So you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like those by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.
Hopefully, you're reading this just prior to (or just after) splurging a not-insignificant chunk of change on some high-quality Nootropics. If you're going to spend your hard-earned money on Nootropics there's an important question you should be asking...
How can I make more permanent the mindset and enhanced powers of cognition that this Nootropic imbues?
You should be pondering what you can do in the short term so that using a not insignificant dosage of potent smart drugs for 30, 60, or 90 days not only enhances your performance in the medium term but also benefits you in the long term.
You should be thinking about how you can use a medium-term pharmacologically enabled boost in motivation, memory, and cognition to build escape velocity momentum toward your goals.
The American oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is famous for saying something to the effect of...
Your first million dollars is the hardest to make.
In a humorous exchange across a wide generational gap, in a Twitter exchange with the rapper Drake, he added a zero to the amount in his original axiom.
Drake tweeted: The first million is the hardest. To which T. Boone Pickens responded:
The first billion is a helluva lot harder
The point that T. Boone is making (in a very hip-hop fashion) is that momentum really matters.
If you don't have momentum life sucks! You keep repeating your mistakes and sordid history. Your laborious efforts barely pay off. You're unlucky. You keep getting screwed over and betrayed. The system keeps holding you down. You feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.
If you do have momentum life is good (and gets better!) The more money, resources, and notoriety you accumulate the easier it becomes to accumulate even more. Your time and opinions are respected. Investors, banks, and strategic partners beg for the opportunity to invest in you. You are desired; both in the bedroom and boardroom. Even when you make mistakes and screw things up people forgive you and you continue to profit.
In my life, I've had brilliant momentum and I've also been utterly stuck like a broken-down old locomotive sitting in the middle of nowhere with its iron wheels rusted to the tracks. Unless you're ok with living a life of quiet desperation you must be prepared to kill, steal, or do whatever the hell it takes to attain and maintain momentum. Luckily we live in civilized times where you don't actually need to kill anyone or steal anything to get ahead but I use this language to evoke the degree of visceral, mental intensity that you need to bring to bear to build momentum (especially if you're wholly or partially lacking in momentum!)
In the past men amassed vast fortunes primarily using violence, it honestly did not take much smarts or brains. Nearly every male member of the Mongol Khan dynasty who didn't die on the battlefield or by the assassin's blade killed themselves with alcoholism. These guys were intoxicated nearly all the time, yet they managed to conquer and rule nearly half the known world.
Today the primary tool of the successful is a mindset of vigorous, focused ambition.
It's very in vogue to bemoan wealth inequality and complain about economic mobility. Yet had you been born in any other epoch of human history, your economic destiny was, with almost total certainty, predetermined from the moment of your sweaty, smelly, inglorious inception.
Furthermore, in the past true free will and agency were only fully taken advantage of by a small proportion of any given society. Only the top 5%, 10%, or (maybe as much as) 20% of the most intelligent people got to accumulate any resources and freedom to chart their own course in life.
Yet today, if you're reading this, chances are that you're residing in a country where virtually everyone gets to determine if they end up in the poor house or in a big house.
But it's not as simple as saying...
If you work hard, you'll get ahead! You just need to work hard, take responsibility, and you'll achieve the American dream (or whatever kind of dream you have...)
Technology has radically transformed the landscape of our society and culture and success is not the predictable linear thing it used to be:
Go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate, get a job, work hard, get a raise, get married, buy a house, have kids... Success.
In today's economy and the economy of the near future, success is still predictable (even almost guaranteed) if you have two things
1. Intelligence
2. Focus
These two things matter more than where you're from, what you studied in college, what kinds of grades you got, or if your dad is a politician. Today's economy rewards you primarily for your intellectual labor and inventiveness.
Intelligence (or generalized intelligence or G) is a factor mostly determined by genetics. It's mostly predetermined by factors outside your control. Although, there are some things you can do to optimize and cultivate your innate intelligence.
