The Molecule of More

stimulus-independent thought, was the brain’s default mode.
When they looked at happiness, they found that people were less 
happy when their mind was wandering, and once again, it didn’t matter 
what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, 
or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what 
they were doing. They researchers concluded that “a human mind is a 
wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”
But what if you don’t care about happiness? What if you’re so 
dopaminergic that the only thing you care about is achievement? It 
doesn’t matter, because no matter how brilliant, original, or creative 
you are, your dopamine circuits aren’t going to achieve much without 
the raw material provided by the H&N senses.
Michelangelo’s Pietà, depicting the Virgin Mary cradling her dead 
son, powerfully communicates the abstract ideas of grief and accep-
tance. But it took a block of marble to realize the artist’s conception. 
The sad beauty of Mary is an idealized depiction of femininity, but 
Michelangelo could not have conceived this image had he not used his 
eyes to study real women and his emotions to feel real sorrow in the 
here and now.
By spending time in the present, we take in sensory information 
about the reality we live in, allowing the dopamine system to use that 
information to develop reward-maximizing plans. The impressions that 

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we absorb have the potential to inspire a flurry of new ideas, enhancing 
our ability to find new solutions to the problems we face. And that’s a 
wonderful thing. Creating something new, something that has never 
been conceived of before is, by definition, surprising. Because it is 
always new, creation is the most durable of the dopaminergic pleasures.
STIR IT UP
Creativity is an excellent way to mix together dopamine and H&N. 
We discussed a particular kind of creativity in chapter four, a creativity 
achieved by dismantling conventional models of reality. It’s an extraor-
dinary creativity in which the creator is driven to pursue his work to the 
exclusion of all other aspects of life, such as family and friends. Lonely 
and obsessed, people with breakthrough ideas are usually dissatisfied. 
Dopamine predominates, and H&N circuits wither. But there are more 
ordinary forms of creativity that anyone can practice, acts of creation 
that promote balance, rather than dopaminergic dominance.
Woodworking, knitting, painting, decorating, and sewing are 
old-fashioned activities that don’t get much attention in our modern 
world—which is exactly the point. These activities don’t require smart-
phone apps or high-speed internet. They require brains and hands 
working together to create something new. Our imagination conceives 
the project. We develop a plan to carry it out. Then our hands make it 
real.
A business executive working in financial services spent his days 
brooding over stock options, asset derivatives, foreign exchange rates, 
and other imaginary beasts. He was wealthy and miserable. His misery 
drove him to see a mental health specialist, and a few months later he 
had rediscovered his passion for painting, a hobby he had abandoned 
decades ago. “I can’t wait to get home at the end of the day,” he told 
his doctor. “Last night I painted for four hours, and I didn’t even realize 
the time had gone by.”
Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn how to paint, but 
that doesn’t mean that creating beauty is out of reach. Coloring books 

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for adults have mystified some and satisfied many. At first glance they 
seem silly; why do adults need coloring books? But they have the ability 
to relieve stress by providing an escape from the imbalanced, dopami-
nergic world. Coloring books for adults feature beautiful, abstract geo-
metric patterns—dopaminergic abstractions combined with sensory 
experience.
Children also need to work with their hands. In 2015, Time maga-
zine published an article titled “Why Schools Need to Bring Back Shop 
Class.” Working with drills and rip saws, surrounded by the aroma of
fresh sawdust, is a welcome break from the intellectual rigors of aca-
demic classes. Sanding a piece of wood until it’s “as smooth as a baby’s 
bottom,” as one shop teacher put it, is a joy that few people experience 
these days. And the birdhouse that comes into being at the end of it 
all—it’s a small miracle. Dwelling on it is an oasis of peace where the 
mind can say, I made that.
Many people grew up in a home where their father had a work-
bench in the garage. They’re less common today, but fixing things is a 
unique pleasure. Each project is a problem that needs to be solved—a 
dopaminergic activity—and then the solution is made real. Sometimes 
solving repair problems requires creativity because the necessary tools 
or supplies aren’t available. For example, figuring out that a nail clip-
per can be used as a wire cutter. Fixing things also boosts self-efficacy 
and increases one’s sense of control: H&N delivering dopaminergic 
gratification.
Cooking, gardening, and playing sports are among many activities 
that combine intellectual stimulation with physical activity in a way that 
will satisfy us and make us whole. These activities can be pursued for 
a lifetime without becoming stale. You might get a few weeks of dopa-
minergic thrills by buying an expensive Swiss timepiece, but after that 
it’s just a watch. Getting promoted to district manager makes going 
to work exciting at first, but eventually it becomes the same old grind. 
Creativity is different because it stirs together H&N with dopamine. 
It’s like mixing little bit of carbon with iron to make steel. The result 
is stronger and more durable. That’s what happens to dopaminergic 
pleasure when you add physical H&N.

