2. Accumulating Pain to Restore Dopamine Balance

Among my accountability friends, I was inspired by a fellow X user, Unagi, and decided to start waking up early — around 06:30 to 7:00. Since I started in winter, it was especially difficult for me.

Since my company moved to fully remote work in 2020, I gradually shifted from a routine of waking up at 8:00, commuting, and cooking, to one of staying up late and waking up late.

In 2023, I developed the habit of lifting weights. At the time, I forced myself to eat protein at twice my body weight every day and to meet my weekly gym attendance target. However, at the beginning of 2024, that routine was interrupted because of buying a house and writing a quantitative trading system. Once the house purchase and the quant trading program became more stable, I started slacking off again.

Without a commute, I should have had much more time to use in theory. But over time, that became an excuse to sleep in; after getting up and washing up, I would go straight to work, and even my habit of reading e-books and listening to podcasts during my commute started to slip.

I’ve been heavily affected by cheap dopamine — scrolling X, Threads, Instagram, and Shorts all at once, getting hooked before I knew it, and realizing that the time I spend doomscrolling has been growing more and more severe.

Now that I’ve left my job and am facing a more free-form lifestyle, it’s time to adjust my habits.

I really like watching videos by Zhang Xiuxiu, who introduces many productivity books and also talks about how to quit dopamine. For me, one effective method is to add pain.

Pain

Pain is something you have to practice.

Winter is a great time to accumulate pain: the discomfort of the temperature difference when getting out of bed, the discomfort of feeling sleepy, the cold wind hitting your face while riding a bicycle, the sharp, biting air. Every day I want to give up; the warm bed is much more comfortable. And yet, these painful sensations are training me to focus and get things done.

Recently I watched an interview video with Zhang Xiuxiu and Chen Yanbo. It’s hard for me to imagine how much pain someone must endure to push themselves to the limit for polar expeditions and challenges, but for Chen Yanbo, that seems to have become his belief and the goal he wants to achieve, so no matter what kind of pain it is, he is willing to endure it.

The benefit of accumulating pain is that your tolerance increases. Many things in daily life that seem tedious and painful are really not that bad compared with riding out the cold wind in the morning and feeling extremely uncomfortable.

Maintaining a Simple Life

I often feel that software engineers are a group that’s hard to please yet often enjoy relatively generous benefits: remote work, company perks and subsidies, flexible working hours, unlimited vacation, glamorous titles and reputation, and so on.

Once you get used to a comfortable life, with stable work and a high salary, it becomes very hard to give all of that up. It’s especially difficult when you have a family and children, so it’s important to consciously create a lifestyle that includes some discomfort. (I’m not trying to criticize any work style; everyone has their own considerations.)

I’m hardly in a position to say much 😂 (just look at this guy buying a house and an electric guitar), but at least I believe I’m someone willing to sacrifice part of my quality of life to focus on what I want to do. And I’ve also gone through that period of having no money, no internet on my phone, and only a hundred yuan left in my postal savings account, unable to withdraw it and unable to afford food.

I want to restore my dopamine balance through pain. Do you have any methods for accumulating pain? Feel free to share them with me.