Welcome to part 4 of our series on sex, productivity and motivation.
This article is about sexual energy and sexual transmutation, and how you can harness this energy to send your productivity into overdrive. I promise that it will be nothing woo-woo – it’s about controlling desire, and about conserving and channeling your sexual “energy” (and related “energy” from attraction and flirting) towards productive ends, like getting more things done.
Update: click here for part 5.
Quick Note
We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from everyone about the series – thank you for all of it, both good and bad.
As much as we love getting emails saying “hey, that makes a lot of sense, thanks!” it’s actually a little surprising that more people haven’t been offended – sex is a controversial topic after all.
Based on requests, the remaining articles in this series are going to be shorter, with less theory and more practical applications.
Quick Summary: Sexual Energy and Transmutation
Thanks to Cameron (who wrote in), you’re going to be seeing more summaries at the beginning of our articles from now on.
Basically, sexual energy and sexual transmutation comes down to:
- Not masturbating.
- Continuing to have sex.
- Getting a crush.
- Channeling all the emotions, feelings and energy into productive things.
- Understanding how this applies differently to men and women.
Let’s get into the details.
Sex Transmutation
As far as we know, Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich is the modern granddaddy of all theory on sexual energy. Sure, the whole idea of conserving sexual energy does go back further to Taoist and other Eastern traditions, but the first widespread, modern record is from Hill.
There are a couple of interesting things about what Hill wrote:
- He never actually tells you what to do, but does wax lyrical and skirt around the topic a lot.
- He only talks about men.
- When talking about Think and Grow Rich, no one ever mentions the sex transmutation chapter.
Channeling Sexual Energy (Transmutation)
As far as we can tell, the theory and scientific background for conserving sexual energy is fairly poor, and most accounts are self-reported, common folk knowledge or observational. So let’s skip that and get right into the how of channeling sexual energy – how to turn your desire, your love, your romance, your attraction… into action towards productive things.
Keep in mind that while the principles of this are the same for men and women, the real-life application may be different because of differing biological imperatives and social forces.
For Men: Stop Masturbating
For men, it’s straightforward.
Here’s what Napoleon Hill was trying to tell you but couldn’t find the right words to do so:
Stop Masturbating.
It’s that simple.
Why? There are a lot of reasons. Here are some:
- Fewer ejaculations equate to better focus and a greater ability to work. Your body actually builds up larger quantities of testosterone.
- Historically speaking, most men masturbate as teenagers growing up, but as their access to women grows as they get older, most drop the habit. With the advent of Internet pornography, this process has gone out the window.
- If you abuse masturbation, it becomes a success barrier in your life. Think about all the time you’ve spent masturbating, and the opportunity cost.
- Giving up masturbation helps you give up pornography, which has its own set of problems. More to come in part 6.
The mechanism upon which this works is largely unknown and most people try to explain it spiritually through chakras and energy points and whatnot, but basically you conserve energy/hormones/emotion/focus and are able to channel them into other things, creating incredible results.
Now while the instructions are simple, the application is not. Most modern men simple cannot stop masturbating. Interestingly enough, more women than men can stop masturbating. Here are some tips for making this happen:
- Recognize that you will feel the need to masturbate or have sex. Keep having sex. But if masturbation is your only option – don’t. In the beginning, it’s just your body going through withdrawal from a long-formed habit. Instead of masturbating, force yourself to sit down and work – over time, this gets easier and the work you produce will be of incredible quality (not to mention efficient).
- Seriously, resist the temptation to masturbate. If you really can’t stand it, call your girlfriend/a girl over. It’s better.
- If you really can’t concentrate on work, you need to switch up activities. Go to the gym. Go for a walk. Go out and flirt with women. You can do anything else – as long as it’s not watching porn or masturbating.
For Men: What About Sex?
You’ll notice that we’ve said to keep on having sex.
Now if you’re really hardcore about this, you should have sex, but not ejaculate (we have a friend who does this – he pretty much kicks ass all the time). For the rest of us, continue having sex normally.
Your body knows the difference between sexual intercourse, and masturbation. Your mind does too. After intercourse, you get a healthy dose of oxytocin and testosterone. After masturbation, you mostly get dopamine, which can dramatically throw off your mental state (especially if you masturbate a lot).
