Game Changers by Dave Asprey

Hello, Book Thinkers family! Today's book tip is going to come from Game Changers by Dave Asprey. The subtitle of this book is What Leaders, Innovators, and Mavericks Do to Win at Life. This book focuses on total human optimization. So I read another book by Dave, which is right here, Superhuman, and I found a ton of value in that. My video review is probably 15 or 20 books back if you want to check it out. And when I got into this book, I really loved it because it was very similar to Tools of Titans or Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. What Tim did and what Dave did was they analyzed hundreds of podcast episodes that they conducted, interviews with top performers in every area of the world, in every area of life, in every discipline, and they condensed them down into lessons. What did most people attribute to benefiting their life? What tips and tricks did each person say could improve their life? And what patterns were there across the world's elite? And that's what this book touches on. So my tip for today is to read the book, and I'll talk a little bit about some of the changes that this book caused me to make in my life. Because Dave asked the questions like, what 3 things could anybody do to improve their life regardless of discipline? There were a lot of things that applied to my life that came from people that I don't necessarily share much in common with, like yoga instructors or a pianist or some other type of music or somebody who's trading on Wall Street. Like, the list of people is very, very, very diverse, yet the takeaways can be applied to optimizing anybody's life. So for me, one of the things that I found really interesting was nootropics, or nootropics, nootropics. I always have a hard time pronouncing that word, but ways to optimize your brain's cognitive function, ways to increase memory or the ability to access memory and to recite words, how to retain more information from what you're reading. How to basically read faster. He talked a little bit about Jim Kwik and his speed reading courses, different ways to decipher information. So I thought that was really interesting, and I'm actually going to try out a couple cognitive enhancers myself from the book, like aniracetam and modafinil. I'd love to try that. I think it's illegal. Maybe I need to go get a prescription. But there were so many things in this book that dealt with improving your brain's ability to function that I really want to try. And he also talked about his experiences with some of those things in Superhuman as well. Another example was that I bought a couple potted plants for my home office here and for my bedroom. And those are going to be plants that will produce oxygen and get rid of toxins in the air, or whatever the right word is for that. Things that can produce oxygen at night that don't need a lot of light, that don't need a lot of love, because I'm definitely not a gardener and I have no passion for that yet. But it caused me to buy a couple plants. Another thing that I found really interesting was that because I'm wearing this Oura Ring that tracks my sleep, I have a lot of awake time at night. Now, because of Dave's recommendations in Superhuman, as well as a couple other books, I have done a lot to improve my sleep. So I have pretty off-the-charts, uh, deep reading numbers, as well as REM is pretty good. But I have a lot of awake time, and I do hear feedback from other people that I snore. And that's a sign of sleep apnea. So what I did was I bought this pillow that attaches to the back of your back. It's like a little inflatable pillow. I actually have it right here. It looks really goofy, but what it does is it makes sure that I don't sleep on my back, which can constrict airflow and cause me to wake up, which disrupts my sleep. And over the last couple nights of wearing that, my awake time has been super low, the lowest it's ever been since I started wearing this Oura Ring. So That's another good example of a takeaway from this book. There's also something that I'm starting tomorrow called dual n-back training, and there are apps for it that are free that you can try out. And it's difficult to explain the exercise, but apparently if you do it for 30 minutes a day for a month or 45 days straight, you can actually increase your IQ, which people thought was impossible. But now that we understand neuroplasticity, we understand it is possible. So there are Countless other takeaways that I'm implementing from this book, but those are 4 examples of things that I thought were really interesting and that can improve my life, optimize my life. That's sort of my theme for 2020 here. I'd really recommend the book. I actually listened to it and I listened to his other book, and yeah, it was a really good listen. So with that, I'll end my video. If you've read this— if you've read this book, comment below and tell me some of your biggest takeaways. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Were you somewhere in the middle? And also, if you've made it this far, thank you so much for watching the video. I really appreciate everybody that takes time out of their day to learn a little bit more about the books that are improving my life. It means a lot to me. So thank you very much, and that's the end. Go read something. Bye.