I heard a good video yesterday about dopamine, the pleasure chemical that is released in your brain when you do certain reward activities. In the past, they were the result of work. You scavenge and find food, you search for fruit and find it after climbing a tree. You build a hut and have pleasure of living and being safe in it. Before, we did work, and got rewards. Now, we can get a dopamin fix whenever we want. We call for the dominos pizza, we get the bigmac and fries combo, we turn on the tv, we play a video game, we turn on porn, etc etc. Once we start the dopamine release, it’s very hard to cut it off.
Like the mice pushing the lever for dopamine stimulations, that act eventually supersedes even needs like hunger/eating. Certainly it makes non-dopamine activities harder to do once you’re on the dopamine train.
Take away. One, recognize dopamine/pleasure producing activities. Second, layer them. Start your day from zero with very low dopamine producing activities, work on things you need to do (which will eventually produce some reward, however slowly but often long effect/impact), hardest/lowest producing first, and eventually graduate to higher producing dopamine activities as the day goes one. Keep the increase gradual, and increasing (being aware that next activities should only be the same or slightly more).
Start with coffee, no sugar. Start on your most important thing first, end your day with your reward.