The lowest hanging fruit for dopamine management is unhook yourself from mass media, especially any that do not Glorify The Grind. Which is nearly all of them, save for small corners of the Net like here.

The most damaging narrative structure ever perpetrated upon man is fitting stories inside tiny footprints of a few hours here and there or worse, an hour (typical shows) or a minute (advertisements). This makes it easy to inject compliant thinking that the big rewards come through cathartic Big Moments Of Effort. Outside of random chance, all big payoffs as a result of Human Doings Gutting Out Human Doings are accomplished through The Grind.

We lost an incalculably valuable narrative structure when the storytelling around the fire, passed down by word of mouth, was shoved aside. To children it felt like years upon a single story which reinforced the grind of human existence, and the children simultaneously lived the immediate feedback reactions to different points in the stories from their elders who they looked up to.

The Grind is what you do when no one is looking, and you are entirely by yourself. Whether it is that one last set, that one last differential equations problem, or that first page of the essay you don't feel like doing. Glorify. The. Grind. Discard any storytelling channel from your life that does not acknowledge that fundamental of what it means to be human.