You've read the books. Watched the videos. Highlighted the passages and saved the reels.

And you're still here.

Same apartment. Same job. Same version of yourself you swore you'd leave behind six months ago.

Every month that passes, the gap between where you are and where you want to be widens.

You feel it in the low energy that follows you through the afternoon, the fog that settles in right when you finally sit down to do the thing that matters. The shame of being too tired to focus and too wired to rest, stuck in a middle ground that looks a lot like scrolling.

I've been there. The procrastination of a task that would have taken minutes turns into hours. The lost weeks hyperfocusing on things that changed nothing and created 0 results.

You keep waiting for the moment it clicks. The morning you wake up is different. The one video that finally shows up on your YouTube discovery page.

You refresh.

Every single day, you hope there might be this one video that changes your life.

But it doesn’t.

And somewhere underneath all the content you're consuming, there's a question you're afraid to ask out loud:

What if I already know everything I need to know?

What if the problem was never information, but the identity I associate myself with?

Don’t be the main character. Be the narrator.

You want to shift your identity. You want to install a new version of yourself. One that is aligned with your future vision and goals.

You need to change how you see yourself.

You need to change the mental imagery of yourself.

You need to change the stories you are telling yourself.

If you can change the stories in your mind (the mental programming), you overwrite your current version of yourself and become the narrator instead of the character.

You want to be able to switch stories and outcomes, whenever and however you like. The main character can’t do this. He can only transform but can’t change the rules or the world he lives in. Only the narrator can switch characters, stories, worlds and even universes.

To fix your bad habits and shift your identity, you need to create different characters for different worlds.

Most people only create one character:

1. → They become a pure strength build.
2. → They become a pure dexterity build.
3. → They become a pure sorcerer/magician build.
4. → They become a pure incantation/holy build.

In one save game (one character), you can’t level all skills to 100 without cheating, and you can’t cheat because the universal laws prevent you from doing that. Because after a certain level, the time, resources and energy you need to invest are so high that you are going to be limited.

But you can create different save games and characters. Because levelling up in the beginning requires fewer resources, time and energy, it only becomes time-, resource- and energy-hungry once you exceed a specific level.

So the goal is to build 3 different characters and switch between them.

And I will explain to you how to get there.

Character 1: Athlete and researcher.

A lot of people (especially those with ADHD) go to the gym first thing in the morning or have breakfast first thing in the morning. But this doesn’t work well for your brain.

This structure destroys your limited cognitive resources.

You should NOT start your day with any strength training; you should start your day as a researcher and an athlete.

Let me explain.

We have 4 characters:

1. Bodybuilder
2. Athlete
3. Researcher
4. Mystic

The researcher (physicist, scientist, etc.) and the athlete benefit from each other because endurance training improves cognition:

In short, if you do more endurance training, like running, cycling, swimming and movement in general, you literally become more intelligent.

The more endurance training you have, the more you increase your Focus Points (FP), which means you can either focus more intensively or for longer periods of time and stay in deeper flow stages.

In general, the athlete model is more suitable for people with ADHD, because that’s the benefit of ADHD, being hyperactive, hyperalert, and hypersensitive, to use their environment and hunt for prey. (ADHD people are hunters, neurotypicals are farmers)

Michael Phelps, the best swimmer in the world, who has ADHD, said:

Endurance training creates euphoria, also known as the runner’s high. You get more alert, more focused, more present. Your ADHD stops being a “burden” and becomes a skill you can leverage.

An ADHD person needs a fast environment, that’s where they accelerate.

Neurotypicals (the farmers) can do the boring work, do the same boring sh*t every single day, but you can’t, and that’s good. There are enough neurotypicals behaving like robots and filling out Excel sheets, making them depressed and angry, but they still stay at the corporate job, because they have so many liabilities that they need to pay.

How does the researcher connect to that?

As I said, the more endurance training we have, the more we increase our FP, which makes focus more intense and increases duration. Meaning we are able to become more intelligent and do more research, which is slow work like reading, writing, and collecting information, knowledge, and wisdom (what I am doing with writing my weekly newsletters).

Here’s a routine you can follow to combine the researcher and athlete into a unified vision:

1. Read, research and write first thing in the morning. Let your mind be absorbed by curiosity and novelty.
2. Detach and let your mind wander. Have an intense euphoric break, go for a run or go cycling. Let your mind absorb and digest the information you have accumulated before. While in a state of euphoria, your brain makes new connections and ideas; collect these ideas on your Apple Watch or phone.
3. After you finish your intense exercise, go back and make these ideas tangible, iterate on them and productize your mind. Turn your thoughts into content and monetize your ideas, concepts and frameworks. Create the output. (I built an entire Notion second brain for that; that’s what my chaos to clarity cohorts are about.)

