Biohacking Limitless Motivation
| Ⓒ By Jonathan Roseland |
I'm not a doctor, medical professional, or trained therapist. I'm a researcher and pragmatic biohacking practitioner exercising free speech to share evidence as I find it. I make no claims. Please practice skepticism and rational critical thinking. You should consult a professional about any serious decisions that you might make about your health. Affiliate links in this article support Limitless Mindset - spend over $150 and you'll be eligible to join the Limitless Mindset Secret Society.
Motivation can be quite the conundrum. Sometimes you've got it, sometimes you don't. Maybe your motivation seems to wane seasonally. Instead of chasing inspiration further, I'll suggest that you reframe your thinking about motivation...
The other day I was getting a coffee with a bright young entrepreneur who has a pretty successful online business. He lamented that oddly he felt sometimes uninspired by life, he's automated and outsourced a lot of his business. He's found that his income has plateaued and he sometimes sleeps in. I told him, you know what's the ultimate lifehack for motivation to make more money? Become a father. Consistently when men become a father they start making a lot more money, especially entrepreneurs. It just flips a switch in your evolutionary psychology that really turns on the motivation. My friend wasn't interested in having kids, maybe you're not either -- this article contains a number of strategies and tools for limitless motivation.
Searching the internet you'll find a lot of confusing information about motivation. There are a few misguided notions about motivation that I'd like to disabuse you of...
- That motivation is NOT something you own, it's not an immutable characteristic of your personality. It's something you cultivate and maintain like fitness or flat belly.
- I'll suggest that your lack of motivation is NOT a moral failing. When we see a lazy lay-about type of person that's not a productive adult it's easy to judge them (or ourselves) a moral weakling. I'm not a moral relativist and certainly, some lazy people are just immoral but most probably just misunderstand the connection between health and motivation.
- Inspiration is a crappy source of motivation. All sorts of external stimuli can inspire you to make positive changes in your life, like a personal development conference, a new relationship, a great conversation with a loved one, a new place or a powerful documentary film can fill your motivational gas tank -- but for a very finite amount of time. As inspired as you might be to do something great in a few days, weeks, or months your interest in this worthy endeavor will wane. You'll sink a little deeper into self-loathing as you procrastinate and as you let life happen and get in the way of what you were once so excited about.
This article is going to get practical about the tools and strategies that fuel biological motivation.
Jocko Willink, a highly decorated retired US Navy SEAL and bestselling author, is perhaps most famous for saying that...
Discipline equals freedom.
Similarly, I like to say that...
Discipline is the ultimate lifehack because discipline gives you any other thing that you desire.
Do you desire wealth and money to enjoy the finer things in life?
Work persistently with discipline and focus to provide value to the world and you'll be rewarded richly.
Do you desire a sexy girlfriend (or boyfriend)?
Discipline will make you the kind of person who attracts somebody attractive.
Do you desire a good looking body and physique that people stare at with longing and jealousy?
With long, disciplined hours spent in the gym or exercising you can sculpt just such a body.
Do you desire fame, celebrity, influence, and public notoriety?
With discipline, you can build an attention-worthy personal brand that will attract millions of social media followers, likes, raving fans, and bitter haters.
Do you desire health and vitality?
With discipline, you can fix almost any health problem that holds you back and habituate good habits that make you happy and energetic all the time.
Do you desire a happy, loving family?
Discipline is crucial to healthy familial relationships. Without it, your family life will be a cauldron of dysfunction.
Perhaps you're more altruistic instead? You desire more than anything else to leave the world better than you found it and make a positive impact.
Social revolutionaries and thought leaders without discipline consistently make the world much worse despite their good intentions.
Discipline gives you the freedom to do or be whatever you want.
Discipline will give you the freedom to flourish in the career and vocation of your choosing.
Discipline will give you the resources to be free to go and do whatever you want.
Discipline will give you freedom from the petty tyrants in your personal life.
Discipline will free you from the vices and bad habits that hold you back.
