Thanks to the 12,000+ people who have read this post. It encouraged me to do a big update in August 2020.

I love to optimize. There is nothing more satisfying than optimizing something and seeing the rewards from all the time saved and the increased output. But this doesn’t stop for me just at work.

For the past 5 years, I have taken my love for optimization and transformed my entire life for the better, including being more meaningful, productive, having much more energy, and overall becoming significantly happier. I’ve read dozens of blog posts and books on the topic, talked to some of the best biohackers and productivity experts, and have tested thousands of hacks and techniques. Also, I’m a bioengineer by training and work in the biotech industry, which has helped me to better understand the biology behind most of the life hacks and to evaluate better the benefits (or risks) of certain practices.

I’ve had so many interesting discussions on biohacking with my friends, connections and colleagues, and they always wanted me to tell them more about it. So now I tell them, and at the same time, I also tell you.

In this post, I’m sharing openly everything I do, why I do it, all my data, and the tools that I use to inspire you and help you to live a more fulfilled life. It takes over 30 minutes to read it all and I hope it will be worth your time.

Reading is only the beginning of the journey. The application is where most of the benefits come. So I would recommend that you get started with 1–2 things you liked from this article that you feel could solve one of the main challenges in your life. If it works, try more, and more, and more.

Welcome to my journey of biohacking, or life optimization as I prefer to call it 🚀

What others think about the post:

General Partner of top VC: “I LOVED your life optimization post — I did know about Deep Sleep, and your advice on sleep strategy feels spot on.”

High-level biohacker & tech entrepreneur: “Loved the post! It’s much more comprehensive than most of the articles I read on the topic and you’re doing a great job at simplifying an otherwise complex topic.”

CEO of a 3000-employee biotech company: “Thank you for putting this out! I loved to read it and I was very impressed by how thoughtful and open you have written this! These things only help if you feel that the author is “all in” and this comes clearly across! YES, it feels like it was life-changing for you and this makes the article very powerful!”

Why should I optimize my life?

Before we jump into the details, let me explain to you why this is all so important and should not be passed over. We all need a good reason to dive in, and here are some excellent ones:

It allows us to reach further in life, whether it’s in our career, our social life, or our internal wellbeing.

It helps us to live a more thoughtful and fulfilling life.

It makes us significantly happier.

I started optimizing my life out of necessity. I was starting a business at the age of 23 and had no choice but to become more productive and happier to succeed. This environmental pressure got me started in life optimization. Now, I’m pushing even harder as I see the benefits and don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

I’m deeply convinced that, even if you’re not a founder or in an extreme environment, you can benefit a lot from most of what is below. The hardest part, in that case, is to force yourself to do it even if you don’t seem to need it as much.

Is life optimization made for everybody, even for parents with children? That’s a good question I get a lot. Life optimization is made for everyone, from founders, to students and to parents. Regarding kids, I can’t tell for sure as I don’t have kids yet, but I’m more and more convinced it’s perfectly adapted. I’ve met lots of parents who are perfectly optimized, but on the other hand, I’ve also met lots of parents who are not and are using their kids as an ideal excuse to not be. I would even argue that having kids is a great opportunity for personal development as it makes your environment more challenging.

What’s sure is that life optimization is not made for you if you aren’t interested in increased success and happiness. If you’re interested, let’s continue 😉

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself” Warren Buffett

How does it work?

Biohacking techniques are much more than tools and “hacks”. They are high-level frameworks that all work together to produce an overall result. It takes time and effort to build these but once you’ve built your framework, it is much easier to put the rest into practice.

Everybody is different, so what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. This means that it is crucial to test and try out different things to find what works for you as an individual.

There is no way to use one trick, wave a magic wand and suddenly increase your productivity significantly. It takes a lot of little steps that, when combined and compounded, can increase your productivity anywhere from 50% to 500% (I would say I’m at 300% right now) and double your happiness (I increased from 60% to 80% average mood per day).

Also, some of the techniques below are stuff that you’ve probably heard of or that might sound obvious. As for startups, ideas are commodities, the value resides in the execution. And it’s much more complicated than it seems.

The easiest way I found to optimize my life is to think of myself as a project or a startup. If I want to improve something, I’ll launch a test, track the results, and draw conclusions to find what works for me. I set quarterly, monthly and weekly goals to keep myself on track and to constantly keep improving.

To execute properly, you need to invest time and energy into it. I’m seeing lots of people willing to improve or become more productive but not actually working on it. As is everything in life, you harvest only what you’ve planted. If personal development is important for you, make it a priority in your quarter/month/week and work on it. For me, I set aside 2 hours per week of deep work on what I label personal R&D to improve my system and reap the benefits I mention throughout the post.

The beauty with biohacking is that the value you get out of it is compounded, not linear. This means you get value out of it every day, allowing you to reinvest to create even more overall value. The good parallel here is the finance world where compounded interest increases the return on investment significantly over time.

Figure from this good article “Compound Interest Formula — Explained — https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/articles/finance/compound-interest-formula.php

When you look at your optimization journey, the key is to keep an eye on how steep your learning curve is, or how fast you are improving. Make sure you are constantly looking to build on your experience, to continue to learn, so you can optimize your life in the most optimized fashion.