Focus is an increasing rarity in our digitally distracted age. We have extraordinarily, astoundingly distracting technology within arm's reach nearly every waking moment that many of us are engrossed with nearly every waking moment! This technology blunts our working memory's capacity to problem solve, our ability to think deeply, and cuts down our attention span along with hurting our capacity to instill long-term memory and skills. I've argued that chronic Internet and technology use affects our minds similar to chronic heroin addiction.
And focus really matters, nobody achieves success without focus. Unfocused people are chronically unhappy and frustrated.
Professor Jerry Muller, the author of The Mind and the Market, articulated it best:
“…a period of growing equality of access to education and increasing stratification of marketplace rewards, both of which have increased the importance of human capital. One element of human capital is cognitive ability: quickness of mind, the ability to infer and apply patterns drawn from experience, and the ability to deal with mental complexity. Another is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility. And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace.” (March 2013, Foreign Affairs)
You might be saying: Making money isn't everything. I would rather be happy than rich.
Well, you might not have your sights set on being an executive in a corner office but the same types of personality traits and mindset that make you economically valuable are absolutely the same things that also make you a good friend, parent, leader of your community, or entrepreneur. If you want to contribute meaningfully to society, intelligence and focus really matter.
So what does this have to do with Nootropics and Biohacking? Nootropics and Biohacking give you a significant unfair advantage in intelligence and focus. In the remainder of this article, I'll describe the tools, habits, and strategies for making more permanent high performance intelligence and focus. And I'll prescribe a usage protocol for them...
The Sprint
So you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like those by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.
I suggest that you commit to a month or two or three of discipline; doing all the things you know you should be doing and none of the self-defeating, indulgent, silly things.
How long should you sprint? If this is a new idea for you but you're ambitious and confident, I'll suggest 2 months. If you already have solid discipline and habits, I'll suggest you go for 3 months. If you have poor discipline just aim for 30 days. The smart drugs coursing in your veins and seeping across your blood-brain barrier will improve your baseline discipline.
After the sprint is over you can indulge in some of your old vices or habits of dubious value.
And trust me, you will enjoy them after this short season of living a more spartan lifestyle.
Sin is never sweeter than when savored after a season of stark stoicism.
So, yes, for the short term, I'm suggesting...
Abstinence
Commit to abstaining during the sprint from all the things that make you weak, unhappy, and waste your time...
Junk food - Instead go stock up on healthy snacks and nourishing, satiating meals.
Junk entertainment - Turn off the shallow TV shows, suspend your Netflix membership, block the stupid internet comedy, and turn off your Facebook newsfeed.
Junk people - Maybe you have net negative people in your life that kind of waste your time and don't add anything. Just do everything you can to avoid or minimize contact with these people.
Social media - I'm not saying you need to delete your Facebook profile. Just commit to not using social media impulsively and excessively. Delete all those apps from your smartphone.
Video games
Porn - See The Journey from No Fap to Tantra | Documentary for men.
Smoking - Quit smoking whatever you may like to smoke.
Sobriety - Pass on booze or recreational drug use.
And whatever other bad habits you might have; make a commitment to yourself to abstain from these things. If you fail and cheat a little it's not the end of the world, just recommit for the duration of the sprint. If abstaining from all these things simultaneously seems like a herculean challenge to you, you should know that self-control generalizes, and discipline begets more discipline. In my own experience, it's a lot easier to be universally disciplined than it is to just be disciplined in one or two areas.
And again, the Nootropics will make it easier to be disciplined.
Download Coach.me
If you fail to track your habits during the sprint you will almost certainly fail or have a mediocre sprint. The best free (also ad-free) tool I've found for quantifying habits and lifestyle is the app Coach.me.
If you join Coach.me, follow me! I've got some wacky and seriously self-improving habits!
Brag AFTER 3 Weeks
Studies have shown quite conclusively that if you are kicking a bad habit (or picking up a good one) and you tell your friend and family about it (or worse, brag on social media about it) right away the positive feedback you get actually demotivates you from making progress and sticking with it.
You see this every year at the beginning of January, everyone starts bragging on Facebook about how they are going to finally start eating right or going to the gym, and a digital orgy of likes, hearts, self-help memes, and encouraging comments ensues. These same people consistently fail to habituate good habits and are back to their jaded, cynical self-loathing selves by springtime.
