What is bio-hacking?
‘Biohacking is a fairly new practice that could lead to major changes in our life. You could it call citizen or do-it-your-self biology. It takes place in small labs — mostly non-university — where all sorts of people get together to explore biology.’1
‘Biohacking is the process of making changes to your lifestyle in order to “hack” your body’s biology and feel your best.’2
Personally for myself, biohacking is making alterations to your lifestyle to optimize your performance in day to day life. Suffice to say, we are what is around us- the air, the food that we eat , the people we associate ourselves with, light that we get. Coming from an ex professional poker player perspective, I would describe bio-hacking as the edge in life. However, I do not consider myself an expert in this field but an advocate.
Back in the days when I stayed in Macau, there was no sleep schedule per se. Literally the chinese whale’s sleep schedule = your sleep schedule. We would basically just play as long as the whales are playing and go to sleep immediately after they leave.
This basically means irregular sleep timings / sleep deprivation which in turn results in lowered stress resilience, willpower and focus ( That explains why I don’t always win. Kidding) . But in all seriousness, I oftentimes find myself in autopilot mode – meaning I’m not actively thinking about the hand when I’m playing it, resulting in bad decisions overall.
Top that up with a diet of casino food ( usually junk food by choice ) and lack of a fitness regime, I was a walking zombie most of the time. Sure it’s not hard to make money when your opponents doesn’t even know the rules to the game, but I still had to deal with other professionals which would affect my overall win rate when I’m not thinking clearly.
Luckily I had the opportunity to transit out of that lifestyle after my switch to e-commerce and begin experimenting on biohacking to improve performance. The difference is remarkably substantial.
Firstly, my energy level is usually higher than most of the people due to the state of mind I am in. If you feel sleepy during afternoons it’s probably because of the carb intake. Similarly if you have glucose spikes throughout the day it’s probably because of the sugar intake ( diet) .
These are just the tip of the iceberg things that come obvious to us but nobody takes action on it.
Why not though?
Reflecting at the past, I would say personally it was short-sightedness on my part. I’ve achieved certain level of success without doing any of these, why do I need to start doing it?
To get to the bottom of this we must first understand that with high levels of clarity and performance , we can produce immense amounts of resources.
Resources = $$$ , social capital ( deep & genuine relationships with people ) , great health and lifestyle.
High levels of performance requires high levels of focused energy which will produce output that is higher than your average day and worse, days that you’re feeling down / having a hangover.
Compound that across your work, learning journey, relationships , lifestyle – it doesn’t take long before you actually figure that you’re not too far off that super high achiever friend of yours and most things are actually possible in life.
Finally, having high levels of focused energy also trains us to have deep downtime. Having truly engaging conversations with the ones who matters. Showing our vulnerabilities and grow together with one another.
‘ Where do I begin!? ‘
Here are some of the resources that I’ve started with :
Article – https://hackernoon.com/biohack-your-intelligence-now-or-become-obsolete-97cdd15e395f
Head Strong – Dave Asprey ( Book )
Tools Of Titans – Tim Ferris ( Book)
I would like to keep this an on-going conversation and whoever that is interested can definitely reach out to me and we’ll discuss the benefits that we’ve gotten from this or new ways to further bio-hack our performance/ intelligence.