And one quick comment on cultural differences in biohacking.

There are several differences in the ideas on biohacking, especially between the US and Europe. The Silicon Valley is the area with the most widely known biohackers, for example, Serge Faguet who spent 200k and takes a lot of drugs, or Dave Asprey who spent 1M and sells “bulletproof” coffee. Some of what they are doing is great, other things are far less convincing (to stay polite).

The version that I have adapted for my life is suited to my European lifestyle and differs from the ones mentioned above. It focuses more on existing good practices rather than spending lots of money on high-tech stuff, unproven cell transplants, drugs etc. I believe in simplicity and that my approach brings more benefits, especially in the long run. It works for me and I believe it will work better for you too, wherever you live in the world.

Overall, you have to believe in the benefits of biohacking, test it out, and figure out what works best for you to enjoy a happier and more productive life.

Now, let’s get started on what I actually optimize, from sleep, nutrition, exercise, mental health, mental models, tools, finance and drugs.

My 8 Pillars of Life, all working together for increased productivity and happiness

These are the high-level frameworks that I focus on. In order: deep sleep, food, exercise, mental health, mental models, tools, finance and drugs. They cover most of the aspects of my life and bring me the most return.

The most important thing here is that they are all connected and dependent on each other. Your focus on nutrition will only go so far if you are not also focusing on deep sleep and exercise, you need to work on it all to harvest the benefits.

Deep Sleep

Why?

If Jeff Bezos finds 8 hours a night, so can we all.

We are all busy, have too many things to do, with too little time in a day. It’s all about prioritization. If sleep is someone’s priority, she can make it fit in any schedule, whether she is on a plane every second day or if she has three kids, a dog and a garden.

Sleep deprivation is a huge problem across the globe. According to the CDC, 40% of Americans, with a similar statistic in Europe, get less than 7 hours of sleep per night. Studies have shown that everyone between the ages of 15 and 65 need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. Clearly we have an issue.

The issue is even emphasized by some cultural habits. Ariana Huffington puts it well:

“The current male-dominated model of success — which equates success with burnout, sleep deprivation, and driving yourself into the ground — isn’t working for women, and it’s not working for men, either.”

The issue is even larger as dozens of studies show that we cannot catch up on sleep. A 12h night is not half as good as an 8h night. The worst is if you deprive yourself of sleep for several months and then plan to catch up during your holidays. It’s better than not catching up at all, but far away from being ideal.

A lack of sleep significantly impacts your productivity and creativity. This makes sense, how can someone possibly put all of your energy into finishing that report when half of their mind is making that fuzzy white noise you get from exhaustion.

It’s even worse for decisions. As former president Bill Clinton once said,

“Every important mistake I’ve made in my life, I’ve made because I was too tired”.

Monica and Hillary must agree.

But what’s the actual benefits you might wonder? The science of sleep is still in its infancy. We don’t totally understand what’s happening and thus cannot measure exactly its benefits.

What’s sure is that some studies indicate a solid trend towards the importance of sleep. For example, a study from UPenn and Peking University has shown that the attention span and several other aspects of cognition do not normalise even with three days of recovery sleep, raising the question of lasting injury in the brain. The brain could be irreversibly injured from sleep loss.

Till Roenneberg, one of the most influential sleep scientists summarized it well:

“I have the suspicion that once we really understand what sleep does, we will not choose to shorten it”

Sleep is one of the best time investments someone can make. It gives the energy needed to perform at best in our professional and personal life, be more creative and be happier.

It just needs to be prioritized over a long enough time to notice the benefits.

“My number one strength is that I sleep very well. I sleep 8 hours a night, every night and nothing wakes me up.” Jean-Paul Agon, CEO of L’Oreal.

Mindset

Sleep is my number one priority (that’s why I start with that chapter too).

I’ve worked actively on improving my sleep since 2013 and luckily, my parents have great sleep hygiene, which they have transmitted to me.

I need an average of 9 hours of time in bed per night and 2h30 of deep sleep to be fully rested, which I have tested by waking up without an alarm for 2 weeks and by tracking the quality of sleep. If I am not able to get this amount, I feel tired and I am far less productive. Therefore, I have a very specific routine to ensure I catch every minute of sleep my body needs. It would take a lot to convince me to give up any of my scheduled hours of sleep.

Over the years of optimizing my sleep, I have found massive improvements in every aspect of my life.

What I do:

I go to bed every weekday between 11 pm and 12 am. The time you fall asleep is the part that you have control over, (life such as work commitments dictate your waking time) so this is where you can calculate when you need to go to sleep to get the right amount. When you fall into this routine you can calibrate your biological sleep so you will fall asleep faster and have a better quality of sleep. If you need to wake up earlier because of work or kids, you need to go to bed earlier. And you’ll actually sleep better as one study showed the best sleeping time is between 8 pm and 12 am.

