Even after following every productivity slash delegation method known to man, we still find ourselves week-in and week-out having to do tedious and hard work.

That's why we've spent many hours researching and testing ways to hack the neurotransmitter called dopamine.

When our dopamine levels are high, it's easier to make ourselves do the stuff we'd rather not, and vice-versa; when our levels are low, it's almost impossible to do it.

Living healthily is a start. Lots of sleep, sunlight and exercise are free and natural ways to keep dopamine high.

Beyond that, with supplementation and specific protocols, we can nuke our system with dopamine for short but intense periods of energy and focus.

Kinda like Bradley Cooper in Limitless.

Here's how we do it.

1. 45 mins before the event: Take 1000 mg of L-Tyrosine, 300 mg of Alpha-GPC & 500 mg of PEA (hard to get in New Zealand & tastes awful)

2. 30 mins before the event: Follow this non-sleep deep rest protocol.

3. 15 mins before the event: Take a cold shower - keep your head and neck underwater for two minutes.

4. 10 mins before the event: Have a cup of black coffee and green tea (stops the degradation of adrenaline). If you are going to do this in the evening, skip the caffeine and replace it with an Ārepa, as the half-life of caffeine is 5.5 hours and wrecks your sleep

• And, of course, if you have any health issues, talk to a doctor before doing this.

Notes:

For the most part, a nap and a black coffee does the trick.

Think of this like your way healthier and more effective can of red bull. It's only for special occasions of deep work that you really CBF doing - like completing a quarterly plan.

We don't do it every day, nor do we recommend you do either.

How To Stay Relevant

The efficient business produces a specific result, for the lowest possible cost, at a moment in time. But does not care for the best outcome now or in the future.

The paradox of efficiency is, as you get more efficient at producing a particular result, the result becomes less valuable.

30 years ago, it took a week to send Grandma a letter in the post, who lived just a few hundred kilometres away.

Imagine if the postman had spent every day since trying to make his service more efficient. Ink stamps, instead of paper ones; computer databases, instead of cardboard folders; electric self-driving cars, instead of human-driven diesel vans.

In all that time, he might have been able to drive down the delivery time to a few hours and the cost, to say, a dollar.

But compared to SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which are free, instant, and available to everyone. No matter how efficient the postman gets, he has no chance.

The efficient business only cares about now, but we don't. We exist in a forever-changing landscape of expectations and possibilities.

Our businesses can't rely on just getting better (efficiency) at producing results; we must continually produce better results.

That's why we need to wander away from how things have been done to how it feels like they shouldn't be with low-cost experiments that have unlimited potential for unlocking new learnings and outcomes.

At the end of every quarter, we ask ourselves what we learned and how we learned it. The insights worthy of repetition are almost always inspired by trying something new.

Why Are You Wrong?

Every conclusion is just a best estimate; we can never assume ourselves to be wholly right.

Even universally accepted laws like Einstein's theory of gravity is only our current best guess of why the particles in our world behave the way they do.

That's why working with people brave enough to challenge our thinking is essential for making better decisions.

And even better than that is learning how to challenge ourselves with questions like 'Why am I wrong'? that explore our ingrained biases, wonky assumptions and fallibility.