll be like, oh, my phone is still on that table. And it's not that I've been tech free, but. But I've just been phone free. And that morning routine really makes a difference for me.
- [23:28]
B
That's powerful. Non negotiables. Yeah.
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C
And it's a gradual process.
- [23:32]
B
What would our world look like if everyone knew how to activate their dose naturally?
- [23:39]
C
I think everyone has a dream within them that is hard to fulfill because it requires such immense effort to actually achieve Your dreams. And I think if you're dopamine system specifically is imbalance your likelihood of accessing your dream by being able to do the hard things that can get you there is much more likely. And I think a world where people are actually living in a life that is the one they dreamed of, they're probably going to be pretty satisfied and fulfilled and calm and happy. And I think a world where you have this guilt running through you of, like, I know I'm not quite living the life I should be, but I'm stuck in all these addictive loops with all these different components. That's a tough world for the mind. And I think a world the other side of your brain chemistry being in balance is a pretty nice one for society.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah. We have a similar mission, you know, reminding people that they're the pilot of their brain. They don't have to be the passenger.
- [24:28]
C
Yeah. And more than ever, like, this is our, this is our time to nail it. Because technology, as amazing as it is, like, as my whole life, is enabled because of technology. Social media, laptops, computers. But, but technology is going to become much more addictive for us when eventually we move towards, like, augmented reality. Glasses and the phones continue to improve. Social media becomes more addictive with AI. This time, right now is like the time for us to be like, okay, let's get a really good relationship with this stuff so that we can use it for all it has to offer us and live a life. That's amazing. But there are going to be some people in the future that get a bit stuck by technology and they live quite lethargic consumption lives, and that's not going to be the one you've been dreaming of. So it's such a great time now to start, start making a difference with it.
- [25:09]
B
That's. That's the message. Before we wrap, I always like to ask our guests, ultimately, our podcast is all about learning. Right. And I'm curious, is there one thing that you're currently learning about or you're studying that has, Outside of this, outside of this conversation topic that has you particularly excited that lights you up? Something that you're. You're learning and studying?
- [25:35]
C
Yeah. I mean, it is outside of this, but I am currently five months away from becoming a dad for the first time, and my partner and I are fascinated by that whole world of birth and how we bring a human into this world and how we're gonna manage that kid's relationship with food and technology and nature and the whole birthing process itself. And all the brain chemistry side of it. So we're having a magical time investigating how we figure out how to be a mom and dad in the future.
- [26:05]
B
Congratulations from our community.
- [26:07]
C
Thanks.
- [26:08]
B
There's going to be a lot of learning there.
- [26:10]
C
Yeah, it's going to be a whole new world for me that.
- [26:12]
B
All right, where can people. I'm holding a copy of the dose effect Small habits to boost your brain chemistry by TJ Power. Where can people go deeper with your work or connect with you?
- [26:22]
C
Yeah. So the dose effect is on all the platforms. Barnes and Noble, Amazon Waterstones takes you on a cool journey of all 20 of the actions that embed this stuff into your life. And then jpower on Instagram is where I teach how to rebalance your brain.
- [26:37]
B
Well, tj, thank you so much for. For being on our show, sharing your time and your talent. This was a very powerful conversation with TJ Power, the one that I hope you'll dose yourself with again and again. I mean, just remember that, you know, while I was labeled a boy with a broken brain, your. Your brain is not broken. It could also be just undernourished. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins are not just chemicals. They're. They're. They could be keys to unlocking your clarity, your creativity, your. Your sense of connection, your. Your calm. And so my question for everybody here is, what's one thing you learned from this conversation that you can implement today? And I would encourage everyone to actually screenshot wherever you're consuming this. Tag tj, tag myself. So we get to see it and post that. Aha. Or that one thing that you're going to do based on this. Because we know knowledge by itself is not power. It has the potential power. Power when we apply it. And then by sharing with your online, you know, your. Your family gets to see it, your. Your friends, your fans, your followers. Then we get to be able to make it more of that world that. That TJ was talking about. And so maybe it's 30 second gratitude. Practice a sunlight walk, you know, some borders and boundaries around your. Your smart device, whatever it is, commit consistency. Right? Little by little, a little becomes a lot. So again, if you know someone struggling with their mood or their motivation, share this episode with them. Make sure you tag us there. And until next time, remember, you. You are not your brain, but you're the operator of your brain and you have the power to rewrite it for power and performance. This is your brain. Coach Jim Quick. Until our next episode. Be limitless.