I will not use my phone after 11 pm. I put my phone in airplane mode and put it out of reach on my desk (or even better, in another room). This is good for a few reasons: studies have shown that limiting your screen time before bed aids you in falling asleep. The bright blue lights of the screen activates your brain, keeping it from relaxing in preparation for sleep. Try grabbing a book (or Kindle) and reading yourself to sleep instead.

Switching the notifications off on your phone means you cannot answer anything, allowing your brain to switch off and not to worry about things such as a work email that has suddenly popped up, or your mum messaging hoping for a chat. These are important but can wait until tomorrow.

If you use an alarm to wake up in the morning, putting your phone out of reach is the perfect way to avoid pressing the snooze button 15 times. You will have to get out of bed and walk over to switch it off, meaning you’re already awake so there’s no need to get back into bed.

I have invested in a good mattress. A good mattress, starting somewhere around 300€, can make the difference between a restful night and one which makes you toss and turn all night trying to get comfortable. It’s also very important for your posture.

I make sure there is a relaxing light for when it’s time to sleep, wear pyjamas (just a sleep t-shirt not ugly grandma pyjamas), and put on timed sleep music (the sleep playlist on Spotify is great). This routine conditions my brain to recognise that it is time to sleep and quickly it moves into sleep mode. I can now fall asleep very fast, on average in 6 minutes.

I’m caffeine-free since January 2019. It feels amazing, I sleep even better and have more energy during the day. Before, I made sure I had no caffeine after 2 pm and have a maximum of one coffee per day. Studies have shown that it takes 8–12 hours, depending on your metabolism, for the caffeine to degrade. Because I need to sleep no later than 12, I have tested and found that the coffee will have left my system by this time. Anything later and my sleep will be disturbed.

Power naps are a very important part of my sleep routine. I make sure I take a 20-minute power nap 80% of my weekdays. No animal is awake for 16 hours a day so it is crazy to expect that we will be able to perform at our best for this amount of time. 20 minutes is the ultimate time to give you a little boost. It is more of a meditative state than actual sleep but it gives you enough to recharge your batteries. If you feel you need a bit longer, go for over an hour. Anything in between is less efficient, rather it might take you longer to get back to an active mode and might make you feel groggy. To start trying out naps, just find a calm space, lie down and set your 20-minute alarm (for example on an Apple watch as I do so you don’t disturb people around.)

I used to track my sleep duration and quality with the Dreem band, a headset tracking your brain activity, the heart rate and your movement. It reaches 90% precision of a sleep clinic and gives an accurate picture of your sleep quality. The data I collected over a quarter showed that I had above 2h30 average deep sleep per night, which according to Dreem is higher than 97% of the population. Before, I was using an app called Sleep Cycle, either on my apple watch or phone. This shows your REM sleep and cycles. It is not the most precise (10–20% of a sleep clinic) but at least you get a basic idea and some data to base yourself from.

Because I have spent so much time optimizing my sleep, I’m now waking up 80% of the time without setting an alarm, just at the optimal time my body would wake up fully rested. This is very hard to achieve and took me 4 years of sleep optimization.

Nutrition

Why?

“Energy is the fuel you burn throughout the day in order to be productive, and without it, your productivity is toast. Especially on a neurological level, having lasting energy is critical. Your brain cells consume double the energy that the other cells in your body consume; even though your brain makes up just 2–3 percent of your body mass, it burns 20 percent of the calories you take in.” Chris Bailey from the Productivity Project

Even though the benefits of food on cognitive performance and health are not quantified in details, what’s sure is that food has a significant impact.

Here are a few studies you can read to go deeper:

On Neuroscience: Nature Review Neuroscience here: Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805706/#!po=1.51515)

On Health: according to the US Department of Health, unhealthy eating habits have contributed significantly to the 33.8% rate of obesity in American adults (https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/eat-healthy/importance-of-good-nutrition/index.html#_ftn1).

Mindset

I began optimizing my eating habits ever since I was a child. My parents and my home country (France), helped me a lot to structure it for the best outcome.

I divide my food habits into three main categories:

What I eat

When

How much

To me, these are all equally important, though we tend to mostly focus on what we eat, and less on when and how much.

I have 4 high-level rules that are simple, actionable and have a high-return:

I don’t eat too much

I take time to eat my meal

I always eat meals at the same frequency

I limit crappy industrial processed food, sugar and alcohol as much as possible

What I do

I have approximate set times of which I eat every meal: 9 am breakfast, 12:30 pm lunch, 5 pm afternoon snack, and 8 pm dinner. Having these set times allows my body to regulate my glucose levels most effectively in cycles and ensures I never run out of energy.

I only eat the main dish at most meals, limiting dessert or entree. The main dish usually is enough in terms of calories to give you everything you need. Anything more is unnecessary. I also plan the quantity of what I eat beforehand so that I don’t overeat or undereat. Another good hack is to drink plenty of water before you eat, or have a low-calorie salad to fill you up a bit more before you dive in.

I always make sure I spend at least 20 minutes eating my meal. 20 minutes is the amount of time your brain needs to register that you’re full, according to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18589027). If you scoff your food you are at a very high risk of overeating as your brain won’t tell you that you’re full until it’s too late!