What about oral sex or digital stimulation? Well, there’s no concrete data available, but our best guess is that the presence of a woman has something to do with hormone release, and that both are somewhere in-between masturbation and intercourse.
After you have sex, be sure to take zinc supplements. Zinc provides the raw material for the production of prostate fluid and semen, and your body will be in a deficit after sex.
For Men: Make Love To Your Mission
So now that you have all this pent up sexual energy from not masturbating, the question becomes what do you do with it.
There are two options here.
- If you are pretty self-disciplined, simply take your mission in life and follow it. Use the internal arousal and desire and focus in on that mission with everything that you have. If you don’t have a mission, we suggest reading The Power of Story and The Way of the Superior Man to help formulate one.
- If you have trouble being self-disciplined, you want to learn to make love to your mission. Give it a form, make it feel sexy, and feel love for it. Once you’ve done this, get to it.
Yes, Thanh and I do indeed make love to productivity on a daily basis.
When you start to do this, amazing things happen in your life. The most noticeable will be how productive and efficient you become at getting things done. People around you will also sense it – and you’ll start to attract good things into your life, be they resource, contacts, people, women etc.
For Men: What About That Woman?
If you read the chapter on sex transmutation in Think and Grow Rich carefully, you’ll notice that Hill makes a lot of references to finding the “right woman” to act as a sort-of muse for men.
For men, finding a specific woman to direct this energy towards isn’t actually necessary. The energy/built-up emotions and feelings that come from following the protocol of:
- Not masturbating,
- Continuing to have sex as per normal,
- Continuing on your mission in life,
is more than enough for most men. This is mostly because men have a biological imperative to seek out new partners to impregnate all the time, and thus focussing on a specific woman isn’t actually related to channeling their sexual drive.
Now there is an “exception” here, which is the concept of pair bonding. This applies much more to women and we’ll discuss it in detail below, but make a mental note that it is something that men can also do, if they find that it works for them.
For Women: Stop Masturbating?
As we noted earlier, Hill never mentions how women can channel sexual energy in Think and Grow Rich. We suspect that this is because at time of writing, there just weren’t as many women climbing corporate ladders and achieving awesome things as there are today, so Hill had no reference point. There may also have been less understanding about the nature of female desire and libido in Hill’s time.
So, the interesting question is – will simply stopping masturbation and focussing in on a mission work for women too?
We don’t see any reason that it won’t.
The only thing that is stopping us from simply telling women to do the same as men, is that there just aren’t as many women with single-minded missions in life (even today). This can be partly explained through a psychological difference between the sexes – men are typically more stubborn when they decide to do something and require less social approval. Based on our own social circles and network, we’ve also found that comparatively more men than women have strong missions in life.
Note: Actually most people in general don’t have a mission in life. But within the spectrum of men and women who do, the men vastly outnumber the women. This can be partially explained by remembering that gender relations outside North America and Anglo countries tend to be more “traditional”.
There may also be a physiological reason why this doesn’t work as strongly for women too – according to Taoist and other Eastern traditions, when a woman orgasms, she expends far less “energy” than when a man does (they offer this as a explanation for women being multi-orgasmic while most men are not). This sort of makes sense – men ejaculate semen upon orgasm, women do not (female ejaculation is something entirely different). Less sexual energy spent means less need to conserve it, meaning that women are probably already channeling it into other things effectively, so conserving and channeling a bit more through refraining from masturbation will have a smaller impact on productivity and results.
If you are a woman reading this, we say go ahead and try what Hill suggested to men: stop masturbating, keep having sex and channel energy towards your path in life.
For Women: Get a Crush
We briefly mentioned pair bonding above. Essentially, it’s biological parlance for having a crush.
Credit goes to Arden Leigh from A Weapon of Mass Seduction for pointing this out to us on Twitter – it really was the “missing piece” in working out how sexual energy and transmutation works for women.
Simply put, having a crush is having emotions or feelings channeled towards the potential of a future pair bond. The urge to pair bond is extremely strong in human beings, and as Arden Leigh puts it, “You’ll do anything to impress them”. This can be someone you’re already in a relationship with (spouse, boyfriend, fiancee), or someone you would like to be in a relationship with.
For women, it is more of an emotional crush than a sexual one. This is because sex is typically an emotional experience for women, whereas for men there tends to be a clear separation between the physical and emotional components.