Instead, practice discipline in silence and track your habits, after at least 3 weeks feel free to brag about your good behavior.
In the beginning, abstinence and discipline will not be very fun. It will be boring, uncomfortable, tedious, and maybe even arduous but as you build momentum and the good decision-making compounds over the duration of the sprint you'll realize that you're remarkably more happy and productive.
Remember that discipline is the ultimate lifehack because if you have discipline you get to have any other thing that you desire.
Working Memory Regimen
Working memory is different from your memory of your past or what you studied in school. Your working memory is your memory that deals with the present, it's your problem-solving capacity. It's the RAM of your mind, you can have a fancy computer or phone with all sorts of great apps but if you don't have enough RAM it's not going to accomplish much.
Your success in school or the workplace is fundamentally underlied by your working memory, I would go as far as saying that it's MORE important than your long-term memory.
Unfortunately, the Facebook terms of service and the employee at the cell phone store declined to inform you that impulsive technology usage is quite bad for your working memory. If you've ever thought all this "smart" technology is making people stupid you're mostly correct!
Luckily for you, science has found that there are several effective ways to improve working memory in the long term.
Dual N-Back Brain Training
This is a challenging brain game that you play on your smartphone or computer that powerfully exercises your working memory by giving you sets of auditory and visual information that you need to remember. As you get better and better at it, the game increases the number of sets that you need to remember. In as little as a few weeks, it increases your working memory capacity, upgrading the RAM of your mind.
You may be skeptical of brain training games and apps, a lot are of dubious value, however, compounding scientific evidence year after year is indicating that...
Dual N-Back does improve working memory.
Dual N-Back improves general intelligence which makes you better at tasks in the real world outside of playing the brain game.
Dual N-Back is more effective than a placebo.
To quote from a 2015 meta-analysis paper published by researchers at the University of California
Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis focusing on one specific training program, n-back. We searched PubMed and Google Scholar for all n-back training studies with [fluid intelligence] outcome measures, a control group, and healthy participants between 18 and 50 years of age. In total, we included 20 studies in our analyses that met our criteria and found a small but significant positive effect of n-back training on improving [fluid intelligence]. Several factors that moderate this transfer are identified and discussed. We conclude that short-term cognitive training on the order of weeks can result in beneficial effects in important cognitive functions as measured by laboratory tests.
Dual N-Back is free and it's worthwhile to download it on your Android, iPhone, or computer and try it.
Meditation
A mindfulness practice benefits your mind differently by increasing the density of grey matter and stimulating neuroplasticity. Its most notable effect, though, is on mindset and mood; if your internal dialog is often a cacophony of self-criticism meditation transforms your thoughts from a squadron of bickering chickens into a Roman phalanx of legionnaires pushing forward together toward victory!
Download the Headspace app and get started with their 10-minute guided meditations, as little as 10 minutes a day is beneficial but most people find there's a marked improvement in their mindset and general mood by increasing it to 20 minutes daily.
Maybe you've tried meditation before and your mind was just too overactive, you got angry with yourself sitting there trying to think about not thinking...
I had a similar experience when I first tried to meditate, so I switched to doing the Dual N-Back training for about a month which markedly improved my attentional control to the point where meditation wasn't such a frustrating exercise in mental self-flagellation. Now I meditate quite consistently.
Reading Books
Sadly many have given up reading books and instead surrender their finite leisure time to attention-grabbing internet articles and salaciously thumb-nailed Youtube videos. Reading books exercises our capacity to think deeply, slowly, and wholly, to reach true comprehension of a topic or story.
When you read try to focus 100% of your attention on the words on the page in front of you, imagine yourself in the mind of the author, and try to think about what they must have been thinking as they wrote. It's truly a sublime pleasure waiting to be rediscovered by you! As a working memory exercise, there's not much of a difference between reading fiction and non-fiction. Personally, I like to read two books at any given time, usually a fiction and non-fiction title on alternating days.