I limit the amount of fast-food to once per week and limit the amount of sugar I eat. I shouldn’t need a big explanation of why fast-food is bad and holds practically no nutritional value. Sugar, on the other hand, is something that might. Our bodies don’t need refined sugar. We think we do because it tricks the brain and makes us feel happy and energised. This boost, however, does not last long and if you’re not careful you could come crashing down (not mentioning the risk of diabetes etc. see the NIH blog on sugar — https://directorsblog.nih.gov/tag/sugar/).

I also limit the amount of alcohol I consume. As a rule, I will not drink anything from Monday to Wednesday, included. For the final four days of the week, I have limited myself to less than 4 litres of equivalent beers in total, about 8 pints of beer over 4 days. Clearly, I will not drink this much every weekend, and often I will not drink at all on the weekend. But having this allowance gives me an opportunity to recognise another one of the pillars, mental health, by giving time for socialisation and fun. (Of course, it would be even better to get those benefits without alcohol, but I haven’t managed that yet…)

I don’t focus too much on the quality of my food such as eating superfoods or organic. I have tested and have found it does not have a significant impact on me besides from leaving my wallet a little lighter. As long as I eat a relatively healthy and balanced diet, I find this is sufficient for my nutritional needs (see last part on supplements).

I have tried fasting or intermittent fasting but it didn’t work for me. I was dubious before starting the test and the data I looked at didn’t convince me of the benefits. Fasting is part of several religions and has been done for ages, but this doesn’t mean it’s good. The major benefit I can see is that it provides you with food discipline, which you can apply to any item above. Here is a good piece on fasting from Bloomberg: Silicon Valley Wants to Cash In on Fasting (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-24/intermittent-fasting-is-getting-silicon-valley-startup-treatment)

My biggest tip for nutrition is to enjoy your food. If you do this, you will put more of an effort into eating food you love, taking the time to appreciate it, and reaping the rewards that they bring. For me, eating is a very pleasant and important experience. I have to say, I’m grateful to the French culture for being so focused on food.

Exercise

Why?

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity” John F. Kennedy

Exercise is what prevents the body from becoming “rusty”. This is for every part of the body, physical fitness, digestion, hormones, sleep cycles, mental health, exercising improves absolutely everything (check out this article for more information: https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/other/health-benefits-of-playing-sports.html).

This is the amount of physical activity the WHO recommends (https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_adults/en/):

“Adults aged 18–64 should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity.”

“For additional health benefits, adults should increase their moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity to 300 minutes per week, or engage in 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity.”

It’s especially true for the brain too and that’s what I’m most interested in.

As John Ratey, author of the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, wrote,

“Exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function”.

As for food, there are still a lot of scientific mysteries surrounding the benefits of exercise, but what’s certain is that these benefits have been underestimated for years.

Mindset

Exercise is one of my top priorities. It helps me to disconnect from work or any stresses in my life and gives me the energy to be able to take on the challenges of the day.

“But I don’t have time?” you might think.

Lack of time is one of the excuses I hear the most, but it’s not a good one. You have so many different choices of sports and you can find exercises that take very little time, for example, the 7-minute workout. If you cannot find 75 minutes in your week to do intense physical activity, you probably have a bigger problem.

By prioritizing exercise, I find time for it. As for sleep, the time invested in exercise has a high return on investment and is an enabler for achieving more.

Taking a little step back, I started with sports when I was a child as my parents always encouraged me to practice. I started table tennis at age 5, and by age 13, I was training every day and was one of the top 20 table tennis players in France under 13.

When at uni and now with a company to run, it’s a very different schedule and had to be adapted to find a good balance.

Finding my optimal exercise plan was more challenging than I thought, especially because the benefits of exercising are pretty difficult to quantify. I took it step by step by testing new exercises, increasing the quantity, and I have now found what I think is the best routine for me.

What I do

I spend 20 minutes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning doing 160 push-ups and 320 sit-ups. I started this initially with a 5-minute workout and gradually worked up. I find that 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time as I am not exhausted, and my muscles and my mind are pumped up and ready to go.

Every Monday and Wednesday I have a 2-hour table tennis training. Racket games are a really good exercise as they are high intensity, require your brain and give your entire body a great workout.

On Saturday mornings, the first thing I do after I wake up is to go for a 45-minute run. This puts me in a really great space for the day and gives me a great cardio workout. If it’s below 0 degrees outside I will stair climb in my apartment building instead. This is a fun way to meet the neighbours!

Once a month I skip my Wednesday table tennis training and head to the pool for a 1.5km swim.

To get to and from work every day I ride my bike giving me an extra 20 minutes of workout every weekday.

I track all my physical activities. I use Runkeeper for my running session, Sworkit for my morning fitness, and my Apple watch for general activity tracking. In my week, I spend 6 hours exercising.

Bonus: another brilliant way to workout is to dance. So if you want to boogie it out, head to the clubs for some healthy cardio!

Mental Health

Why?

50% of Americans are constantly exhausted because of work, according to a study made by the University of Chicago (http://gss.norc.org/ ). It’s one of the main symptoms of burnout.

