"I'm an INTJ, so I'm allowed to be cold." No. You're just using a framework to justify being shitty.

Here's where MBTI fails: it stops working once you grow up. I used to test INFP. Now I get INTJ. But really? I'm 50% on almost every scale. The system breaks when you're balanced. When you've done the work.

Tests are built for the average

Know why tests fail? They're built for the middle of the bell curve. If you're emotionally stable or completely unhinged, you confuse the algorithm.

Last week an Enneagram test told me I was a Type 1. Wrong. I'm a 4 who integrated to 1. The test saw my current state, not my core structure.

Enneagram: A system mapping nine core personality types based on deep motivations, fears, and defense mechanisms. Each type has specific paths of growth (integration) and stress (disintegration).

See, that's what separates Enneagram from the rest. MBTI measures behavior. Behaviors shift. A healthy person acts different from an unhealthy one, so the test breaks. But Enneagram? It tracks the why beneath the what. Your core fear stays the same whether you're thriving or falling apart. The expression changes. The root doesn't.

The tests can't handle this complexity. They're built for surface patterns, not deep structure. Use them for a quick read if you want. But don't let some algorithm tell you who you are. The real work happens when you study the system itself.

But Enneagram is complicated. People want simple. They want "you're this type, here's your meme." They don't want to study integration lines, instinctual variants, levels of health. Too much work.

Pattern recognition over lab validation

I've typed at least a hundred people using Enneagram. Never been wrong once I got to know them. Not because it's scientific. Because it's right. It maps human motivation with scary precision. You want to understand someone? Watch their core fear play out. Watch their defense mechanisms activate. It's all there.

The "scientific" tests? Big Five? They measure. They don't transform. Therapists love them because they create dependency. "Let me interpret your scores." Meanwhile, Enneagram hands you a map and says figure yourself out. No wonder the establishment prefers Big Five.

Big Five: The academically validated model measuring Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Descriptive, not prescriptive.

Not that Big Five is useless. I do track mine.

Understanding worldviews

But overall personality systems don’t explain everything and that’s where the Spiral Dynamics comes in.

Spiral Dynamics: A model of human development showing how worldviews evolve through color-coded stages, from survival-based (Beige) through tribal (Purple), power (Red), order (Blue), achievement (Orange), community (Green), integration (Yellow), to holistic (Turquoise).

Your Enneagram type 8 at Red? Pure domination. Might makes right. That same type 8 at Orange? Strategic competitor. Still assertive, but channeled through systems. At Yellow? They integrate power with wisdom, leading through synthesis rather than force.

The personality structure stays. The expression transforms completely.

A Type 4 at Green gets lost in collective emotions, desperate to be uniquely authentic while drowning in others' feelings. At Yellow? They use their emotional depth as data, not identity.

Spiral Dynamics shows you that your personality isn't your prison. It's your instrument. But the music you play depends on which stage you're at.

But even that's incomplete.

Your genes and nutrition drives your personality more than you think

A dopamine-serotonin balance change can transform an introvert into an extrovert. It’s that important.

Chronic imbalances literally reshape personality. Genetics is partly to blame for it, nutrition too.

Neurotransmitter basics: Dopamine drives motivation and reward. Serotonin affects mood and social status. Acetylcholine manages attention and learning. Imbalances create personality distortions that feel like "you."

Low acetylcholine in childhood? Those learned behaviors stick even after you rebalance. The body keeps score in ways personality tests can't touch.

Consider the COMT gene. Fast variant? You clear dopamine quickly. You need more stimulation, take more risks, get bored faster. Slow variant? Dopamine lingers. You're more cautious, detail-oriented, prone to rumination.

The cruel part? Early nutritional deficits shape neural pathways. Zinc deficiency in childhood can create lasting social anxiety. You think you're "just anxious." Really, your brain learned anxiety as its default state when it lacked building blocks.

Get more information in the post blow. ↓

Stack systems or stay stuck

Most people want a label that makes them feel special. I want systems that make me better.

MBTI for surface preferences. Enneagram for core motivations. Spiral Dynamics for worldview evolution. Neurotransmitter awareness for the biological foundation.

Stack them. Use them. Or keep telling yourself you're "just an INFP" while your unexamined shadows run your life.