Importantly, you'll want to do your working memory regimen while dosed on Nootropics for the same reason that bodybuilders and athletes train while dosed on performance-enhancing stimulants. It gives you the capacity to train your mind more intensely and make cognitive gains.
During the sprint, I'd recommend trying to do all three daily
10-20 minutes of Dual N-Back
10-20 minutes of meditation
30 minutes of reading
Ideally, you're spending about an hour on this working memory regimen which may sound like a lot of time daily but you should be able to easily find an hour of free time if you cut all the time wasters mentioned above out of your life.
A potent Nootropic will usually give you at least an extra hour of productive energy daily if not more!
To optimize the cognitive gains do them in the middle of the day when you are relatively alert and awake.
If I had to choose just one to do it would be the Dual N-Back.
Intermittent Daily Fasting
5 days a week, try to practice what the world's leading anti-aging researchers and biohackers recommend enthusiastically, a daily fast of about 16 hours. Do all your eating and snacking within an 8-hour window; for most people, this means eating a large, filling dinner around 9 PM, going to bed, skipping breakfast, and eating a substantial lunch with lots of healthy fats around 1 PM. This puts your body into a ketogenic state; burning fat instead of glutamate.
At first, it may be excruciating to fast for 16 hours but quickly you get used to it and it doesn't really bother you.
Skipping breakfast and snacks ends up saving you quite a bit of time and money.
Avoid eating carbs, sugar, or bread especially when you're fasting as your body will switch back over to glutamate.
As long as you're feeding your brain lots of the healthy fats it needs, you'll have plenty of energy.
If you're a performance enhancement junkie you'll want to consume some high-quality MCTs while in a fasted state, many do this by starting their morning with a Bulletproof-style coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. But if you want to experience all the cognitive and longevity benefits of Ketosis that you hear everyone online ranting and raving about you don't want to consume just any old MCTs, you're going to have to be very discriminating!
You're going to want to avoid the useless and harmful MCTs; lauric acid, C6, and C12.
Be wary of impure MCT products, a certified organic stamp is not enough, ideally, you want to see the manufacturer's certificate of third-party analysis with a spectroscopy report evidencing above 97% purity, which is considered pharmaceutical grade.
Of course, you'll want to avoid anything containing artificial sweeteners, coloring, or weird chemicals with names you can't pronounce!
Ultra Keto+MCT by Ultra Human meets my stringent standards, combining Patented Exogenous BHB Ketones and Pure C8 MCT along with selenium citrate, pink Himalayan salt, and malic acid that gives it a delicious, non-artificially sweetened taste.
If you can't afford to or are unable to get your hands on high-quality MCTs, try intermittent fasting anyway; it's still a smart lifehack for health and productivity! If you’re obsessive about really optimizing your morning you’ll want to dose some pharma grade Amino acids along with the MCTs and whatever else your morning keto stack entails...
Amino Code by Ultra Human, their Amino Acid Matrix is designed for maximum NNU (net nitrogen utilization) for faster human muscle tissue recovery and optimized metabolism for/accelerated fat loss. It’s free of... Sugars, Dyes and Artificial Sweeteners have been associated with stomach discomfort, bloating, allergic reactions, insulin spikes...
Aminos studied in human trials treating epilepsy demonstrated it as effective in optimizing ketosis:
Although our data are preliminary, we suggest that branched chain amino acids may increase the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet and the diet could be more easily tolerated by the patients because of the change in the ratio of fat to protein.
What I like about this morning ketosis cocktail is that these performance enhancers work on totally different neurobiological mechanisms than Racetams, Modafinil, or other common smart drugs which is great news for long-term Nootropics users who have built up a tolerance to cognitive enhancers that they have to take at increasing dosages for increasingly underwhelming results.
Auditory Optimization
Raise your hand if you've been guilty of this...
You wake up with the good intention of having a kickass productive day but you just take a quick look at Facebook and then you see a Youtube video or news report about some absurd thing happening somewhere in the world, you click the enticing thumbnail and get just a little pissed off about the idiocracy of the world, then you watch another video or news segment... Before you know it you've wasted an hour of your morning triggering (to use that very in-vogue word) yourself. Finally, you turn it off and get to work on your project but you're a bit unfocused and frenetic, and a mediocre day ensues.