It is incredibly difficult to be productive if you’re exhausted and emotionally you have nothing left to give. The brain is a muscle, and just like the others, it has to be taken care of. It’s incredibly important to be able to disconnect and relax to give the brain time to recover. If not, it can lead to burnout and serious damages to the most important muscle you have.

Mindset

I’ve experienced intense exhaustion from work and was close to burning out for a long period of time (more in this blog post. Knowing what it’s like was a trigger to optimize my mental health. It was also an important trigger to start my life optimization journey. Everything is connected and works together toward happiness and productivity. I put a lot of effort into my mental health which results in more energy and overall happiness.

What I do

I meditate at least 20 minutes per day. I’ve been working a lot on improving my meditation practice since September 2019, with the help of a coach, and the results have been astonishing. I do at least one 20 minute session of deep meditation and on top do “focus meditation” to refocus at work and visualization to prepare for something important. Here’s a blog post about my meditation experiment.

I have been tracking my mood/energy every day for the past 5 years. I’m now using Daylio and have been with Mr Mood before. Once a day at 8 pm I put in my data on how I have been feeling that day with a short comment. It takes me less than 2 minutes and allows me to have consistent data over time. This is far from perfect tracking but is a great compromise between effort and cost. This is essential for me to look back at how I felt to optimize and track results from all the previous categories over longer periods of time.

Monthly view of my mood in Daylio, yellow is 90–100%, green is 70–80% and purple is under 60%.

I work no more than 55 hours a week. If you want to know more on why, here’s a blog post I wrote on this.

I take 3 weeks off every summer to completely disconnect from work. This is important to get away from your everyday life, especially from work, to be able to relax and recharge. By taking this time to fully relax I find I am far more productive as I get back to work.

I never work on the weekends. The weekends are my weekly mini-holidays. It’s so important to take this time to disconnect as it makes us less stressed, balanced, and far more productive over the long run. I make sure that I use my weekends to spend time with my friends and family. Social contact has a significant impact on your mental health and wellbeing.

I spend time on my hobbies. One of them is travelling, which I do twice a month, usually combining professional and personal on the same trip. I love travelling as it helps me disconnect and recharge, but doing it too much consumes too much of my energy. Of course, I optimize all my travelling with a noise-cancelling headset (Bose QC35), a foldable pillow (Cabeau) and silicone earplugs (Mack’s earplugs).

I have more sex and cuddling, at least 4 times a month. If you look at the biology side of things, reproduction is why we are on earth and thus has a significant biological impact on us. If you want a very extreme view on sex, feel free to listen to Serge Faguet’s podcast in the resources part at the end of the article.

I have done a lot of work on emotional intelligence to better feel my emotions, express them and read it from others. Meditation is an ideal tool to progress on the topic and there is a lot of psychology involved. Having a better understanding of emotions allows me to better optimize my mood, manage people better, and ultimately increase my overall happiness level.

Mental Models

Why?

Mental models are the high-level frameworks that define how you think, prioritize and plan your life. They are incredibly important and can be trained like everything else.

Habits and principles are the keys to every other part of life optimization. Mental models help you to train your capacity to build sustainable habits. Principles are equivalent to your own culture and allow you to build habits and make decisions more easily.

Mindset

I’m fascinated by mental models. The principles and habits I’ve built and adopted allow me to reach so much more in my life.

I’ve invested a lot of time to develop my mental models. I work on it every week by looking for new models, testing what I’ve found, and updating or replacing old models with better ones.

Most of my sourcing comes from talking to the most interesting people I can find, reading the best books published on the topics, and listening to podcasts talking about what successful people have already figured out. Sourcing new models are not enough though, the greatest value comes from the execution, which in this case is understanding the models and integrating them into your system.

I see mental models as my operating system for life, as something that sits above everything I do and which can be constantly improved.

I will start by talking about the models themselves and then continue with the tools to apply them.

What I do

As you may have guessed, I optimize everything I can. It’s really a mindset shift that made all of this blog post possible.

My default answer is no. This means I’m not overwhelmed by too many tasks and focus only on the most important stuff. Tools that can be applied are given opportunity ratings and a list of hot spots. I go into this more in detail below.

I keep things simple. When looking at a problem, I will boil it down to the fundamentals and resolve it step by step. I constantly remove the clutter and focus on the most important.

I track everything so that I can see progress and see what needs more work. As Peter Drucker said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” I’ve mentioned some of the tracking tools in the parts above and otherwise use a note to track the progress.

I limit useless decisions, allowing my brain to only focus on important decisions. For example, I wear the same outfits and eat the same foods every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This means I don’t have to think about what I want to wear that day or what I want to eat. This may seem excessive but in cutting down on these small decisions I’m unloading my brain from unnecessary stress and can focus on what’s important. Your daily decision-power is limited, better use it wisely.

I manage my interruptions very rigorously so that I am not distracted from the task at hand and can give it my full attention. I disable all of my notifications and answer messages in the times I have designated for it. This means that I dictate my time, not other people.