Most people with ADHD don’t do that.

Character 2: The Bodybuilder

Most bodybuilders are not that smart. Sorry to say that, but most of them are just doing looksmaxxing. They spend all their time fine-tuning every little muscle group, instead of investing time into FP and endurance.

Their bones might be able to carry a heavy load, but their hearts became glass. From the outside, they look like Greek Gods, but from the inside, they are glass canons.

1. Most of them don’t do any cardiovascular exercise, which can improve VO2Max and increase blood flow to the heart and brain, thereby supporting hippocampal function, as I mentioned in the research above.
2. Most of them eat 5-6 times a day to “maximize” protein absorption and synthesis. This means higher insulin levels, which in most cases don’t go down, and carbohydrates create brain fog, and your body focuses more on digestion instead of brain activity. I mean, you don’t hunt with a full stomach. Are you?
3. If you eat 5-6 times a day, cook the meals, and train all day, is there much time left to get into a deep state of focus without any interruptions? (aka flow, where you get 500% more productive) I highly doubt that.

What I suggest, whether you have ADHD or not, is to have a maximum of 3 meals a day to avoid losing muscle mass and maintain longevity, which is increased by muscle density in older age. Additionally, having the first meal be a ketogenic breakfast (better for men, due to higher cortisol tolerance) helps you focus better and reduces insulin spikes and cravings from subsequent meals.

In short, you increase ketones in the morning, which helps with brain activity, such as studying, researching, and learning (researcher). The moment your ADHD brain detects dopamine, like sugar, carbohydrates or even sweeteners, it overrides your “motivation” inside your brain, and you crave more dopamine.

Why is this the case? As mentioned, people with ADHD are hunters, and honey was rare, and the process to create maple syrup takes time. Means there was a glucose shortage. It is the reward of the effort. (Don’t give your brain a reward before the effort.) Again: why should you hunt if there is food in abundance?

I also suggest keeping up your research and athlete work in the morning; you can even stay fasted (that’s what I am doing), and then become a bodybuilder in the afternoon, where you switch roles. You prepare your bodybuilding meals for the next day, you eat your carbohydrates before weight training to fuel your muscles, and you eat again after your intense bodybuilding session. You can also connect with other human beings while strength training.

What I like to do is work and run in the morning, and hike, cycle or go to the gym in the afternoon (after lunch). This is my ideal day.

Character 3: The Mystic

The last character is the mystic. The “spiritual person”.

This is probably the most important one and leads to greater happiness in most people's lives.

1. This is spending time with your partner.
2. This is spending time with family and friends.
3. This is your connection with God and the universe.

You connect with nature, with other human beings or with God himself. You can do this at any time of the day. The more you spend time in sunlight, nature, inside the water, and spend time with family, friends and your partner, the happier you get.

But don’t forget that, to maintain a healthy mind and body, it’s necessary to be a researcher, an athlete, and a bodybuilder as well.

You can’t max out all skills and abilities in one character. But you can switch between these 4 characters and even combine them, as I did with the athlete and researcher. You can even combine the mystic with the athlete and go hiking, swimming, running, or cycling. You can even combine it with the bodybuilder and enjoy meals together and intense training sessions.

The High-Flow Lifestyle: The combination of all characters in one day.

The main point I want to make at the end is that the healthier you get, the more you train, the more you have active recovery spent with loved ones:

• The better you can focus.
• The less you procrastinate.
• The less you are bored.
• The fewer ADHD symptoms you experience due to gut health, low inflammation and nervous system regulation.

The goal is to build and develop these characters until the end of your lifetime. It becomes an infinite game, a main quest you never want to quit. You are fully present and fully in flow. This "routine” makes life so enjoyable that you don’t want to do much else. These are health, wealth, and relationships. They are the three domains of life. That’s what humans want to master in their lives. We just combine this into a daily routine, instead of a life goal.

This is the balanced lifestyle everyone talks about, but only a few really accomplish. And this combination and unification lead to the highest echelons of life.

Life becomes so enjoyable and fun that it turns into a video game. Your own video game, making you the narrator of your life.

(Overall, this is correlated in research as a “high-flow lifestyle”, which is the highest achievable goal.)

Thanks for reading, hope this was helpful.

If it was, feel free to reply!

Jeff

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