Your choice.

For most of my life, I’ve felt tired. Even as a teenager, I wasn’t the “lazy” type, I just had no fuel. My parents assumed it was attitude. It wasn’t.

I liked tennis. But I couldn’t play long. I’d dominate for half a set, then lose every match.

At 25, I had a six-month window where I felt alive. I went low carb, dropped weight, could run for kilometers. Then it all collapsed. The diet and stress burn me out and damaged my gut.

I got worse before I got better. But over the past few years, I’ve made progress. And every time I improved, I noticed one common factor.

What actually helped: Analyzing my DNA

In 2018, I did a 23andMe test and ran the data through a few analysis tools. They told me which nutrients I likely needed more of, which processes were inefficient, and where to compensate.

Note that people misunderstand genetics.

They think it means “you’ll go bald” or “you’ll get sick.”

But most gene variants don’t mean you’re doomed. They mean something in your system is inefficient. That inefficiency worked for survival in the past. Now, it just makes you tired unless you support it.

The further your lifestyle is from the conditions that shaped your biology, the more problems you get.

What my genes told me

Two issues stood out.

• I break down dopamine faster than average
  Dopamine regulates motivation. If your baseline level is high, you are motivated to do even boring tasks. If it’s low, you chase extreme stimulation.

• I don’t make enough acetylcholine
  This neurotransmitter helps with focus, speech, motivation, and dopamine synthesis. I need the equivalent of 9 egg yolks per day just to meet my choline needs. That’s not easily feasible without supplements.

You can see how one problem makes the other worse. If I didn’t address them, nothing else would matter.

What I took to function: Nootropics

I had another issue. Because of gut damage, I wasn’t absorbing the nutrients I needed, especially choline and its cofactors.

The only thing that kept me functional was nootropics. It’s compounds that improve cognitive functions. I keep things simple and stay far from more powerful stimulants like Adderall that are way more likely to mess you up.

Here’s what I take:

• Red bull for caffeine and taurine (you can also do coffee and a taurine supplement if you prefer)

• Sometimes another boost of caffeine and also theanine with matcha

• CDP-choline

• And more recently creatine

I’d take them early in the afternoon. That gave me 2 to 4 hours of deep work. That’s how I survived.

Now that I feel better overall, I use this stack in the morning and it lasts the whole day.

What about safety?

If you’re cautious, track blood markers regularly.

But most of the supplements I listed are low-risk, especially when used in normal doses. They support basic functions so are unlikely to create imbalances.

Where to start?

If you want to do like me, here’s what to do.

1. Get a DNA test

It’s a one-time thing. Use a tool to interpret health-related gene variants. You’ll get a list of systems that might need support.

I have used Genetic Lifehacks with the raw data from 23andme to help me. I understand if you don’t want 23andme. I think the best alternatives are probably AncestryDNA and MyHeritage.

2. Add nootropics slowly

Start with one. Track how you feel. Don’t stack too fast. The ones I listed above are safe and effective for most people. If caffeine makes you anxious, pair it with L-theanine.

3. Keep your nutrition simple

My staples:

• Beef

• Egg yolks (you can keep the whites too)

• Milk or yogurt (I use kefir currently)

• White rice or another starch you tolerate

Just that is enough to meet 99% of your macro & micronutrient needs. This way you don’t have to obsess over vegetables or anything else. Just sprinkle in what you like on top of these staples and you’re good.

4. Use supplements to cover gaps

No recommendation here because it depends. I take a B-complex with a few minerals on and off. Zinc too, when I’m not eating beef.

And a few other things trying to heal my gut completely.

Bottom line

I’m pretty sure everyone has some untapped potential waiting to be unlocked by understanding their genes.

So while I might have had bad karma with my health, it doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from doing what I’ve done.

I so wish going back to a time where I don't talk about money at all and talk about the product, the building process, the solution, its great attributes, and how much I love my craft. Talking about money has ruined it for me as "it" being the only end goal, which is not. (Source)

Why building for the love of the craft rarely works

Most indie builders didn’t start out wanting to be marketers. They started because they liked making things. Tinkering. Fixing broken systems. Solving weird problems in beautiful ways.

But that dream? It crashes fast.

