Dopamine is quite literally your will power. If you have no dopamine, you’re more willing to be lazy. However, dopamine isn’t quite like a glass of water, its more like a lemon or an orange. To extract dopamine/willpower you need to squeeze the citrus. Certain activities like video games are highly dopaminergic, meaning that they stimulate a higher release of dopamine, when compared to other activities. Using the citrus analogy, video games are a firm strong squeeze. When your lemon is full, video games will leave the citrus pretty empty, meaning you’re less likely to do anything else that isn’t highly dopaminergic. This is why you can work a full shift and crank out a few hours of video games, because when a citrus is somewhat drained, a strong squeeze will still be able to get something out. But this is why if you play video games first, you’ll be less likely to want to do any more work.
References
- HealthyGamerGG: The Secret Behind Resisting Dopamine