The average human being craves the good things of life without having to work a single day. Surprisingly, this fact only becomes true after a couple of years of a person’s existence. Numerous cultures in Africa and Asia prioritize hard work and imbibe this trait in their young ones through early socialization. While many may criticize their methodologies and rigidity, these people tend to have happier lives.
People who are constructed to like hard work from childhood may seem like they rarely have fun, but are envied by many. The sheer possibility of throwing themselves into tedious and daunting tasks without motivation or seemingly high rewards fascinates others. It takes some of us lengthy personal nudging before we can execute the smallest tasks at home, school or work.
However, if we can train our brains into liking hard things, then we’ll spend less time nudging ourselves and more time working. Some of the hard work we put away is essential to personal growth, therefore, not executing them means future personal problems.
So How Do We Trick Our Brains Into Liking Hard Work?
Dopamine levels determine what tasks we’d pick. Dopamine is a feel-good neurotransmitter in our brain, directing us towards tasks with better and higher rewards. For instance, our dopamine levels will get higher when we anticipate or play video games that we love. However, it’ll diminish when it’s time for hard work.
Once our brains pick an activity that makes us happier, it relegates other activities to the rear, making it difficult for us to enjoy them. This is what makes it difficult for students to read, write and listen in class. To correct this anomaly, we need to restructure our brains and allocate more dopamine into hard work. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Restructuring our brains requires hard work and dedication. It first starts with restructuring our schedule and preference. If you’re a video game lover, then putting hard work into time meant for video games can trick your brain.
Reduce the time you spend doing the things you already love and slowly increase time spent doing hard work. At first, it’ll feel overwhelming but with time, your dopamine level will gravitate towards your new normal. If reading is a difficult task, then pick up an interesting book and read for 30 minutes. Creating a reward system for every hard task completed has been known to help.
Instead of completely cutting gaming or Netflix from your daily routine, you can use them as rewards. After one hard task, you watch 1 episode of your favorite show.
Another trick to help your brain like hard things is social media detox. With over 3.5 billion active people on social media, content can never be scarce. And this makes social media more interesting than anything. Since accessibility to social media is easy, most people now spend their entire lives traveling from one platform to another. Deleting social media from your life for even a day can help you focus on more important things.
Restructuring your brain into liking hard things will be difficult but with dedication and time, you’ll find yourself doing things your previous self would never think of executing.
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