Channeling this crush is simple: simply think of the object of your crush as you’re working on projects, and push forward with them.
Now just as it is unclear if refraining from masturbation and channeling focus into a life mission works for women, it is also unclear whether this process of having a crush and seeking to impress them works for men. If biological imperatives have anything to do with it, we would say no. Men simply aren’t wired to be as predisposed to pair bonding as women are. If anything, men have more of a “sexual crush”, which can be incredibly powerful in boosting productivity and motivation (basically, same thing as refraining from masturbation, and using thoughts of sex/women to focus in on work). There is a problem with this though – this sexual crush quickly fades once a man has had sex with the object of his crush, and men who are quite successful with women tend not to get crushes.
Bottom line: as a man, if you can use sexual crushes to help motivate you, great. If not, just stop masturbating and focus on your mission.
For Women: Keep Having Sex
All the benefits that men derive from sexual intercourse, women also derive (albeit, in the form of estrogen, not testosterone).
We’v also been told by numerous women that sex provides a giant emotional and physical reset for them, reducing stress, unblocking emotions and even resolving migraines. Probably something to do with all those good hormones.
For Women: Embracing Femininity
We briefly mentioned above the “man on a mission” effect – where a man channeling all his energy and concentration and focus into his mission in life becomes magnetic and starts to draw in all the things he needs.
Women have this too, but they have another way of getting it: femininity.
Femininity is the one huge thing that separates women from men. Seems obvious, but in today’s world it often is not.
Now what exactly to do we mean by femininity? Some modern interpretations would be:
- Dressing up.
- Taking care of oneself – exercise, diet, appearance.
More than that, it is being a woman rather than a man. Editor’s note: the corollary is also true for men – be a man, not a woman.
The clearest example of this is spending time in countries like Sweden or Norway – egalitarian and developed societies by any measure, but you can obviously tell that the women are happy with being women, while the men are happy with being men.
Women who have embraced their femininity have a balance and poise that is apparent to the people around them – it shows that you’ve got being a woman handled. As one of our female reviewers put it to us: it creates self-confidence and makes her feel better about herself. In turn, this leads to an increased motivation to do things, and a more productive life.
Similar to how we’ve looked at sexual energy and a mission for men, an abundance of feminine energy attracts resources, people, ideas, creativity and a whole lot more into a woman’s life.
Simple action step: embrace femininity.
A Note on Tantra
As part of our research into this we inevitably came across the concepts of tantra. It generally boils down to this (for men): learn to have sex without ejaculating.
Personally, we don’t think that men reading this should stress about tantra too much – the goal of sex without ejaculation is achievable, but as you’ve seen, is completely unnecessary to transmute sexual energy.
One caveat though: a lot of new age communities who have borrowed tantra traditions will try to convince you that orgasms are bad for men and good for women – this is total nonsense.
Action Steps
Men:
- Stop masturbating.
- Make love to your mission.
- Keep having sex.
- If it works, get a crush.
Women:
- Get a crush.
- Keep having sex.
- Embrace femininity.
- If it works, stop masturbating and make love to your mission.
Update: click here for part 5.
Comments, questions and complaints can be left below. If anything’s unclear, please do ask – these concepts are crystal clear to Thanh and myself and the people we’ve talked it over with. We want the same to be true with our readers.
Photos by: Kashirin Nickolai, thecrazyfilmgirl, JD Hancock, o5com
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy our Premium Newsletters. It's where we share our cutting-edge productivity secrets. Click here to learn more about them.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said Mr Lynn,
Just thought about Napoleon Hill this morning, and thought it was a good idea to google this.
Here’s some extra food for thought,
http://www.asfgold.com/seduction/offtopic/humor/how-2-get-laid-no-nonsense-guide
Time to get productive,
Cheers!
From the URL I thought that was spam, but it’s actually a good “kick in the behind” read – especially if you’re a guy.
Hi Aaron
I have been reading a lot about sex transmutation , and I thought I should give it a try . This is my 45th day after I decided to stop masturbation . I can see the profound effects of it , my energy levels have shot up .But for me to stop doing it , I thought the only way out was to watch porn but not to masturbate . First five times were the hardest , but now it has become really easy I should say after 45 days to control the need to ejaculate when Im at my peak. So my question to you is
1- Is it ok If I watch porn but dont masturbate . Will that yield the effects that napoleon hill talked about .
