Why Your Morning Coffee Isn't Working(unless you are Marc Andreessen)
Most energy drinks just dump caffeine in your system to block adenosine. You feel alert for a bit, then your cortisol spikes and you crash. Not ideal.
Better move: pair caffeine with L-theanine. It promotes alpha-wave activity, which means you get the boost without feeling like you're vibrating. Matcha does this naturally: slower uptake, fewer jitters, steadier focus throughout the day.
Here's what actually helps:
Citicoline keeps your attention sharp
Bacopa helps with memory (takes a few weeks to kick in)
Lion's mane supports nerve growth (still early research, but promising)
Rhodiola and cordyceps help you handle stress without frying your nervous system
Add some turmeric and vitamin C to deal with oxidative stress. B-vitamins keep your cells running...
The best ready-made formulation I've found which achieves this and more is Magic Mind, it packs all of this into one shot (matcha, L-theanine, nootropics, adaptogens, the complete package). It's designed for mental performance without the crash or the pill fatigue.
"When you're looking back over your life at the end of your life with regret, it's brutal. It's brutal." – Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin can't work a soundboard and has no technical ability, yet he's the most successful producer in any genre according to Rolling Stone.
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Zero Alcohol Is Better Than Any Amount, Despite What You Hear...
The whole red wine is healthy thing never made any sense, why would there be a benefit to red wine that wasn’t in other alcoholic beverages?
Old Cannabis vs New
Old cannabis from the 80s and 90s had about 3 to 5% THC content on average
Now studies of legal sales show the average product is about 20% THC!
Cannabis & Psychosis Risk
If you have any first-degree relatives with schizophrenia, schizoid personality, or bipolar disorder, you should not use cannabis; that’s quite risky
Everything is different when the brain is plastic, and our brains are most highly plastic when we’re young
The worst effects are going to be because people start in teen or late single digits
That’s where addictions overwhelmingly start and where the psychotic risk is almost surely happening
Casinos Are the Worst...
Slot machines used to be a small fraction of casino income; now it’s 80% or more
This happened because someone working for casinos watched his kids play video games and realized kids weren’t playing to win, they were playing for the novelty of what’s on the next screen
There’s an industry term, LDWS, losses disguised as wins, where you put in a dollar and pul,l and it goes off as you won, but you actually lost 30%
Casinos are one of the few places you can still smoke indoors, and you get free drinks, so it’s a dense pack of addictions
SSRIs & Mass Shootings
If SSRIs caused mass shootings, you wouldn’t see countries like Australia go 30 years without one while still prescribing SSRIs
The US consumes the majority share of certain psych meds, but that still doesn’t explain why mass shootings are so skewed here versus other places that also use them
The explanatory variable is that it’s extremely easy to get high-powered weaponry in the US
Many teenagers benefit from SSRIs
Some More Intellectual People Have a Harder Time With 12-Step Because They Overthink It…
AA has an expression: your best thinking got you here
In other words, please keep it simple; you don’t have to do a philosophical critique of the 12 steps
It’s an action program, different from a lot of psychotherapy styles, which are more intellectual and analytical
“You will never get addicted to something that you choose never to use. That is your maximal point of control.” – Dr. Keith Humphreys
Deliberately Understaff Projects: Constraints force creativity and prevent bloat from politics and bureaucracy
You’ve gone too far when teams can’t ship basic functionality
The sweet spot is uncomfortable but productive tension
Good teams get tired; great teams run in the red constantly and destroy good teams in that moment
High Alpha, Low Beta Framework: Evaluate people and processes on upside potential (alpha) versus volatility (beta)
Prioritize high alpha opportunities even with higher beta
Processes exist solely to lower beta but suppress alpha as a trade-off
The nuanced dance is decreasing volatility where needed (like payroll) without killing upside in innovation areas
Know When to Quit Your Startup:
If you’re not certain you have product-market fit, you don’t have it
Companies that hit big do so quickly; the “never quit” mentality is VC propaganda designed to extract value from founders, not protect them
Pivot twice or three times maximum, typically by year four You’re running an experiment to see if the universe has binding receptors for your product. If not, move on…
Leadership Means Fighting Entropy Relentlessly:
Teams naturally optimize for local comfort and disorder
Executives must demand 99% energy levels daily, or the system decays
Top performers don’t get 10% more rewards; they get 10–100x
Being “chill” accomplishes nothing
Withholding negative feedback is selfish because you prioritize your comfort over making teammates and the company better
“He really knew a lot about the DNA of success and kind of the real mechanics of persuasion. Like no BS, no academic stuff, just really how to do it.” – James
Goals Are Basically Worthless Compared to Living by Systems:
100 years ago a farmer could set a goal to clear 40 acres before winter and it made sense
Today the world is too complex and changes too fast to pick a goal five years out
Your industry might not even exist next year, newspapers might disappear
Passion Comes From Things That Work, Not the Other Way Around... His system was to try lots of stuff and see which ones work on their own because it was the right time or right combination of skills (it was combination of mediocre skills: mediocre business, writing, and art skills)
If You Try One Thing Once, Things Probably Won’t Go Your Way
The odds of any one thing working even if you do everything right is about 10%
If you did a thousand things and every one had a 10% chance of working, you’re pretty close to a guarantee something will work
Nobody Is Smart Enough to Pick a Good Stock or Know a Good Idea When They See It... “People cannot tell a good idea. Just no one is that smart. You can’t pick a good stock. No one’s that smart. You can get lucky, but you can’t know.”