Because what world actually lets you do just that?

You either chase what you love and starve.
Or you bring in someone else to handle the money side… at the cost of freedom.
Or you do it all yourself and start resenting the thing you used to love.

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You can’t ignore money so master it fast

You do have to think about money before you can afford to ignore it.

The faster you get good at making money, the faster you can stop obsessing over it. I was a dev. Now I’m a marketer. I made the switch on purpose.

Because now, I work 10–20 hours a week and 2x leads for my clients. Yes, it’s services not products. Yes, it’s repetitive. But it bought me time. Space. The freedom to chase whatever idea lights me up.

I’m building again. Slowly. Focused more on health right now but the energy’s back.

Client work doesn’t take over my head the way a dev freelancing gig used to. There’s no mental carryover. Context switching is easy because problems don’t stay in my mind for days.

What changed everything? I stopped flinching from the parts I hated. Got good at sales. Got over the cringe. Built systems that work when I’m not looking.

And when a new channel failed, I didn’t quit. I tested, iterated, found the edge.

Marketing is just structured empathy

But what if you hate marketing?

Then don’t complain.

Or change your mindset to like it. That’s what I did.

Sales is just empathy with structure.
Marketing is a smarter form of customer support.
You’re helping people realize what they need, not tricking them into what they don’t.

If you can’t reframe it that way, you’ll always need someone else to carry your dream. And they’ll take a piece of it for the privilege.

My 4-part system to have the freedom to build

• Start with marketing. Learn it. Master it. Get into the right mindset to embrace and love it.

• Sell boring things. Fund your freedom with something that is guaranteed to work.

• Systemize what works. Don’t scale effort. Scale outcomes.

• Use the leftover energy to build what you love. Projects without pressure. Try your risky ideas.

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That habit alone helped me:

• Pivot across careers — programming, web design, product management, marketing — with instant success every time.

• Get to a level of emotional stability and inner peace I didn’t think was possible.

• Pull myself out of chronic fatigue and multiple chronic health issues.

I’ve met a lot of smart people. But no one who knows as much as I do about both physical and mental health. Not even close.

But I don’t credit it to IQ. I credit it to the discipline I apply to myself.

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Structure

Reading and writing compounds in a way most people underestimate.

I started 20 years ago and I averaged at least 60 minutes a day. That’s equivalent to majoring in multiple fields despite having a full-time job, a partner, and plenty of hobbies. All self-directed.

But to get to that level of consistency I needed structure. Something to hold the practice together day after day, through burnout, travel, and distraction.

That's why I got into systems early: GTD, kanban boards, all kinds of frameworks to manage my life. Without them, I'd struggle to keep everything together at first.

Now they’re second nature. I don’t follow them rigidly anymore, they’re just part of how I move through the day.

Habits

People are surprised when I tell them I have a routine—probably because I travel so much. But I’ve always had one. It’s how I function.

Three pillars keep me grounded:

1. Mental clarity — reading, learning, writing, and journaling. That’s where the ideas come from. That’s how I spot opportunities. That’s how I build high-value products and services.

2. Physical health — sleep, diet, movement. If your biology is broken, nothing else works. Fixing this gave me back my energy.

3. Focused work — 4–5 hours of deep, undistracted effort. You can push beyond that, sure, but not for long. Eventually, your health and clarity will pay the price.

Routine

People are surprised when I tell them I have a routine because I travel so much. But I’ve always had one. Because I need one.

I know when I’m most productive, and I build my day around it. The routine exists so I can do everything I care about — read, write, train, think — and still work when my mind is sharpest.

I split my time between France and Japan, usually 50/50. I don’t travel constantly, and when I do, I move slow enough to keep my rhythm.

People think digital nomading and routines don’t mix. They’re wrong. You just need to re-root fast enough to stay functional.

My recipe for discipline

People ask me how I got to this point — health, clarity, productivity — and the truth is, I didn't change everything overnight. I just built systems that made it hard to fall off track.

Here's what I recommend:

• Use Atomic Habits techniques: habit stacking, temptation bundling, tweaking your environment.

• Fix your biology: sleep more, eat better, exercise. That’s how you stabilize your energy, hormones, and neurotransmitters.

