7 ms·

“Productivity” Tricks for the Neurotic, Manic-Depressive, and Crazy (Like Me)

60 points by eroded 13y ago

eterm 13y ago
Are these really tips that are applicable to others or is blogging like this just another form of humble-bragging?
- elag 13y ago
  It's Tim Ferriss, man. (In my RSS feed this post is just above 'Startup snake oil').
ledge 13y ago
Here this guy claims to have put on 20 pounds of muscle in 8 weeks, and in another article he claims 34 pounds in 4 weeks. Hmm... I wouldn't invest in anything he was associated with, he is clearly full of shit.
- normloman 13y ago
  I was surprised there were tips to begin with. After seeing the crap-ads on his site, I expected a sign-up form asking $100 for his productivity guru webinar (a $300 value!).
- jere 13y ago
  So what? The previous 34lb gain happened about 8 years ago and that was probably his main focus at the time. Then, he was in his late 20s. Now, he's in his late 30s and obviously spread thin. I love HN, but damn the negativity and dismissal. The guy is opening up on some pretty personal stuff and I for one appreciate it. [edit: I've explained why I think the original 34lb gain is possibly legitimate in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669680 (though you should note that wasn't the point of this comment.)]
  - delluminatus 13y ago
    Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible, even for a young man. Even gaining 34 pounds of weight in 4 weeks (not just muscle, but fat as well) would be a serious challenge: 34 pounds of weight equates to about 119,000 kilocalories[1], meaning you would have to eat 119k/28=4,250 kcal a day in addition to your "maintenance" calorie level (i.e. the caloric energy that you burn with everyday activity -- usually 1500-2500 kcal). So he would have to eat about 7,000 kcal a day in order to gain weight at that rate. Furthermore, gaining weight and gaining muscle are very different beasts. Muscle is only "built" when muscle fibers are broken down through strenuous activity and then rebuilt. This is not a rapid process. It's widely accepted in the weight training community that without steroids, muscle can be built at a rate of a pound or two a week at most. So either the author is lying about his muscle gain, which throws his other statements into doubt, or more likely he's simply confused about how to actually measure weight vs. muscle gain, and reporting erroneous conclusions. There are many fitness-related misconceptions out there. [1] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calories/WT00011 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calories/WT00011
    - jere 13y ago
      Original article for reference: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to... >Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible I'm not so sure it's impossible. Claiming such seems like black swan fallacy. Lots of people were skeptical about it of course and I don't blame you for being skeptical. My original comment above was mainly in response to the divergent 2 numbers being clearly bullshit... they're not. I'll try to tackle what you said below: The calorie part isn't much of an argument. With enough exertion and access to calorically dense, highly palatable foods, it's not that hard to eat several thousands calories in excess daily. A large pizza can easily be 2500 calories; a cheesecake can easily be 3000 calories. But... your calculation is actually a straw man, since fat requires more calories than muscle. I can't find an exact number, but taking just knowing that caloric density of dietary protein is less than half that of dietary fat and that muscle mass is mostly water, I'm guessing at least half as much as fat, so closer to 1500 calories than 3500. Add a small detail to that