Why Your Morning Coffee Isn't Working (unless you are Marc Andreessen)

Most energy drinks just dump caffeine in your system to block adenosine. You feel alert for a bit, then your cortisol spikes and you crash. Not ideal.

Better move: pair caffeine with L-theanine. It promotes alpha-wave activity, which means you get the boost without feeling like you're vibrating. Matcha does this naturally: slower uptake, fewer jitters, steadier focus throughout the day.

Here's what actually helps:

• Citicoline keeps your attention sharp
• Bacopa helps with memory (takes a few weeks to kick in)
• Lion's mane supports nerve growth (still early research, but promising)
• Rhodiola and cordyceps help you handle stress without frying your nervous system

Add some turmeric and vitamin C to deal with oxidative stress. B-vitamins keep your cells running...

The best ready-made formulation I've found which achieves this and more is Magic Mind, it packs all of this into one shot (matcha, L-theanine, nootropics, adaptogens, the complete package). It's designed for mental performance without the crash or the pill fatigue.

​There's a 50% off your subscription here, or 20% off your one time purchase​

Time Saved This Week: 9 hours, 5 minutes

​NEW Premium Notes​

​When Things Fall Apart: 3 Lessons from Ben Horowitz on Leading Through the Struggle (Part One) | Beginner’s Mind with Christian Soschner​

• Take it from someone who has lived it. Ben Horowitz took Loudcloud public as the dotcom bubble was collapsing, and the company's stock eventually plummeted to a measly $0.35 per share. Exactly when it seemed like there were no moves left to make, he built the business back toward an eventual $1.6 billion sale to HP. Fortunately for you, he believes that learning from another person's mistake beats learning from your own. Part one of this book review on The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz gives founders and CEOs first-hand lessons on how to lead through struggle, why honesty is the policy, and how to communicate layoffs

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​Essentials: Use Sleep to Enhance Learning, Memory & Emotional State | Dr. Gina Poe​

• Sleep is not just downtime, it is when your brain builds memories, cleans itself out, and decides which emotions get filed away and which ones stay raw. Dr. Gina Poe breaks down what actually happens across a night of sleep, from the growth hormone bump you can only catch once to why your bedtime consistency matters more than your total hours, and shares best ways to protect the sleep​

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​Meet the Writer Who Sold Millions of Books Before 30 | R.F. Kuang on How I Write with David Perell​

• Writing a good book is no act of genius, but rather the result of thousands of individual rhetorical decisions crafted together by an author to create a compelling story. Each of these decisions can then be isolated and analyzed in a way that helps you learn the craft of writing for yourself. R.F. Kuang has already written several successful novels early in her career, and she has some incredible advice on how she generates ideas for books, leverages human emotions, and explores different voices. Once you learn to read more than just the words on the page, writing a book becomes more accessible and your reading experience becomes more meaningful

Top Takeaways Of The Week

​When Things Fall Apart: 3 Lessons from Ben Horowitz on Leading Through the Struggle (Part One) | Beginner’s Mind with Christian Soschner​

• Easy: Setting a big goal
• Hard: Missing the goal and laying people off
• Easy: Hiring great people
• Hard: Managing their egos and unreasonable demands
• Easy: Setting up an org chart
• Hard: Getting people to communicate within that org chart

• Thinking “why did I start this company in the first place” has XXXX effects
• Being overly positive makes your employees think you’re lying to them, and you may start to believe you’re XXXX​

Every founder will struggle, but not every founder will XXXX​

• Founders must always be prepared for struggles they cannot even XXXX yet

Success = XXXX > Statistics

• “When you’re building a company, you must believe there is an XXXX and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it.”

CEOs should resist the psychological pressure to always be XXXX​

• “Shielding your team from XXXX feels like leadership and works like sabotage”
• It’s not the CEO’s job to be XXXX all the time

CEOs should always tell it like XXXX​

• Being XXXX is not about morality, it’s about efficiency
• ​XXXX is bandwidth, everything else is throughput
• Uncomfortable XXXX > comfortable lies

Never outsource a XXXX to pressure tactics

• Pressuring people to resign to avoid an inevitable XXXX is a cowardly move
• This is “a leader buying relief from his own guilt with another person’s XXXX”

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​Essentials: Use Sleep to Enhance Learning, Memory & Emotional State | Dr. Gina Poe​

The first 4 hours of sleep are critical for memory processing, particularly if you learned something new that day… the memory may show up in your dream

The second half of the night: REM sleep periods are longer (non-threatening background sounds will be incorporated into dreams instead of waking up), sleep is deeper, difficult to wake someone out of this stage

Growth hormone release happens most in the first XXXX (you don’t want to miss it)

• Our bodies know when we should be sleeping and our cells are ready to respond to growth hormone release at a specific time… you can’t XXXX on this release

What to actually do for best sleep possible

• A perfect night of sleep: XXXX hours with about 5 sleep cycles
• People need different amounts of sleep but most people who sleep 4.5-5 hours of sleep for many nights experience XXXX​
• You can’t oversleep but if you consistently need more than 9 hours or more, if may be an XXXX​
• ​XXXX is a REM sleep suppressant until it’s been metabolized and removed from our bodies
• ​XXXX are at best 70% accurate at tracking sleep cycles – take it with a grain of salt
• Fun fact: XXXX wake you up more than anything (even kids) in the middle of the night
• Avoid XXXX late at night, try XXXX exercises before sleep, calm down the sympathetic nervous system, and try not to sleep when anxious or hyped up
• Try XXXX, non-sleep deep rest, intentional muscle relaxation, or XXXX to relax – during meditation, our brain mimics some functions of REM sleep but we don’t know the extent

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​Meet the Writer Who Sold Millions of Books Before 30 | R.F. Kuang on How I Write with David Perell​

It’s a myth that writing is unteachable

• You can study the thousands of individual rhetorical choices that authors make to create a fluid piece of writing
• Even if you don’t want to be an author, learning the craftsmanship of writing will make you a better reader

Conscious XXXX is a fantastic exercise... because you deep dive into the author’s little choices that cumulate into their voices

• Picking apart the writing > XXXX the writing
• h/t Steering the Craft by Ursula Le Guin

“You have to learn to write not like XXXX”

• ​XXXX exercises make you ask why other authors make certain writing decisions, which naturally makes you question your own

Don’t be afraid to be XXXX when writing

• Many classic novels are not as intimidating as you might think, the authors often bounce back and forth between deep philosophy and ridiculous XXXX​

​XXXX writing exercises help you learn what doesn’t work

• Example: Write about a beautiful XXXX setting from the perspective of someone who hates the XXXX​
• You know the XXXX conditions don’t allow for your best writing, so it gives you the freedom to be playful and messy
• When you know what doesn’t work, you have a better feel for XXXX​

This is how R.F. Kuang explained her writing process:

• Word vomit draft. Mostly brainstorming and research.
• She does not start with an outline. She identifies what moments could be