If you are a founder, executive, or high-level professional in your career, then you are always looking for new ways to optimize and energize yourself.
Today, we have a term for this—which is “biohacking.” It is the science of changing variables in your life to remain as close to a “flow state” as possible. The difference, however, between biohacking and just generally optimizing your day-to-day life comes down to efficiency. For example, we all know that working out releases endorphins and can impact our mood, improve our productivity, etc., but sometimes we don’t have time to drive 30 minutes to the gym, workout for an hour, and then drive 30 minutes back home. So the question becomes, “How can I achieve a similar state change and result with less friction?”
As a CEO, I consider biohacking and just having a general interest in self-optimization to be part of the job.
If you are leading a company, chances are, your To-Do list exceeds the amount of hours you have available in a day. Where so many founders and executives go wrong is they think the solution is to sleep less. Right? They emphasize the importance of hustling and working harder than everyone else, when in reality, that sort of bull-headed approach ends up being exceedingly inefficient.
It’s not about working harder. It’s about working smarter.
Now, I’m fascinated by biohacking, so I’m always looking for new, unique ways to improve my effectiveness as both a CEO and a human being.
Here are 5 of the most unconventional, but incredibly effective biohacks I’ve used to optimize my time, productivity, and performance.
1. Smart Physical Exercise Machinery
I was the first investor in Dave Asprey’s Upgrade Labs, run by serial entrepreneur Martin Tobais.
Between that facility and my office, I have a wide variety of machinery to improve all different types of physical optimization. Some of my favorites are:
By having these physical exercise tools in the office or at home, all of a sudden you are able to start driving serious self-improvement while removing a lot of the barriers that keep people from taking care of their physical body: travel time, schedule conflicts, etc.
2. NAD+ (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) Injections
Burnout is a huge problem for founders and executives.
Personally, I’ve been close to the edge a couple of times. You work, and work, and work, and the demands of life keep you from really being able to take a step back to reset. And with the hustle/entrepreneurship culture we have today, burnout has almost turned into something to celebrate. “You burnout when you’re hustling the hardest.”
I disagree with that.
Some people try to prevent burnout by taking an oral supplement called NAD+. But oral supplements have very poor bioavailability and don’t really lead to any meaningful change unless you’ve been taking them for a year or longer. What I have started doing instead is having a regenerative medicine specialist provide me with pharmaceutical-grade NAD+ that can be harmlessly injected to give an immediate boost of natural energy. NAD+ injections help reset the neurotransmitter balance in your brain, and helps you feel more at ease and naturally full of energy.
3. Sauna / Cold tub meditation
I meditate every morning for about 10 or 20 minutes.
But especially on mornings where I’m really struggling to clear my head, I’ll sit in the sauna for 20 minutes, before immediately jumping into the cold tub. In this cold tub is 200 pounds of ice. But it’s the drastic shift of environment from being in a sauna (where you’re sweating and really feeling into your body) to sitting in a tub of ice that forces you into the present moment the same way a long meditation would.
This small morning routine has a very immediate effect on your neurotransmitter balance, will give you a ton of energy, and eliminate workout soreness to a very high degree.
4. NK cell therapy
Only a few facilities do NK cell therapy.
Basically, it involves drawing 20 vials of blood, centrifuging your plasma, and extracting T cells to find the healthiest ones. Then, once they find the healthiest T cells, they make “copies” of them (billions of copies) before infusing those back into your body. It’s an extremely elaborate, difficult, and expensive thing to do, but I gave it a shot because of the relationship I had with the medical clinic.
In theory, all the T cells in your body then become copies of your healthiest ones. This is supposed to help defend against disease, viruses, even brain degeneration and cancer.
5. Ketamine therapy
This is slowly becoming a more popularized practice, and something I do every quarter or so.
Ketamine can be extremely effective at resetting your brain’s neurotransmitters and stress hormones. There are actually studies that have proven ketamine administered to mice can be a transformative treatment for depression and stress. So from a preventative medicine standpoint, ketamine can actually be incredibly effective for individuals who know they will be entering intense periods of training, work, etc.
I have tried, and am always trying, new and unique biohacking methods. But more importantly than any of the methods I have listed above, what matters most is finding what works for you.