in that he lost 3lb of fat during the same time period and the calculation is more like ((34 X 1500 kcal)-(3 X 3500 kcal))/28 = 1446 kcal a day in excess. So he'd be eating about 3500 calories per day. That's actually a fairly typical number for an American. I really don't think he was confused about how to measure... he went to a human performance lab and used hydrostatic weighing, one of the most accurate methods. Finally, call me naive, but I don't think he's lying either. I've read a lot of Ferriss's stuff and one theme that has come out is he's really good at finding loopholes that allow him to win by just barely staying within the rules. I'm no expert, but I've noticed that improvements in body composition are rapidly achievable for people who had a similar composition in the past and only temporarily deviated. I'm pretty sure Ferriss was jacked when younger (he used to wrestle). Ferriss also references the Colorado experiment and the same point is brought up on the wikipedia page (the claim here by the way is a 63lb gain in one month... so you must really think that is BS): >These claims are considered controversial because it was only performed with two subjects who were not "average," but regaining pre-existing muscle mass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment He may very well not have "built" the muscle, but simply regained the existing mass.
efbenson 13y ago
If he really is bipolar (manic-depressive is an outdated term that most of us don't use) this sounds like a very manic period after coming out of depression. The truth is somewhere in the middle. If he sustains this for more than 6 months it might be sustainable, otherwise his mania will run out and the depression will set back in.
ryan-allen 13y ago
So in this post, Tim mentions that he has seen a therapist "for the first time ever" because he was possibly doomed to life long pessimism, yet he implies that he is manic depressive, which may well be true, but then he wraps up his post with some 'tips' on how to manage, and if they work for him, great... or maybe not. I don't feel so good about him throwing about this manic depressive stuff, especially in the coffee table self help circle-jerk industry. Bipolar disorder is a serious goddamn illness and it ruins peoples lives. The average age people are diagnosed with bipolar is around 30, and that's a lot of life to live flipping from left to right listening to whimsy advise like this. This is really dangerous. You can't give a list of '10 things to do' to someone with bipolar and expect them to sort themselves out. If Tim is truly suffering from biploar, that 'list of things that work' changes from week to week, possibly even day to day and hour to hour. The drive he feels is from his hypomania (that leads to a post like this and incredulous books like the 4 hour body) that inevitably leads to an exhausted crash and period of debilitating depression. Hell, he might even have a mixed episode and in a manic 'clarity' moment of the depression he decided to hang himself. This isn't simple conjecture, these are the kinds of things that happen. For what it's worth, if you want to see what the many sides of bipolar are like you should watch "The life of a Manic Depressive" with Steven Fry. He interviews many famous people and regular civilians regarding their illness, and you'll find that the sample there are mostly not living 'inspired lives' like Tim, and his advise isn't going to help them in the long run I fear, if anything I fear it'll cause more people suffering to delay that first visit to a psychiatrist to seek help. EDIT: I'd like to point out that if Tim's writings are a product of his hypomania/mania you can't blame him for it. But whatever.
iSnow 13y ago
Humble bragging meets survivor bias.

