Ask HN: How would you spend $100 a month for a year on professional development?
If you have a budget of $1,200 for a year, how would you spend it to get the most out of it?
From a purely monetary perspective, I know I can reliably turn $1200 USD invested in my health into many tens of thousands more, but only if I am reliable.
Having the right tools helps me avoid illness, depression, inessential idleness, "brain fog," anxiety, and other, similar maladies. Not fighting myself means I have more energy to focus on my goals, which results in more time for essential idleness, which provides me more energy to focus on my goals, and so on.
With the right tools, I can work at peak performance every day, and $1200 is, to me, a worthwhile price to achieve this. Regardless, I wish you well in whatever you choose to invest your $1200 in.
once you are at peak you can stretch limits and thnik clearly and compete faster
For something easier to start, I got my first great results from Onnit's Alpha Brain while consuming good fat sources. Not all nootropics and supporting ingredients are fat-soluble, but it pays to know when they are so you get the most out of them.
Also, I've experienced piercing clarity, creativity (building effective analogies, lateral thinking, creating novel solutions), and astonishing cognitive speed during light hypnagogia from very low doses of psilocybin combined with nootropics. Of course, the problems with this approach are manifest.
Is there any reliable, legitimate evidence that any of these things are actually useful? Or is it all just hand-wavey nonsense?
From a quick Google, I'm seeing lots of results from the Bulletproof(tm) coffee guy which isn't doing a lot for my faith in this.
Mostly curious because after pricing out the things that you listed, it feels like you could get a lot more placebo-bang for your buck.
There really is nowhere near enough epidemiological study on the effects of nootropics or performance enhancing drugs, in general. Much of the science surrounding the recent wave of biohacking is bleeding edge and, often, a study on some particular use also represents the entire corpus on its effects. In service of biohacking, this makes it difficult to weed out the hacks. As ever, caveat emptor.
That said, when it comes to making personal decisions about what helps you or hinders you, I don't believe you necessarily need to be a neurologist or an organic chemist. You can collect stories from other people, and take them on balance with what studies you can find. Going over something like http://www.jbc.org/content/89/2/547.full.pdf won't make for exciting reading, but it can help you make informed decisions. You can, with a cautious and self-critical attitude, guinea pig yourself, taking logs and noting your overall health and performance, preferably with the help of your doctor. You can ask others near you if they notice any changes in your performance or mood. And at all times, you can ask yourself how you feel.
There are a lot of people cashing in on "brain drugs" of late. You mention Bulletproof (Dave Asprey), and while Dave surely is making good money, he does sell decent products. To be considered separately, Dave openly advocates for sourcing food and supplements from wherever they may be cheapest and of good quality, but I happen to like his coffee, so I fork over the cash.
I don't know how placebo effect for one supplement could amount to much if you're already taking 30-40 vitamins, powders, and capsules a day (as I am). If I take one more white gel cap, I barely notice. What matters to me are my notes over the last few weeks, whether I've observed any positive or negative impact in that time, and whether that impact was sustained without any obvious confounding factors. This is hardly a multi-year, double-blind trial, but it is enough for me to confidently decide whether I find a drug's results favorable enough to continue using it.
As a freelance contractor, falling into even short bouts of illness, depression, indecision, immobility, or myopia represents a real and ever-present threat to my quality of life. For me, $1200 is completely worth the price of finding new ways to increase my total productive time. For others, that money is better spent elsewhere. Yet I would argue that even webmaven's purchase of a good chair and keyboard is right up there in my original list, under "whatever I find works." Any investment in one's health, I believe, is sure to be repaid in full, for what use is the rest if we do not have our health?
The newly redesigned version[1] looks attractive as a replacement (probably in 2018).
After that, I would say #2 is a good keyboard, but specific recommendations are very personal. Suffice it to say that you probably want to spend at least $150 (and possibly 2-3x that) for the right keyboard for you. I am very likely to purchase a Keyboardio Model 01[2] next to replace my venerable Unicomp buckling spring keyboard[3].
Once you have the ergonomics of your work environment adjusted to your physique, you can commit to an extra hour or more every day of studying (by using) new tools, libraries, languages, etc. without unnecessary stress on your body.
[1] http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/performance-wor...
I wonder why previous designs of keyboards, including typewriters, didn't make greater use of your thumbs. It's a good half of the functionality of your hand that most input devices blithely ignore, in favor of our pinky fingers?! On the surface that seems like an ergonomic catastrophe.
Does anyone have a good reason why keyboards are designed they way they are now?
Books force you to disconnect and take time to think about your day's work and what to do next. I think that's my favorite part.