
Brain Hacks Top Founders Use to Get the Job Done  - relaunched
http://firstround.com/article/The-Brain-Hacks-Top-Founders-Use-to-Get-Stuff-Done?utm_source=Firstround.com+Library&utm_campaign=6705173537-The_Right_Way_to_Grant_Equity_to_Your_Employees&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9bb43e05b-6705173537-75290789
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unclebucknasty
Hack 1 - Don't read articles about what top _X_ 's do.

Hack 2 - Get back to work.

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nomorre
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.

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

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pavel_lishin
It took me awhile to parse out which parts of the headline were verbs. Hacks?
Top? Use? Get?

My first reading stopped at "Brain Hacks Top Founders", and I grew concerned.

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mkartic
wow, now i'm running through all possible parses of that title to figure out
the funniest interpretation. The longer I think, the less funnier its getting.
:|

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

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ch4s3
wow. I actually laughed so hard that everyone in the incubator heard me.

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joanojr
I feel like that could have been a sarcastic comment.

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exceptione
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!

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joshwa
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).

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goodgoblin
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.

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mkartic
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.

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jongold
tldr: "Sleep more"

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gdewilde
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof#Feats)

omg hax!

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bhouston
Quite the article title.

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BlackDeath3
You almost cannot help but laugh at that title. Talk about "hack".