Perhaps you lack political freedom and are oppressed by the powers that be where you live. Discipline will give you the power and resources to fight back, change the system, and resist tyranny or the means to pack up, leave and go somewhere freer.
The problem with discipline
If you don't already have it, it's damned hard to get.
If you don't have discipline you'll fail over and over in your plans and ambitious projects.
You'll frustratingly repeat your own personal history cycle of hope, striving, failure, and crushing disappointment.
You'll rationalize and come up with elaborate excuses for your failure and lack of follow-through.
You'll believe in conspiracy theories about a system of oppression that's holding you down.
You'll talk about working smart instead of working hard, but the truth is that you do neither.
You may go to personal development events or hire coaches that motivate you for a few days or weeks but the clarity of purpose, focus, and intensity will not last long enough for you to accomplish anything meaningful.
You'll grow a little more cynical and bitter every year; your self-loathing will gestate into bouts of depression and illness.
Yet when you have discipline, you have momentum. You slowly but surely accomplish your goals. You become happier, which makes you less needy, which makes you more attractive to other people. People call you out of the blue with great opportunities. Your success begets more success.
Discipline evokes a stereotype of a hard-nosed, workaholic old man but the truth is that when you have discipline life is way more fun. When you're working you really work but when you're relaxing and playing life is sublimely beautiful. You're free of petty time-wasting chores, tasks, obligations, and worries that suck the joy out of life.
We've all met old or middle-aged people who were, honestly, losers;
They were in dead-end careers that sucked the life out of them. They had health problems and bad habits. They looked bad and smelled bad. They had an awkward, creepy way of communicating. Their personal lives were a wreck, they complained about their failed marriages and their children hated them.
This is the life that awaits you if you fail to become disciplined.
Discipline is hard to get
Some of us were lucky to have parents or a community that spent years or decades instilling discipline but many of us have to learn discipline as adults.
Jocko acquired the discipline that now makes him a successful author and entrepreneur thanks to decades of military training and service. That's one way to get it, but the cost is very high, you may even pay with your life on the battlefield of a foreign land.
There are other paths to discipline...
- Exercise and fitness.
- Entrepreneurship and business.
- Mastery of technology; learning programming, building websites, or tinkering with hardware.
- Martial arts
- Many young men devote years of their lives to learning the art of seduction; practicing social dynamics.
- Spiritual or religious devotion to a church, movement, or mindfulness practice.
- Studying seriously in college to prepare for a serious profession (that you may end up hating!)
If you've embarked on one of these paths you know that you don't get that far without discipline. But discipline can be quite the catch-22; you need discipline to get discipline but if you don't have discipline you really struggle to get discipline.
Luckily there is a shortcut to discipline; a class of safe, non-addictive legal drugs called Nootropics or smart drugs that consistently improve focus and motivation. Modafinil is one of the most popular and praised Nootropics.
Modafinil is a cheat code for discipline.
I'm not suggesting that you use these drugs forever and become dependent upon them for your productivity; I certainly don't. I'm suggesting that you use these drugs like a cheat code; as a short term measure to build momentum towards your goals and to jump-start your discipline with practicing habits that produce more discipline.
The Best Motivational Nootropics
Several Nootropics are especially potent agents of motivation.
Kratom -- White strains of Kratom are praised frequently by users as pharmacological enablers of motivation and workaholicism. Kratom does have some downsides to consider but it really will make you want to work hard.
Piracetam -- The quintessential smart drug that instills a pleasantly intense focus. Order Piracetam
Oxiracetam -- A non-stimulatory Nootropic that notably enhances will power for 4-6 hours. I call Oxiracetam the discipline molecule because I'm able to stay focused on whatever I should be doing while dosed on it. Order Oxiracetam
Rhodiola -- A powerful Adaptogenic nutraceutical herb that modulates your autonomic nervous system for peak performance. Rhodiola has a very pleasant energizing effect when several hundred milligrams are consumed in hot tea. Order Rhodiola
Eleuthero -- Siberian ginseng has been used by traditional Eastern cultures to overcome fatigue. It's even better combined with the other adaptogenic herb Rhodiola.