• Win early in the day. Small successes give you the dopamine to keep going.

• Iterate quickly on your routine to find one that works for you.

• Track things, but only what matters. I log how I feel, how I sleep, and what I consume. The rest is noise.

• Remove friction from your routine. Cook more efficiently, live next to a gym, stop doom scrolling.

• Don't skip two days in a row. When I stop a habit and don't restart it very soon, I can say goodbye to it for months usually.

• Find systems that work for your. Integrate them. And then you can start to go beyond them.

That’s how I started. Nothing fancy. Just the right small things, every day.

And then compounding took over.

It’s unavoidable.

As someone who used to watch all the new TV shows and movies when I was 18, I don’t watch anything anymore. Same with video games. Yes, I have less time — but still plenty. And this shift only happened in the last few years.

So what happened?

Slop happened.

Why does everything seem worse?

It’s shiny but empty.

If you don’t look too close, things seem to get better. Movies have stunning cinematography even the ones with zero soul. Games are more realistic than ever but also more lifeless. Science knows more and yet the outputs feel sterile.

It’s not progress. It’s veneer.

The details are gone

Take video games.

Look at how environments used to be crafted: textures had personality, lighting was stylized, geometry was optimized to feel right, not just simulate realism.

Now? Everything’s technically “high-res,” yet somehow blurrier. Shaders try to mimic physical reality, but in doing so, kill intentionality. Modern games are filled with generic assets glued together by rushed pipelines. It’s noise with no art direction.

Same with storytelling.

Plots used to have a pulse, even dumb ones had rhythm. Now, everything feels like it was written by people who don’t live, only consume. The result: incoherence dressed up as “subversion.”

So why all this slop?

A few reasons:

• Bloat. Industries scaled too fast. Teams ballooned. Now, you’re not hiring people who care, you’re hiring to fill seats. No one owns the product. No one fights for the details.

• Disconnection. Creators are removed from who they’re making things for. They don’t care to understand the audience. They follow data dashboards instead of instincts.

• Process over taste. Everyone wants frameworks, systems, blueprints. But good work needs taste. And taste can’t be outsourced or A/B tested.

• Content treadmill. Everything’s become content. Not a film. Not a game. Content. Disposable by design. Optimized for algorithms, not for impact.

We didn’t just lower the bar.

We forgot why there was a bar in the first place.

How to avoid the slop (especially if you're building things)

This isn't just about movies or games. It's about everything being made today: apps, newsletters, startups, courses.

As an entrepreneur, you’re not immune.

You’ve probably seen it:

• Products that work, but feel lifeless

• SaaS tools bloated with features nobody uses

• Brands that talk like ChatGPT on Xanax

That’s slop too. Just with a different coat of paint.

Here’s how to build without falling into it:

• Stay small on purpose. The more layers between you and the thing you’re making, the more chances slop seeps in. Protect the directness.

• Refuse generic. In a world templated to death, the smallest bit of taste stands out. Bring taste back into tech. Refine. Redesign. Rewrite. Obsess.

• Make for someone specific. If your product tries to appeal to everyone, it ends up meaning nothing to anyone. Understand your people better than they understand themselves.

• Keep your edge. Compromise is where slop breeds. Keep the part of you that wants to say: "No, this isn’t good enough."

This era rewards shipping fast and scaling thoughtlessly. But those who care about nuance, emotion, and coherence will always outlast the churn.

Because the opposite of slop isn’t polish. It’s intention.

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But I came back.

The new features were too good. Especially one: chat history reference.

Since then, I’ve been using it daily for things I used to avoid or overthink. With this setup, I think 10x faster. I see through things in ten minutes that used to take me hours.

1. Offloading my inner world (Enneagram + Spiral Dynamics)

I gave it my type. My level. My blind spots.

Then I layered in chats: explaining how I work, how I see things, what drives me.

Now I ask it things I used to journal about. Why did I react like that? What was the signal beneath the emotion? Did it move me closer to alignment or not?

It doesn’t give answers. It mirrors back clarity.

And that’s enough.

2. Grounding health in my genetics

I know, this is where people start yelling about privacy.

But I’m not uploading my full genome. I used a service that analyzes key SNPs and gives you a PDF: methylation, detox, dopamine, COMT, all of it.

