Enjoyment of the activity vs focus on reward

[Smigles]

So i came across this video:



In it Mr Huberman explains that focusing on a reward can take away almost all Dopamine release you get from doing an activity. He talks about an experiment where kids that love to paint get a reward for painting for a while and when they no longer get the reward, they aren't interested in painting any more.

He argues that you have to find your Dopamine releases during the activity, not in form of an reward afterwards.

I wonder how much this is related to tournament burnout. I Have been playing tournaments for 10 years now and it really took most of my enjoyment i had from disc golf. Just focusing on relaxed rounds with my buddies on the weekend is so much more enjoyable for me.




Tldr: this is a 10 minutes version of the video, please ignore the pictures in the background, it's some motivational crap but the message is the same and it's not a 2.5 hours lecture.

 

[jskew113]

I came across Huberman some weeks ago on Jacko's podcast. Dude is a very interesting character and I really enjoy his insights. It is very much long form discussions.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Dthunderchicken]

Thanks for the Cliff Notes version.

I'm now in the declining years of my game. I'm more interested in drawing pretty lines with my discs than the number at the end of the hole or round. That's a good thing because I really suck now. I do miss competition though. I've always thought it brought out the best in me.

 

[ray1970]

I must be ahead of the curve.

I always thought enjoying the activity was the reward.

 

[ru4por]

Outdoor recreation has been the reward for many years, for me. Disc golf is not my only interest, just my main one. Nearly all of them are outside. The reward is ever changing and every momentary version brings its own joy. The activities are simply something to do while taking in this joy. I am competitive and play tournaments and leagues often. Again, they are vehicles that provide me with the chance to "go to church". There is also a large social component that I find cathartic, as well. This has been magnified by COVID, for sure. A round is generally about an hour and a half or so (longer for tournaments) and only a few minutes are actually spent throwing. Seek pleasure in that down time.

 

[jupiterboy]

Yeah, people's motivations get complicated. One of the first big laughs I had coming back to disc golf was seeing people complain about having to walk from one hole to the other. JFC

The other was UDisk, like I'm really supposed to check in with my phone while I'm OUTSIDE PLAYING? REALLY? Tell my about Dopamine, lol

I like to see these plastic discs fly. Time stops while they are in the air. That's fun. Do it again.

 

[ChrisWoj]

The reward for me has always been making the disc fly the way that I intend for it to fly (within my physical capabilities). I'm reward oriented, but its also a reward that will be present so long as I play.

Outdoor recreation has been the reward for many years, for me. Disc golf is not my only interest, just my main one. Nearly all of them are outside. The reward is ever changing and every momentary version brings its own joy. The activities are simply something to do while taking in this joy. I am competitive and play tournaments and leagues often. Again, they are vehicles that provide me with the chance to "go to church". There is also a large social component that I find cathartic, as well. This has been magnified by COVID, for sure. A round is generally about an hour and a half or so (longer for tournaments) and only a few minutes are actually spent throwing. Seek pleasure in that down time.

I'm like this with games... I have a pool table I practice on frequently (well, when it isn't covered with tee signs) but haven't played league in years. I just like making the balls do what I want them to. I intend to buy a crokinold board once I'm done spending on some property improvements (fence). And will be setting up a nice space for bocce and croquet once the yard is all fenced in. Little dexterity things are fun as hell for me. Inside. Outside. Disc golf is the main one. But I just like skills games.

Hopefully I'll find games, eventually, that are more easy on the body when I start to really age.

 

[autocrosscrx]

I like a mix. I like to just get out and walk and see the discs fly and have some time to myself. But that gets boring. I like tracking progress, too. And I like the pressure and camaraderie of tournaments and leagues.

 

[HyooMac]

The reward for me has always been making the disc fly the way that I intend for it to fly (within my physical capabilities). I'm reward oriented, but its also a reward that will be present so long as I play.

That's me, exactly.

The "reward" is making par (because as I learned long ago in ball golf, "par is perfect" - in that you're playing the hole in the number of strokes intended by the designer).


But more often, I get a huge jolt of enjoyment by hitting my intended line. The enjoyment comes partially from knowledge (knowing what my discs will do if thrown correctly), partially from planning (looking at what I have to do to make the most out of the shot), and partially from execution.

