How to use serotonin to hack your productivity

1. The no-double-skip rule explained

1.1. The idea behind this is that you don’t skip out on a task, project or habit two consecutive days in a row.

1.2. This means you’re allowed to be working on the task every other day.

1.3. What you need is an understanding that it’s alright to skip a day or two — just not back to back. Sometimes you just need a mental or physical break from a particular task.

1.4. When you’re committed to doing something every day, it puts immense pressure on yourself to complete it. When you don’t, for whatever life-related reason, you’ve created a black mark in your brain against the activity.

1.5. You lose momentum because your mindset sets you up for accepting hiccups in routines as a failure.

1.6. But by using the no-double-skip day rule, you’re priming yourself with a different approach to goal setting and its perceived success.

2. We’re all lobsters

2.1. It turns out that when lobsters lose a fight, the serotonin level drops and pushes it down the hierarchy of lobster supremacy. It also turns out that humans share a common evolutionary ancestor with them.

2.2. Serotonin is a brain chemical that is often associated with feelings of happiness. In humans, it can be triggered and released via psychological perceptions or physical activity.

2.3. When we use the no-double-skip rule, you are transforming your relationship with the task, project or habit.

2.3.1. Skipping a day is not viewed as a failure. Rather, it is accepted as part of the process, giving you the flexibility and mobility needed to complete your other tasks.

2.4. So rather banking your serotonin on the number of consecutive days, you also still get a boost when you skip a day.

2.5. Your skip day also lets you have a break — something which might just be enough to get you up and running on your feet again.

3. It takes time to build a muscle

3.1. Our willpower to do something is like a muscle.

3.2. When you give yourself permission for a day off, you give yourself permission to rest — something which we don’t seem to do enough.

3.3. If you want to gain traction in anything, what you really need is to be consistent with it.

3.4. The frequency helps but it’s better to have a maintainable frequency over a long period of time vs. going all out in the beginning and then running out of steam a quarter of the way there — all because you didn’t give yourself permission to rest.

3.5. The act of sprinting, in the beginning, may feel like you’re making massive traction. And when you start slipping in velocity, you start to beat yourself up. Then your brain responds with less serotonin and the next you know, you’ve fallen off the bandwagon and joined all the lobsters that’s done the same.

3.6. It’s better to be the smart lobster and pace yourself in your habits and projects.

4. Final thoughts

4.1. If you allow yourself the flexibility for failure, then the perception of it changes. You allow yourself to look at the situation in a positive light rather than a negative one.

4.2. Winning is a positive action that releases serotonin. Allowing yourself the space to do the things you need to do sets you up with an environment that helps track towards winning.