Nimendra's Notes 🪴

Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body

5 min read

books booknotes health neuroscience productivity

Sleep, naps, and NSDR

  • A 15–20-minute nap can improve concentration, mood, and energy for the rest of the day. A 5–10-minute nap may give a smaller, shorter-lived boost.
  • If working through heavy emotions, the book suggests a longer nap, up to 90 minutes. A nap of around 45 minutes may leave you groggy if it ends before REM sleep.
  • Don’t force a nap if you aren’t tired during the day and sleep well at night.
  • Use non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) for 10–30 minutes. One suggested time is first thing in the morning after a poor night’s sleep.

Stress control

  • Stress is a physiological response, not just an uncomfortable feeling. A perceived stressor activates hormones and neuromodulators, including cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.
  • For a quick downshift, use the physiological sigh: inhale deeply through the nose, take a second sharp nasal inhale, then exhale slowly through the mouth. Repeat up to three times as needed.
  • The book recommends regular cold exposure, such as a cold shower or ice bath, three to seven times per week.
  • Try a short, scripted NSDR session, or build a five-minute meditation into a daily routine. Morning meditation may be easier to maintain because it happens before the day’s demands take over.

Supplements mentioned for stress

The book lists these options for reducing aspects of the stress response:

  • Ashwagandha: 200–300 mg, once or twice daily, in the afternoon and/or evening.
  • L-theanine: 100–200 mg, one to three times daily. The author suggests pairing it with caffeine for regular caffeine users or during unusually stressful periods.
  • Phosphatidylserine: 400–800 mg once daily, after 4 p.m.
  • Rhodiola rosea: 200 mg once or twice daily.

These are the author’s suggestions, not personalized medical advice. Check suitability and interactions with a qualified clinician, especially before starting supplements.

Nutrition

The Clean Omnivore Diet

  • The suggested approach is called the Clean Omnivore Diet. It includes animal and plant foods, with animal foods such as meat, eggs, and shellfish generally providing little or no carbohydrate.
  • Aim for 90% or more of food to be unprocessed or minimally processed. Build meals from single-ingredient foods such as meat, fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables, rice, beans, oats, pasta, and oils.
  • Limit ready-to-eat packaged foods and packaged multi-ingredient foods, especially products with added sugar. Choose plain yogurt and cottage cheese, and add fruit or other flavorings yourself.
  • Nut butters can be nutritious, but the book notes their high calorie-to-protein ratio and recommends moderation, particularly when trying to lose body fat.

Hydration and fats

  • Aim for 18–24 ounces of water after waking, then about 80 ounces over the first ten hours of the day, spread out as practical.
  • Include healthy fats in meals and snacks. Favor unsaturated fats such as olives, avocados, olive oil, and avocado oil.
  • Eat fatty, cold-water fish such as salmon, sardines, mackerel, or herring once or twice a week. The author also suggests considering fish, krill, or algae oil supplements, with a target of about 1,000 mg EPA per day.
  • Include two to four servings of low-sugar fermented foods daily, such as sauerkraut, kimchi, brined pickles, kefir, low-sugar kombucha, miso, or natto.

Focus and learning

The SDAP cycle

The book summarizes its learning and performance cycle as:

  1. Get alert.
  2. Get and stay focused.
  3. Maintain a state of urgency.
  4. Embrace errors that arise from genuine attempts.
  5. Rest.
  6. Repeat the performance.
  • Alertness and focus require elevated arousal without tipping into stress. Sleep, NSDR, stress control, and nutrition are foundational tools for getting there.
  • Put your phone away. Even having it nearby can make cognitive work harder.
  • Focus and flow are not the same. Focus supports learning and plasticity; flow is useful for performing skills that are already learned.
  • Hydration and stable blood sugar support focus. The book also discusses caffeine and theanine, including trying 100 mg of theanine alongside caffeine.
  • Silence is presented as the best default for focus, apart from specific sound-based tools such as 12–20 Hz binaural beats.

Return attention to the present

Periodically notice whether your thoughts are on the task and place around you or pulled into the past or future. If they have wandered, tether attention to current sensory details: the temperature of the room, its smells, or what people nearby are doing.

Emotional resilience

  • Lasting cognitive and behavioral change comes from neuroplasticity. Plasticity can be adaptive, as in learning a skill, or maladaptive, when it makes life harder.
  • The book encourages turning difficult feelings into constructive action rather than using them for self-destruction or lashing out.
  • For a difficult experience, write for 15–20 minutes a day for four consecutive days. Write honestly about what happened, what you felt then and now, and any lasting effects. Stop when the timer ends; the writing does not need to be polished or shared.
  • In grief, allow 10–30 minutes a day to feel the attachment fully. Try not to reduce the emotion or dwell on counterfactual “what if” scenarios.
  • James Hollis’s motto, as presented in the book: Shut Up. Suit Up. Show Up. Practice gratitude instead of complaining, use a task-switching routine to move between roles, and fulfill those roles through action.

Selected highlights

“Silence is best.”

“All sustained behavioral and cognitive change is the result of plasticity.”

“Get alert. Get and stay focused. Maintain a state of urgency. Embrace errors that arise from genuine attempts. Rest. Repeat your performance.”

“Losers take the negative things that happen to them and the feelings that come from things that suck… and they wallow and they use it for self- or outward destruction. Winners however take whatever they feel—even if it sucks—and they transmute those feelings into actions that are good for themselves and for the world.”

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