~ So I just did 8 hours of coding learning straight. I feel surprisingly good. For a few reasons... I think. I think the most important reason is my trusty new Attention Investment Cycle. But also I’ve been fasting since midnight yesterday (it's now 9pm).
The fasting part is pretty cool because I’m pretty sure I’m what some people call “fat adapted” now. That seems to indicate that my body is used to going into no-carb mode and that my liver switches to making keynotes pretty quickly when no food is available. I think this is because I’ve been doing Monday fasts for the last month and have been doing a semi-ketogenic diet for many years now. The theory seems to be that if your liver makes enough ketones your brain will be quite happy running off ketones instead of carbohydrates.
One side effect I’ve found is that while fasting I feel super chill. Almost as though I smoked a little pot, but I’m really just living off water and burning whatever fat or muscle or food left in my body.
I also used the Attention Investment Cycle like crazy to keep on task and in the python learning mode. There certainly were a couple of times where my mind wandered, but I “felt the joy of letting go” of those distracting thoughts. I then happily got back into what I was learning. I wouldn’t say that what I’m learning was particularly easy or particularly hard, but I really think that by keeping my attention calmly and happily on the subject I learned way more than I normally would have.
Of course, we’ll have to see if this wonderful vibe remains when I eat food again, but I’m optimistic about that. I’ve hacked my daily eating too so I feel amazing until I have a huge protein shake in the evening.
Now I think I'll make a crumby low-fi hip-hop beat and post it here. More on that soon…
PS
I also, practiced soccer stopovers, ufc addiction inoculation, and trumpet between the 8 Focusmate sessions that joyfully kept me in my room(all more soon...)
PPS
update from the next day:
I think I've noticed a pattern. It seems that after a day of fasting and getting tons of work done my sleep is not as good(while fasted) and my productivity decreases while refeeding myself the next day. I'm still playing with this and as an overly optimistic person I feel like there's a great solution in there somewhere. In the end it was a struggle to get 4 hours of work done the next day. But the day after I easily did 7 hours. more soon...