As you know from a previous post, I accidentally ended up with a prescription for methylphenidate (MPH). I take it not infrequently as the benefits are quite noticeable. Quite frankly, I think that MPH is an incredible drug. That being said, I do not want to conform to the default drug dosage regimen as I see little benefit in accidentally training myself to depend on it. The default approach is to take it either every day or every working day. This is not how I do it. In this article, I summarize my approach to taking MPH and attempt to generalize it to any cognitive enhancer. It is a companion piece to a recent article on using MPH for work and please.

I have to add that even before MPH I was highly productive. I do not want to mention any real-life achievements that make me easily identifiable, but one I am quite proud of, and which is an achievement that is neither unique nor something I normally mention in real life, is that I completed a demanding two-year Master’s degree in a technical discipline at a reputable university in Europe within twelve months. This was a specialized program where the minimum IQ, ignoring the few not-so-bright token female admits, is probably around 125. The median time for completion is somewhere around two-and-a-half years. All it takes is failing an exam which precludes you from taking a follow-up course or getting stuck during your thesis research project. I was the only one in my cohort who managed to finish his degree on time; the second-fastest student took a little over two years. Amusingly, my graduation ceremony was the one of the previous year’s cohort and they told me that plenty of their peers are graduating late, which also happened to people the year before them. Thus, I shared the graduation ceremony with some people who had started their degree program two years before me. I do not want to boast, but it probably says something if you are twice as fast as the second-fastest guy in your cohort. That being said, to the others it did not seem to have occurred that you could take extra courses, so plenty of smart people there just did not make use of this possibility, and we had a few pretty smart guys in this program.

In my day job, I do moderately interesting technical work, but also plenty of pretty boring work that needs to be done, sometimes for compliance reasons and at other times because someone else wants to get his TPS reports on time. Perhaps the most charitable way of phrasing it is that I find my work tolerable. If I was independently wealthy, I would not do it, though. I do find my personal projects, which include this blog, much more interesting, even though there is little to no financial reward. These are my constraints, so the obvious question is how to use MPH in an effective way, looking for a solution that strikes a good balance between frequency of use and real-world benefit. If you just habitually take this drug, this does not matter but in that case, you may build up a tolerance, leading to requiring higher and higher doses or experience unnecessary side effects.

In addition to the constraints set by your personal and professional life, there is also the problem of addiction, which is probably relevant for many if not all cognitive enhancers. On top there are side effects to manage and expenses to juggle. If you get a prescription for MPH, money is not an issue, but if your cognitive enhancer of choice is cocaine, it most likely is, except if you make a multiple six-figure income. The general approach is thus to assess your incidence of side effects in terms of frequency and severity, while taking into account addiction and the prevalence of withdrawal symptoms. Then there is money, as briefly mentioned. These factors you need to take into account for finding your optimal solution.

One benefit of my work is that I have a certain level of seniority, which means that I can organize my days to some extent. There are of course bullshit meetings I need to attend, but this is not that much of an issue for my further planning. What I do is therefore to structure my days, ideally in blocks of two or three days. My approach is to bundle the work, take MPH to be done with it sooner, and then take it easier for the rest of the week. Concretely, this may look like this: If there are meetings I cannot get out of on Wednesday and Thursday, I check my deadlines and see if I can pack these two days full of work. On MPH, I may produce the output of one week in 1.5 days or so. Whom am I kidding? I basically get one week’s work comfortably done in no more than one day, including the boring crap. It helps me get through the necessary parts faster, and the rest of the week I could take it easy. I would obviously never just skirt work  do something else during my working hours, in particular if I am working from home, but theoretically you probably could. This is particularly true if you manage to parcel out your work so that you spread out the results from your one or two busy days over five our six days, perhaps with a minor revision.

This approach of pushing through what needs to be done, in order to free up time for the rest of the day or week works really well for me, both professionally and privately. I am also fortunate enough that I do not experience serious side effects from MPH. The only issue is dry mouth, which is a minor issue that is taken for by sipping water frequently. I also experienced a slight increase in blood pressure and heart rate initially, but I have gotten this under control.

Addiction and withdrawal symptoms are a serious issue. In my case, I do not experience euphoria on MPH, unlike many other people. However, if that is the case, it seems quite likely that an on/off schedule were you take MPH for two or three days, and then take a few days off would probably be difficult to maintain. My standard pattern is taking it for two days in a row, followed by a break of three days, or I do two days on, two days off. If I experience withdrawal symptoms, then I would probably reevaluate my dosage and usage frequency and lower the dose far enough to no longer get withdrawal symptoms, but here I have to clearly point out that this particular aspect is just a hypothesis.

If money is an issue because you cannot get a prescription for a controlled substance like MPH or amphetamine/dextroamphetamine and therefore need to watch your expenses, I would similarly attempt to squeeze more work in fewer days, get through them, and then recover. You probably want to spend even more time on planning, and perhaps you should even abstain from consuming your favorite cognitive enhancer if you cannot get enough work done in return. This is the view of the wage slave who cannot go around and start his own projects. Some companies give you this freedom to a limited extent, and in that situation, I would assess on a case-by-case basis if it makes sense to take some drugs to get more done. For freelancers, the situation is a lot different, in particular if you get paid by output rather than the hours put in. This reminds me of a guy I used to know who boasted about making 30,000 euros a month by taking on multiple assignments at once. His story was that he is just oh-so productive. A more realistic view is probably that he snorted a lot of cocaine that enabled him to work 12-hour days for six days a week.

If you can directly translate your time into money, I would use side effects and health impact as the limiting factor, i.e. work backwards from the time you need for full recovery. In the long run, it is probably not healthy to constantly be on cognitive enhancers, so I would be careful with that. A corner case is to work really hard, while being powered by drugs, with the goal of capturing so much surplus value that you will not have to work much for the rest of your life, or significantly less afterwards. Some startup founders seem to have this modus operandi but I have my doubts that this is a viable approach.

The bigger picture is that if you do not need to take cognitive enhancers, you should perhaps abstain altogether. To return to the example of me plowing through a two-years technical Master’s program: I did not need to take performance-enhancing drugs for that and there surely are a lot of people who could not have replicated this even if they had taken excessive amounts of Adderall or Ritalin for one year straight. These are not wonder drugs but they help you perform better. I take MPH when I think I will get something out of it. On the other hand, if I have made plans for a lazy day, consisting of sleeping in, taking a long walk in nature, watching a movie, and cuddling with my lovely wife, then I assume that I can do this just was well with MPH as without, so why pop a pill? I want to avoid habit-forming, and with the aforementioned approach I seem to be on a good way.