Of course, you don't need ultra high end gear to enjoy your music, or
ultra high end wine to enjoy your evening, just as you shouldn't
solely
use acupuncture to treat your cancer. It might be as effective to
learn
how to meditate. But maybe we all just need to meditate in
different ways.
One useful exercise which I still recall from an otherwise
unmemorable corporate training:
List all the ways you, personally, get your dopamine kicks, answering
the following questions for each:
can it be enjoyed whenever you want, or only at scheduled times?
can it be enjoyed alone, or only with other people?
can it be enjoyed for free (eg you already have the gear), or only
with some cost each time?
From the executive side, of course we were supposed to be learning
to evaluate projects, and qualitative project bottlenecks, in terms
of time, staff, and budget.
I prefer to view this exercise from the finance side, however, and
periodically ask myself: do I have a portfolio of dopamine-generating
activities that is well-balanced? In other words, have I learned
enough that I can enjoy both things which have no temporal, social,
or financial requirements (eg philosophy) as well as things which
have all three (eg sport)? Furthermore, are the rewards from the
activities with higher commitments sufficiently greater than from
those with lesser?
-Dave