Nothing more satisfying that saying "Yup - that's the line" as it flies.

 

[seedlings]

Is there fun watching your disc barely miss the gap to kick 60 feet downhill into a wooded ravine? Haha!

He makes sense. I play with a dozen or so friends. Middle last year one of them decided to make tags for our group. That kinda took the fun out to play every single round competively. Sometimes I'm just deciding to try different discs or lines and drop down several tags. I'm used to it now and the fun comes back.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Is there fun watching your disc barely miss the gap to kick 60 feet downhill into a wooded ravine? Haha!

He makes sense. I play with a dozen or so friends. Middle last year one of them decided to make tags for our group. That kinda took the fun out to play every single round competively. Sometimes I'm just deciding to try different discs or lines and drop down several tags. I'm used to it now and the fun comes back.

Tags for me have always been a sporadic thing... I like always having the tags. But I'll go like 5-7 matches in a row where I'm gung ho trying to take and hold the best tag possible. And then I'll go 5-7 matches where I'm just out there playing for fun and what happens happens. I just like having the flair on the bag, mostly.

 

[Smigles]

I must be ahead of the curve.

I always thought enjoying the activity was the reward.

I started with that, but then started playing tournaments just to have a justification to travel around (as if you need one haha). I started placing better and better and eventually even winning some.

I guess i was never really aware of this aspect. I am now back on playing for the game, the throws, the flight of the disc. It is a lot more fun.

The other was UDisk, like I'm really supposed to check in with my phone while I'm OUTSIDE PLAYING? REALLY? Tell my about Dopamine, lol

Well, two sides to every coin. UDisc is a lot more handy than paper scorecards etc. It also gives live scoring to any event that uses it. There are a lot of upsides for using Udisc (At least for organising tournaments). My view is that Udisc is fine as long as you dont also open up Instagram every time you enter scores

 

[Three Putt]

I've seen this in action a lot. I'm a terrible player and always have been, but my "reward" for playing was never tied to the score or finish. It was always a lot more intangible. I missed the stupid early tree on hole three and had a birdie look; actually converting the birdie is a bonus. I cleared the early tunnel on hole six and had the long drive on my card. I popped a 30+ footer in to save par on hole 16. All those sorts of things mixed in with being outside, wandering around trees, hanging out with people I enjoyed talking with...that stuff has been enough that after 30 years I'm still here.

Dozens of people I've known that I'm either still in enough contact with (read: never deleted them off my facebook friends list) or I've run into again somewhere that I used to throw disc with don't play anymore. A solid 90% of these guys were far better players than I was, and most of them were a lot farther into the competitive scene than I was. They just topped out. They moved up from INT to ADV, stopped making large improvements in their game and were solidly mediocre in this big pool of ADV players. They stopped winning all the time and they were off to cycling or something. We obviously valued different things from the experience.

 

[Three Putt]

Is there fun watching your disc barely miss the gap to kick 60 feet downhill into a wooded ravine? Haha!

He makes sense. I play with a dozen or so friends. Middle last year one of them decided to make tags for our group. That kinda took the fun out to play every single round competively. Sometimes I'm just deciding to try different discs or lines and drop down several tags. I'm used to it now and the fun comes back.

Tags for me have always been a sporadic thing... I like always having the tags. But I'll go like 5-7 matches in a row where I'm gung ho trying to take and hold the best tag possible. And then I'll go 5-7 matches where I'm just out there playing for fun and what happens happens. I just like having the flair on the bag, mostly.

Tags are one of those things where the point got lost for some people.

Before tags were common, when I headed out to play I almost always got hit up to play for $5. There was always SOMEBODY who HAD to have something on the line to play for and $5 was the generally accepted fee. Just heading out to the course to play and running into friends cost you $5, and there was an enormous amount of social pressure to just conform and donate the $5. 90% of the time the person demanding we play for $5 was by far the best player and the bet was predetermined, but socially it was spun like we owed that to the good players for some reason.

In St. Louis it was so bad that one time when a group of us were meeting up and we asked a local pro who happened to also be there if he wanted to join us, he demanded that we pay him $20 up front the the "lesson" we were all going to receive for being in his presence. :| This was what happened when you just wanted to throw, you know?