My audio biohack for avoiding this all together is focus-promoting music. There are a couple of ways to do this...
Pick a long soothing track of classical or electronic music and listen to that.
Pick a song or album you like and just listen to that on repeat, I like Drake's melodic hip-hop album Nothing Was The Same.
The website or app Brain.FM plays these endless algorithmic music tracks, I paid for a lifetime membership because their music is such an effective promoter of focus and creativity for me.
Importantly, start playing this music first thing when you sit down to work on your computer. Don't give yourself the opportunity to get distracted!
The Protocol
How to utilize the tools discussed in a 30-day sprint.
Pre-Sprint
It's going to take several days to a week for your package of Nootropics to arrive, in the interim...
Download the Dual N-Back app and try it a few times.
Spend an hour outlining your medium-term goals for the sprint. You may want to create a self-determination flowchart.
Write down the things you are going to be abstaining from during the sprint. Resist the temptation to egregiously abuse these things right before starting the sprint.
Delete all the useless, distracting social media apps from your smartphone. Install some software or apps on your computer that block websites you want to avoid.
Find some focus-promoting music.
Go to the bookstore or Amazon and look for some books that you might like to read.
Clear out your kitchen of junk food. Go to the grocery store and stock up on healthy foods and snacks.
Try doing a 16-hour intermittent fast.
Don't brag (yet!) to your friends and family about your sprint BUT you may need to let them know that you're going to need some space and time.
Week 1
When the Nootropics arrive commit to hitting it hard and starting the sprint strong.
You don't need to take an extreme or attack dosage of the Nootropics, just take the recommended dosage.
At first, you may not find the Nootropics all that stimulating. Often Nootropics have a cumulative effect. It may take a week or two for their effect on your mindset to become apparent.
I would NOT take the Nootropics every day of the week. I advise taking them 5-6 days a week.
Do at least 10 minutes of the Dual N-Back training daily.
Try to meditate at least 5 times this week.
Listen to the focus-promoting music first thing in the morning or whenever you get started working.
Do intermittent fasting for 5 days.
Try to read for at least 30 minutes, for at least 5 days.
Log your habits in Coach.me daily.
Commit to NOT cheating on your diet this week.
Week 2
Continue with Nootropics and the working memory training regimen
At least once this week try meditating for 20 minutes instead of 10.
If you're doing well with the habits and goals you've outlined resist the temptation of getting ambitious and adding a lot more things to do. Stay committed for the duration of the sprint just to the things you outlined initially.
If you want to cheat on your diet this week, allow yourself that.
On Sunday or near the end of the second week spend an hour evaluating your progress and performance. Outline your to-do's and priorities for the coming week.
Week 3
You may have the inclination to experiment; increasing or decreasing the dosage of Nootropics or adding in other supplements, you can do that this week and see how it changes your baseline mood and productivity.
Maintain your working memory training regimen.
Meditate for 20 minutes for 5 days.
You may be hitting a bit of a motivational dip but stay focused, discipline gets easier after a few weeks of consistency. You can try increasing your intake of Nootropics for motivation.
Again near the end of the second week spend an hour evaluating your progress and performance. Outline your to-do's and priorities for the coming week.
Week 4
The time has come to do some well-deserved bragging!
Feel free to share your progress and accomplishments with those who will encourage you.
If you really can't wait till the end of the sprint, allow yourself an indulgent cheat meal this week.
Evaluate your performance and progress and consider if you want to maintain this sprint for another 30-60 days.
Finally...
I'll remind you once more that self-control generalizes; it's easier to practice self-control holistically than in one area of your life. If you implement at least some of the biohacks described here practicing discipline will be a lot easier.
When you finally indulge your hedonistic impulses after the sprint, it's all the more satisfying. Personally, I have a holiday scheduled in about 2 months to the black sea and I'm looking forward to savoring an indulgent cigar while chilling by the seaside!
Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?
Share this post