It’s a running gag in my family that I never have time to watch shows or movies. If you recommend some really good show to me, probably one that just released and has everyone talking about it, I will … maybe … see it five years from now. If I can find the time and energy.
Like everyone else, I need moments of relaxation and entertainment. I need breaks from work. I want to be able to put on a movie in the evening, recharge and perhaps learn a thing or two from a good story, so I am energized to go back to writing my own book tomorrow morning.
But I rarely actually do this. And it only gets worse and worse.
Why? Why can I motivate myself quite easily to run for 5 miles, even though I hate running and it’s raining … but I can’t motivate myself to put on a good movie and watch it? Why do I want to watch movies and read books and see stories that others are telling, but never actually do?
Then, just now, I read an article about dopamine, dopamine balance, and good habits. And something clicked in my brain.
I rarely ever watch movies or shows anymore because it just feels tiring. It feels exhausting now. Most entertainment made today just feels like homework, more draining than actually doing hard work. So many times I’ve been exhausted and planned to just relax for the evening, only to end up going back to work anyway because it was less draining than watching something!
And I think this all comes down to dopamine balance. Or, rather, how writers nowadays completely ignore any “balance” in the first place.
In that article I found a more accurate and practical explanation of dopamine than I ever found before. Like many people, I used to believe that dopamine was the reward for doing something pleasurable. You eat your favorite food, or you work out and work your muscles, and then you get dopamine as a reward.
This view was already shattered a few years ago, when I learned more truth and details about how dopamine works. But this article shattered it even further.
Because, in reality, dopamine is created and balanced automatically by our brain. It’s like a battery.
- When you’re chasing quick dopamine (such as scrolling social media), you are using the dopamine inside that battery. The dopamine was already there—you’re just spending it on this activity now.
- Which means, when you stop doing the activity (or your battery is depleted), you get a big crash. You’ve used a lot of your dopamine, so now you’re in a dopamine deficit.
- Which means you can have all the discipline you want, you can try all the tricks you want, you are physically not able to be rewarded for anything. So nothing feels pleasurable, and everything feels hard and painful and draining.
This explanation made everything make sense to me. The final bits of the puzzle that I never quite seemed to figure out now have a proper place. Dopamine is a battery that’s automatically managed by your brain, and doing something “pleasurable” actually drains it.
First of all, this is why chasing “fast dopamine” is bad. This is why junk food and social media completely destroy your ability to be motivated for anything or do hard work. Because you’ve used the dopamine you had on that stuff—and now there’s nothing left to use on the actual thing you needed/wanted to accomplish. Taking a “quick break” from work to check YouTube, or email, or grab a bite to eat feels good in the moment. But it actually ruins your ability to do things afterward.
I’ve been noticing this myself the past year or so. Regularly, I would be working and feeling a bit hungry and tired, typically just after midday. Even though I am working, and I feel I would be able to continue doing stuff for a few hours, I would think “let’s go downstairs and have lunch now, then go back to work with recharged energy”.
And that never seemed to happen! Going downstairs and having lunch just made me less and less motivated to go back to work. The longer I’d eat, the more I’d extend the break, the harder it was to get back to work again. I would go back upstairs and helplessly stand behind my computer, suddenly lacking the willpower to do the work I was actually eager to do one hour ago.
Eating food, solving some puzzles, checking my phone for a bit, it actually uses the dopamine I had naturally. The dopamine I would’ve liked to use on my work, but now I spent it on other things and really really struggle to get back to work.
At the very least, I wanted this article to quickly communicate this “lesson” or “finding”. Once I realized this was happening, I changed my thought process. I keep working when I still have the dopamine for it, even it if means suddenly lunching at 3 o’clock instead. So be it. And I made sure not too check my phone, not to eat too much or for too long, and to go back upstairs before I’ve depleted all my dopamine. This has been a massive improvement in getting work done as well as not overeating, simply because I don’t spend my natural battery of dopamine on the wrong things (for too long).
Now, however, you might ask what all this has to do with movies being tiring. Well, perhaps you can already guess where I’m going with this.
I suddenly realized that modern stories lost the dopamine balance. Movies have become faster and faster, flashier and flashier. It often feels like some higher-ups are telling the writers that there MUST be an explosion every 5 minutes, or there MUST be quick dialogue and quick cuts and a sexy naked woman every 5 minutes, or you’ll lose people’s attention! Movies have started stuffing more and more characters, and plotlines, and “cinematic universes” into longer and longer runtimes.