2-Secondly , will there be any health problems because of me getting high and then abruptly stopping it .
3-Are there any exercises to transform the stored energy into something more productive .
Hey Gowtham,
So if I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying you’re getting sexually aroused through watching pornography still? We have a follow up article about that:
http://www.asianefficiency.com/health/sex-productivity-and-motivation-part-06-pornography/
Porn has its own set of problems.
As for transforming that high/sexual energy into something productive, it just takes discipline. Work out what it is you want to get done, and start doing it. It’ll be hard for the first little bit, but as you get used to recognising that sensation of stored energy and channeling it towards your goals, it becomes easier.
Hope that helps.
- Aaron
Given that “fewer ejaculations equate to better focus and a greater ability to work”, and sexual intercourse usually results in ejaculation, wouldn’t logic dictate that sexual intercourse is detrimental to focus and ability to work?
Yes.
If you’re willing to give up on sex as well, go for it.
My personal take is that the health benefits of sex outweigh the loss in productivity.
What do you mean by saying “Make love to your mission”? Can you be more practical about it?
Learn to recognise the feelings of sexual arousal and excitement and instead of looking for an outlet for release (for most men that would be a partner or porn/masturbation), take a moment to breathe and then focus in on working on your goals/mission.
It sounds a little woo-woo but it works.
AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME.
Excellent article. And I don’t give high praise easily.
Thank you!
what do you mean by makeing love to your mission?
I find this all very interesting because I’m basically already doing most of this. Through trial and error and thanks to my fairly unique situation, I’ve determined that this is how I want to live my life for the next few years.
I believe I’ve benefited partly thanks to abstinence, to waste less time on this self sexual activity and be less distracted from my aspirations. I’ve come to feel that masturbation coupled with pornography promotes a cascade of urges that I can never really satisfy. It would usually evolve to the point to where if I were to masturbate during the day, the feeling would return often, and continually pull me away from my work, or make resisting and staying on task an even more difficult struggle.
Since I was young I was attracted to the idea of not having sex before marriage, and so I have been celibate to this day. I assumed that to actually achieve this goal, I would inevitably have to use masturbation as a release. So from there I figured out that through ejaculation and with it’s associated hormones, it had noticeable effects on my mood. I could reduce not only those sexual urges temporarily, but also feelings of loneliness as well. Over time, I did correlated that regular masturbation had negative effects mainly as one of the largest time sinks and distractions in my life.
About a year ago, I became infatuated with a girl to a degree that I’ve never experienced before. I felt a new vigor and motivation for life, and that was to attain her by first improving and becoming my ideal self. The infatuation seemed profound, but so was my motivation, and I honestly haven’t found anything else in my life to this date, that motivates me more than finding a significant other. Masturbation was one of the habits I wanted to kick while attempting to woo her. For the first time I was able to go a significant time without masturbating, and through wanting her I was motivated to finally do it.
This motivation also effected my drive in other aspects of my life. Along striving to achieve my goals such as academic success, I also began exercising frequently. Through that experience I suspect that exercise, and aerobic exercise specifically plays a significant role in improving the functioning of the brain, and benefits tasks such as studying. Another positive effect of exercise for me, is that it seems to reduce sexual urges as well, making resisting masturbation easier. So I believe that a balanced diet (because it is strongly linked with exercise and a healthy well being), exercise, abstinence, and spirituality seems to be a positive feed back cycle that feed into each other.
Another key factor that I believe has reinforcing effect on reducing masturbation is the ability to change your environment, and then refuse to begin your old habits once in the new environment. I was able to do this through moving to a different apartment, and I feel that being in that different space helps me to reinforce that I’m starting new habits.
About this time last year I felt more productive than I ever have for most of my life. However, there was a problem with the infatuation. The caveat is that for me chasing this girl who I was infatuated with, was almost too much of necessity for my well being. Unfortunately when that relationship didn’t work out as I had intended, I had lost a lot of that drive.
