slvr77

Healthy economies will always displace workers through creative destruction. For example, the internal combustion engine decreased demand for horse whip makers but increased demand for oil workers. While few horse whip makers could make the transition to oil workers a healthy economy can usually adjust.

Structural problems in economies can also create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, in a debt based economy debt and savings are just call options on future labor (production). In a healthy economy the concept of debt and savings is used as a way for people to buy and sell call options on their labor. For example a student may choose to sell a call option on his labor by taking on debt for an education with the expectation that his labor will be more valuable in the future. Somebody in middle age may chose to buy a call option on the students labor with the expectation that the value of his labor will decline in his old age.

However in a pathological economy structural problems can create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, if deflation becomes entrenched then all rational actors may chose to defer consumption into the future where labor will be cheaper. This can create structural unemployment like it did in the 1930's. Other examples where the available call option on future labor is smaller than the demand. For example the demand from Baby Boomers looking at retirement, demand from the 1% to maintain their relative wealth, corporate coffers that can't be repatriated due to tax minimization strategies and sovereign wealth funds may exceed the productive capacity of the future labor pool.

In that case the economic system may be 'signaling' to the rising generation to defer their labor but in a way that exceeds their actual capacity to defer the labor creating sub-optimal use of labor.

I have a genetic tweak to that allows me to raise and lower tonic dopamine levels using betaine. It was something that I stumbled on and then spent a few years understanding the impact. While there is a lot of research very little of it is easily translated into human behavior or comprehensive so no good links.

Lots of good advice in this thread but it seems you may have pushed your dopaminergic system into a bit of overdrive. Lots of novelty can leave lots of dopamine floating around your pre-frontal cortex which puts things on a hair trigger. It primes the brain for learning and has the side effects of making reaction times faster and unfortunately more spastic, which destroys fine motor skills like handwriting. It also lowers filters for novel stimulation which makes you more easily distracted. Longer term it will inhibit oxytocin release and make you less bonded to your social group, increase your tolerance for risk and has the side effect of making you feel that you don't measure up and need to prove yourself. If your ADHD drugs are dopamine agonists or partial agonists it likely would have made the problem worse.

Generally you may find yourself more productive if you break your day down into research, planning and implementation. During your planning phase you should limit yourself strictly to pencil and paper and remove computers, cell phones and other electronics. Use this time to design your product in your mind, break it up into sub-components and how they will interact. If you hit a wall due to a lack of knowledge you should work on it until you can write down a specific question that you can't answer and then address it in your next research cycle. Once you have something actionable only then do you move onto implementation and if you run into problems go back to planning.

I am going to warn you that the planning stage will be torture in the beginning! You will feel a huge need to 'get something done' because the lack of novelty will lower dopamine. It will be easier if you do your planning sessions in the morning when your brain has had some time to clear itself of excess dopamine overnight.

Some other supplements that will help clear out excess dopamine include SAM-e and/or TMG; melatonin at night; H2 blockers like Tagamet at night (the are antacids but raise prolactin levels), low dose lithium, avoiding blue light in the evening by using f.lux on your devices and/or blue blocking sunglasses and meditation. Usual caveats apply. I'm not a doctor, your results may vary.