Do you experiment on your own body to be more productive?
Abadesi
48 replies
Humans have tried everything to maximize our brain and body power - from diets to fasting to even micro dosing on LSD according to a new GQ article. Do you do experiments on your own body to be more productive? What are the results?
Replies
Alex Cardinell@cardine18
Perfect Tense
Absolutely, but within the realm of things that I know won't cause any long term damage. I've found the following helps a lot:
- Frequent intense workouts
- 8 or more hours of sleep every night
- Melatonin an hour before bed to make sure I stick to my bedtime
- Lots of natural light
- Making sure I am well fed on healthy unprocessed foods with low sugar
- Staying hydrated
- Caffeine, but not every day and never after 3pm
- Minimal alcohol and almost never on weekdays
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Confirmic Cookie Widget
Things I have personally found to be good for me:
1. Fasting - not structured or whatever, but if I skip breakfast/lunch I tend to get much deeper into my work.
2. Taking a holiday.
3. I've tried modafinil, microdosing, adderall and the rest of the obvious nootropic-esque things - typically not worth it as you tend to borrow the next days' productivity. Your mileage may vary.
4. Sleeping at a consistent time
Growth Marketing Checklists
Yeah fasting and not eating in the mornings aside from a having a latte has really worked well for me! Have done it for the past 6 months and productivity in the mornings has been amazing!
I used to eat oats/berries (awesome brekky) in the morning normally quite early (approx. 7am) and often found myself craving for more food or a snack at around the 10.30/11am timeslot, and about 2 hours later I'm then wanting to have a decent lunch. This is fine but for me personally, I wanted to eat with some freedom (i.e. higher carb meals). Now only eating really between the hours of 12pm - 8pm, I've certainly reaped the rewards of losing some weight and mornings have been super productive. It did take a little getting used to at first, but after a couple of weeks I felt great.
It's not for everyone and best to research/seek GP guidance, but I'll personally never look back :)
@dansiepen thanks for sharing! I also find fasting a great way to stabilise energy levels and reduce distraction. It's nice to know its an option when needed.
TransKey - Translator Keyboard
Gave intermittent fasting a try a few years ago and haven't stopped since 🙌
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@abadesi there’s “intermittent fasting” and then there’s intermittent fasting. Simply skipping a meal occasionally falls in the former category, actually setting up designated eating- and fasting windows on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule (or some combination) is the latter. That’s where I’m at now after trying the former for some time without seeing much in the way of results.
Little Movies
Skipping breakfast and sometimes OMAD makes me more creative. But it's not always easy to do.
@yigitpinarbasi I've never been able to do OMAD except when I'm actually unwell and have no appetite
Kiroku
Eight hours sleep, meditation and exercise, stoic philosophy, hourly intradermal microdoses of Adrenochrome 😂
@suparchie I had to google Adrenochrome hehe
@suparchie @abadesi Umm.. looks sketchy. Be careful. https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc... "The changes in thinking induced by adrenochrome are similar to those observed in schizophrenia. "
@suparchie Eight hours sleep, meditation and exercise, stoic philosophy combo for me as well, along with fasting. Adrenochrome is something new. Never heard about it. How long have you been using it?
@suparchie @onesaint uh oh!
@suparchie @abadesi Doing that now. hehe
Dragula
Tried Intermittent Fasting with 8 hour and 6 hour eating windows for about two months and saw good results. I felt more awake in the mornings. Sadly, I couldn't eat bigger meals and hence, my total calorie count for the day suffered. Lost some muscle mass during the process so went back to regular 3-meals-a-day routine.
I manage multiple chronic illnesses so hacking my body has been critical for productivity. These days I can do 6-8 productive hours/ day. I'm always tweaking but here's my current routine:
Food
- High fat/low carb
- Intermittent fasting (16/8)
- Matcha latte with MCT oil (no other caffeine)
- High fat breakfast (fuels my day like nothing else!)
- Track nutrition with Chronometer (helpful to track nutrients to make sure you get what you need)
Physical
- 10-30 minutes of barre (first thing)
- Walk as much as possible (Easy when you live in a big city without a car!)
- Let go of sleep anxiety and trust my body will get enough (critical for an insomniac!)
Mind
- Morning pages daily https://juliacameronlive.com/bas...
- Ashwaganda before bed to calm mind and nervous system
- Long meditative walks to clear my mind
Bodies are all so different so it's well worth taking time to listen to what yours wants.
Lemon Lab
I'm not a creature of routine so I do both of these things sporadically: I drink caffeinated Soylent sometimes on weekdays to save time on thinking about what I want to eat for breakfast/lunch. And I take melatonin occasionally when I really need a good night's sleep. 😴
@taylormajewski hehe maybe I need to up my dosage
@taylormajewski I have yet to try Soylent or Huel. Really wish they sold melatonin in the UK... I've often wondered if it's just placebo though. When I have really bad jetlag it doesn't help much.
Lemon Lab
For me productivity is all about increasing my brain functionality. Intermittent fasting until 2pm, genius mushrooms, ginko tea and other usual suspects: blueberries, avocados, walnuts, coconut oil.
