The Fuel of Motivation
In the mid 90s, my neighbors a few houses down had the Nintendo 64 video game console, and I was obsessed. A fair number of days were spent attempting to go over and play more Mario Kart 64, and my neighbor friends, after a short while, became visibly annoyed when I asked to play for the umpteenth time.
To remedy the situation, I convinced my brothers to pool our pocket money together and save up to buy the system ourselves. I don’t recall how long it took, exactly, but in the weeks or months of saving, I could not wait. Of the memories remaining of my elementary school years, few are as vivid as my desire for the N64. The anticipation to have this technological marvel was unmatched by anything else in my childhood.
Finally - finally - the day arrived. We had enough money. My dad drove us to Target, we asked the worker to unlock the glass case (you were a big deal, in my mind, if you asked to open the glass case), and the system was ours. We picked out a car racing game, Cruisin’ USA, and went home. We fired up the system and played for a while. That night, I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep, ditching my bed around 6:00 a.m. to sneak into the living room to get started with my attempt to play video games for the rest of my life, if possible.
In many circumstances where we want something and waiting is required, we perceive the wait as difficult, even agonizing, if we’re feeling particularly excited (and hyperbolic). We wait, and imagine how great it will be to finally have or experience whatever it is we’re waiting for. The anticipation is palpable, and as we experience and reflect on these waiting games, the anticipation itself can be as memorable and rewarding as, say, actually playing that Nintendo.
Entire industries thrive on anticipatory build up. Movie previews leave us wanting more (assuming we’re interested). Sporting events, particularly those with longer times between games, generate hours of talk radio, writing, and speculation as we look forward to the next season or game. Retailers stock their shelves months in advance with holiday treats and merchandise.
These teases are no coincidence, as our minds work in such a way that the anticipation can sometimes be more rewarding than the thing itself for which we’re waiting.
A significant contributor to this excitement of anticipation is dopamine, a chemical in the brain that fires when we consider potential rewards. Dopamine helps fuel that anticipatory excitement and motivates us to pursue things. Drugs that spike dopamine levels need to be ever-increased in dosage to match previous dopamine hits (hence their tendency to become addictive). When we don’t sleep well, eat well, or exercise, natural dopamine levels can run low.
When it comes to finances, dopamine can heavily influence our decision making. In the masterpiece book “Your Money & Your Brain,” Jason Zweig discusses ways dopamine can harm our decisions, as the anticipation of making money can feel better than actually making money. Zweig points out a lottery winner who repeatedly returns to lottery tickets; the initial win was unexpected and generated a significant dopamine hit; the subsequent purchase of more tickets was a dopamine hit each time because of the possibility of another positive financial surprise.
Ok, sure, but most of us don’t win the lottery. Yet we can still get that dopamine high from buying lottery tickets, or from, say, buying a particular company’s stock. It’s all about the possibility of striking gold. A big bet on a stock that pays off is no different than a lottery win in our minds. For some, it introduces a tendency to seek out that possibility of profit in the future, sometimes to that person’s detriment. (I won’t go into detail here, but trading individual company shares on a short-term basis - and long term for that matter - is risky and unlikely to yield favorable results. Diversify diversify diversify.)
Even if one doesn’t buy lottery tickets or day trade stocks, it is a very human tendency to envision future wealth, however derived. We like to think about it, anticipate it, and consider how it would improve our well-being. But as Zweig points out, that anticipatory enjoyment might be better than the real thing: “Imagining your future wealth often makes you happier than actually having it. Put another way, the pleasure you expect tends to be more intense than the pleasure you experience. That sets you up for chronic disappointment until you learn the truth.”
So there’s a downside. Yet without dopamine, we would have a much more difficult time working towards potential rewards. You could think of dopamine as the fuel that powers motivation, in many cases. Sometimes the motivation is to seek rewards that could lead to harmful or even addictive behaviors. But dopamine can also help us work towards helpful pursuits.
The book “Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending” by Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton gives suggestions on how we can spend in a way that takes advantage of the dopamine network. (I like how this book emphasizes spending rather than saving. We all know saving more and spending less is good, but it’s nice to see a positive read on spending.)
My favorite suggestion from the book is to “pay now, consume later.” For instance, booking a stay on Airbnb can enhance the enjoyment of a future vacation as you spend time thinking about it (and you’ll feel like you’re spending less by the time the trip arrives and the accommodations are paid for). Consider booking a place to stay and maybe even a flight a long time out, and reap the rewards of anticipation. (Also wise: make sure you can cancel and get some or all of your money back in case the trip doesn’t work out.) It’s extremely rewarding to bookmark the place you’re staying and look at its photos for the fifteenth time, look for local restaurants, plan an itinerary, etc.
Another fun way to take advantage of dopaminergic tendencies is to not use two-day shipping for online purchases. Unless you’re buying something that you need, like toilet paper (which, for most of us, derives no anticipatory pleasure anyway), try the longest shipping option available instead. My tendency to buy too many pairs of athletic shoes has one upside, at least: increased enjoyment in waiting for the package to arrive. I’ll save photos of the new shoes on my phone and look at them once or twice a day and frequently check the shipping status. While I feel that I can’t wait for the shoes to arrive, the feelings are actually increasing my enjoyment of the entire experience.
On a longer-term basis, it might be helpful to think about specific long term wants to encourage saving. Retirement saving, especially, is hard for many, but perhaps we can take advantage of our dopamine pathways and anticipate the enjoyment of buying that retirement fishing boat - or whatever your retirement fishing boat might be - to help us save more. Instead of telling myself to “just save more,” which I’m unlikely to do, I can, for example, think of the crackling fireplace in my own mountain cabin, and it might be easier to set aside more, and enjoy thinking about the possible future.
Allow me to be a downer at the end here, however. The “pay now, consume later” idea can hurt financially, especially with large purchases. I’m thinking mainly about houses and cars. It can be especially helpful to understand our psychology for some of the biggest expenditures we’ll ever make.
Consider, for example, that the excitement of buying a home might come almost entirely from anticipating and becoming a homeowner, rather than actually being a homeowner. (Zweig discusses “becoming” versus “being” in “Your Money & Your Brain,” an enormously helpful distinction.) If you think you’ll be better off in a home, or in a more expensive home, or driving a more expensive car, that doesn’t often turn out to be the case, as the anticipatory pleasure is shut off quickly after moving in or driving the car off the lot, and the new purchase becomes the new normal. I’m not indicting either of these purchases in their entirety - not at all - it’s just helpful to consider how our minds can sometimes lead us to misjudge a large expenditure.
Dopamine is a fascinating element of the brain, helping us work towards potential rewards. It drives so much of what we do. It can help and hurt. Knowing its impact can improve our decision making and potentially maximize our enjoyment of a purchase.
So thanks for the two-day shipping Amazon, but I’ll pass this time.
