Why you should adjust work to your dopamine

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to our shared journey of learning to become The Attention Master.

If you wonder why you can’t stay motivated 24/7, then this episode is for you.

Here is what you will learn today:

• Why checking email first thing can sabotage your entire day

• The real windows when your brain is primed for hard work

• Why dopamine is more than just one thing

What if I told you that your brain’s motivation system runs on a schedule, and that you’ve been fighting it?

We act like productivity is just willpower + coffee. It’s not. Your brain’s reward system has its own clock. Work with it and everything gets easier.

How dopamine really drives motivation

Surprise. More dopamine around doesn’t automatically mean more motivation.

This is because dopamine is not just one thing, it’s a combination of the following two:

1. Your base level.
   This helps you feel ready to act. During daytime your baseline is usually higher than during nighttime.
   

2. Quick bursts.
   These happen when something promises a reward. After your brain got a taste of the reward once, the dopamine burst moves from the reward to the cue that predicts it.

   • When you see a cue that usually pays off soon → You feel like doing it.

   • No clear cue or the win is far away → It feels hard to even start.

That’s the key: motivation is mostly about strong cues that promise near-term wins, not just about how much dopamine is floating in the background.

This also explains apps: Instagram, email, and feeds throw constant, uncertain cues at you. That’s what people mean when they say “dopamine hits”.

Big projects lack these. Rewards arrive with a delay, so the hits are weaker unless you create better, more frequent cues along the way.

When your brain actually wants to work hard

There are times when your dopamine baseline is higher. This is typically the case in the morning, positively impacted by sunlight.

Important to understand: you’re dopamine baseline is not stable!

Across the day, it often looks U-shaped: good in the morning, dips after lunch, and comes back late afternoon/evening. That’s why your drive can fade early afternoon and return later.

Looking across many studies, a clear pattern shows up:

Best windows for hard, thinking work

• 60–180 minutes after waking (your morning window)

• 6–9 hours after waking (your late-day comeback)

The dead zone to avoid: 4–6 hours after waking (early-afternoon dip)

The morning email trap

Opening email or social first thing trains your brain to chase fast, easy rewards. For hours afterward, your mind keeps comparing every task to those easy rewards. Writing, coding, or strategy work now feels like slogging through mud. Protect your first serious work block from anything uncertain.

Later in the day, you should try to avoid notifications and emails as much as possible, because a single ping can change the the math in your head. Uncertain info (“what is it?”) acts like a tiny reward, so your attention jumps.

And even if you don’t give in to the distraction, part of your mind keeps wondering (same as open tabs on your computer keep occupying processing power).

What you can do about it

1. No uncertain stuff before the first deep block. No inbox, DMs, or feeds.

2. Make strong cues for hard tasks. Open the exact file, write the next one-line step, set a 60–90-minute timer you can see. Seeing the timer alone is a cue!!! It rewards you while you are working on the task AND at the end.

3. Compress wins. Break work into 10–20-minute chunks with checkboxes so you get steady, near-term “wins.”

4. To do lists: not a fan of them, but the worst is having one and NOT checking the tasks off that have been completed. (Who's guilty? 😂)

(Note: Lemio comes with a hard lock to protect your mornings, and a focus timer to reward you with the right cues for hard tasks.)

Your new schedule could look like this:

08:30–10:00 Deep Work #1
10:00–10:25 Email/Admin batch
10:30–12:00 Deep Work #2 (optional)
12:00–13:15 Lunch + walk/sunlight
13:15–14:30 Reactive work / meetings
14:30–14:45 Nap or brisk walk (optional)
14:45–16:15 Deep Work #3 (creative/strategy)
16:30–EOD Email/Admin/Calls/Outreach/buffer

Recap:

• Dopamine = baseline + reward anticipation

• Baseline depends on the time of the day. Morning best. Mid afternoon good. Dip after lunch.

• Reward anticipation is all about short-term wins.

• Avoid cheap rewards from email and social media in the morning, it will make anything else harder for the rest of the day.

• Your brain isn’t lazy. It follows cues and timing.

This knowledge comes at 0 cost
If you learned something, be generous
and share it with friends or family.

See ya next week
Stephan

ONE MORE WAY WE CAN HELP

We know that mastering your attention is extremely difficult. It's not going to happen in a day. That's why we've created Lemio, an app designed to be your personal buddy on the journey.

Sources:

1. Byrne, J.E.M. et al. (2017). Time of Day Differences in Neural Reward Functioning in Healthy Young Men. – fMRI across 10:00/14:00/19:00 shows diurnal modulation of reward circuits with a mid-afternoon low vs. morning/evening.

2. Hasler, B.P. et al. (2014). Time-of-day differences and short-term stability of the Monetary Incentive Delay task. – Pilot fMRI confirms reward activation varies by time of day and is reasonably stable within individuals.

3. Byrne, J.E.M. & Robbins, T.W. (2019). Circadian modulation of human reward function (systematic review). – 13/15 studies find reward is moderated by circadian/time-of-day proxies.

4. Doran, A.R. et al. (1990). Circadian variation of plasma homovanillic acid (HVA). – Human HVA (a dopamine metabolite) shows a daily rhythm with early-morning acrophase.

5. Janssens, J. et al. (2019). Sampling issues of CSF/plasma monoamines. – Documents diurnal rhythms in some subjects for HVA and highlights individual variability and measurement caveats.

6. Orban, C. et al. (2020). Time of day is associated with reductions in resting-state connectivity. – Global brain metrics shift over the day, consistent with time-of-day effects on neural function.

7. Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P.R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward (Science). – Classic paper: phasic dopamine encodes reward prediction errors, moving from reward to its predictive cue with learning.

8. Glimcher, P.W. (2011). The dopamine reward prediction-error hypothesis (review). – Consolidates evidence that phasic dopamine reports deviations from expected value.

9. Fiorillo, C.D., Tobler, P.N., & Schultz, W. (2003). Discrete coding of reward probability and uncertainty (Science). – Dopamine neurons track reward probability and show distinct signals for uncertainty.

10. Bromberg-Martin, E.S. & Hikosaka, O. (2009). Midbrain dopamine neurons signal preference for advance information (Neuron). – Dopamine codes the value of information itself, explaining the pull of uncertain pings.

11. Shenhav, A., Botvinick, M.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2013). The Expected Value of Control (Neuron). – dACC weighs payoff vs. effort to decide how much control to deploy on a task.

12. Niv, Y., Daw, N.D., Joel, D., & Dayan, P. (2007). Tonic dopamine: opportunity costs and the control of response vigor. – Tonic dopamine tracks average reward rate, setting how “worth it” acting fast feels.

13. Otto, A.R. & Daw, N.D. (2019). The opportunity cost of time modulates cognitive effort. – Raising opportunity cost reduces willingness to invest cognitive effort—mechanistic support for “quick hits make hard work feel worse.”

14. Zénon, A. et al. (2016). Dopamine manipulation affects response vigor (J. Neurosci.). – Pharmacological boosts to dopamine increase cognitive/behavioral vigor, consistent with average-reward accounts.

15. Ward, A.F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M.W. (2017). Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. – Just having your phone present measurably taxes working memory/attention.

16. Stothart, C., Mitchum, A., & Yehnert, C. (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell-phone notification (JEP:HPP). – Notifications alone (without using the phone) impair performance on attention-demanding tasks.

17. Ohly, S. et al. (2023). Effects of task interruptions caused by notifications (systematic). – Fewer notification-driven interruptions improve performance and reduce strain; FoMO/telepressure moderate effects.