Fast forward to now and I’m in a similar situation where there is another girl, who I am very much interested in, but not in not the same immature way as the one before. I don’t expect it to be as immediate as before, and I accept that things may never work out, and I’m ok with that. Still, the hope of creating a loving relationship with her is what I would describe as intoxicating, and trying to attain that goal by first being the best I can be is helpful in my daily life. It’s as if every stride that I make in productivity is bringing me closer to her. So I would agree that I am making her my muse, and being very patient as well.
It seems even odd to me that I haven’t fully committed myself to trying to actually attain her yet, and I’m sure someone else may wonder the same. Firstly, what I’ve noticed about my character is that I have a difficult time selling myself when I don’t feel I am up to my own personal standards. In an analogy, I can’t sell the product if I don’t think it’s up to par. This is especially true when I see admirably traits in those that I am interested in. My ideal path through life is first to be well footed on the road to my personal success, then enter the dating realm, and once I find the right person, marriage. I think I have missed out on quite a few opportunities for relationships because of this reasoning, but I am afraid that if I do commit too much to someone before I am ready, I may stray from my ideal path, or I will not be able to relate to her, or display admirably characteristics to her. I have a hard to being my happy, authentic and my confident self when my ideas of success are not on track. I also think committing to someone too soon will make me want to have sex before I can consider marriage. So I am content to being patient and there is something else that inspires me to continue with this crazy idea. I have subtlety tried to explain that I need time first for myself, and she seems to understand that I can’t be with her at the moment. I think she does know that, or in the very least, I am making myself believe that. We’ve recently parted ways for the time being, but she did mention she would be waiting for me.
The reason why I found this article was because of this latest self discovery. I had this extraordinary realization that when I feel urges I don’t have to fight and resist them, but instead I can interpret them in a different way, and channel it into being productive. I now accept those feelings of arousal and use them as a reminder that if I’m productive enough, I will potentially be able to experience those feelings and many more with her. Which I assume will be much more rewarding. I think this is what Allan was partly referring to. In the literal sense, I am making love with her as my mission, but I am also linking my sexuality with productivity, and the feelings they generate in me are becoming similar.
There has been a lot of error before in my progression, and I’m not sure if this strategy will work out for me yet, but I’m glad that I found this article to help reinforce this idea. To me my biggest concern is that I am using an extrinsic motivation to get me going along, but I have noticed that as I become more efficient in my work, I am building more intrinsic motivations to master my skills.
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the taking the time to write/share that.
We’re huge fans of the idea that if it works for you, use it and go for it, no matter what other people may tell you is “right” or “wrong”.
That being said, what you said about using extrinsic motivation (in this another person) as motivation is pretty spot-on – intrinsic motivation is way, way better in the long run.
- Aaron
The more I keep reading about how “men are meant to impregnate many people; women are meant to pair bond” and how sex is more emotional for women and not men leads to me wonder if God or nature totally hates women. Seems like female hearts and emotions were setup to get the shaft and get broken from this assumed genetic makeup of humans from the get go. No thanks.
What if our ancestors were multi-dimensional beings and not animals? What if sex was not meant purely for procreation but also for love and affection and bonding as well? That changes the picture quite a bit.
Mike,
Thank you for sharing that. There are many things in your story that are very familiar to me and your ideas and solutions are, then, very pertinent for me. Thank you for sharing. One thing, in particular, that I liked about what you said is:
“I had this extraordinary realization that when I feel urges I don’t have to fight and resist them, but instead I can interpret them in a different way, and channel it into being productive.”
That is a wonderful idea. In the past, when I had urges I would fight them and try to distract myself and forget about them and so on. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I like your idea of acknowledging them and simply moving on from them or redirecting them. That is something I will try now.
Thank you for being willing to share. It has given ideas, motivation, and reminders to me and quite possibly many others as well.
Hi Aaron,
First of all thanks for this wonderful article about sex transmutation. I had read Napolean Hill’s book and had done some research about Sex transmutation but I haven’t explored it yet for real. Your website is really awesome, and I am determined to explore it and see the results in my life.
But, I wish to place a question before you. I am not sure whether the question in my mind will confuse you, but I am posting it here anyway. May be it will prompt you to look at a new aspect of sex transmutation.
I have a condition which is known as “Autogynephilia”. Which means, I am a man, but I have fantasies about having a feminine identity. I am turned on by the idea of imagining myself as a beautiful woman (I am not a crossdresser, but just have a fantasy of seeing myself in feminine image). Most of my sexual fantasies are in this category, and most of these fantasies lead to masturbation at the end. But I would like to clarify one thing – I am not a gay. When it comes to real sex, I want it with a woman and I am in deep love with a girl as well.