Kaneslinks
Absolutely! Actually built a self-experimentation platform to actually make it easier to actually measure and learn from experiments. Won't plug it here, but for anyone interested link is in my profile.
I've learned that morning hydration, no screens before bed and meditation are key for me. Also not having dairy, though that's only kind of related to productivity...
The common denominator between all these solutions is that they're allowing either your mind or body to take a break. Drugs too. You're essentially taking your hands off the steering wheel and going into cruise control.
@allanrevah hadn't thought of it that way but yes! makes total sense
@alchen Me too! This book comes highly recommended, "How to change your mind"
I experimented with Modafinil, was not worth it. Current stack is Qualia, intermittent fasting, blue-light blockers, meditation. Also testing Sleep Mode, a Bulletproof supplement product to improve sleep and tracking the results with Oura ring.
@joseph_benjamin1 i want an Oura ring! I'm just worried Google might buy it some day or anyone with nefarious intent for my data.
Have you found the supplement helps improve the quality of sleep? And has the ring helped you improve your sleep patters/sleep better or more restfully?
@abadesi It was honestly life changing seeing the effect small amounts of alcohol had on my sleep patterns. The oura ring is absolutely worth it. Too early to tell on the supplements, but i think so.
Even if Google had your ring data, why is that so bad? They'd just use the data they have on you to show you ads/products more tailored to your preferences.
The question of what makes me more productive was one of my main inspirations to step into tech and create a new product to figure this out! 😻
I'm logging my inputs and outputs (the things that I do and how it makes me feel) on a daily bases now for two months and I already learned that:
1. I am more productive when I'm eating fish, protein bars and sweets.
2. Sleep duration has no significant impact on my productivity. Though I'm planning to add sleep disturbances into account and see if it changes anything 💤
3. My productivity is higher than average on days when I exercise.
4. As per health symptoms - stomach ache and digestive problems decrease productivity, though bloating and increased heart rate don't have any impact at all. 🤷♀️
5. Being in a great mood leads to higher productivity (though this looks more like - correlation doesn't mean causation - kind of situation 😅)
@gabriele_jusaityte surprised that sweets helped productivity - I find the insulin surge after consuming refined sugar makes me super sluggish and easily distracted.
Do you wear a heart rate monitor/wearable to help with tracking?
@abadesi About those sweets - I presume it’s the dark chocolate that I take as a quick snack, in between my meals, that got sweets so high on the list. I can definitely relate to feeling sluggish after a slice of cake or…pretty much any other sweet 😅
My tracking days started with a Garmin watch and then I tried a variety of different apps to get the full picture, but one thing I’ve noticed when searching for the right tracking tool is that the majority of the data, they are gathering, aren’t actionable. What does a heart rate of 96 actually mean? Nothing until you can correlate it with your productivity. To get the full scope - there’s usually a mix of heart rate, sleep duration, food intake, etc. coming together.
Currently experimenting with the interconnectedness of Sleep, Mood, Productivity, Health, Physical activity and Food and looking to answer questions like what food ingredients make me feel bloated, does skipping a meal cause a headache and how many hours of sleep I need to be most productive 🧐
Drop me a DM if you wish to try it out before it’ll be rolled out to the public 😇
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Started taking up meditation at the start of this month and I'm happy to say that it's now a habit. I've just been using headspace, and I noticed mainly two effects 1) Focus is alot better 2) I'm alot happier/morning when I get up in the morning! Next month, I'm going to look into experimenting more regarding the use of tech (my screen time on my phone is 4 hours), and I'm ideally looking to find ways to lessen that.
@kaito_cunningham Nice hope the journey bears fruit! Starting my day with meditation helps me focus and stay positive, too. I notice the difference on mornings where I skip it. Reduced screen time is a big one, too. Do you track it on your smartphone? That has helped me keep mine down, I have timers that remind me when I've spent 30 mins on an app like Instagram so I know to put my phone down soon! or even turn it off.
Two months ago I bumped into some topic about the importance of Vitamin D, I was surprised how important it is. I did some tests to evaluate the level of this Vitamin in my blood and of course it was too low.
Since then, I've been taking 5000 IU of vitamin D daily and it worked for me, the greatest change is that I don't need an afternoon nap anymore. During the last 2 years, it was really hard for me to work at this time, I mean extremely hard because my eyes weren't even able to focus on the screen and my head was shaking from side to side. I even thought there were some troubles with my brain or cervical spine, but some tests showed it was ok.
So if you feel weakness, drowsiness or something like that and nothing helps you - make sure your vitamin D levels stay in a healthy range, even if you're living in sunny climes.
6 hours sleep, intermittent fasting combined with a 75% Keto diet, boxing, yoga, running and being thankful and trying to find the best in every moment helped a lot within the last year. My resume is definitely to continue with this routine. I guess having a routine makes a huge difference ;)
Mostly health stuff such as midday naps, daily exercise (either biking or basketball), 7-8 hours of sleep a night (1130pm-7am) and prayer
my brother died from lsd microdosing. won't recommend.