Intentionally blunting the reward response for intermediate achievements can help maintain pursuit of long-term goals.

“is to occasionally remove reward subjectively, let's say you set out a goal of making I'm gonna make this quantitative with respect to finances 'cause it just is an easy description but this could also be in sport. This could be in school. This could be in music could be in anything creative endeavors but let's say you set out a certain financial goal or let's say you wanna get a certain number of followers on whatever social media platform as you reach each one of those goals. You should know now that the amount of dopamine is not going to peak. It's actually going to diminish and make you crave more the key to avoiding that crash but to still keep it in healthy levels that will allow you to continue. Your pursuit is as you are, stair casing toward your goal. Maybe that's dollars, maybe that's followers maybe that's grades maybe that's some other metric it's metals or trophies. You actually want to blunt the reward response for some of those intermediate goals.”

“Now, this dopamine reward prediction error, as it's called, can be leveraged toward trying to reach our goals because it tells us where we should set our milestones. We can't be in a mode of simply being focused on the finish line.”

“as you are staircasing toward your goal you actually want to blunt the reward response for some of those intermediate goals”

“to actually actively blunt the reward to not go and celebrate too intensely because in doing that you keep your dopamine system in check and you ensure that you're going to stay on the path of continued Pursuit”

“Now, this dopamine reward prediction error, as it's called, can be leveraged toward trying to reach our goals because it tells us where we should set our milestones. We can't be in a mode of simply being focused on the finish line.”