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.
The success of a business often has to do with the timing
Everyone was getting laid off following the 2008 crash. People needed space to pursue their dreams after losing their corporate jobs. With a few ads on Craigslist, the first floor was 92% full within five business days. The floors filled as fast as they could expand.
This building became GreenDesk, which still operates as a coworking space in Brooklyn. Adam wanted to take the idea national, but the landlord simply wanted to stay local. So, the landlord bought Adam out and he set out to start WeWork
Constraints are the mother of all innovations
The first WeWork building was the least amount of money they ever spent on a building
In business, you can only choose one at a time: 1. stop building and let profits catch up / 2. continue building and delay profitability
“Sprinting was an understatement… We did the impossible every day and miracles once a week… It worked everywhere. There was not a place on the planet you could open this thing and it didn’t work.”
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Awe is fully measurable. You can track it through vocalizations, goosebumps, vagal tone, facial expressions, immune activation, and voice patterns…
The most awe-inspiring moments aren’t just the vastness itself, it’s the transition from small to vast, going from confinement to openness
This is actually how Pixar uses awe in films. Pete Docter told Keltner: the film feels narrow, like a tight anxious world, and then suddenly the vastness appears and boom
Here’s how to do awe walk (you should try this):
Once a week on your regular walk, go somewhere a little different, somewhere that might surprise you
Slow down, deepen your breathing, sync your breath with your steps
Go from small to vast: look at one leaf, then look at the whole tree, then look at the whole canopy pattern
Listen to one kid laugh, then listen to the whole symphony of kids laughing on a playground
Look at one point of light, then look at the whole pattern of light
Music is scientifically the fastest and most powerful way to create collective thinking. Impossible to do in a classroom, but music does it in milliseconds
Taylor Swift shows are a great example: Swifties are instantly bonded, united in like a moral cause almost or identity cause
The biggest enemy of awe is meanness. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: standing in nature, “all mean egotism vanishes.” That’s awe
We are living in a period of way too much self-focus and it’s actively costing us awe
What makes a city awe-inspiring is not complicated or expensive:
A little green space
Public art
Opportunities for face-to-face interaction
A little music in public spaces
Opportunities for moral beauty
Places for meditation and reflection
Collective activities like yoga in the town square
The best dark fiction disturbs you with ideas, not content. The books that stuck around weeks later were the ones that challenged what Jake believed about complicity, war, and mental health. The ones that just listed horrible things faded fast
Books hit harder than movies because you build every image yourself. There are no special effects to remind you it is fiction. You are doing the construction work, which makes dissociation nearly impossible
Complicity is scarier than any monster...
The Girl Next Door is not disturbing because of what happens. It is disturbing because of how ordinary people watch it happen and convince themselves they are not responsible
That idea maps onto basically every atrocity in history
Darkness with a beating heart lands differently than pure nihilism
The Road and A Little Life have similar apocalyptic energy but completely opposite messages about whether life is worth living. One leaves you devastated but hopeful. The other argues the doctor's job is to help the patient die.
Social isolation is a real neurological threat, and fiction has known this for a long time
No Longer Human captured the alienation of modern social media decades before social media existed
That uncomfortable parallel is why the book feels so current in 2024
Gross writing without craft is just a list of events.
Sick Bastards proves that shock content without atmosphere, character, or stakes does nothing
Cows covers similar territory and lands completely differently because there is an actual psychological core underneath the insanity.
Retardmaxxing is the art of not overthinking your exit from things that are making you miserable
The idea is that 99% of guys always look outside themselves for confirmation on choices they already know the answer to. The retardmaxxer just does what he wants
It is not recklessness. It is more like trusting yourself enough to act without needing a 10 step YouTube guide to validate you first
“At the end of the day, it’s the end of the day. You got to retardmax”
Three years with a girl you do not like is not an investment
The honeymoon phase is about 18 months. After that you actually start learning who the person is. So a real long term relationship does not even begin until after that
If you are three years in and you still do not genuinely like her, that time is not a reason to stay. That is just time that passed
The sunk cost trap is the brain telling you that because you spent time on something you are obligated to keep spending time on it. That is not how life works
He is not saying leave at the first sign of trouble. He is saying stop using the calendar as a reason to stay in something your gut already left
The whoopsie method (His best life hack)
He saw a bartending job on Craigslist. It said you must have experience. He had none. He went in anyway
He showed up early before any customers arrived, found the owner doing paperwork, and just said he had no experience but was good with people and willing to learn
The owner gave him the shot. He worked there six months
You lie a little on the resume. You get the job. You learn on the fly. In 2026 you have AI for literally everything so there is no excuse not to figure it out as you go
The bigger point is that the consequences of bold action almost always open up a new world. The consequences of staying stuck open up nothing
Weed makes you live in your thoughts instead of your body. You sit there and ruminate and think in circles and feel like you are having insights but nothing actually changes
The mind is meant for quick problem solving and course correcting
Rumination and sitting still and weighing everything is a symptom of the body not moving right