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Game Changers

By Dave Asprey

What Leaders, Innovators, and Mavericks do to win at life

Biohacking​

  • Intentionally manipulating your biology to bring body and mind into better harmony with each other and our goals
  • Biohacking enables us to update and adjust our mental and physical operating system
    • Body and mind's operating system is outdated - it was build for prehistoric ancestors for survival in a hostile environment
    • Three fundamental factors of a species' survival - fear, food and fornication.

To truly benefit from biohacking, you need to know your goals​

  • Identify your true passions in life (these are the things that make you feel excited just thinking about them)
  • Distinguish between your means goals and you end goals.
    • Means goals are the things you want to achieve in order to achieve something else
    • End goals, in contrast, are things that you want to achieve for their own sake
    • When you're planning you day, it's crucial to remember your end goals. That's because we have an unfortunate tendency to become overly fixated on means goals. When that happens, we lose sight of our end goals and stop working toward them.
  • To achieve your goals with the help of biohacking, you need to prioritize and avoid decision fatigue

Diet​

  • Taking charge of your diet requires you to overcome emotional eating
  • For a healthier approach to food, identify your emotional eating triggers and eat like your grandma
    • If you're eating the right kinds of food, you should be able to eat a small meal and go five hours without getting hungry again.

Sleep​

  • To get a good night's sleep, identify your chronotype and adjust your sleep schedule accordingly
    • Lions - roar with energy before the sun has even risen and then peter out in the evening
    • Wolves - who are naturally inclined to wake up later in the day and have two peaks of energy: one from noon to 2:00 PM, the other beginning after sunset
    • Bears - Who have a natural sleep pattern that follows the rise and fall of the sun
    • Dolphins - Who are prone to insomnia and tend to perform best from midmorning to early afternoon

Exercise​

  • To benefit from exercise, you need to counteract its shortcomings and drawbacks
    • Moving is important - body was designed to do that.
    • Problem - Daily exercise doen't benefit until we make other lifestyle adjustments
      • Could end up being a mostly sedentary person who happens to do intense movements from time to time
      • Six hour bout of sitting can negate the benefits of a one-hour workout
    • Problem - High-risk sports can put our bodies at risk of injury, which defeats the whole purpose of exercise
      • Running is a high-risk sport if done the wrong way
    • Problem - Aerobic exercise leads our bodies to produce the stress hormone cortisol
      • Triggers the creation of oxidative substances that make us age faster and cause inflammation
    • To avoid sitting too much, get a standing desk
    • To counteract the negative effects of aerobic exercise, add strength training to your workout routine. This will cause your body to produce anabolic hormones, which will combat oxidation.
    • to further the aging effects of oxidation, you can also supplement your aerobic exercise with antioxidants and probiotics

Sitting and Standing - YouTube

Energy​

  • To preserve more energy for higher pursuits, minimize the amount you use sex
    • When we're not doing it, we're often thinking about it. And even when we don't think we're thinking about it, we're frequently still thinking about it.
    • If you can sublimate - that is, re-channel - your sex-bound energy into higher pursuits, like creative projects, you'll have more energy to devote to them
    • Muhammad Ali is even said to have avoided having sex for six weeks prior to a boxing match
    • After men ejaculate, their bodies produce the hormone prolactin, which makes them sleepy. It also counteracts another hormone, dopamine, which makes them feel good. That's why they often feel tired and even depressed after sex
    • Women produce prolactin after having orgasms as well, but to a much lesser degree. For them, orgasms produce a number of positive biochemical effects instead.
      • The body's production of stress and inflammation-causing hormone cortisol is lowered
      • Orgasms increase the body's production of the mood-bosting neurotransmitter serotonin, the emotion-mellowing hormone oxytocin and oxytocin-enhancing hormone estrogen
    • To minimize the effects of orgasms on men - limit to one orgasm per week
    • To maiximize the effects of orgasms on women - at least two per week

Fear​

  • Fear is one of the biggest obstacles to success
    • Fear takes us out of the present moment
    • Fear discourages us from taking the risks that lead to success
  • You can overcome fear by giving yourself safety cues
    • Listen to a soothing voice (guided meditation)
    • Visualize yourself in a happy place (ex - Bat Cave)
    • Try to feel gratitude for as many things, people and events in your life as possible - even your failures, which you can reinterpret as helpful learning experiences. (write journal)
  • Stop using the word can't
    • If you say you can't do something, your subconscious will interpret this quite literally and it will give up, since there's no point trying to do something that you can't do.