The Stimulation Height Chart
Map your daily activities by dopamine altitude and deliberately fly lower
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 78%
Bailey argues that everything we do sits at a different altitude of mental stimulation determined by how much dopamine it releases, and that the brain's acquisition network (dopamine, the molecule of more) is anti-correlated with its presence network (serotonin and oxytocin). At the top sit hard drugs, then super-stimuli like social media, pornography, and UberEats. In the middle band lie the activities where we actually contribute: writing, playing an instrument, coffee with a friend. At the bottom are the most calming activities: letting your mind wander, watching a campfire, hiking. You draw your own chart, rank your typical activities by height, estimate your average altitude, and then deliberately spend more time in the middle and lower bands. The counterintuitive payoff is that the lower, less stimulating band is also the most productive, because presence is what optimizes contribution.
Origin
Extracted from Chris Bailey's account of researching How to Calm Your Mind, where he mapped the dopamine altitude of his own daily activities to find the band that balanced calm and contribution.
Core principles
- 01Every activity sits at a different height of mental stimulation based on its dopamine hit
- 02Acquisition and presence networks are anti-correlated in the brain
- 03The middle band is where real contribution happens
- 04High-stimulation activity is an active form of laziness
- 05Lowering your average stimulation height raises presence and output
How to run it
- 1
Inventory your daily activities
Write down the things you actually tend to across a normal day, from work tasks to phone habits to downtime.
- 2
Rank each by dopamine hit
For each activity, judge how large a hit of dopamine it delivers. Online, novelty is the main driver, so sort digital inputs by how surprising they are.
Pro tip Treat most online activity as roughly equal in life-impact and differentiate it mainly by novelty.
- 3
Draw the altitude bands
Arrange the activities into a vertical chart: super-stimuli at the top, contribution activities in the middle, mind-wandering and nature at the bottom.
- 4
Estimate your average height
Look across your real day and gauge how high your average stimulation altitude sits.
Watch out A high average that feels productive is often just active laziness leaning on distraction.
- 5
Deliberately fly lower
Shift time out of the top band and into the middle and lower bands, resisting the urge to climb back up by checking your phone.
Pro tip Guard the middle band; the reflex to check your phone is what pulls you back up to a height that is hard to descend from.
In the wild
Bailey noticed he would climb to a high stimulation altitude to fill tiny gaps, scrolling his phone for the five minutes between a 2:55 meeting ending and a 3:00 meeting starting. Once he mapped these as top-band activities, he could see the pattern and substitute lower-altitude filler like tidying his desk or practising piano, which kept his average stimulation height down.
→ Recognizing the altitude of gap-filling habits let him swap them for calmer, more present ones.
Common mistakes
Mistaking high stimulation for productivity
Flying at a high altitude feels busy and even hard-working, but it is leaning on distraction to do your thinking and rarely produces contribution.
Trying to leap straight to the bottom
It takes the mind time to adjust downward to a lower stimulation level, so an abrupt drop feels restless. The goal is a lower average, reached gradually.
Is it for you?
Best for
People who feel scattered, distraction-driven, and never present despite being busy all day.
Not ideal for
Anyone looking for a quick fix; it requires honest self-observation and gradual habit change.
From the transcript
“every single thing we tend to over the course of the day exists at a different height of stimulation”
“generally speaking we want to lower our mental stimulation height because that is what leads us to make a bigger contribution”
“the acquisition mentality is primarily structured on top of the neurochemical dopamine so much so that a lot of researchers refer to dopamine as the…”
From the episode
How To Stop Feeling So Burned Out - Chris Bailey - #569
Chris Bailey