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Comment by alexandradavis | Hacker News Reader

My experience matches caustics: I was able to settle into work, but my creativity was killed.

I'd recommend smart drugs for doing drudgery, but if you need to engage the right brain for inventiveness, chocolate works great :)

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I disagree, in a way. I used to take amphetamines when studying (adderall) and I'd find that I could completely get lost in whatever task I was pursuing. So, if I stayed focused on my study material, I'd absorb the material very thoroughly and quickly (relatively speaking). However, if I'd get distracted by something ~creative like, say, drawing a picture or composing a song (I didn't do any coding back then) I could get similarly lost in that task. That ability to "get lost" in something is, to me, very powerful creatively.

Here's an example of the sort of artwork that I would do on speed that I probably wouldn't have the patience for, otherwise:

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/5550/penroseknotv3sm.jpg

I'm sure there are some types of creativity that are blunted, but the ability to direct extended focus and attention to any task (even creative ones) is a powerful thing that shouldn't be overlooked.

Please note, I am not the author of the mentioned article. In fact, I never took Modafinil. I just remembered there was a decent discussion here at HN of the first part of the article, then I Googled and found there is follow up. So I decided to post it here.

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