Horny Goat Weed -- This funnily named herb is a gamechanger for maximizing sexual hedonism and imbuing healthy masculine aggression and zest for life. Order Horny Goat Weed
Modafinil -- A hardcore vigilance agent used by militaries and Air Forces. It's a hardcore promoter of focus and wakefulness. For 8-10 hours it will put you deep in the focus zone and you'll be very awake. Order Modafinil
Caffeine + L-Theanine -- Energizing caffeine and tranquilizing L-Theanine is one of the most loved Nootropic stack combinations. You can, of course, alternate drinking coffee and green tea but it only works if you drink high-quality coffee. If you can't afford to drink organic, toxin-free coffee frequently or don't like coffee you can take a Caffeine+L-Theanine stack.
Mind Map Your Future
To instill powerful motivation I'd encourage you to take some time (20-40 minutes) to Mind Map your future. I like the software MindMeister which you can use for free for this. Create a 5 Year Self Determination Flowchart
It's well said that we often overestimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in 5 years.
In 1 year you'll likely be pretty similar to what you are right now.
It's also kind of hard to say what your life will be like in 10 years, some people's lives radically change for the better or worse in 10 years.
However, in half that time your life will likely still have a significant resemblance to what it is now.
I would like you to make optimistic predictions about what your life could look like in 5 years in these areas...
Business or Career
Education and Learning
Family and Friends
Finances
Health and Fitness
Hobbies
Relationships & Sex
Things
Travel & Adventure
Where will you live?
What would an average day or week look like?
I want you to strike a balance between your wildest fantasies and a reasonable prediction of how you will be living if you practice your best habits with discipline. Here's mine
Perhaps you can draw some inspiration or ideas from it.
Lifehacks for Motivation
Coach.me -- You need to measure and quantify the habits that fuel motivation. I'll suggest you try this seriously addictive habit formation App and social accountability tool. So it leverages your digital narcissism to train you winning habits with scary consistency. I've used it too...
- Master a second language
- Learn to salsa dance
- Overcome my approach anxiety
- Write daily
- Practice a daily meditation practice
- Stay sober while practicing ethical hedonism
- Brain training daily for OVER a hundred days straight
Yes. It's free (and ad-free). It synchronizes beautifully between your Android, iPhone, and web browser. This is hands down my most useful lifehacking tool, it's one of the few pieces of technology that makes me MORE productive, consistently. It takes about 30 seconds to Download it.
Brain.FM -- Focus is crucial to flowstate which is the state of mind where you're happy and concentrated on doing your best work. This is an app that I use every day, it plays cool algorithmic music optimized to improve focus and creativity. There are many places on the Internet where you can find free-focus promoting algorithmic music tracks but I paid full price for a lifetime Brain.FM membership because I knew that if I paid good money for it I would actually use it and the 1-2 hours of deep thought and true productivity that I get daily thanks to Brain.FM makes it one of the best software investments I've ever made!
Evernote -- This is probably the best note-taking app for recording your thoughts and to-do lists.
Books
Think and Grow Rich -- The classic personal development book. If you haven't read it yet just read it and you'll find yourself inspired to greatness. If you read it a long time ago read it again and think about how you've changed.
Head Strong by Dave Asprey -- Your lack of motivation probably has its origin in your mitochondrial function, the base level of biological energy generation. Dave makes the case that a lack of motivation isn't a mere matter of moral failure, it has much more to do with your biology. This book is chuck full of biohacks for living the bulletproof life.
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains -- If you lack motivation that probably has a lot do with how technology hurts our minds. This book deeply explores how the internet is (as you may have suspected) making us all stupid! In my thorough review of the book, I give an effective brain rehab program...
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss -- Tim's 700-page summarization of hundreds of hours of Tim podcast. An exhaustive exploration of lifehacks for optimal productivity.
The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler -- In this engaging book, the phenomena of flowstates is explored. Flowstates are what enable professional athletes and extreme risk-takers to enter a focus zone of time dilation and high performance.
Reengineer Goals into Behaviors
In this video, I discuss powering through motivational dips and how to smartly reframe goals.