After dropping $30-$40 bucks some months just trying to throw casual rounds and get in some practice, having a mini disc with a stupid number that didn't really mean anything I could just hand somebody and get back another one with another stupid number that didn't really mean anything was golden. That was always the point of them, it saved me $5 every time I handed it over.

People in some places tend to make the numbers a HUGE deal; they are stupid numbers in a arbitrary sequence based on who shows up on any given day that don't really mean anything. Just remember when you get one back with a larger number than you handed over...It could have been $5. :|

 

[ChrisWoj]

Tags are one of those things where the point got lost for some people.

Before tags were common, when I headed out to play I almost always got hit up to play for $5. There was always SOMEBODY who HAD to have something on the line to play for and $5 was the generally accepted fee. Just heading out to the course to play and running into friends cost you $5, and there was an enormous amount of social pressure to just conform and donate the $5. 90% of the time the person demanding we play for $5 was by far the best player and the bet was predetermined, but socially it was spun like we owed that to the good players for some reason.

In St. Louis it was so bad that one time when a group of us were meeting up and we asked a local pro who happened to also be there if he wanted to join us, he demanded that we pay him $20 up front the the "lesson" we were all going to receive for being in his presence. :| This was what happened when you just wanted to throw, you know?

After dropping $30-$40 bucks some months just trying to throw casual rounds and get in some practice, having a mini disc with a stupid number that didn't really mean anything I could just hand somebody and get back another one with another stupid number that didn't really mean anything was golden. That was always the point of them, it saved me $5 every time I handed it over.

People in some places tend to make the numbers a HUGE deal; they are stupid numbers in a arbitrary sequence based on who shows up on any given day that don't really mean anything. Just remember when you get one back with a larger number than you handed over...It could have been $5. :|

I am absolutely one of those people that likes to put "something on the line" every time out, even if I'm just playing for fun and planning on smoking until I can't throw straight. But, knowing I'm a good player, even with players of similar skill level I'm almost always looking to give out strokes unless the other player is better than me. I usually try to give out at least the 1 stroke per rating point or whatever. If you're the better player and you're gonna be "that guy" wanting a money round then you absolutely should be offering strokes with your ask of someone else to play you for money. Its just plain a straight up obligation from my end. There's no fun to be had in taking money from my friends in an uneven competition.

 

[Nick Pacific]

The book " Golf is Not a Game of Perfect" really reiterates the OPs point, but Rotella goes even further than Huberman and says something interesting in that you can have it both ways. We as humans tend to have binary thinking deeply embedded in our first instincts, but it doesn't have to be that way.

You can train yourself to simultaneously be competitive and have fun and swing free at the same time. It takes some practice and at first will take some conscious rewiring of how you approach the game but after awhile it will become automatic and just the way you play the game without even thinking about it.

 

[skizzle34]

I have finally started learning this after almost a decade of competitive play. Looking back at my career the times where I was the most focused on how I was finishing and what my rating was were the times I truly did not "enjoy" playing disc golf. I always thought that once I got to 1000 I would feel different and then I did it and I felt even more pressure and even less joy playing. I started being super picky about when and where I would play. It got so bad that I almost gave up playing completely. AS A 1000 RATED PLAYER! Then I had my son and I realized that throwing frisbees at modified trash cans is in fact not all that serious. I fell from 1000 to 980. Once I got back to 980 I reevaluated and started playing to have fun. Running putts I used to lay up. Going for the stupid gap because its exciting. Low and behold I am back to 998 and having 3x as much fun as ever with none of the pressure.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

The fact that I enjoy playing courses that are well above my skill level (assuming they're well executed), tells me I enjoy the activity, rather than the reward.

Not much reward in shooting 12 over par.:\ If playing for score or rating was my yardstick for enjoyment, I'd have quit long ago.

For me, the reward is inherent in the game, the course, the shots, the scenery, the company, being out in nature...the whole experience.

 

[Three Putt]

There's no fun to be had in taking money from my friends in an uneven competition.

I mean, that we were not really their friends was really driven home by the fact that it took $5/head to get them to hang out with us. At least to me it was.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

I mean, that we were not really their friends was really driven home by the fact that it took $5/head to get them to hang out with us. At least to me it was.

So you had you buy your friends?

< entirely misses the point.