41–50 of 95 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not even stuff like fish oil, vitamin D, piracetam, gingko, stuff like that?
Well, many people (including me) are low in vitamin D, because we spend so much time indoors. My dermatologist said (only partially joking) that if you're aren't deficient in vitamin D, you're not using enough sunscreen.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/26/us-vitamind-heartd...
Like that author, I also find it much easier and faster to deal with uncomfortable emails when drinking. I also am able to crank out dreary but needed documentation, and it's also when I generally write proposals and cover letters, things with a social component to them needed. It's very helpful and saves a lot of time, just don't go overboard.
I have personally programmed a lot while tipsy (never drunk, I am not sure I would want to read that code in the morning) and it allows me to get over the humps of writing that utility function that needed to be written but I was putting off, it allows me to just start putting code down in vim without really worrying whether or not it is good enough... Let me quantify good enough a little better. I am a perfectionist…
I find it helps me focus as it stops my mind from wandering off down infinite stacks over minor issues. Like caffeine though there's a certain precise narrow level where this happens and if you go over that level it doesn't work.
"We Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers – that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent. But we are wrong. In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It do…
No one is around judging you or knowing you are drunk, you are just writing emails.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't find alcohol helps me at all; it takes an edge off me for several days. I very rarely drink, almost only at special occasions and then matched wines with meals and that kind of thing. But I do find that being somewhat tired helps me get into a certain kind of "getting things done" zone: when the creative planning is not necessary, and mostly the grunt work of pushing things through to implementation remains.
Being tired makes it easier for me to do public speaking and sales presentations. I've never locked up in the middle of a presentation when I've had a bad night's sleep beforehand. It's almost getting to be something I optimize for: set up travel so I'm as tired as possible before presenting.
Whenever I'm low on sleep, I'm mostly just irritable and more prone to making mistakes, although once, when particularly sleep deprived, I found myself reading the back of a shampoo bottle as if it were a cooking recipe. A couple minutes in, I realized it wasn't a recipe, thought to myself something like "Snap out of it!" Not more than five minutes later and I was reading the "recipe" again.
Anyways, personally. I'm certainly neither more productive nor more talkative when sleep deprived.
Reminds me of this XKCD, aptly titled "The Ballmer Peak": http://xkcd.com/323/
I have noticed a similar effect in other areas myself. On example is bowling. Sober, I am terrible, but after a few beers I rock the lane; right before I start to wobble and fail to hit even a single pin :P
But damn, I used to be in a couple leagues and those 2 pints really put me in the zone.
"We Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers – that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent. But we are wrong. In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It do…
It's not a "cultural" thing or however you want to call it. My father is one of the nicest persons you'll ever meet when he's sober, but when he gets really drunk he becomes aggressive and violent as hell. And I can assure you that he's not doing it because he thinks he's "cool" to be aggressive when drunk, my parents live in the middle of nowhere, social norms are the last thing my dad would care about.