Laptop chargers are also an object for which it’s trivial to own multiple, at a low cost and high (potential) advantage.
Other examples: Take caffeine once a week (and nicotine (not cigarettes!) once a month) instead of never or daily. Leave social situations when they’re not fun or useful anymore. Do small cost-benefit analyses when they make sense[1].
I’ve done two already this year: One to decide whether to leave a bootcamp, and another to decide which gym to select. (The second one misfired: I made a mistake in my calculation, taking only the way there as a cost and not the way back to public transport, which led me to choose the wrong one (by <100€ of cost over the time I go there)). I should’ve done the math (done ✓), then burned the math and gone with my gut (not done ✗).)
Just last week I wrote a post reviewing the evidence on caffeine cycling and caffeine habituation. My conclusion was that the evidence was thin and it’s hard to say anything with confidence.[1]
My weakly held beliefs are:
Taking caffeine daily is better than not taking it at all, but worse than cycling.
Taking caffeine once every 3 days is a reasonable default. A large % of people can take it more often than that, and a large % will need to take it less.
I take caffeine 3 days a week and I am currently running a self-experiment (described in my linked post). I’m currently in the experimental phase, I already did a 9-day withdrawal period and my test results over that period (weakly) suggest that I wasn’t habituated previously because my performance didn’t improve during the withdrawal period (it actually got worse, p=0.4 on a regression test).
[1] Gavin Leech’s post that you linked cited a paper on brain receptors in mice which I was unaware of, I will edit my post to include it. Based on reading the abstract, it looks like that study suggests a weaker habituation effect than the studies I looked at (receptor density in mice increased by 20–25% which naively suggests a 20–25% reduction in the benefit of caffeine whereas other studies suggest a 30–100% reduction, but I’m guessing you can’t just directly extrapolate from receptor counts to efficacy like that). Gavin also cited Rogers et al. (2013) which I previously skipped over because I thought it wasn’t relevant, but on second thought, it does look relevant and I will give it a closer look.
Laptop chargers are also an object for which it’s trivial to own multiple, at a low cost and high (potential) advantage.
I don’t see why there is a high potential advantage here. I’d expect:
Most people to be able to find a friend or a nice person at a coffee shop with a charger they can borrow.
Most people to be able to get a new charger within a day or so (in person store or online + pay for faster shipping).
Going a day or so without a laptop not to sacrifice much in terms of fun. I actually expect it to be a net positive there since it’d force you to do something like go for a walk or read a book. It also has the benefit of exercising your “boredom muscles”.
Going a day or so without a laptop not to sacrifice much in terms of your career. Maybe your boss is frustrated with you in the short term, but I don’t expect that to lead to any actual consequences like being meaningfully more likely to get fired or not get a promotion.
If you’re a student, you sometimes have to hand in papers on a deadline (or are on a tight schedule), in which case another charger might be useful. (This is less relevant today, when many laptops have identical charger plugs).
Maybe I can be clearer: I use 2mg nicotine rarely (15 times since December 2022), so on average about once a month, which I’ve edited in the comment above. It’s been really useful when used surgically. Why do you advise against it? The strongest counterarguments I’ve seen were in here.
I think there is some context missing. When I see “taking nicotine” I think “smoking a cigarette, but expressed using more science-y language to make it sound like a less awful idea”. Whereas you seem to be taking nicotine gum or something, which is a different proposition. (I think smoking is a very bad idea, with very high confidence. I think nicotine by other sources is also a very bad idea, but my confidence is lower).
Laptop chargers are also an object for which it’s trivial to own multiple, at a low cost and high (potential) advantage.
Other examples: Take caffeine once a week (and nicotine (not cigarettes!) once a month) instead of never or daily. Leave social situations when they’re not fun or useful anymore. Do small cost-benefit analyses when they make sense[1].
See also: Solved Problems Repository, Boring Advice Repository.
I’ve done two already this year: One to decide whether to leave a bootcamp, and another to decide which gym to select. (The second one misfired: I made a mistake in my calculation, taking only the way there as a cost and not the way back to public transport, which led me to choose the wrong one (by <100€ of cost over the time I go there)). I should’ve done the math (done ✓), then burned the math and gone with my gut (not done ✗).)
Just last week I wrote a post reviewing the evidence on caffeine cycling and caffeine habituation. My conclusion was that the evidence was thin and it’s hard to say anything with confidence.[1]
My weakly held beliefs are:
Taking caffeine daily is better than not taking it at all, but worse than cycling.
Taking caffeine once every 3 days is a reasonable default. A large % of people can take it more often than that, and a large % will need to take it less.
I take caffeine 3 days a week and I am currently running a self-experiment (described in my linked post). I’m currently in the experimental phase, I already did a 9-day withdrawal period and my test results over that period (weakly) suggest that I wasn’t habituated previously because my performance didn’t improve during the withdrawal period (it actually got worse, p=0.4 on a regression test).
[1] Gavin Leech’s post that you linked cited a paper on brain receptors in mice which I was unaware of, I will edit my post to include it. Based on reading the abstract, it looks like that study suggests a weaker habituation effect than the studies I looked at (receptor density in mice increased by 20–25% which naively suggests a 20–25% reduction in the benefit of caffeine whereas other studies suggest a 30–100% reduction, but I’m guessing you can’t just directly extrapolate from receptor counts to efficacy like that). Gavin also cited Rogers et al. (2013) which I previously skipped over because I thought it wasn’t relevant, but on second thought, it does look relevant and I will give it a closer look.
Thank you, that’s really cool! I’ll look at your post when I have time.
I don’t see why there is a high potential advantage here. I’d expect:
Most people to be able to find a friend or a nice person at a coffee shop with a charger they can borrow.
Most people to be able to get a new charger within a day or so (in person store or online + pay for faster shipping).
Going a day or so without a laptop not to sacrifice much in terms of fun. I actually expect it to be a net positive there since it’d force you to do something like go for a walk or read a book. It also has the benefit of exercising your “boredom muscles”.
Going a day or so without a laptop not to sacrifice much in terms of your career. Maybe your boss is frustrated with you in the short term, but I don’t expect that to lead to any actual consequences like being meaningfully more likely to get fired or not get a promotion.
If you’re a student, you sometimes have to hand in papers on a deadline (or are on a tight schedule), in which case another charger might be useful. (This is less relevant today, when many laptops have identical charger plugs).
Good point. Makes sense that it’d be important for such people.
I strongly advise against taking nicotine.
Maybe I can be clearer: I use 2mg nicotine rarely (15 times since December 2022), so on average about once a month, which I’ve edited in the comment above. It’s been really useful when used surgically. Why do you advise against it? The strongest counterarguments I’ve seen were in here.
Pretty much all of those reasons—what it’s missing is that nicotine itself may also be a carcinogen- at least, it has the ability to be one: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01668-1
Although there aren’t enough isolated studies done on nicotine in a long period to be conclusive: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5020336/
Some reviews disagree: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26380225/
I think there is some context missing. When I see “taking nicotine” I think “smoking a cigarette, but expressed using more science-y language to make it sound like a less awful idea”. Whereas you seem to be taking nicotine gum or something, which is a different proposition. (I think smoking is a very bad idea, with very high confidence. I think nicotine by other sources is also a very bad idea, but my confidence is lower).
Ah, agree on the cigarettes thing (edited it in).
Could you link a source for the once a week coffee? I am intrigued.
I did not yet read your recommendations so I don’t know if the answer is there.
I got the caffeine recommendation from here, Nicotine here. I don’t have great sources for this, and the ranges were mostly gut estimates.
Thank you