60 points by eroded 13y ago

eterm 13y ago

Are these really tips that are applicable to others or is blogging like this just another form of humble-bragging?

elag 13y ago
It's Tim Ferriss, man. (In my RSS feed this post is just above 'Startup snake oil').

ledge 13y ago

Here this guy claims to have put on 20 pounds of muscle in 8 weeks, and in another article he claims 34 pounds in 4 weeks. Hmm... I wouldn't invest in anything he was associated with, he is clearly full of shit.

normloman 13y ago
I was surprised there were tips to begin with. After seeing the crap-ads on his site, I expected a sign-up form asking $100 for his productivity guru webinar (a $300 value!).
jere 13y ago
So what? The previous 34lb gain happened about 8 years ago and that was probably his main focus at the time. Then, he was in his late 20s. Now, he's in his late 30s and obviously spread thin. I love HN, but damn the negativity and dismissal. The guy is opening up on some pretty personal stuff and I for one appreciate it. [edit: I've explained why I think the original 34lb gain is possibly legitimate in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669680 (though you should note that wasn't the point of this comment.)]
- delluminatus 13y ago
  Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible, even for a young man. Even gaining 34 pounds of weight in 4 weeks (not just muscle, but fat as well) would be a serious challenge: 34 pounds of weight equates to about 119,000 kilocalories[1], meaning you would have to eat 119k/28=4,250 kcal a day in addition to your "maintenance" calorie level (i.e. the caloric energy that you burn with everyday activity -- usually 1500-2500 kcal). So he would have to eat about 7,000 kcal a day in order to gain weight at that rate. Furthermore, gaining weight and gaining muscle are very different beasts. Muscle is only "built" when muscle fibers are broken down through strenuous activity and then rebuilt. This is not a rapid process. It's widely accepted in the weight training community that without steroids, muscle can be built at a rate of a pound or two a week at most. So either the author is lying about his muscle gain, which throws his other statements into doubt, or more likely he's simply confused about how to actually measure weight vs. muscle gain, and reporting erroneous conclusions. There are many fitness-related misconceptions out there. [1] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calories/WT00011 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calories/WT00011
  - jere 13y ago
    Original article for reference: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to... >Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible I'm not so sure it's impossible. Claiming such seems like black swan fallacy. Lots of people were skeptical about it of course and I don't blame you for being skeptical. My original comment above was mainly in response to the divergent 2 numbers being clearly bullshit... they're not. I'll try to tackle what you said below: The calorie part isn't much of an argument. With enough exertion and access to calorically dense, highly palatable foods, it's not that hard to eat several thousands calories in excess daily. A large pizza can easily be 2500 calories; a cheesecake can easily be 3000 calories. But... your calculation is actually a straw man, since fat requires more calories than muscle. I can't find an exact number, but taking just knowing that caloric density of dietary protein is less than half that of dietary fat and that muscle mass is mostly water, I'm guessing at least half as much as fat, so closer to 1500 calories than 3500. Add a small detail to that in that he lost 3lb of fat during the same time period and the calculation is more like ((34 X 1500 kcal)-(3 X 3500 kcal))/28 = 1446 kcal a day in excess. So he'd be eating about 3500 calories per day. That's actually a fairly typical number for an American. I really don't think he was confused about how to measure... he went to a human performance lab and used hydrostatic weighing, one of the most accurate methods. Finally, call me naive, but I don't think he's lying either. I've read a lot of Ferriss's stuff and one theme that has come out is he's really good at finding loopholes that allow him to win by just barely staying within the rules. I'm no expert, but I've noticed that improvements in body composition are rapidly achievable for people who had a similar composition in the past and only temporarily deviated. I'm pretty sure Ferriss was jacked when younger (he used to wrestle). Ferriss also references the Colorado experiment and the same point is brought up on the wikipedia page (the claim here by the way is a 63lb gain in one month... so you must really think that is BS): >These claims are considered controversial because it was only performed with two subjects who were not "average," but regaining pre-existing muscle mass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment He may very well not have "built" the muscle, but simply regained the existing mass.

efbenson 13y ago

If he really is bipolar (manic-depressive is an outdated term that most of us don't use) this sounds like a very manic period after coming out of depression. The truth is somewhere in the middle. If he sustains this for more than 6 months it might be sustainable, otherwise his mania will run out and the depression will set back in.

ryan-allen 13y ago

So in this post, Tim mentions that he has seen a therapist "for the first time ever" because he was possibly doomed to life long pessimism, yet he implies that he is manic depressive, which may well be true, but then he wraps up his post with some 'tips' on how to manage, and if they work for him, great... or maybe not. I don't feel so good about him throwing about this manic depressive stuff, especially in the coffee table self help circle-jerk industry. Bipolar disorder is a serious goddamn illness and it ruins peoples lives. The average age people are diagnosed with bipolar is around 30, and that's a lot of life to live flipping from left to right listening to whimsy advise like this. This is really dangerous. You can't give a list of '10 things to do' to someone with bipolar and expect them to sort themselves out. If Tim is truly suffering from biploar, that 'list of things that work' changes from week to week, possibly even day to day and hour to hour. The drive he feels is from his hypomania (that leads to a post like this and incredulous books like the 4 hour body) that inevitably leads to an exhausted crash and period of debilitating depression. Hell, he might even have a mixed episode and in a manic 'clarity' moment of the depression he decided to hang himself. This isn't simple conjecture, these are the kinds of things that happen. For what it's worth, if you want to see what the many sides of bipolar are like you should watch "The life of a Manic Depressive" with Steven Fry. He interviews many famous people and regular civilians regarding their illness, and you'll find that the sample there are mostly not living 'inspired lives' like Tim, and his advise isn't going to help them in the long run I fear, if anything I fear it'll cause more people suffering to delay that first visit to a psychiatrist to seek help. EDIT: I'd like to point out that if Tim's writings are a product of his hypomania/mania you can't blame him for it. But whatever.

iSnow 13y ago

Humble bragging meets survivor bias.