Physical Tips
(A number of these are of Huberman, filtered through my personal experience. They may or may not work. The others vary, some being from experimentation, research, hearsay, etc.)
- - Electrolytes before drinking can reduce the severity of a hangover.
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- - Electrolytes (salt) and fat also assist with keeping the booze down and avoiding hangovers, see the Zakuski course.
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- - Caffeine has a reinforcement effect on foods/drinks/activities (i.e. consuming caffeine while consuming or doing something will increase your liking of it).
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- - Increases the dopaminergic effect of exercise and reinforces the desire for that exercise.
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- - Caffeine within ~90min of waking results in an adenosine crash; so does a large amount of highly concentrated coffee. Be smart with your timing.
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- - Tums/generic antacids can be used to deal with stress-related nausea.
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- - Magnesium glycinate improves your sleep and reduces insomnia.
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- - Cardio capacity comes on fast (if you're doing it every day), but goes away fast; be smart about how you train it and where you use it.
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- - The minimum required sleep for normal functioning is 4 cycles (~6hr); the recommended minimum is 5 cycles (~7.5hr).
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- - Sniff an alcohol wipe if you're nauseous; it overwhelms the senses and the nausea goes away.
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- - You can check if you're sick by tasting a zinc lozenge; if you're sick they taste fine, and if you're healthy they taste like crap.
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Mental Tips
- - The average adult can sustain unbroken attention for no more than 3 minutes - do not expect your focus to be uniform while working.
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- - Keep your work sessions to 90 minutes or less.
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- - Learning bouts of 90 minutes or less tend to be best as well.
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- - Staring at one spot for 60 seconds will increase your level of focus; mental focus follows visual focus.
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- - Your best cognitive work will be done within 8 hours after waking.
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- - Keeping your screen at or above eye level helps promote alertness.
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- - Do repetitions of the action you want to improve.
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- - Expect and embrace errors (the 85% rule - failing around 15% of the time is the "optimal" difficulty for skill learning).
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- - Randomly take a break every few minutes for around 10 seconds - for some reason this makes you learn faster.
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- - Limiting variation in your sleep is more important than the amount of sleep you get (although both matter).
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- - Shift your clock gradually to prepare for jet lag.
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- - Naps are perfectly fine; as long as they are kept under 90 minutes, they shouldn't disrupt your sleep cycle.
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- - Emotional issues can often be body-related, so:
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- - If you are angry, eat
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- - If you are worried, sleep
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- - As a corollary, avoid making large decisions/forming new habits when low on sleep
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