Now, here comes my question – When I give up masturbation and sex fantasies, I am actually giving up feminine sex fantasies. Will the sex transmutation work for me the way you described?
I’m happy that my above mentioned fantasy is harmless in my life, but there could be fetishistic people to whom normal men/women rules don’t apply (frequent crossdressers,transgendered folks,BDSM fans etc). Does the sex transmutation apply to them all? If it works, it is a big solution to millions of fetishes across the world who finds it difficult to actualize their sexual fantasies due to society’s restriction. It could be a panacea for them.
Thanks,
J
Hey J, I don’t really have an answer for you for that one. But I will keep it in mind the next time I run into some people I know from the BDSM community – maybe they can shed more insight into it.
- Aaron
What should you do if…
-you’re asexual, but still masturbate
-being your own gender doesn’t bring you confidence as much as being between the two does
In that case I’m pretty sure cutting out masturbation still equates to time saved (from the activity itself) and there’s no reason as to why you couldn’t channel the drive from that into productive outlets.
Fewer ejaculations doesn’t yield better quality work if the pent up sexual energy is distracting you. Some men feel more aggressive when they haven’t ejaculated and can’t begin to be productive until they do.
Most men, even married men do not have sex with a woman regularly. Masturbation is the norm for most men and historically always has been. Given that sex has always been so taboo to talk about, it’s unlikely any real evidence exist of the masturbation behaviors of men throughout history. What evidence do you have that most men give it up?
Time spent masturbating an opportunity cost?! It doesn’t take that long! A man can ejaculate in a few minutes or less. Absurd.
Giving up porn a goal? Porn having it’s own problems? The only legitimate problem I see with porn for a man is the instant gratification factor. The same can be said of fast food, video games etc. Stimulation that a man doesn’t have to work for can be damaging. Extreme examples are drugs. However, porn provides stimulation for sexual fantasy only, If anything it only helps you ejaculate faster than you would have with the fantasies in your head, saving you valuable seconds in opportunity cost.
Try it and if it doesn’t work out for you – no harm done, go back to masturbation/pornographic consumption.
Also, have a re-read of the science behind pornography and how masturbation plays a role in forming addiction.
Other than its use as a shared experience, pornography is clearly a waste of time, and a distraction that heightens sexual energy and channels it in a destructive direction. Unless you have someplace for it to go, it’s only going to impair your productivity.
However, excess sexual energy is inevitable for anyone who interacts with others. And for those times when sexual interaction is impossible, masturbation is an acceptable, or even useful, release. Let’s face it: nobody–not even James Bond–is able to have sexual relations every time they are needed. “Channeling excess sexual energy into productive activity” sounds like a good way to turn a negative into a positive, but is it really an attempt to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse? Most people find sexual desire distracting, not enhancing.
Another aspect that hasn’t been brought up is the medical one: men who do not ejaculate often enough heighten their risk of prostate cancer. Are you prepared to accept your responsibility for raising that, due to the advice you have given?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4861-frequent-ejaculation-may-protect-against-cancer.html
Hey Bob. The distraction from built-up sexual energy is really a mental thing. It most definitely is possible to channel it productively – not saying that it is easy, but it is doable and the results are quite amazing.
Also we don’t advocate no ejaculation (our friend does so at his own risk), but get your ejaculations while having sex, not masturbating. Also the “need” to have sex – that’s a mental thing that’s better channeled into productive output. Nobody “needs” to be having sexual relations every couple of hours, and your social and dating life can be shaped to accommodate the level that is required.
My only gripe about this article is how simple you make to just “get a girl” as an alternative to masturbating. If it was that easy, OF COURSE it would be easy to stop masturbation and there would be no need for it. When I have a girlfriend, I never masturbate. When it painfully ends, you think all guys can just “go get a girl”? No, the sexual desire is too distracting to be productive and must be released to even begin to be productive for some men.
This makes so much sense. I just realized looking back that when I do these things on certain days, I am incredibly productive. Thanks for boiling it down!
We encourage thoughtful and energetic discussions on our posts as long as they adhere to our commenting policy.
Basically, do not spam :-)