I dropped that file into a project.

That single move killed 80% of hallucinations. Because now ChatGPT is using a single reference I trust.

I also added my current supplement stack and diet.

So when I get a new symptom, I open a new chat, describe what changed, and it answers from inside that context.

It’s like having a second brain that doesn’t forget what you’ve already tried.

3. Clarifying what I actually think

When I hit a new idea — a health theory, a political take, a cultural debate — I don’t react. I paste it in a chat and talk it through.

Most of the time, I’m not “undecided.”

I’m unformed.

There’s something there, but it hasn’t surfaced yet.

The chat helps me shape it. Without noise.

That’s how I avoid drowning in content. And how I stop groupthink before it starts.

Try my flow (if you want to think faster + clearer)

• Set up a ChatGPT project.

• Make sure chat history reference is on.

• Upload a few documents that define you: personality frameworks, health history, core beliefs, whatever shapes your lens.

• Start chatting. Treat it like a mind mirror, not a task monkey. Be curious and dig deep.

• When something big hits (a symptom, a trigger, an idea), create a fresh chat, and explore.

Most people don’t need more inputs.

They need sharper ways to process what’s already inside.

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But once your health is properly wrecked, the hacks from health gurus stop working. Guaranteed.

“Just eat real food” won’t save you. For more people than you think, food alone isn’t enough.

I know because my health collapsed 15 years ago. And I’ve tried everything since.

For context:

• I never drank more than one glass of wine a month

• I’ve been sleeping 8+ hours for years and mouth-taped before it was trendy

• I ditched seed oils before it was a Twitter meme

• I’ve cycled through every diet imaginable — paleo, keto, carnivore, vegan, low-FODMAP, SCD, you name it

Nothing worked.

My lowest point was beyond exhaustion

At my worst:

• I needed 14–16 hours of sleep just to function

• Brain fog so heavy I couldn’t think straight

• Walking 10k steps wiped me out for a full day

• Migraines every other day

• Digestion? Let’s not go there

I built a life around low input: 10 hours of work a week, zero stress, just to survive.

I'm better now — but not because of food

Now? I’m better. Not cured, not perfect. But I can work more — just not full-time. I’ll never go back to 8-hour days.

And the thing that helped me most is why I get so angry at the “just eat real food” crowd.

Because it wasn’t enough.

My energy flipped with two things

I have gene mutations (MTHFR and others) that mess with methylation. It reduces choline and creatine synthesis. Which flattens dopamine. Leading to disastrous energy and motivation.

I could eat a dozen eggs and a steak a day — didn’t matter. My gut doesn’t absorb everything properly.

Here’s what actually worked for me:

• 250–500mg CDP-Choline

• 10–15g creatine daily

Yeah, 10–15g. When I say that, people look at me like I’m insane. But 5g? Nothing. Might as well be a sugar pill.

Some people get side effects on that much creatine. Others — like me — need it just to feel normal.

Look into MTHFR and creatine. You’ll find stories like:

• “Fixed my erectile dysfunction”

• “ADHD symptoms gone”

• “Energy came back after 10 years”

Then you’ll find others saying the opposite. Because genes matter. Gut health matters. Deficiencies matter.

But there’s no money in figuring out your specific biochemical mess. The research will never be enough.

So stop waiting for it. Start experimenting. Carefully, methodically — but don’t mindlessly outsource your body to gurus and PubMed abstracts.

You have to become your own case study.

He said:

Since then, he’s been building again. Not by brute force, but because the story changed.

He’s an Enneagram 4 like me — so I get it.

When you’re wired like us, slop is worse than failure.

We’d rather not ship at all than ship something we don’t resonate with. We’d rather be the tragic figure than the average success story. And if we don’t feel emotionally connected to what we’re making, the drive evaporates.

It’s not laziness. It’s identity.

We want our work to say something about us. To feel alive. To feel true.

But this can lead to paralysis:

• We keep refining instead of shipping.

• We pick work that feels “pure” over work that works.

• We avoid paths where we might succeed… but feel ordinary.

So how do we move forward?

Not by pretending to be someone else.

Not by forcing ourselves into productivity porn.

