Mastering Email… to Reduce Stress and Maximize Your Health and Productivity (1/15)

Our reward system is driven by our desire for pleasure and our fear of punishment – the proverbial carrot and stick.

The carrot (dopamine) is disguised as a promise of reward – that exhilarating feeling of joy we’ll experience if we can only get our hands on the object of our desire.

We can become so focused and fixated that it feels like life or death… our survival hangs in the balance.

We can see the evidence of a stressed-out, dopamine-driven society all around us by observing our insatiable response to food, nicotine, gambling, shopping, television and social media.

In fact, modern technology is like a running faucet of dopamine. Like automatons, we endlessly check our cell phones, Facebook, X, or email, constantly searching for happiness, fulfillment, and another jolt of dopamine.

Send someone a text, and shortly after, you get a reply. Curious about your friends? Check into Facebook or X. Need the answer to a trivia question? It’s only a Google search away.

Modern communication is the ultimate creation to feed our insatiable curiosity. Dopamine gets us searching, and then moments, minutes, or hours later, we get our reply – our greatly anticipated reward.

This, of course, tees up the next search-and-send, and the process of anticipation begins again, forming an endless loop.

What Makes it So Compelling is That it’s So Compelling

“I wonder what’s in my in-box?” With each cycle of search and reward, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop texting or checking email, Facebook, and messages.

If you were to stop and consider what’s going on in your brain and body when you’re craving a salty snack or when you’ve just woken up and you’re about to check your in-box, you might notice that you feel like an unseen force is pulling you.

John William Waterhouse – Ulysses and the Sirens (1891)

Like the mythological Ulysses and his sailors trying to pass the irresistible call of the Sirens, the dopamine-driven promise of reward is so overwhelming that we’ll unwittingly chase and consume things that frequently bring us far more misery than satisfaction.

How satisfying was that cheesecake when all that remains is a few crumbs? How much pleasure did we really get from buying that “must-have” pair of jeans?

Because “pursuit” is dopamine’s magical spell. It’s never going to give you the stop signal – the feeling of satiety – because there’s no such thing as enough is enough.

Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability, which is precisely what makes digital messages all the more compelling.

In psychological terms, email is a “variable-interval reinforcement”… we don’t know exactly when the good stuff is coming, so we have to keep checking even though personal experience would suggest we’re likely to be disappointed.

Are We Powerless Against the Forces of Dopamine?

Dopamine is controlled by our autonomic nervous system (it’s automatic and beyond our direct control), but we can bring it under control if we can become consciously aware of our thoughts and behaviours.

When we can identify the false rewards of a dopamine-induced desire, its magical spell can lose its power.

The next time you feel an overwhelming desire to eat a snack, buy an “unneeded” item, or check your email for the tenth time that hour, consider what you expect to happen when you get your “reward.”

What do you anticipate feeling? Then, note how you actually feel when you get it. Do you feel contentment and satisfaction? Do you feel disappointment or stress?

When you can consciously become aware of what you’re “really” getting from your anticipated “must have” reward, before long you can break dopamine’s overriding power to that particular object of desire. As a result, you’ll notice a marked decrease in your levels of stress and anxiety.

Through self-awareness, we often discover that the object we thought would bring us happiness actually causes us to feel emptiness and disappointment.

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” ~ Oscar Wilde

It’s important to remember that desire, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, living a life without desires wouldn’t be worth living. The key – as always – lies in awareness; to know the difference between desire and true happiness.

Texting, email, Facebook, and X are not inherently bad. Far from it. They’re wonderful tools that can enrich our lives in many ways. So, we don’t want to banish these tools; we want to learn to control them.

Nobody wants to live a life of reaction because it signifies a loss of control, and a loss of control is the foundation upon which a life of stress, anxiety, and depression is built.

“Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

When you become aware of your feelings of anticipation and compare them to the long-term joy and happiness you experience, then you will become the master, and information, social media and email become the servants.