No Fap for Men
Porn is the opium of the (male) masses, watching and masturbating to porn as little as a few times a month radically hacks your motivational psychology. Men who quit porn and masturbation for as little as 2 weeks consistently experience a major improvement in motivation, inspiration, and happiness. Most men watch a little porn BUT try going a full month and see how much more vivid it makes life for you. This documentary goes a lot deeper down this rabbit hole...
Keep Your Goals to Yourself
Scientific studies dating back to 1926 show that telling people about your goals makes them less likely to happen. The emotional pleasure of telling other people about your goal is so intoxicating that it demotivates you. So stop talking about what you are going to do. Get to work. Seriously.
Habituate Better Breathing
Your issues with a lack of energy may have something to do with bad breathing, especially if you spend most of your day sitting your breathing is likely chronically shallow. Check out the video below and read How to Breath like a Jedi (Taoist Breathing).
Seasonal Affective Disorder
If you live in North America or Europe for at least several months out of the year you likely suffer from a low-level depression caused by Vitamin D deficiency during the winter months. If you notice your motivation and zest for life waning as the weather gets cold it's well worth taking some steps to address S.A.D
- Supplement Vitamin D
- Along with Vitamin A and Vitamin K
- Try to get at least 15 minutes of sun a day or a UV-B light
Quit Coffee
Caffeine can be a hell of a motivational drug but coffee can also become a crutch. Here are a few biohacks that can be coffee alternatives if you've become caffeine dependent.
Do you have ADHD?
Many students suffer from this confusing condition, as a young man and high schooler I struggled inside and outside of the classroom because of my ADHD but today I've overcome it. This video explains how...
Apps vs OS Philosophy
This podcast is about general personal development but it contains a powerful duality that you need to understand if you want to unlock true motivation and not waste your precious time with personal development stuff that's not going to get you where you want to go.
Habits -- Hour 1: Empire Building & Hour 2: Zombie Mode
In these vlogs, I describe two cornerstone habits for working more efficiently
- Spend the first 60 minutes of the day working on the things that really matter.
- Move tasks that are not cognitively demanding to the very end of the day.
Stop Being Lazy!
This podcast and article features 17 Lifehacks for Beating Chronic Laziness
Diet Hacking
Diet really matters to motivation. The right diet keeps you motivated and focused while the wrong diet or junk food will put your biology through this spike/crash cycle that makes it challenging to learn anything meaningful. I'll suggest the $1 diet hack of eating raw coconuts.
Do a 90 Day Productivity Sprint
Let's say that you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90 day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like TAO by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.
I suggest that you commit to a month or two or three of discipline; doing all the things you know you should be doing and none of the self-defeating, indulgent, silly things.
For the sprint, identify a realistic, ambitious yet achievable medium-term goal; it could be a small business you want to start, a creative project, a fitness transformation, or whatever.
How long should you sprint? If this is a new idea to you but you're ambitious and confident, I'll suggest 2 months. If you already have really solid discipline and habits I'll suggest you go for 3 months. If you have poor discipline just aim for 30 days. The smart drugs coursing in your veins and seeping across your blood-brain barrier will improve your baseline discipline.
After the sprint is over you can indulge some of your old vices or habits of dubious value.
And trust me, you will really enjoy them after this short season of living a more spartan lifestyle.
Sin is never sweeter than when savored after a season of stark stoicism.
Keto Lifestyle
5 days a week, try to practice what the world's leading anti-aging researchers and biohackers recommend enthusiastically, a daily fast of about 16 hours. Do all your eating and snacking within an 8-hour window; for most people, this means eating a large, filling dinner around 9 PM, going to bed, skipping breakfast, and eating a substantial lunch with lots of healthy fats around 1 PM. This puts your body into a ketogenic state; burning fat instead of glutamate.
- At first, it may be excruciating to fast for 16 hours but quickly you get used to it and it doesn't bother you.
- Skipping breakfast and snacks ends up saving you quite a bit of time and money.
- Avoid eating carbs, sugar, or bread especially when you're fasting as your body will switch back over to glutamate.