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But most people don’t bother to engage in acts of creation, like 
drawing pictures, making music, or building model airplanes. There’s 
no practical reason to do these things. They’re hard, at least in the 
beginning, and they probably won’t earn us money or prestige or guar-
antee us a better future. But they might make us happy.
THE POWER IS IN YOUR HANDS
In 2015, TINYpulse, a consulting firm that helps managers increase 
employee engagement, surveyed over 30,000 employees working for 
more than five hundred companies. They asked the employees about 
their managers, their coworkers, and professional growth. But what the 
survey was really about was happiness.
TINYpulse noted that no one had ever performed a survey like this. 
Management consultants in general didn’t seem to place much value 
on happiness. But TINYpulse believed that happiness was essential to 
a company’s success, so they looked at happiness in a broad range of
industries, including the glamorous fields of technology, finance, and 
biotech. None of them came out on top. The happiest people were 
construction workers.
Construction workers take abstract plans and make them real. 
They use their minds and their hands. They also enjoy a high degree 
of camaraderie. When TINYpulse looked at the reasons construction 
workers gave for feeling happy, the most common was, “I work with 
great people.” A construction manager said, “One thing that unites 
everybody at the end of the day is kicking back for a little bit with a few 
beers and talking stuff out—the good and the bad.” Affiliative relation-
ships in the context of the work environment played a key role: work 
and friendship, dopamine and H&N.
The second most important reason for happiness given by con-
struction workers was, “I’m excited about my work and projects,” a 
dopaminergic reason. The authors of the report also noted that the 
construction industry had enjoyed strong growth in the previous year, 
and this growth was reflected in rising salaries, another dopaminergic 

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contribution. It takes both dopamine and H&N to attain happiness, the 
state of being that the philosopher Aristotle considered to be the goal 
of all other goals.
Our dopamine circuits are what make us human. They are what give 
our species its special power. We think. We plan. We imagine. We ele-
vate our thoughts to ponder abstract concepts such as truth, justice, 
and beauty. Within those circuits we transcend all barriers of space 
and time. We thrive in the most hostile environments—even in outer 
space—thanks to our ability to dominate the world around us. But these 
same circuits can also lead us down a darker path, a path of addiction, 
betrayal, and misery. If we aim to be great, we will probably have to 
accept the fact that misery will be a part of it. It’s the goad of dissatis-
faction that keeps us at our work while others are enjoying the company 
of family and friends.
But those of us who prefer a life of happy fulfillment have a differ-
ent task to accomplish: the task of finding harmony. We have to over-
come the seduction of endless dopaminergic stimulation and turn our 
backs on our never-ending hunger for more. If we are able to inter-
mingle dopamine with H&N, we can achieve that harmony. All dopa-
mine all the time is not the path to the best possible future. It’s sensory 
reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s 
full potential. Operating at its peak performance, it becomes capable 
of producing not only happiness and satisfaction, not only wealth and 
knowledge, but a rich mixture of sensory experience and wise under-
standing, a mixture that can set us down the path toward a more bal-
anced way of being human.

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FURTHER READING
Lee, K. E., Williams, K. J., Sargent, L. D., Williams, N. S., & Johnson, K. A. 
(2015). 40-second green roof views sustain attention: The role of micro-
breaks in attention restoration. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 42, 182–189.
Mooney, C. (2015, May 26). Just looking at nature can help your brain work bet-
ter, study finds. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost 
.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/05/26/viewing-nature-can 
-help-your-brain-work-better-study-finds/
Raskin, A. (2011, January 4). Think you’re good at multitasking? Take these 
tests. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcodesign.com/1662976/
think-youre-good-at-multitasking-take-these-tests
Gloria, M., Iqbal, S. T., Czerwinski, M., Johns, P., & Sano, A. (2016). Neurotics 
can’t focus: An in situ study of online multitasking in the workplace. In Pro-