But by flipping the script:

• Resonance doesn’t have to mean delay. You can build fast and care deeply. The key is choosing ideas that spark you and committing to finishing without editing the life out of them.

• Being unique doesn't mean being stuck. A shipped product that doesn’t totally reflects your voice is more rare than a half-finished one stuck in your drafts.

• Validation isn’t a business model. Likes and sympathy feel good. But it’s not putting food on the table. Successful entrepreneurs just build until they make it instead of worrying about validation from peers or the community.

You don’t protect your uniqueness by standing still.

You prove it by making things that couldn’t come from anyone else.

Step by step.

What happens when you challenge the consensus

Take creatine. The consensus says 5g a day. But when I bumped it to 10–15g? Everything changed.

What I expected:

• Faster recovery — 5g were not enough to do that (for me)

What I didn’t expect:

• Ridiculous sexual stamina

• Full control over ejaculation

When I shared this, I got the usual response: “Placebo.” “Pointless.” “Wasting your money.”

They recite their gospel — “muscle saturation maxes at 5g” — while ignoring the mounting evidence of other benefits at higher doses.

Challenge the dogma? You're a heretic.

Why gatekeepers hate what works

This isn’t just about supplements.

Take the Enneagram. It’s a personality framework with far more practical depth than MBTI.

Critics love to parrot their favorite phrase — “lacks academic validity” — yet after years of practical application, its accuracy and usefulness are undeniable.

What they really mean by “academic validity”:

• Approved by the right institutions

• Packaged in acceptable academic language

• Controlled by traditional gatekeepers

The subtext? If it empowers you without them, it must be discredited.

Science has its blind spots

Tools that empower individual growth often face the strongest opposition from those whose authority depends on maintaining dependency.

The crisis of reproducibility in social sciences exposes the limitations of our current validation methods.

Some truths, especially those involving complex human experiences, defy conventional scientific measurement.

Don’t outsource your truth

I trust science — but only the kind that survives scrutiny and real life.

Years of reading junk science has taught me to balance institutional knowledge with personal investigation.

Dismissing thousands of lived experiences for lacking formal validation: pure intellectual cowardice.

True wisdom lies not in blind acceptance of authority, but in maintaining the courage to think independently while remaining open to all sources of knowledge.

First, a little bit about my drive and work:

• I’m driven by creativity and built for beauty: fashion, architecture, cultivated nature. Anything crafted with intention. Mediocrity isn't an option, it's a slow death.

• I started making profitable online products at the end of the 90s when I was a teenager.

• My entrepreneurial journey started 20 years ago and includes co-founding a web agency, a startup, going solo freelance, and now running a successful marketing agency.

• I code, design, manage products, and market. Not a jack of all trades but a master of systems.

• Would go into woodworking if I wasn’t chronically online.

• My empathy — understanding how others think — is really sharp which has shaped my customer-centric vision and strategy.

A burnout in my 20s created major health issues and forced me to rebuild from scratch:

• Was crippled by chronic fatigue, brain fog, extreme anxiety, and very bad gut function.

• Devoured 100s of health books to address these issues and optimize my wellbeing.

• Designed a stress-free lifestyle that allowed me to be successful when I was barely able to work.

• I leveraged the Enneagram and Spiral Dynamics, among other systems, to understand myself and others, developing my social skills to become confident and dominant.

All these experiences led me to these core beliefs:

• Question authority by nature. Not because it's cool, but because my mind won't let me do otherwise.

• I'm libertarian in theory, pragmatic in practice. Freedom needs a foundation most aren't ready to build.

• I see success in the prism of freedom, not money. Plus, I'd rather have the respect of people I admire than a bank account built on betrayal.

• Sex isn’t recreation. It’s meditation. Deeper, slower, better. In that state, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

• Most health gurus sell solutions for healthy 25-year-olds. Real health problems need real answers, not Instagram wisdom.

• Being the generalist I am in my work and personal life, I have a holistic view of things that let me see patterns others don’t.

• Most (not all) mental issues are really physical issues. Fix your nutrition, and watch your “mental” issues dissolve.

• Always have the Dunning-Kruger effect in mind. If you think you know, you probably don’t.

If these ideas resonate, stick around. We're just getting started.