Have you ever opened your laptop to start that Important Strategic Thing… and 42 minutes later you somehow know three new pasta hacks, a trending dance, and the emotional backstory of a stranger’s houseplant? If so, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not lazy.
Your brain just really, really loves dopamine, and TikTok hands it out like sweets at a toddler’s party.
The Harsh Truth: Your brain doesn’t care about your goals. It cares about dopamine – the brain’s reward chemical that gets released when you make progress or complete something. While big goals might be inspiring, they’re too vague. And vague means no dopamine. And no dopamine means no momentum.
Meanwhile, tiny tasks are delivering dopamine hits all day long:
- Email? Sent. ✅ Dopamine.
- Slack reply? ✅ Dopamine.
- Add ‘make to-do list’ to your to-do list after making it, then tick it off? Monster dopamine. You absolute legend.
Do you see the pattern? Your brain isn’t chasing importance, it’s chasing completion.
That’s why TikTok is so addictive: each short video gives your brain a beginning, middle, and end. Your brain thinks: “Achievement unlocked!” So… it scrolls again. And again.
What To Do When You’re Stuck in Procrastination Purgatory
Forget powering through with willpower. The better strategy is to build TikTok-style feedback loops into your real work. Begin by breaking that big, intimidating task into micro-tasks so small they border on silly:
- Open the doc
- Write the title
- Jot three bullet points
- Add one stat / link / half-baked metaphor
- Dance break (strongly encouraged)
- Write the ugly first paragraph (future-you will fix it)
Each tick = dopamine = progress = momentum.
String enough of those together, and your brain gets hooked, for the right reasons.
Remember: Motivation doesn’t come first. Progress does. So don’t wait for inspiration, start small, trigger dopamine, and let momentum do the heavy lifting. By the time you “feel like working,” you’ll already be halfway there. (And honestly? That’s how promotions happen. One tiny task at a time.)