Szymon's Zettelkasten

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P: Optimize your level of arousal to better fit your needs


People have a natural level of arousal which varies from person to person.

There are different protocols that can manipulate your level of arousal.

When you combine these three facts, you end up with a fantastic conclusion: you can optimize your level of arousal to better fit your needs through smart use of known protocols. With this knowledge you'll be able to change your mental state as you change your clothes to better fit into a given situation (you don't go to a funeral in a tank top).

You can look at it through a short-term and long-term perspective.

The short-term perspective entails that you can use a protocol for a specific task or set of tasks.

You can use it positively, by implementing a protocol to bring you into a temporary state that better fits your needs, like drinking a coffee before a 3 hour learning session.

You can use it negatively, by avoiding using particular protocols in an ineffective way because they don't fit your natural arousal levels. For example, if you're a person who is naturally high on the level of arousal and excels in focused work, taking modafinil will likely have either minuscule effects or lead to overstimulation resulting in nausea and dizziness (happened to me). It's like pouring gasoline on an already well burning grill.

The long-term perspective is about introducing habitual changes in your lifestyle that alter how you act and behave in everyday life. For example, if you're a procrastinator and you want to stop being this way, you would look for ways of bringing up your level of arousal. Cold shower, exercise, caffeine,

I will develop this note by Knowledge Todos

Determining all of the protocols and grouping them by the impact on the arousal level. For now, I'll just add a table

{{table}}

Lower

Increase

L-Theanine

Caffeine

Warm shower

Cold shower

Longer inhalations

Listing out ways to determine your baseline arousal level.

{{table}}

Low arousal

High arousal

Introvert (?)

Extrovert (?)

Calm

Energetic

Not sweating

Easily sweating

Hardly distracted

Easily distracted

Night owl (?)

Morning bird (?)

Better at sleeping

Worse at sleeping

Walks slowly (?)

Walks rapidly (?)

More likely to procrastinate

Less likely to procrastinate


Relevant notes (PN: )/questions (Q:):

TK P: Learning is the dance between the focused and diffused state: the level of arousal influences if you're in the focused or diffused state

You can literally control your state using just your breath

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