Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I've never observed the "feeling sick" issue myself in periods of greater productivity, but that could be because I wasn't paying attention - I have "evening sickness" like you described roughly 2-4 times a month, and I end up just popping some paracetamol and feeling fine the next day. My blood work comes out OK on checkups, so I (and my doctors) guess it's likely some mild allergy rearing its ugly head every now and then.

I can share some things that I've found out over the years that are not helping:

- Alcohol. I tried that because during my one month-long super-productivity period I was also drinking socially quite a bit. After testing I ultimately rejected this hypothesis; regular alcohol consumption doesn't seem to help me get back to this "flow state" (and makes sleep worse).

- Sleep deprivation. Naturally, in the golden period I was doing so much that I slept irregularly and less than I should. So I tried sleeping less, but it didn't help.

- Music. I had a certain set of songs I was constantly listening to on my headphones as I made the world subject to my will. The songs still get me in a kind of productive mood, but the effect seems to hold for 5 minutes, not 5 weeks.

- Anxiety. Turns out having it is orthogonal to super-productivity! I had anxiety problems back in these golden times, I had them later on, over time I've learned to cope - but between low and high background anxiety levels, the super-flow didn't return.

That super-productivity I'm seeking comes with a very specific kind of feeling, like you're doing logistical parkour through your day. And now in comparison, lack of it feels like an engine that can't start. Or like those episodes in Star Trek where they can't stabilize some force field, and it keeps sorta-working, but blinking in and out. That's how I feel these days.

Thank you for sharing, also.

Until I read your original comment I sort of forgot about that sort of feeling since it's been months of normal daily grind. I wonder if anyone has done serious study into this type of performance.

Some things I've found:

- Waking up way earlier than usual works for about 1 day a week but then I'm more tired the next few days.

- Hydration helps me. A big cup of water is more important than coffee in the morning.

- Caffeine is great. I want to try a detox and re-introduction.

- Socialization is a double edged sword. I find it easier to be hyper-productive when my life has enough interpersonal connection, but being with people is fun and the more I socialize the harder I find it to settle into flow at work

- Eliminating distractions is really important for me (or maybe it's a side effect?) but in my times of hyper-productivity there is no distractions or desires for distractions (ex: video games, social media, etc)

A thought occurred to me today: could it be some kind of "sugar high"? If I'm getting my timeline right (this was 7 years ago), my hyper-productivity period happened about when I stopped being on a ketogenic (carb-minimizing) diet, and got back to eating high-carb food.

(During my time on keto, I didn't feel any significant energy loss below the baseline; but I wonder if reintroducing carbs after being deprived of them for a while could have created a temporary state of high energy?)

I know for me there is a definite diet aspect on a daily basis, but I don't remember if that's been the case during any of the weeks where I've felt invincible.

But on a small-scale basis: - Eating a big simple-carb-heavy meal will absolutely ruin my energy focus the rest of the afternoon - However if I've been running a deficit and feel low-energy, a moderate meal of complex carbs (ex: bowl of pasta) will give me enough energy for a few hours of high-energy focused work

I've done keto once or twice at various points when I was more into fitness and there's something nice about the consistent levels of energy.

Have you tried going on keto again? I wonder if there's some magic recipe of cycling on-and-off carbs that can fuel extreme bouts of energy without negative health implications

I haven't tried keto again. I'm married now, and any dieting has to be coordinated for two people (to save on cooking efforts). My wife doesn't like the kind of foods that form the core of the diet. So instead, I'm just looking at calorie-intake-minimizing diets.

Agreed on big simple-carbs meals; that's a sure-fire way for me to shut down my brain for a couple of hours.

Replying in parallel, because I have further thoughts to share. Ever since this comment thread started I've been thinking a lot about those times of hyperproductivity I've described, and I've identified couple things that were true in both cases, and thus are hypotheses worth checking out:

- In both cases I had a hard deadline and a well-defined set of goals, but there was a big gap between "minimum acceptable outcome" and "best possible outcome", with rewards scaling with the outcome. Something back then made me set my sights on the high end of that spectrum.

- I wasn't really blocking other people - if I didn't meet my deadline, I'd suffer some limited (and mostly non-financial) loss, but nobody else's work would be destroyed by this. I.e. in one case my work was irrelevant to anyone but myself, and in the other it was an optional (though strongly desired) dependency.

- I had people to impress. In one case personally, in the other I wanted to make our group look impressive in the local community.

- Both cases have had a significant "like hell I/we can't do it, just hold my beer and watch this" factor. I.e. the deadline was tight, and relevant people didn't believe it could be done in the time remaining.

These factors are a bit harder to reproduce. Most of situations I encounter these days don't have truly hard deadlines ("there's a release next week" is almost never a hard deadline in practice), and yet at the same time involve potential losses to other people (if the release actually happens and I don't deliver, I might derail it). There's little space to go above-and-beyond, in a way that doesn't feel like setting yourself fake goals for the purpose of self-gamification.

I'll be thinking about ways to test these hypotheses and, if any of them turns out to be a significant factor, to engineer my life to make use of it.

You mention irregular sleep as a factor here, did you ever try taking a nap every day to see if that helps?

The only time I've had this sort of hyper-productivity feeling, I was working out consistently in the mornings, and always napping around noon, maybe thereby giving a boost in energy levels for "the next stretch" of the day.

I also wish I could reproduce this sensation. For me, I think having clear overarching long term goals, that every routine action built towards helped a lot. Summoning the energy to get started is a lot easier if I have an obvious reason for doing it, and once I get started I usually felt great about it anyways.

I spent a few weeks trying to do short (10-20 minute) afternoon naps and they did work great for helping me transition from "day job" focus to "work on personal projects" focus.

In my experience, a good nap could take me from 50% back to 90% but other times I'd wake up feeling queasy, dizzy, grumpy or low-mood. I stopped due to those unexpected side effects, but it seems worth trying again in the future.

Working out consistently may be an important part of the picture. One thing I've learned for certain about myself is that hard workouts will destroy my energy level for the next 1-2 days. So no heavy-weight lifting, 3-hour bouldering sessions or long heavy-breathing runs. Adding in light jogging every evening didn't make much of a difference in either direction.

I may try something like a 2-3 mile run each morning and see if the morning exercise makes a difference.

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