Why Does Dopamine Make You Feel Tired Even When You Have Energy?

We’re seeing a new silent epidemic spreading among today’s kids and young people, and most of all Generation Z and Alpha kids are dealing with it. This troubles us really a lot and it’s affecting younger and younger kids even now. They’re indeed being hit from a really young age. Even after a good night’s slumber that should alert a bear to come outside, you completely lose motivation to leave your bed in the morning. It really feels like all you want to do is lay in bed all day and sleep. You feel sleepy during the day, and while working or studying, you seem distracted as if you’re not interested.

Whether it’s your career goals or in studies, you know what exactly you need to do to achieve them, but when it comes to taking action, you feel tired and start postponing it. Well, these experiences aren’t yours alone. A very large silent epidemic is spreading, about which most people aren’t aware. No one is able to fix this problem of constant tiredness and lack of energy because no one properly understands the root causes of where these problems originate in the first place.

So let’s start directly with the main issue: what exactly is tiredness?

Pay attention to understand this, as many people make mistakes in understanding it. Tiredness is a psychological state, not a physical one. No matter how many calories you’ve consumed in food, how much rest you’ve taken, or how many energy drinks you’ve had it has nothing to do with energy. You can still feel tired. It’s a mental, a psychological state a particular kind of chemical imbalance in the brain.

Let’s explain, Our brain has evolved over millions of years, and millions of years ago when we lived in forests, there was no Swiggy, Zomato, or free food for life. Basically, there was a severe shortage of resources, and in those times when animals actually died of hunger and thirst, it was extremely important that we use our body’s energy resources thoughtfully. For humans, having a large brain meant even more calories being spent because despite being only 2% of body size, our brain consumes 20% of energy.

So it was absolutely clear that in ancient times, due to food and resource scarcity, the brain had to develop energy conservation mechanisms so that it would use our body’s energy very carefully, only for tasks the brain considered necessary. And exactly because of this need, the emotion of tiredness was born.

According to the Central Governor Model of neuroscience published in 2012, tiredness is basically a feeling that makes you feel like there’s no benefit to taking a particular action or effort—that it will only waste your energy. This is an ancient psychological loophole that continues to this day and influences us to use energy very carefully.

Basically, according to another research published in 2016, this can be called a kind of cost-benefit analysis that decides your motivation level before any task. Our brain is weighing, like a scale, before performing any action: how much energy will be spent on this task and how much reward will I get? And what exactly is a reward for the brain here? Well, positive feeling neurochemicals: dopamine and serotonin. The brain’s ultimate goal is simply to achieve maximum reward with minimum effort, because this psychology helped us survive in past centuries.

Look, you’ve understood a simple first principle of our brain: gain the highest reward with the least effort. Now let’s understand what I’m talking about with a simple example. Our brain gives us happiness, motivation, and a feeling of energy primarily through the dopamine hormone. You can basically call dopamine the brain’s currency—if dopamine is secreted or the brain anticipates dopamine secretion from doing some work, the brain will give the body energy and motivation to execute that particular action, and you’ll feel enthusiastic about accomplishing that task.

Now put yourself in today’s era.

Today, you mostly juggle between two types of actions:

1) constructive or healthy actions

2) unnatural and risky actions

Constructive actions are basically the kind of work that you know will benefit you greatly in the long term, are in the interest of your life, health, and long-term happiness. These actions include studying daily to get top marks for a student, upgrading skills for an employee, following a rigorous training routine daily for an athlete.

So from these low-effort, high-reward actions—for example, your brain produces 10 units of dopamine just by moving your fingers for 30 minutes. Now this is where we reach the real root of tiredness.

Look, in today’s era, a constant battle is going on in the common person’s brain. On one side is hard constructive work that will build life and give long-term happiness, but takes a lot of effort and releases less dopamine—10 units after 8 hours of work, and that too in a delayed fashion. And on the other side, just by moving fingers for 30 minutes, dopamine starts releasing from the first minute itself.

Now in brain language, it’s very simple: wherever there is less effort and high reward, action will always follow. And that’s why then our brain’s energy conservation loophole starts: minimum energy, maximum dopamine. And consequently, the brain starts making us feel tired at the very thought of taking extra effort. Medically, this is called dopamine desensitization, and today’s modern unregulated lifestyle is its biggest cause.

Work is necessary, but there’s an itch in the fingers to open Instagram?

No. Don’t feel like going for a workout in the morning?

No. Go for the workout.

No to junk food temptations!

The more you resist your impulsive limbic system urges, the stronger the connection between your prefrontal cortex and insula becomes. The more you’ll escape the trap of dopamine desensitization. You’ll start enjoying constructive work like studying, your job, skill upgradation. Your willpower will also strengthen. You’ll start living a disciplined life that will contribute to your overall long-term happiness.

The strength model of willpower also says that willpower is like a muscle that we should train daily by saying no to bad things and actually doing what we mean. And this is the main solution to fight against dopamine desensitization—to fill energy and enthusiasm for work that seems boring, meaningless, and tiring.

CONCLUSION

Now let’s come to the Conclusion:

How do we eliminate this problem of tiredness from the root?

How do we feel motivated, energetic, and happy most of the time in our life?

Look, if you feel chronically tired, you basically need to focus fundamentally on just two things:

first, mindset, and second, actions or behavior. Combining these two will form your lifestyle, and from there your improvement will begin.

Let’s understand how. According to psychology, there can never be lasting change in your behavior until you change your mindset. Mindset is literally 80% of any change. Even to quit the heaviest addictions, you first have to work on the mindset. You know, because your behavior will always stay congruent to how you identify yourself in your mindset.

So the first step is to create a purpose in life a purpose that fulfills all your human needs and creates a positive impact in the world, which by the way is also a human need. Now if we talk about human needs, they are of various kinds, such as basic biological needs food, clothing, shelter. But beyond that are our social and romantic needs, and even beyond that are our growth needs and the need to create a big positive impact with our own abilities.

Look, according to me, there’s no need to focus on 100 things. Just create a philosophy for your life where you focus with razor-sharp precision on just one most important need, and all other needs will be met automatically.

References

1. Schultz, W. (2015). Neuronal reward and decision signals: From theories to data. Physiological Reviews, 95(3), 853–951.  
2. Noakes, T.D., & Gibson, A.S.C. (2004). Logical limitations to the “catastrophe” models of fatigue during exercise in humans. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 38(5), 648–649.  
3. Volkow, N.D., Wang, G.J., Fowler, J.S., & Telang, F. (2008). Overlapping neuronal circuits in addiction and obesity: Evidence of systems pathology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363(1507), 3191–3200.  
4. Baumeister, R.F., Vohs, K.D., & Tice, D.M. (2007). The strength model of self-control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(6), 351–355.  
5. Botvinick, M., & Braver, T. (2015). Motivation and cognitive control: From behavior to neural mechanism. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 83–113.  
6. Montag, C., & Diefenbach, S. (2018). Towards Homo Digitalis: Important research issues for psychology and the neurosciences. Sustainability, 10(2), 415.  
7. Andreassen, C.S., & Pallesen, S. (2014). Social network site addiction – an overview. Current Pharmaceutical Design, 20(25), 4053–4061.  
8. Oyserman, D. (2009). Identity-based motivation: Implications for action-readiness and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3), 250–260.  
9. Lorist, M.M., Boksem, M.A.S., & Ridderinkhof, K.R. (2005). Impaired cognitive control and reduced cingulate activity during mental fatigue. Cognitive Brain Research, 24(2), 199–205.