Brain Hacks Top Founders Use to Get the Job Done

Hack 1 - Don't read articles about what top X's do.

Hack 2 - Get back to work.

New proposal: Death to "hacks."

Unless you're Paul Graham, you don't get to say hacks.

We're talking here {"lifehacks", "brain hacks", "social hacks", "parenting hacks", "HR hacks","travel hacks", "Business Insider Tip XYZ hacks"}

All of this sounds an awful, awful, awful lot like SHORTCUT or TRICK.

There's nothing wrong with being efficient with your time, diligent, and sneaking around useless grunt work w/ a bit of clever automation, but this lame-article hack movement is the worst.

Dare I say I've heard enough from these hack writers?

Death to hacks.

The title of this article seems to have been generated by an Upworthy-style bot targeted at Hacker News.

I read the whole article waiting for the thesis to become prescription drug abuse.

Good article. I am amazed by how much we can gain if we squeeze out even more output from our useless meaty bodies. Way to go!

Snark all you want, but as someone slowly going crazy from work these seem like a very useful set of heuristics to build awareness of the way my body and mind react to things.

Lack of sleep or poor sleep really does affect my emotions and decision-making the next day. Thinking about exactly which people or situations make me feel anxious or energized helps me recognize those emotions as they arise and try to dial them back.

TLDR: get sleep, protect yourself from interruptions, and pay attention to how you react to your work and life activities and emotions (aka mindfulness).

The math does seem really appealing, getting 4 extra hours of sleep (assume up to 8), and planning out 2 hours of whitespace during the day (both ideas I would love to try, don't get me wrong) leaves 14 hours to work.

Assume that realistically only 12 of those hours can be spent working, given you have to eat, shower, dress, socialize, general upkeep, a 60% increase in productivity gives you 19 hours of comparable effort, a potential +7 or an entire working day. Worth a shot, but there are deadline pressures which often force your hand and there are likely physical constraints which would limit the amount of increase you can legitimately experience. I.e. how fast can you type? How quickly can other people absorb the genius thought flows you are expounding? +4 seems like a fair upper bound, plus you get to feel better.

I think it depends to some degree though on the type of work you are doing, but the power degradation that occurs when pushing yourself is kind of akin to going insane, you probably won't realize it is happening until you are staring at some javascript error haplessly and suddenly remember that you used to be able to summon the solution at will, or remember that you used to know that it was considered impolite to scream at random people on the street.

If you're telling me about hacks, I want them to be short and to the point. This article seems to go on and on.

tldr: "Sleep more"

Mine are that much better.

1 - Don't sleep ! (what?!)

1.1 - Reap any opportunity to close your eyes while thinking and listening to people, if they start closing by themselves you've lost the game.

1.1.1 - Move your head not your eyes, the tiny eye muscle wont last 30 hours.

1.1.1.1 - Rotate the whole body in stead of the neck, if it isn't in front of you it doesn't exist.

1.1.2 - Never look in a direction you don't have to. HD streaming takes huge amounts of bandwidth and processor power, the more things move the harder you run out.

1.2 - Use half open eyes when the opportunity presents it self.

1.2 - Keep the body in the ut most relaxed position.

1.2.1 - put the heating up as far as possible AND wear lots of cloths. Heating 70 kg of water takes huge energy. You need a temperature as if you are in bed. (People also make 50% more mistakes at 20 degrees Celsius than at 25.)

1.3 - If the task doesn't require thinking (or very little) -> don't think! While seemingly impossible at first, after 20 hours or so it comes naturally.

1.3.1 - Get someone to drive you or use public transport but don't look out the window.

2 - no drugs

2.1 - no alcohol

2.2 - no tea

2.3 - no tobacco

2.4 - dont drink coffee, coffee is for people who sleep.

3 - Eat fruit and vegetables 3.1 - Don't eat meat, all predators sleep after eating.

4 - Be overly kind to people, the last thing you need is drama, drama consumes more energy than anything but also forces you to look, listen and think at the same time, all without getting any work done.

5 - No sex 6 - Don't shave 7 - No personal hygiene (optional)

8 - When you inevitably fail to stay awake sleep 14 hours.

9 - Don't hurry with anything, drive as economical as possible, nothing can beat that.

10 - Eventually, if you have no other data coming at you, the subconscious will learn what you are doing. Accidental naps feel like interruptions before you get here. If the subconscious understands the work the nap wont prevent you from thinking about the work.

11 - Stay productive

11.1 - If you start hallucinating go to sleep immediately regardless of the location.

11.2 - If you get migraine you haven't been doing 2 and 3 long enough.

12 - Remove all unnecessary sources of sound from the environment. The brain has no firewall, you don't want to be processing nonsense.

13 - Oxygen is like steroids, get as many plants as you can.

14 - Forget about all other goals, the only goal is the 168 hour work week at 62.4% productivity or~so.

14.1 - The rewards isn't the money. It is sleeping with the thought yer've accomplished all that. No amount of money can buy that feeling.

:-)

It sounds like a big deal but it isn't anything like running a full marathon in the Arctic, wearing nothing but shorts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof#Feats

omg hax!

Quite the article title.