I’m also on flax seed oil, nature’s highest source of Omega 3’s which are vital for brain function.
My understanding is that flax seed oil contains omega-3s in a form that's not immediately usable by the body (linolenic acid), and the conversion process is inefficient. Check out this post from the excellent Heart Scan Blog:
He's talking mostly in terms of heart health, and notes that flax oil may have other anti-inflammatory benefits, but it seems that if your goal is getting the most omega-3s for your buck, fish oil is a better source.
What are some of your secrets for combating work overload?
My single biggest secret for continuing to get things done, often working 12 hour days and 6 day weeks, is to love what I do.
I do not think of it as "work", as something to "get through", or as something difficult, unusual, "overload", or temporary. Quite simply, I sit at my computer 12 hours per day, every day, because I want to, I love what I do, and I can't imagine doing anything else. I have been working like this for years.
In fact, I feel sorry for anyone else who doesn't feel this way. What a sad life to be spending so much time doing something that you have to force yourself to do.
Some of the things I have arranged in my life to enable me to do what I love:
I eat similarly to you. It's a great idea no matter what your circumstances are.
I also exercise regularly, 20 minutes, 3 to 6 times per week. I mix it up and only do things I love: 5 rites, pushups & pullups, jogging, swimming, heavyhands, shovelglove, bodyweight exercises, and even a day or 2 at the gym on their machines.
Breakfast at my desk, lunch away from my desk, dinner and Jeopardy with my SO every night without exception.
At least one date night per week, with an extra beer or two just in case it's a chick flick.
I never text, tweet, blog, IM, or facebook. I do respond to voicemail and email regularly. Everyone I know understands this.
Ipod, radio, and 3 cats keep me company. Occasionally I bring a small TV into the office for football games (I'm getting more work done now that the Steelers have been eliminated :-(. )
I like to work in 48 minute bursts, with a 12 minute break each hour for email, internet, snack, or anything else.
That doesn't help. I'm not a mathematical figure, nor is the author of the article. The non-mathematical meaning of "degenerate", which I was already familiar with, also failed to make it clear to me. I still do not know what your comment means.
I'm not referring to you, I'm referring to your comment that you get through a 12 hour day by not working a 12 hour day. It may be a technically valid statement but it's completely uninteresting. It's like saying that the best way to become a millionaire is to have a million dollars.
I’m staying away from pretty much anything thats not directly from the ground. I am also taking several brain helper pills to increase the uptake of seratonin, improve concentration and memory and keep me feeling alert 24/7.
What is a brain helper pill? The author says he is 'staying away from pretty much anything thats not directly from the ground' so I guess that rules out Adderall, etc.
Thats struck me as odd too - he's avoiding anything unnatural and man-made, but feels no issue with popping a bunch of pharmaceutical chemicals?
No offense to the author, and I'm glad if the above strategies are working out for him, but this smells a little like too much new-age health food mania. I too know people who swear by organic foods and will spend hours lecturing you on the dangers of industrialized food production... and have a row of pharmaceuticals they pop daily.
This reminds me altogether of the Jonathan Coulton song: "I Feel Fantastic" (look up lyrics if you don't know it).
He says "no coffee". Apparently it's neither natural enough nor "pure brain-food" enough.
Piracetam is another popular nootropic. It's cheap, well-studied (as nootropics go, anyway), and probably pretty benign.
My unrequested advice is that if you're thinking about taking nootropics, you should probably make sure you're eating reasonably well and getting enough sleep and exercise first. Then consider the trade-offs.
This article made me hate this guy. It's not his fault. I'm being unreasonable and I know it. But when I read this all I can think is "Does this guy realize that Poor people have been managing 12 hour days without a problem even without all this new age junk"
Again, I'm being unreasonably rough on him it just feels like he's denigrating all those hard working people who have to work 12 hours a day to survive and don't have the hundreds of dollars to spend on spiffy pills and organic food.
I withheld a similar comment, not SO MUCH from this one blog post, but from reading others on the blog as well.
As somebody who routinely works 12 hour days, I've found that I don't need any special system to make it work, I just have to be willing to do it. That said, I just tolerate it. I'm not working on anything for myself right now, and while I like the work, I don't necessarily love the way our customer / management want us to work. That means I don't have a magical system to make it more tolerable, I just do the work, as I'm expected to, and try my damnedest to kick ass at it while I do.
The main thing I got out of the article though, is that he isn't really working a 12 hour day at all. Between taking breaks every hour, exercising, taking a lunch break, etc., it seems that the REAL secret to working a 12 hour day is to not ACTUALLY work a 12 hour day.
i think that all such blog posts operate under the assumption that you're a reasonably-educated middle-class person who doesn't have to work extreme hours or in poor conditions just to survive and put food on the table. i think if you're worrying about putting food on the table, you probably aren't the target audience for HN.
Pishh pashhhh....those aren't even real hours. 12 hours days (and at least 30% of the weekend) is pretty much expected in an average corporate world management job these days.
I don't think I've even worked less than 10 hour days in the last 6 years, and once burned through about 2000 hours in 4 months (if you want to absolutely and completely loose track of time, those are the kind of hours to work, when 2-weeks feel like 2 days, you know you are working too much).
That being said, maintaining a healthy diet and sticking to some kind of exercise routine is really critical to keeping stress levels down.
I don't think I've even worked less than 10 hour days in the last 6 years, and once burned through about 2000 hours in 4 months
I hope you're getting paid a fortune, or better yet are working for yourself, because 2000 hours in 4 months is 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I cannot think of a single corporate job that would be worth that kind of hell.
It was on one particular contract for that period about a year before I went to work at my present startup company.
It was crazy I'll admit, I'm unlikely to want to do that kind of compressed work schedule again.
I actually didn't see daylight for most of that time and ran mostly on something I think was an adrenaline high. The sense of accomplishment at the end of it was enormous.
It was a crazy rewarding experience both in terms of self-satisfaction and in the wallet. I made a year's salary + about another 20% in bonus pay + a few other interesting compensation pieces.
More importantly, for that 12 month work year I managed to accrue the equivalent of 2.5 years of experience by hours and in terms of total output with that contract and some other long hour work, likely more since I had 100% focus on that work with absolutely no room for interruption, it's had a amazing impact on my career trajectory because I can point to that remarkable output and all of the spin-off developments that came from that body of work. In addition, I probably learned more in that 4 months that I had in my previous 4 years of work. It also landed me my current position as employee #(some single digit) with my company and put me immediately into a position of significant responsibility.
It's also given me good perspective on how much I'm worth when negotiating salary as well as how abysmally few hours are in a 9-5 40 hour week and how little work I can get done in that time by comparison.
I wouldn't recommend it for most people though, it was a pretty big sacrifice, but I'd wager that if I were to become employee #0 and startup my own company with my own $$$'s I'd work about those hours to see it off the ground.
My understanding is that flax seed oil contains omega-3s in a form that's not immediately usable by the body (linolenic acid), and the conversion process is inefficient. Check out this post from the excellent Heart Scan Blog:
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/omega-3-must-be-fr...
He's talking mostly in terms of heart health, and notes that flax oil may have other anti-inflammatory benefits, but it seems that if your goal is getting the most omega-3s for your buck, fish oil is a better source.