I only touch things once. When I see something, I act on it straight away rather than going back to it and wasting time. To make sure I do this effectively, I control when I see things with tools such as notification control so that I only see the notification when I am ready to tackle the task, or I plan the task for when the time is right and let the person know. Other tools I find useful are zero inbox and a set schedule. See below for more info on this.

I intend to never lie about anything to anyone. This includes white lies to make a story seem more exciting or to paint myself in a better light. Lying damages your honesty and the quality of your relationships. See the extra resources at the bottom of this post for a good book on the topic.

I delegate every possible task I can to either people or software. Doing this reduces the number of tasks you have to complete, ensures that all the work is completed much faster, and increases the leverage of your own time.

I add a 25% buffer to any projects or plan in both my personal and professional life. This allows me to manage unplanned events, which always happen, and to make my plans more accurate. A good plan has to be realistic and that’s why most New Year’s resolutions don’t work.

I spend 2 hours every week on personal R&D where I will actively work on improving my mental models, tools, or any part of my life. Investing in myself is one of the best investments I can make.

Tools

Why?

Tools allow you to put the above mental models into actions and to execute them properly. A model without execution is just an idea.

Mindset

What I’m referring to here are the concepts behind using specific tools. I believe we tend to focus too much on the actual tool instead of understanding how it works and adapting to it. For example, now that I have a good system for managing my tasks, I can use pretty much any to-do app and it will do the job. I could talk about all the apps I’m using in my life but will focus instead on those linked to biohacking and the most important ones.

What I do

I use a list of 7 hot spots. These hot spots are categories of your life plan such as mind, body, emotions, and career, which I use to plan my month and quarter. When I plan, I make sure to prioritize what I want to do in different categories, and seeing all the hot spots on the same page allows me to balance it out as I would like to.

I make lists of everything. The list is the tool, but this allows me to track everything, from the books I read to the triggers in my mood. This makes my tasks quantifiable, measurable, gives me a clear outline of everything, and provides feedback on what I’m doing.

I set up weekly themes to structure my week and know when I should focus on which group of tasks. For example, I do product development on Tuesday morning, team meetings on Monday, stats on Friday and networking on Wednesday afternoon. This allows me to know automatically when I should do which task and allows me to balance out my focus. Jack Dorsey from Twitter/Square is famous for running it at an extreme level.

I plan my weeks ahead and give myself 5 important tasks per week. I do my planning every Friday by reviewing the previous week, and start every day with my most important tasks and don’t leave until I’ve finished. The actual tool is an Evernote file where I add each week on top of each other, which also allows me to review all my previous weeks in one scroll. Planning my weeks allowed me to focus more time on important tasks.

I rate every opportunity from 1 to 10 in terms of its importance. If it is a 6 or below, I will say no, if it is an 8 or above I will say yes. I am not allowed to rate anything as 7 as this forces me to make a decision about whether I will take the opportunity or not. This is an easy tool to help you say no to too many opportunities. Thanks to Tim Ferris for sharing that one.

I use zero inbox and batch my emails to only check them twice a day — at noon and at 5 pm. That means I have designated that time as email time so I will do all those tasks then and I won’t need to go back and re-read an email. Overall, I have never missed an email in 4 years, answer my 100+ daily emails in less than 24 hours and spend less than 4 hours per week on it.

I send process-centric emails. This is planning an email so that it integrates the next steps depending on conditions, for example, it can say “if not, let’s do that”. This reduces the back and forth of emails to really get to the point and get the job done faster.

I use a Kindle and audiobooks so I can read anywhere and source ideas for my personal R&D sections. I read one professional book and an inspirational audiobook per month, which I plan and track in a list to be accountable and make sure I choose carefully what I’m spending my time on. Feel free to check the blog post I wrote on my reading system here.

Finance

Why?

“Money doesn’t buy you experiential happiness but lack of money does buy you misery” — Daniel Kahneman

We are convinced we need more money than we think we do. The data clearly shows, however, that there is a threshold. As soon as a certain income level has been reached there will be no further gain in happiness. Even though everyone is constantly told, and sometimes believe, that more consumption and material wealth leads to happiness, this is not actually true.

Mindset

I take a minimalist approach to money and it helps me live a much happier life. Money is a tool, not the end-goal.

I’ve developed that approach thanks to my parents and to the habits I’ve developed afterwards. I wasn’t born a millionaire, I’m from a middle-class family and have a salary in the mid-5 digits (I’ll spare my exact salary here). I believe what is more important than how much you earn, is how you consider money and how you use it. Blaming my salary would be an easy excuse and would only make it even worse.

What I do

I’m very frugal and live a minimalist life that is within my means. I’m still living with roommates, don’t own a car, don’t go to Michelin restaurants, don’t take cabs if there are public transport options, fly Ryanair, don’t wear luxurious clothes. The only thing I spend money on is what saves me time. Mark Cuban agrees and that’s how he made his first million.

I track all my income and expenses. I use an app, Moneybook, to track it on my iPhone every day and then transfer it once a month to my personal finance dashboard, which is a custom-built Google sheet. This means I know exactly how much I’m spending, on what, and how this compares to my income, giving me greater control over my finances.

