The Ultra Human Protocol

So you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like those by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.

Hopefully, you're reading this just prior to (or just after) splurging a not-insignificant chunk of change on some high-quality Nootropics. If you're going to spend your hard-earned money on Nootropics there's an important question you should be asking...

How can I make more permanent the mindset and enhanced powers of cognition that this Nootropic imbues?

You should be pondering what you can do in the short term so that using a not insignificant dosage of potent smart drugs for 30, 60, or 90 days not only enhances your performance in the medium term but also benefits you in the long term.You should be thinking about how you can use a medium-term pharmacologically enabled boost in motivation, memory, and cognition to build escape velocity momentum toward your goals.

The American oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is famous for saying something to the effect of...

Your first million dollars is the hardest to make.

In a humorous exchange across a wide generational gap, in a Twitter exchange with the rapper Drake, he added a zero to the amount in his original axiom.Drake tweeted: The first million is the hardest. To which T. Boone Pickens responded:

The first billion is a helluva lot harder

The point that T. Boone is making (in a very hip-hop fashion) is that momentum really matters.

If you don't have momentum life sucks! You keep repeating your mistakes and sordid history. Your laborious efforts barely pay off. You're unlucky. You keep getting screwed over and betrayed. The system keeps holding you down. You feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.If you do have momentum life is good (and gets better!) The more money, resources, and notoriety you accumulate the easier it becomes to accumulate even more. Your time and opinions are respected. Investors, banks, and strategic partners beg for the opportunity to invest in you. You are desired; both in the bedroom and boardroom. Even when you make mistakes and screw things up people forgive you and you continue to profit.

In my life, I've had brilliant momentum and I've also been utterly stuck like a broken-down old locomotive sitting in the middle of nowhere with its iron wheels rusted to the tracks. Unless you're ok with living a life of quiet desperation you must be prepared to kill, steal, or do whatever the hell it takes to attain and maintain momentum. Luckily we live in civilized times where you don't actually need to kill anyone or steal anything to get ahead but I use this language to evoke the degree of visceral, mental intensity that you need to bring to bear to build momentum (especially if you're wholly or partially lacking in momentum!)

In the past men amassed vast fortunes primarily using violence, it honestly did not take much smarts or brains. Nearly every male member of the Mongol Khan dynasty who didn't die on the battlefield or by the assassin's blade killed themselves with alcoholism. These guys were intoxicated nearly all the time, yet they managed to conquer and rule nearly half the known world.Today the primary tool of the successful is a mindset of vigorous, focused ambition.

It's very in vogue to bemoan wealth inequality and complain about economic mobility. Yet had you been born in any other epoch of human history, your economic destiny was, with almost total certainty, predetermined from the moment of your sweaty, smelly, inglorious inception.Furthermore, in the past true free will and agency were only fully taken advantage of by a small proportion of any given society. Only the top 5%, 10%, or (maybe as much as) 20% of the most intelligent people got to accumulate any resources and freedom to chart their own course in life.Yet today, if you're reading this, chances are that you're residing in a country where virtually everyone gets to determine if they end up in the poor house or in a big house.

But it's not as simple as saying...If you work hard, you'll get ahead! You just need to work hard, take responsibility, and you'll achieve the American dream (or whatever kind of dream you have...)

Technology has radically transformed the landscape of our society and culture and success is not the predictable linear thing it used to be:Go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate, get a job, work hard, get a raise, get married, buy a house, have kids... Success.

In today's economy and the economy of the near future, success is still predictable (even almost guaranteed) if you have two things

1. Intelligence2. Focus

These two things matter more than where you're from, what you studied in college, what kinds of grades you got, or if your dad is a politician. Today's economy rewards you primarily for your intellectual labor and inventiveness.

Intelligence (or generalized intelligence or G) is a factor mostly determined by genetics. It's mostly predetermined by factors outside your control. Although, there are some things you can do to optimize and cultivate your innate intelligence.

Focus is an increasing rarity in our digitally distracted age. We have extraordinarily, astoundingly distracting technology within arm's reach nearly every waking moment that many of us are engrossed with nearly every waking moment! This technology blunts our working memory's capacity to problem solve, our ability to think deeply, and cuts down our attention span along with hurting our capacity to instill long-term memory and skills. I've argued that chronic Internet and technology use affects our minds similar to chronic heroin addiction.And focus really matters, nobody achieves success without focus. Unfocused people are chronically unhappy and frustrated.

Professor Jerry Muller, the author of The Mind and the Market, articulated it best:

“…a period of growing equality of access to education and increasing stratification of marketplace rewards, both of which have increased the importance of human capital. One element of human capital is cognitive ability: quickness of mind, the ability to infer and apply patterns drawn from experience, and the ability to deal with mental complexity. Another is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility. And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace.” (March 2013, Foreign Affairs)

You might be saying: Making money isn't everything. I would rather be happy than rich.

Well, you might not have your sights set on being an executive in a corner office but the same types of personality traits and mindset that make you economically valuable are absolutely the same things that also make you a good friend, parent, leader of your community, or entrepreneur. If you want to contribute meaningfully to society, intelligence and focus really matter.

So what does this have to do with Nootropics a