I encourage readers to consider whether they are the correct audience for this advice. As I understand it, this advice is directed at those for whom all of the following apply:
- Making a large impact on the world is overwhelmingly more important to you than other things people often want in their lives (such as spending lot of time with friends/family, raising children, etc.) - You have already experienced a normal workload of ~38h per week for at least a couple of years, and found this pretty easy/comfortable to maintain - You generally consider yourself to be happy, highly composed and emotionally stable. You have no history of depression or other mood-related dissorders.
If any of these things do not apply, this post is not for you! And it would probably be a huge mistake to seek out an adderall prescription.
Even if all those things apply … this post may not be for you! Last year I tried to replace sleep with caffeine, and it did not go well. Even if you think you’re happy and emotionally stable, you may discover that stimulants are anxiogenic for you, and you may be dumb enough (i.e., me) not to make that connection for a year.
Stimulants, at least for me, are much better at making me feel productive than increasing my total output. I regularly wasted 3-6 hours chunks plumbing the depths of a rabbit hole that unstimulated me would have rightly avoided. A moderate caveat emptor here.
I’m not convinced you can really replace sleep with caffeine in any meaningful way; tolerance to caffeine builds so quickly as to make it unuseful after a couple of weeks.
If you’re not the right person for the article, I’d instead recommend this post on Sustained effort, potential, and obligation. I’ve found it’s given me a helpful framework for making sense of my own limits on working hours, and you may also find it useful.
I admit that reading this post also stirred up some feelings of inadequacy for me—because, unlike all those CEOs and great men of history, I have actually a pretty low-to-average limit on how much sustained effort my brain will tolerate in a day. If you find yourself with similar feelings (which might be distressing, perhaps even leading you to spiral into self-hatred and/or seek out extreme measures to ‘fix’ yourself), the best antidote I’ve found for myself is The Parable of the Talents by Scott Alexander. (TLDR: variation in innate abilities is widespread, and recognizing and accepting the limits on one’s abilities is both more truthful and more compassionate than denying them.)
You generally consider yourself to be happy, highly composed and emotionally stable. You have no history of depression or other mood-related dissorders
I think there’s conflicting pieces of evidence on this topic, and most recent studies focus on stimulants as add-ons to antidepressants, rather than as the primary treatment for depression.
So, if you think you might be some level of depressed (without having ADHD), I think it’s sound advice to avoid fixating on stimulants as your most promising option—but know you do have lots of effective options to try that might really improve your wellbeing and productivity, such as those discussed here and described by community members here and here.
I encourage readers to consider whether they are the correct audience for this advice. As I understand it, this advice is directed at those for whom all of the following apply:
- Making a large impact on the world is overwhelmingly more important to you than other things people often want in their lives (such as spending lot of time with friends/family, raising children, etc.)
- You have already experienced a normal workload of ~38h per week for at least a couple of years, and found this pretty easy/comfortable to maintain
- You generally consider yourself to be happy, highly composed and emotionally stable. You have no history of depression or other mood-related dissorders.
If any of these things do not apply, this post is not for you! And it would probably be a huge mistake to seek out an adderall prescription.
Even if all those things apply … this post may not be for you! Last year I tried to replace sleep with caffeine, and it did not go well. Even if you think you’re happy and emotionally stable, you may discover that stimulants are anxiogenic for you, and you may be dumb enough (i.e., me) not to make that connection for a year.
Stimulants, at least for me, are much better at making me feel productive than increasing my total output. I regularly wasted 3-6 hours chunks plumbing the depths of a rabbit hole that unstimulated me would have rightly avoided. A moderate caveat emptor here.
I’m not convinced you can really replace sleep with caffeine in any meaningful way; tolerance to caffeine builds so quickly as to make it unuseful after a couple of weeks.
...unless you have other reasons to believe that an Adderall prescription might be good for you. Saliently: if you have adhd symptoms.
If you’re not the right person for the article, I’d instead recommend this post on Sustained effort, potential, and obligation. I’ve found it’s given me a helpful framework for making sense of my own limits on working hours, and you may also find it useful.
I admit that reading this post also stirred up some feelings of inadequacy for me—because, unlike all those CEOs and great men of history, I have actually a pretty low-to-average limit on how much sustained effort my brain will tolerate in a day. If you find yourself with similar feelings (which might be distressing, perhaps even leading you to spiral into self-hatred and/or seek out extreme measures to ‘fix’ yourself), the best antidote I’ve found for myself is The Parable of the Talents by Scott Alexander. (TLDR: variation in innate abilities is widespread, and recognizing and accepting the limits on one’s abilities is both more truthful and more compassionate than denying them.)
Some stimulants seem to work well for depression, however: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375494/
I think there’s conflicting pieces of evidence on this topic, and most recent studies focus on stimulants as add-ons to antidepressants, rather than as the primary treatment for depression.
So, if you think you might be some level of depressed (without having ADHD), I think it’s sound advice to avoid fixating on stimulants as your most promising option—but know you do have lots of effective options to try that might really improve your wellbeing and productivity, such as those discussed here and described by community members here and here.
Good point about stimulants mostly being useful as adjuncts and not as monotherapy.