I calculate the added value/price ratio for everything I spend so that I know that I am spending my money on things that are actually of importance and will bring me value. I don’t spend just money because I have it.

I give at least a one week buffer between seeing something and actually buying it so that I know it is something I actually want and need.

I always make sure that I have saved at least 12 months worth of my salary for any form of emergencies, meaning I don’t have to worry if I am suddenly out of a job or some big event happens that means I will not be able to work. In order to have that buffer, I set as an objective to save one-third of my salary each month, thanks to the bullet point on frugality above.

I don’t make any investments at the moment. I don’t have enough to invest and the returns on these are pretty low, especially if I take into account the time I would spend on doing the investments. At the moment, I prefer to focus on maximizing value creation, especially long-term, and reduce expenses.

Drugs and Supplements

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: You should never try any drug without talking to your doctor and the section below is only my experience, not recommendations.

Why?

Drugs and supplements can enhance productivity and happiness. It can also have negative side effects, on the short and especially on the long term. Examples here are not only hard drugs such as Cocaine but everything from caffeine, Adderall, antidepressants, sleeping pills and vitamin supplements.

Caffeine is drunk by nearly everyone to improve “mental alertness”. The side-effects though can be important, disruption of sleep, an increase of anxiety disorders, high blood pressure, worse digestion and many more (source: https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-979/caffeine)

Antidepressants are taken by one in 10 Americans and are now the most commonly prescribed type of drug in the US, according to research published in 2009 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The prescriptions even doubled between 1996 and 2005, even though there are still lots of questions on the efficacy of the treatments. (source: https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/are-antidepressants-effective#4)

Cocaine is obviously another ball game but is still taken by a lot of professionals, and not only in the city or wall street. It’s one of the most addictive drugs because it’s so efficient in upping your levels of alertness, attention, and energy, and can make the user hyper-productive in the short term. The side effects on health are insane though, from disrupting mental health and diminishing recovery to serious health issues such as stroke and cardiac arrest. See more here: https://drugabuse.com/cocaine/effects-use/

Supplements and nutrients are probably the softest of all mentioned above and they prove to have long-term benefits on most of the aspects of life from sleep, brain, energy, immunity, to bones. For example, a study from 2017 showed that Vitamin D levels had an influence on sleep. Another study shows that vitamins and minerals have an impact on energy metabolism (ATP production for the biologist). Side-effects appear when we are lacking one essential nutrient or if we take too much of one, for example, Vitamin D. We source most of our nutrients from our diet and environment, and can complement the rest by synthesizing sources. The main challenge is to quantify the benefits and correlate it to the effort needed to fix it.

Mindset

I see drugs and supplements as an extra step after optimizing everything else in my life.

I believe most of the drugs are easy shortcuts to reach short-term benefits but would not be beneficial in the long-term. It makes more sense if you are a high-level sports player with a 20-year career, but not if you want to perform until your 60s when you have gained the most knowledge.

That’s why I focus more on sleep, exercise, food and mental health, which have brought me more long-term benefits. The cost is the time and effort I had to spend to reach my current levels. As for most things in life, the effort you put into something usually correlates with the benefits.

To go even further, I actually believe that most of the common productivity “boosters” such as caffeine are negative in the long run. It’s a vicious cycle, you take caffeine to get more alert, recover less, take more caffeine to compensate, recover even less, repeat. I prefer to optimize recovery to have optimal energy levels and not needing caffeine during the day.

I limit the number of drugs I take as much as I can. Of course, I’m not talking about cancer treatments or medicine if I had a chronic disease such as diabetes. I’m talking about pain killers, sleeping pills and energy boosters. Basically, anything that is not prescribed or given at the hospital. The one thing I take regularly are nutrients to reach optimal levels and compensate for what I don’t get from my food or environment.

I’m extra cautious about taking any kind of drugs or supplements, especially when it’s not backed by a lot of clinical evidence, which typically is the case for psychotropes or stem cell transfer, and will always consult a doctor (or several) before injecting anything.

Seems extreme and must be hard to swallow

What I Do

I have never taken aspirin, sleeping pills, antidepressants and have only had antibiotics once in my life (because the test of the doctor was out of date). I’m always amazed by how people are taking pills for everything. This causes your body to build up a tolerance, rendering the drugs less effective the more you take them. When I have a cold, I just wait until it’s gone, as my grandma would put it, “it takes 9 days to pass, with or without drugs”.

I use a service to track my vitamins and nutrient levels and to receive the exact amount I need every day. I cannot name the company publicly as they haven’t launched in Europe yet but I’m happy to share in private messages. The supplements I take are Omega 3, Magnesium, and Vitamin D.

I don’t buy any antioxidants, detox supplements or probiotics. The data I’ve seen on the benefits seem very little and don’t surpass the cost I would have to invest.

I have not tried any “serious” drugs like Modafinil, Adderall, Metformin, Rapamycin, Hormones, or LSD-microdosing for example. The effects can be very strong, but I don’t believe it’s sustainable long term and the side-effects are way higher than one thinks or realizes.

The 5 most common questions people ask me

Over the years people have asked me a lot of different questions, but there are definitely a few that pop up time and time again. Here are the top 5 most frequently asked questions.