Our brains can’t handle this. Because every explosion, every flashy moment, every tense action scene (or sexy lady) releases dopamine. It spends some of that dopamine battery in our brain. And at some point battery is empty. Which has two consequences: we feel tired and drained and everything is hard, and we simply can’t release any more dopamine on stuff that’s happening now. So not only do we feel tired while/after watching the movie, we probably feel annoyed and confused about the latter half because our brains just stopped caring and physically couldn’t process it anymore.
Stories, like everything else, should have a balance. You can’t be sad the entire story. You can’t be laughing non-stop for 90 minutes. In that same way, you can’t have tension or action or really meaningful events at all times. A movie with non-stop action does not “release” more and more dopamine, making us enjoy it more and more. It does not “create” more pleasure in our brains. No, it “uses” more and more dopamine, until our reserves are exhausted. And instead of feeling refreshed and entertained, we end up feeling tired and unmotivated to do anything now.
I feel this is a lesson lost to many writers and filmmakers nowadays. It’s also a lesson I’ll try to take to heart, because I am also absolutely guilty of trying to do too much. My hyperactive brain comes up with ten ideas every second and naturally tries to stuff them all into the same book. Understanding this dopamine balance better really helps convince my brain that we need the quiet moments, we need to cut back on the massive life-changing events, and so forth.
In fact, I think you, as the writer, are the perfect reflection of this. If you feel exhausted writing that chapter now … then your reader will probably feel exhausted reading it. If you feel like writing chapter 13 now, even though you’ve just written chapters 5 and 6, then your reader will probably not feel like reading chapter 7 next either. It’s a sign that you’re not balancing correctly. It means you probably spent lots of dopamine (or the same general emotion/feeling/reaction) in chapters 5 and 6, and are about to do the same thing again in chapter 7. Whereas you, subconsciously or not, know that chapter 13 is actually a better balance to chapters 5 and 6 because of the different types of scenes and emotions inside. And the solution, in most cases, is to change your plan for chapter 7 to make you motivated to write it again now.
Most of my favorite movies are from when I was younger. I’m still quite young, so I don’t feel like there’s this massive gap or change in culture or anything. I can look at movies now and movies back then, with the critical and knowledgeable eye of an author and creative, and see the stark difference in how they manage dopamine.
I mean, they always say that kids are these bouncy balls of energy. That you should give them sugar, and things should move fast, and be loud, and be colorful, or kids “won’t be interested”. And this is just not true. My favorite movies as a kid were much much “slower” than the typical pace nowadays, even in media for adults. My favorite movies from back then, which are often still favorites now, spend a lot of time recharging dopamine.
It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Spending 10, 20, 30 minutes in a movie doing nothing truly exciting on purpose! But it’s really true. Basically every story I like has many moments that are just … quiet heart-to-hearts, a little slice of life so you understand a character more deeply, scenes that were included just to let you recharge and for no other reason. They are important. Otherwise, readers/viewers have no more dopamine left to give when that big important climax comes at the end.
Now, in the past, I’ve also complained about tv shows being slow nowadays. In fact, I stated then that “shows are both TOO SLOW and TOO FAST, somehow”. That’s the great paradox that seems to trip other people up (and me as well, actually). How can stories be BOTH too slow and too fast? I think this article shows another piece of that puzzle.
Something will feel “too fast” when it’s asking us to release dopamine when we can’t do it anymore. Something will feel “too slow” when it’s recharging our dopamine when we already have enough and wanna spend it! It’s about pacing and timing. An ebb and flow, a give and take, a careful balance that every writer should learn. I really think you need to consume and create a LOT of stories to get a natural feeling and instinct for this, as there are no clear rules here. (Nothing like “Oh, after exactly 12 minutes of action, we need precisely 8 minutes of peace and quiet, and you will have a MASTERPIECE!”)
I hope to take this into account when writing my stories from now on. When I feel my own dopamine depleted, I can assume the reader feels the same, and should listen to that instinct. And when I feel like writing another action-packed scene, or scrapping that slow meaningless banter, I can more easily convince myself not to do that now.
And, as always, I have the irrational hope that some writers find this article and start creating shows/movies again that don’t just feel draining to me.
Those were my thoughts for today,
Tiamo