Emily McDonald explains how external rewards like money can kill the joy in activities you already love. Your brain reclassifies the activity as a task, delaying dopamine until after you finish, so you're always chasing the next reward instead of enjoying what you're doing right now.
The moment you attach a reason or a reward like money to something that you already enjoy, you actually start to enjoy it less because your brain literally classifies the activity differently. There is also neuroscience behind this as well. It's called the overjustification effect. When everything you do has a goal, you're doing this because of something you're going to get afterward. You're constantly delaying dopamine. So rather than getting dopamine from the task itself, from enjoying the present moment, from actually getting joy while you are doing it, your brain is delaying dopamine. Oh no, you don't get the joy, you don't get the dopamine, you don't get the reward, you don't get to feel good until after the task is done because the activity is a task that you have a reason for completing. So you end up in this loop and you're stuck chasing the feeling that you believe you're gonna get when it's over. And that feeling never really comes because the thing is, is that as soon as we complete things, when we complete tasks, it's always onto the next, onto the next, onto the next. And we're constantly delaying dopamine. And what we're doing when we do that is we're stealing our own joy from the present moment.