Question 1: How much time does it take?

Honestly, not that much. Here is a summary of how I split the time of my week:

Total hours in a week: 168

Sleeping 8h45 per night: 57

Working including 2 hours personal R&D, pro book reading and meditation: 50

1-hour lunch break with nap: 5

Commuting 1h/day : 5

Exercise: 6

Week dinner and weekend lunch/dinner: 9

Fun, hobbies and relationships: 15

Active reading: 2

Left/buffer: 19

To reach that level, I cut down on unnecessary or lower benefit stuff such as Facebook, Instagram or Netflix, which is used on an average of 3 hours per day by Europeans. I prefer to invest this time in more sleep and exercise. In the end, it’s all about prioritization.

If you have a family, it will take more time, but kids also bring a high level of satisfaction and happiness, which can compensate for other activities such as hobbies. You can also optimize your working hours, for example, finding a job that requires less than 40 hours or optimize your productivity engine to get the job done in less than 40 hours, especially in bigger companies.

Question 2: Is biohacking for me?

I truly believe that biohacking can benefit you a lot. It’s really about optimizing your life towards more energy and happiness by choosing the long-term options and having solid habits that work for you. I’m sure that you can work on any of the categories mentioned above and that the time you will invest will be worth it. And whether you are a beginner or already more advanced, whether you’re a founder or an employee, whether you have a family or are single, I’m convinced that you can benefit from optimizing your life.

Question 3: But what are the drawbacks?

Optimizing your life will take you effort and time, which will be taken from somewhere else. In the short term, it could feel as if you could be doing more, but if you persevere for enough time, usually within months, you will start to feel the long-term benefits, allowing you to achieve more for the rest of your life. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Life optimization is betting on the long term without taking shortcuts for the short term, and receiving compounded value for the rest of your life.

Optimizing everything in your life can make you more “rigid”, “overplanned” and “robotic”. It’s true that planning too much, setting too many rules and limits can make your life stiff. I believe that can be optimized too. A good biohacking system should be aligned with your needs to disconnect, to be creative and to have fun. Life optimization is about optimizing your life, not only your work, and by having an optimized life, your work will benefit from it.

It can cost you money to invest in some of the things mentioned above, but most of them don’t cost anything. Most of the changes were mindset changes and prioritization decisions. And if you have to invest money into optimization, calculate precisely the returns and see if it’s worth it. So in essence, even if you don’t have money to invest in it right now, it’s totally fine and you should focus on the things that don’t cost you anything, for example optimizing your sleep.

Question 4: Should I try to copy what you’re doing?

Yes and no. The most important thing in biohacking is to figure out what works best for you. You are very different from me and will have different needs. So you can inspire from what I’m doing, copying things if they work for you too, and otherwise adapt to find the best balance for you.

Question 5: Alright, I’m in, but how do I get started?

That’s the hardest part. Ideas are commodities, execution is everything. You probably knew most of the concepts listed above but you might not be applying them yet.

The most important thing is to act and to just get started. Pick up one, yes just one bullet point that convinced you the most in what you’ve read above and plan to work on it for the next 3–6 weeks (average time to build a habit). If you see the benefits, keep doing it and work on the second most interesting bullet points.

Once you’ve deeply convinced yourself by seeing the actual benefits, you can start to make bigger plans and to invest more time into it. While doing so, track your progress to evaluate how steep your learning curve is.

That’s it!

So there you have it, here is exactly how I have optimized my life.

I have felt enormous benefits since I began this journey 5 years ago. Overall, I’ve increased my average happiness and energy levels from 60% to 75%, and improved my productivity by 3x, thanks to:

Tracking everything to have more data to act on.

Sleeping an average of 8h45 and 2h30 of deep sleep per night.

Exercising 6 hours per week with a balanced workout and morning fitness

Eating more healthy food, in the right quantities while cutting out sugar and processed food.

Giving my brain the rest it needs to be more efficient, thanks to working not more than 55 hours per week, disconnecting on weekends and for 3 weeks in the summer, meditating and having more sex.

Developing mental models to make better decisions, reduce interruptions, limit useless decisions, spend time on the most important tasks and invest in myself.

Use tools such as lists, hot spots, weekly themes, opportunity ratings, or zero inbox, to properly execute my mental models

Liberating myself from the pressure of money by taking a minimalist approach to money, controlling my expenses, saving enough, and always having a 12-month buffer ahead.

Limiting the number of drugs and supplements I take to the maximum, cutting out coffee and any other drugs while taking vitamins to reach optimal nutrient levels.

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I hope you enjoyed reading and welcome to the club of life optimization. Now, it’s up to you to execute and biohack your life. I’m sure it’s worth the effort and I wish you good luck. 😉

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If you liked this article, feel free to share it with one of your friends or colleagues so they can benefit from it too.

If you would like to reach out for whatever reasons, please do, I love this topic and would be glad to talk with you about it. Just ping me at me-at-philiphemme.com. I’m reading every message and will get back to you if you picked my interest.

If you’re interested in reading further on this, here is a list of resources I have found incredibly useful: