Thank you for the detailed and interesting comment. I wish I could maintain my productivity for extended periods of time like you do. Unfortunately I find that my cognitive abilities drop-off very quickly when become tired.

Also you talk of an 'intelligence switch'. Could you explain what you mean by that?

Sure. It might be quite long if I really explained in detail, though. I really need to write the book of that eventually. Here's the very incomplete gist of it.

The idea of an intelligence switch is basically a set of methods, a system, to train and foster the use of some "meta" forms of intelligence so to speak, whose primary purpose is to improve / enable / train intelligence itself. It's very much not a hack (efforts...) but does yield compound-like growth. It's very transdisciplinary in nature in that it does require exposing yourself to many fields and many mental frameworks or logics/models (the more, the better I suppose).

I guess you could say it's a framework for the languages of intelligences, whose output (UI) is conscious thought and effect is actual real-world skills (actions) or models (world views) — technical, mental, social, emotional, political etc. What an exquisitely cheesy yet accurate-enough metaphor.

It's pratically very comprehensive and probably sounds like "be great all-around with a super-trained brain" to most people, I'm afraid. Not quantum science though, elements and concepts are quite simple, but there's no shortcut to training each step.

If you want pointers you might recognize, there's the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck (2008, iirc), and a certain branch of (very practical, down-to-earth) philosophy dating back to Ancient Stoics all the way to 20th century Stephen Covey (the famous "7 habits", at least one in particular), passing by Viktor Frankl ("3rd" school of psychoanalysis dubbed "logotherapy" from logos, speech).

You might have heard the quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Well, the training/building of this "space" + a "growth" mindset, I argue, can take 80% of people at least halfway there (leaps and bounds further than whatever is/are current average intelligences, well enough to kickstart and reap massive further improvements over the next generations).

Knowledge of these methods and principles reminds me a lot of the Scientific Method for instance, hard at first to mold your brain with such rigor, but once internalized a formidable enabler of thought — at a civilizational scale. It's just vastly more general in scope than science or logic, and encompasses — by definition, not necessarily easily/always felt — all possible forms of intelligence, including meta-intelligence itself.

It's no secret either, most of it is out there for the taking, has been for decades, sometimes millennia; but there is so much noise and intox obfuscating.

I'd love to read a blog post/book explaining this in more detail.

I'm also interested in hearing more about the 'happiness switch', and how you trained yourself in your 20s to work for 12~16 hours a day.

The training is a mix of: obsession, up to and beyond exhaustion; grit, driven by passion; a relatively 'fast' metabolism, fueled by food and naps. Nothing magic, bootcamp-style.

Basically, working your day thing (studies, work, obligations) then spending all your free time nerding on something. It progressively morphed from goofing around to learning with a professional mindset, building stuff.

It's important to pace yourself; it's a marathon on a daily basis. However in the long run, over the weeks, it's more like an agile sprint: you work a lot for some weeks or a few months at most, then relax, rinse and repeat.

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The happiness switch

I've found there are fundamental functions in human beings that pretty much describe us entirely. It's a model, deduced from reality, which in turn helps me 'mold' my reality (i.e. aspects of my personality, how I choose to experience things).

This set of skills can be trained; it seems to be 'working' with anyone, but there are 'prerequisites'; exactly which is unclear (for now).

One of the by-products of this is a happiness switch: your emotions inevitably vary, but you are able to maintain your desired "global state" nonetheless. So you do feel sad sometimes, or angry etc.; but at the same time, it's only one aspect of you, one function, namely emotions are the "language of the body", it's just information. They shouldn't drive you, but inform your decisions, your choices. That's one thing you can train. This is where Shakespeare's famous quote takes its full meaning imho: “nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

Emotions are energy though: all our functions produce some 'effect', which may be usable, alone or in combination with others — for instance, cognitively we know that emotions act as a catalyst for memory, to break out of 'RAM' into long-term knowledge. This is a bridge (a powerful one, it's called 'passion' in some cases, 'impression' in other contexts...) between emotions and thinking.

The main sources are Stoicism and/or comparable schools of thought (Zen notably, and a cross-slice of many religions, myths), some critically validated modern 'self-development', cognitive studies (psychology, neurology, etc., e.g. the "hexaco" model), and books/authors/ideas in-between that demonstrate the empirical/statistical 'truth' of some principles (those that endure the test of time, with success). Also a bunch of business/consulting literature that strongly validates ideas, if only empirically — plus autobiographies etc. The spirit of the general enterprise is to validate sources by who speaks — e.g. only take advice from those who succeeded at what you seek, preferably the greatest, including people you don't like — and validate ideas themselves by experience, by real-world application.

So while the endeavor might seem quite intellectual, it's only the tip of the iceberg, the small gate of knowledge — immediately after lies practice, lifelong mantras. That's actual philosophy, what the word meant until the turn of the 20th century: practical advice and repipes for a good living.

I can fall asleep quickly, but I would also fit into the definition of chronically sleep deprived. (4 1/2 or 6 hours each night, sometimes only 3 hours) I never use an alarm and rely on daylight to wake up.

You could try all those meditative techniques to get your brain to stop thinking actively about things but what I would suggest if you've tried everything else is - work out your sleep cycle and time going to bed to sleep some multiple of that.

For me it's 90min, so if I need to get up at 6:00am, I strictly get to bed by 11:55pm, 1:25am, etc allowing myself 5 min to fall asleep. Seems to work for me.

This is very good advice, thank you. I've known about sleep cycles for a long time and indeed, I do follow such patterns — my sleep, as little as I get, seems perfectly normal from a clinical standpoint.

I just have the hardest time waking up at the desired time — just as difficult for me as falling asleep. I don't do well with too-short nights either, when my body decides to sleep it's largely best I let it sleep for as long as it needs (rarely more than 12h, it's weird how I clock 8-9 hours without an alarm most of the time like anyone 'normal').

However I've never tried correlating sleep time with wake time in terms of full cycles, and I'm pretty sure I could. I'll definitely try! Thanks again, so much.

I'm not sure how to word this, so please don't take it the wrong way, but have you been screened for mental health problems? Periods of extended bouts of energy + productivity followed by sleep sounds like it something that could be associated with certain forms of bipolar disorder.

Just curious what your personal opinion is of your mental health (and why you might not fit those typical diagnoses), since I'm sure you've come across similar information when googling your own symptoms.

No offense taken whatsover. : ) On the contrary, thank you for the suggestion.

It's interesting you mention this because by my mid-20's I hypothesized this very condition — a mild form, as I've never experienced psychosis (that's when perception becomes objectively flawed, seeing/hearing things, or failing to censor your own actions etc., hallmarks of the manic phase). However I do display classic signs of hypomany (the non-psychotic form of the opposite of depression), as well as acute and regular depressions (about every other year for 2-6 months) from the age of 12 to 34 (at which aged I "cured", somewhat definitively it seems, my last and by far biggest depression, for once motivated by real mind-numbingly bad events, unlike the mood swings most of my life which were mostly 'internal' for god knows what reason).

(Note that there are "normal" depressions, I merely imply curing the "abnormal" ones here for me. I don't expect nor wish to feel good when bad things happens, even though I know I can do that now. It's not magic either, just a lot of training and not much of a choice ultimately, survival instinct if you will).

So the spoiler is nope, a resounding "no Sir, whatever problem you have, bipolarity is not it." — from one top 10 specialist on the topic in Europe, maybe the world. He was so sure, and such a great psychiatrist, there was no doubt. No professional ever suggested bipolarity for me, but cyclic (seasonal) depression maybe. Anyhow. The only solution I know is to take the matter in your own hands, feel "responsible" in the noblest sense, and work, hard, relentlessly, to make a better self.

You can engineer happiness it seems, or at least deconstruct the lack of it, the inability to feel happy / good. At least, in my anecdotal case.

One formidable life coach in my 20's did suggest I may be borderline, and I worked hard on this because it was... probably mostly true (I did have a tendency to emphasize the good or the bad). Apparently the borderline disorder often cures itself by one's 40's, and indeed in my case, I no longer display any symptom of that (since, well, my early 30's).

Sounds more like an adaption to a longer than 24h circadian rhythm than bipolar disorder, which shouldn't cycle that fast or regularly.

You are right on the money. I went to see a specialized "sleep" doctor around 2006 (can't remember the name of the specialty) in Paris, St Anne. He diagnosed what translates as a "phase shift" of my circadian rythm by ~4 hours (thus my daily cycle runs 28h give or take, sleep remains at 8-9 hours though).

I'm really not a biologist, let alone neurologist, but from what information I could gather, I observe these 'abnormalities' of mine (the good as much as the bad) all seem to stem from the hypothalamus region/function. E.g. I also have a weird digestive cycle, basically ketogenic (1 big meal per day, typically for dinner) is my natural regime. I don't eat for ~10 hours after I wake up usually, then eat a 1.5~2x meal in quantity. Unless I go to sleep, I'll then keep eating regularly however.

But how do you even investigate, let alone 'fix' a malfunctioning hypothalamus?.. I never heard or read anything about such research let alone treatment.