When writing the equivalent of a novel a week started to get a little too much for my primitive brain to handle I started to put on my Transhuman cap and start thinking of ways to squeeze every last bit of potential out of my grey matter…As I write this I am in chilling in Rome with a mug of tea and a bowl of ‘Cao Flakes’ (petali di grano di cocao!). This is far and away however from the pace of life I’ve been experiencing lately however (although a stressful search to find the keys that unlocked my suitcase was more familiar), where I have been working from home to earn a living as a full-time freelance writer.
For anyone who’s ever tried working from will know that it’s harder and more stressful than you might think. Yes you can get up whenever you want and listen to Elo while working if you so choose (or watch Jeremy Kyle), but that’s precisely the problem - you have to be self motivated and highly disciplined all the time. This is even more the case as you get paid for exactly the amount of work you do. If you work in an office for example and you check Facebook, you’re technically still being paid; being paid to check Facebook. If you check Facebook and you’re self employed however, that means you’ll get less work done that day and you’ll have less to sell.
This means that if you work for a regular type of profit you can’t afford to take breaks. At all. I write 3 500 word articles an hour, and I get paid $21 dollars for that. That’s around £11 and that’s what I need to earn to survive. Most people simply wouldn’t want to do that as it requires me to pump out those 3 articles regardless of how tired or distracted I am and with no breaks in between. Those 1,500 words an hour equate to 12,000 words a day and 60,000 words a week - which is roughly the size of a novel (the worst novel in the world but a novel nonetheless). A novel a week. Every week. Then on top of that try to run this website and work on my own projects that will hopefully one day set me free of this crazy vicious cycle. And then I workout, go out with friends, date my girlfriend, keep up with family and house hunt too. So apologies if I’m occasionally slow updating the Biomatrix every now and then…
Perhaps unsurprisingly a novel a week is pretty much reaching the maximum output that my brain is capable of, and interestingly I’ve lately been suffering headaches, stress and fatigue (cool huh?). It’s given me an opportunity to test the maximum capability of my brain. Granted this wasn’t helped by my concussing myself using a makeshift grappling hook which is actually still a cause for concern... Or by my contracting Swine Flu (and still managing to do a workout - huzzah!). It’s meant the last couple of weeks have kind of run parallel to Tony Stark’s again where he’s deleted his mind and slowly losing the plot. I’ve grown my moustache again too…
I’m interested in this for several reasons - firstly because going past the point of comfort is how you go about training - so potentially my brain could start to find this kind of high-intensity writing easy (I’m also learning more than you could ever want to know about plumbing, pest control, various medicines, locksmithing, and gardening). So it’ll be interesting to see whether my productivity starts to go up - if it does it could reach pretty impressive levels. So far I’ve noticed nothing but it‘s early days.
At the same time though it gives me the opportunity to test other ways of increasing that output potential, namely through nootropics and other techniques. Once I reach a certain point procrastination becomes unavoidable. It’s not me just putting off something I no longer want to do; it’s my brain actively being unable to concentrate on one subject matter due to lack of energy. This told me that the first thing I needed to increase was energy and concentration and the best way I knew to do that was with a drug I’ve written about on this site before called Guarana. It’s nothing particularly new and it’s in all of the various energy enhancing sports drinks etc, but taken plain there’s really not much that beats it in my opinion and it makes a great boost about mid-way through my day when I start to lag by just subtle increasing my ability to focus on a single task. Hopefully soon I can look into some of the many other brain enhancers such as modivil - though in the UK these are expensive and hard to come by so there‘s definitely space on the market for something else.
I do also find however that taking my creatine helps, and leaves me just a little less lethargic at the end of the day. I’m not the first to suggest that it has anisotropic properties and it seems that the brain can benefit from the extra energy too. NO2 also helps with blood flow to the brain and helps me feel a little ‘fresher’ if this makes any sense, but don’t take it if you suspect you have a suppressed fracture on your temple… Of course caffeine and bananas are also useful mainstays.
On this site I’ve also long been an advocate of investing in technology to help the cause too and ‘augmenting’ yourself with increased capabilities. So I took my own advice for a change and invested in the ‘Eee PC’, a computer so small that I can work on trains and buses and carry it around easily with me in my beautiful new leather man bag. The laptop screen is only 7” so it really is small enough to tuck away in a bag and to forget it’s even there but at the same time the keyboard is just large enough to type on quickly (roughly my thinking speed actually so there‘s never any reason to pause when typing). This has massively increased my productivity, but also in ways I didn’t expect - such as the fact that the screen is too small to browse the web and so procrastinate and the fact that I can now multitask more easily - even typing articles while using the other computer to chat on MSN.
This further inspired me to find other ways to multitask and make use of the rest of my time. Using hands-free I can easily chat on the phone while typing, but I decided to take this one step further and start dictating articles to my sister while driving. As I often drive to Oxford and Guildford that makes good use of a lot of otherwise wasted hours. I also realised I could go old school and jot notes on a pad to type up when I get back. By carrying a pad of a paper and a pen then I have access to productivity tools even when I can’t take the mini laptop. This means that when I come round to typing my brain gets a rest.
Finally the last productivity ’trick’ is to make sure you get enough sleep. Having tried to write hung over or on minimal sleep I’ve realised just how important that is. Eight hours really is the minimum if you want to get the best performance out of your nonce so check out the article on this site about maximising your sleep.
Obviously the chances are that you won’t need to go to these lengths to push your brain unless you’re some kind of CEO who attends night-school, but it should be interesting nonetheless to see just how much performance you can get out of your neurons and if you do decide to get a little extra tutelage then you’ll be prepared.
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