- As long as you're feeding your brain lots of the healthy fats it needs, you'll have plenty of energy.
If you're a performance enhancement junkie you'll want to consume some high-quality MCTs while in a fasted state, many do this by starting their morning with a Bulletproof-style coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil.
But if you want to experience all the cognitive and longevity benefits of Ketosis that you hear everyone online ranting and raving about you don't want to consume just any old MCTs, you're going to have to be very discriminating!
- You're going to want to avoid the useless and harmful MCTs; lauric acid, C6, and C12.
- Be wary of impure MCT products, a certified organic stamp is not enough, ideally, you want to see the manufacturer's certificate of third party analysis with spectroscopy report evidencing above 97% purity, what's considered pharmaceutical grade.
- Of course, you'll want to avoid anything containing artificial sweeteners, coloring, or weird chemicals with names you can't pronounce!
Ultra Keto+MCT by Ultra Human meets my stringent standards, combining Patented Exogenous BHB Ketones and Pure C8 MCT along with selenium citrate, pink Himalayan salt, and malic acid that gives it a delicious, non-artificially sweetened taste.
If you can't afford to or are unable to get your hands on high-quality MCTs, try intermittent fasting anyway; it's still a smart lifehack for health and productivity!
What I like about this morning ketosis cocktail is that these performance enhancers work on totally different neurobiological mechanisms than Racetams, Modafinil, or other common smart drugs which is great news for long term Nootropics users who have built up a tolerance to cognitive enhancers that they have to take at increasing dosages for increasingly underwhelming results.
Sleep Hacking
Sleep matters but just getting 8 hours a night might not be enough. You don't want to just sleep more, you want to sleep better. Apply these sleep hacks...
Need accountability?
Sometimes what you need to get ahead academically is somebody to put some pressure on you. There's all these motivational mechanisms and tools but sometimes what outperforms all of them is just someone else's expectations of you. A lot of people ask their friends, family, or significant other to be their accountability partner BUT there's a lot of downsides to this -- it introduces some tension and pressure to the relationship and robs harmony from the relationships that should be the most reinvigorating and comforting -- many have ruined their marriages and friendships this way. I suggest coaching -- hire a life coach or expert consultant -- but this can be expensive and time-consuming, which is why we offer a very lean biohacking consulting/life coaching program. Here's how this would work...
- The Biohacking Consultation is 1 hour and 45 minutes total - which is actually two consulting calls.
- First Call 1 hour - Discovery & Strategizing call, I need to ask you some questions, we'll discuss your history and outline a biohacking strategy and action plan to overcome your issues.
- Second Call 45 minutes - Follow up call in 30 or 60 days to see how you're doing with the plan we outlined; how you've improved, what you're struggling with, etc
There are a few important reasons we split the time up into two calls
- It's a significant motivation hack for you to follow through on the biohacking habits and plan we'll outline because you're accountable to me in 30 or 60 days.
- I'm incentivized to come up with a really effective biohacking strategy for you because I have to talk to you after you've been following it for a month or two.
- It timeboxes us with a deadline of 30 or 60 days for you to make improvements and accomplish your goals.
Your Skin in the game here is that you're paying good money for this and you're accountable to me on another call in 30 or 60 days. You'll have to explain your lack of action if you fail to follow through.
My Skin in the game here is that I'll offer a 60-day money-back guarantee on this life coaching. If my coaching and action plan really fails you can have your money back. For this reason, I don't accept everyone as a client.
PLEASE fill out this form
http://www.limitlessmindset.com/membership/consultations
Take a few minutes to answer a few questions, if your issues are far outside my areas of expertise I'll decline the consultation. My time is finite and very valuable so I only want to spend it consulting the people I can really help. Thanks in advance for your understanding!
Please respond...
Either below in the comments (or for privacy, send me an email or social media message)
Where does your motivation break down? Is there an area of your life where you just seem stuck? What is it costing you? What have you tried to change it? What has worked? What has not?
Finally...
Join the Limitless Mindset Substack to...
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