Our brains are primarily survival machines, a tool for survival and all our systems are developed around it, the very bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, everything comes after.

Imagine a typical day in our ancient Hunter-Gatherer Societies, you wake up with sunrise, you are hungry, you warm up a bit and then you go out looking for food. Your life depends on this task, you need absolute focus, there’s simply no place for distractions.

Once you do find it, then the life is all merry, you go back, cook, socialise with your family, eat, relax and fuck. Your brain cools down and now all your energies will be spent digesting, mating and recovery.

Food, thus, should come later in the day. Once you have it, any motivation to do something takes a major hit. About 2 years ago, I used to eat only once a day, heavy meal, and only after I was done with my tasks for the day, this changed my life around.

Obviously it’s not a magic pill for all your sufferings, but it definitely laid a fertile land to grow my process on. Countless studies on fasting and ketosis that I came across since then have made my belief stronger.

Theoretically, this was also priming my brain to relate “Getting Task Done” to getting food, so even the very lower, primal parts of my brain that work for survival will now focus on getting work done. Later on I extended it, basically put everything in physiological needs only after you get your shit done. Thus, the self-actualisation part essentially comes below the physiological needs and the only way to meet these needs is through actualisation.

The same could potentially be abstracted out to general lifespans, your initial years are crucial, full of vitality, potency, the power of creation, there should absolutely be no distraction during these years in forge. And don’t start rocking chair if you’re in the middle of hierarchy, throw it on a bell curve and you’re just another Joe next door.

Here’s an interesting speculation, what if there is a trade-off between focus and perceived social competency ? For all we know, food can be a trigger, to shift the mode of our minds from focus to distraction. Eating early and then getting distracted with pleasure then, can be a form of zahavian signaling for all we know. That you can afford to be distracted because you’re smart and fit enough to find your worm early.