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This is: A bunch of reasons why you might have low energy (or other vague health problems) and what to do about it, published by alexlintz on the AI Alignment Forum.
Epistemic status: This post leans heavily on my personal experience and is not well-researched. I’m not a doctor, nor have I studied medicine. I do consider myself pretty good at Googling things though. Also, a real doctor did look over and at least tacitly approve of this post. I’m not doing much in the way of literature review, validating claims, etc so take everything with a teaspoon of salt. There are also more side effects and bad interactions than I’m able to mention. Do your own research before you try any interventions I suggest! Also, if you find something definitely wrong in the post let me know in the comments and I’ll try to correct it.
Over the past two years or so I’ve been on a long journey to figure out why I often have joint pain (gradually expanding to almost all my joints), gut problems, and episodes of extreme fatigue about once a week. When I say extreme fatigue try to imagine the following: moving sucks and you don’t want to do it, same with thinking about things, and lying on the floor for half an hour because you slid off your chair seems like a reasonable thing to do.
I am not totally sure I’m at the end of this journey but I’ve learned enough to say things which will probably be useful for some people. I was really surprised by a lot of what I found and I expect many of you will be too. I’m also really surprised by the lack of something like this piece out in the world as this is so clearly a thing many people struggle with (if it already exists please post a link in the comments!).
The main things I have looked at are food sensitivities, stress, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and gut health. There are obviously a ton of reasons why you could be fatigued (or have other hard-to-diagnose health issues). To demonstrate how hard this is, this is why we have catch-all diagnoses like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue which nobody really knows what to do with. They just represent some bundle of symptoms with no clear underlying cause (and people have really been trying to find a cause!). Fatigue is a symptom of tons of major illnesses. Suffice to say this is super difficult and I’m just covering a few possibilities. Also, obligatory disclaimer: this is not medical advice.
Why is this important?
My guess is that a bunch of you, maybe most, are not at or near optimal health. This might be a not-knowing-what-the-world-should-look-like-before-you-try-on-glasses kind of thing. You might not realize just how much energy you could have. For example, you probably don’t need to be tired for the first hour or two after you wake up! It’s possible to wake up and feel great most of the time (I’m pretty sure...). Of course sleep, exercise, and nutrition are the obvious things to do and you should almost certainly try those first.[1] There are also good guides on those already (and I see them discussed often in EA circles) [edit: Good sleep guide from Lynette Bye]. If you’re still having problems after that though you probably don’t need to keep having those problems. And if you can solve those problems now the expected value is generally extraordinary. If you get a 1% energy gain consistently through your lifetime because of something you find out now, that is super valuable. Like more valuable than almost anything else you could possibly do for your productivity. If you already have health issues then probably you’re going to get a whole lot more than a 1% energy gain (I’d estimate a 20-100% gain for me if I can solve my issue. This could lead to a much higher boost in impact over the long-term[2]). That’s going to matter a whole lot more than whether you use ultraworking or focusmate, what note-taking soft...
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