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Key Takeaways Dopamine-driven workplaces reward urgency and constant achievement, but they erode focus, creativity and long-term performance.
Companies that prioritize serotonin — through deep work, connection and meaningful progress — build more innovative, resilient and satisfied teams.
Not long before the pandemic hit, my brother Craig and I finished writing a book we’d been working on for over two years. The manuscript was complete, the publisher was happy, the launch was scheduled. We celebrated with our editorial team over pizza around the boardroom table.
Midway through the meal, someone asked, “So what are we working on next?”
Within minutes, we had moved from celebrating what we had built to planning the next project. The pizza was still warm. The accomplishment we had obsessed over for two years? We savored it for maybe an hour.
That was my old way of thinking. I have since found a better path, one I wrote about in a previous article about recovering from burnout and discovering what actually fuels sustainable performance. But back then, I was still trapped in the dopamine cycle.
During my recovery process, I met a Stanford neuroscientist who showed me brain scans of gambling addicts and high-performing professionals. The similarity was unsettling. Both showed identical dopamine patterns. The same neural pathways firing. The same cycle of anticipation, spike and crash.
“You, and your best people,” he said, “are running on the same brain chemistry as slot machines.”
He was right. And many of us had built companies that functioned like casinos.
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