Much has been said about Modafinil, a drug originally developed for treating narcolepsy and military purposes, which dramatically sharpens your focus for extended periods of time.
Comparisons have been made to the imaginary drug, NZT-48 from the film Limitless with Bradley Cooper. I don’t agree with this comparison since that drug increased the intelligence and reasoning capacity of the protagonist, while Modafinil will merely sharpen whats already in between your ears. This is not to say that Modafinil isn’t one of the most awesome drugs in existence, but you should have realistic expectations about what it can do for you.
I first heard of Modafinil through Victor Pride and decided to give it a try. I placed an order of 30 pills at 200mg each from a website recommended by Victor and received my order within about 3 weeks. The brand name of the product was Modvigil.
I decided to take 100mg a day (one pill cut in half) for 30 days. The first dose that I took was on a Monday morning around 6:45am, shortly before leaving for work. Within about an hour I could feel a tingling sensation on the top of my palate, as if my tongue were pressed up against it. The “fizziness” migrated up into my head and settled seemingly at the top of my brain, where this slight pressure maintained until I went to sleep that night.
The effect that Modafinil had on me was an intense sharpening of my focus, the absence of scattered thoughts and the ability to plow through tasks one after another without need to stop, rest and regroup. Imagine that instead of a multitude of thoughts running through your head and a stack of miscellaneous papers on your desk, you have each task lined up like a target on a range and you systematically, aim, fire and reload, knocking off “to-do’s” one after the other.
Like this, except you’re using a rotary cannon.
Ultimately I continued my experiment for three weeks, since I started to feel a bit worn out, presumably because taking Modafinil daily is taxing on your body. I also read this by Chris at GLL and decided that taking Moda on successive days isn’t the best idea.
While taking Modafinil my primary tasks were related to my 8-5 job. It was the most productive period of time at work, I got myself a standing desk so that I could focus even more, made major progress on my annual project, replied to hundreds of emails and reviewed and filed several years of a document backlog.
On top of work I spent a lot of time seriously planning my departure to Europe. Although I hadn’t made the final commitment yet, the details and logistics of moving and how to sustain myself there were a major part of my thinking.
Moreso than specific planning or anything else, taking Modafinil helped bring the limitations of my current work into sharp focus. I realized that though it was awesome to be super-efficient and do the best work of my career to date, even at my very best I was limited by bureaucracy, hierarchy, meetings, rules, bosses, routines, paperwork, politics, personalities and all the other bullshit that comes with working in an office environment.
Modafinil ultimately helped me realize that I wouldn’t reach the next level of my life’s work by working harder and more intensely (essentially just running a faster rat race), but only by changing my environment and writing my own rules to the life I wanted to lead.
Your brain on Modafinil.
Modafinil will not make you smarter, but it will heavily accentuate the skills and desires you already possess. If you have a corporate job that doesn’t allow you freedom to grow and advance based on the quality of your work, Modafinil may be a hindrance to you, because you’ll be limited by external factors. At the same time it may help you realize that you aren’t doing the best work you’re capable of and may prompt you to make a dramatic change like I did.
Suggestions for taking Modafinil:
- Get a good night’s sleep before taking Moda, don’t take it if you’re tired, hungover, etc. You can cheat your body for a little while, but you’ll pay for it by crashing harder later in the day or the next day.
- Don’t take Moda on consecutive days. You can (I did it for 20 straight), but the effect will diminish as time goes on. Use it during periods of intensive work, planning and creativity.
- 100mg was just fine for me. Cutting a pill in half doesn’t give you a perfect dose, so you may get +/- 20mg depending how even the cut is. Taking 200mg at once is overkill in my opinion, unless you take 100mg early in the morning and another “booster” around noon.
- Keep in mind that Moda lasts a long time. If you take a dose at noon (especially if its your second of the day), you may not be able to fall asleep until well past midnight, no matter how hard you try. 9am is the latest I’ll take a dose. Expect to be up for at least 12 hours.
- Modafinil isn’t magic. It won’t make you more intelligent, ambitious or creative than you already are, but it will focus the talents that you already have. Don’t expect to use it as a substitute for the hard work it takes to become a great man: studying, creating and sweat equity.
