This essay was originally posted on Stephen’s blog.

Reading biographies and observing friends, family, and colleagues has led me to become interested in what factors drive the variance in cognitive stamina and observed levels of energy between individuals. Identifying the biological, environmental, or motivational factors which produce this difference seems important and neglected. Understanding this is a research agenda’s worth of work, so my contribution will be to draw a conceptual boundary around the idea of an “energetic alien” and explore some (not selected i.i.d.) examples of eminent energetic aliens from different fields, discuss some hypotheses about the energetic alien phenomenon, and then put forth some ideas for how we non-energetic aliens can compensate.

Before diving into examples of energetic aliens, it’s important to define what type of person qualifies as one. Given that I came up with the “energetic alien” idea by finding a bunch of people, deciding that having a term to describe them would be useful, and then looking at shared characteristics amongst them to form a definition, this definition should not be taken as axiomatic. Instead, it’s drawing a useful but fuzzy boundary around an inherently nebulous concept in order to try understand what drives the tail behavior of a continuous trait. Taking this caveat into account, I define an energetic alien as someone who mostly satisfies the first three criteria and possibly the fourth:

1. Able to indefinitely sustain focus on cognitive tasks for more than the well-documented 4-6 hours a day without burning out or starting to make tons of mistakes.

2. Often described as full of energy or having an abundance of energy.

3. Obsessed with their work.

4. (Optional) Can function well while getting less than or equal to 6 hours of sleep.

While all four of these criteria rule out large swaths of the population, I believe 1 to be the most narrowing. Many people I know go through periods during which they work more than average but a smaller subset of them seem to be able to do so without their focus taking a hit and/or it taking a toll on them in the longer term. An even smaller number seem to be able to do this for cognitively stretching work and maintain their cognitive flexibility. As you might notice by way of absence from subsequent sections, I believe this rules out a significant subset of the people I know who work in finance, law, and medicine. Many of these people consistently work long hours, but a large fraction of them tell me that doing so either takes a toll on their creativity.

Unfortunately, I’m still quite uncertain about what set of factors and interactions turn someone into an energetic alien. My initial investigations have pushed me in the direction of thinking that certain predispositions increase the likelihood of certain people fitting the alien criteria but that doing so also depends on controllable things like desire, fit with one’s work, and being in an environment that enables one to follow their curiosity.

In the following sections, I share a bunch of stories and quotes I’ve gathered about individuals who satisfy the energetic alien criteria. In sharing this post with friends before publishing it widely, I’ve found that people vary widely in terms of which examples they think are interesting, with particularly differing preferences for/against the more esoteric STEM examples. As a compromise aimed at providing something for everyone (or at least everyone I care about having enjoy the post), I’ve done my best to interleave the different categories in a way that keeps both groups engaged.

Biology’s an interesting field in which to investigate energetic aliens because excelling at it requires interleaving physical and cognitive skills in order to succeed at bench work and ideation/strategizing.

George Church is a biologist (and disclaimer, a co-founder of my employer) famous for, among other things:

• Publishing the first direct genomic sequencing method (with Wally Gilbert).

• Pioneering multiplex genome sequencing & engineering techniques.

• Playing a role in the initial optimization and “productionalization” of CRISPR.

• Accelerating and improving DNA synthesis.

• Helping to initiate the Human Genome Project.

• Founding a lot of companies.

• Trying to create a viral-immune genome.

• Trying to revive wooly mammoths.

• And much more!

Based on his own interviews, it’s clear that Church qualifies as an “energetic alien”. After finishing his undergrad in 2 years, George Church worked 100 hour weeks in the lab during grad school, famously getting kicked out due to not attending classes because he was just so absorbed in his research. This level of focus seems to be something that George has continued to be able to access throughout his life. Elsewhere, he discusses how he gets so engaged in his work that he forgets to eat for days if no one’s around to remind him:

Veganism is a little difficult to maintain when you travel, but the fact is with my metabolism, I don’t really need to eat more than once every couple of days anyway. Sometimes I’ll miss all the meals in a day. I just forget about it, especially if my family is not around. I get focused on one particular topic that I obsess about, and if there’s nothing that will interrupt me. I just keep going.

Like some of the other examples we’ll look at, George Church self-identifies as non-neurotypical. In addition to his preternaturally deep focus, he has narcolepsy and dyslexia. While the former is inconvenient when it causes him to fall asleep temporarily during panels or conversations, he’s cited it as an enabler of his creativity. This Stat News article Stat News article has a bunch of good quotes about this. Here are a few of my favorites:

Church said “almost all” of his visionary ideas and scientific solutions have come while he was either asleep or quasi-asleep, sometimes dreaming, at the beginning or end of a narcoleptic nap. Such as? The breakthrough during graduate school that ushered in “next gen” genome sequencing, a fast and cheap way to “read” DNA. “Writing genomes,” or constructing them from off-the-shelf molecules as a way to improve on what nature came up with. Innovations in editing genomes.

Or when his computer acts up, he takes it as a sign from the universe to shut down not only the machine but also himself, by sitting or lying down. “Then, when I wake up, I’ll have the solution to either the scientific problem or the computer problem,” he said.

Unexpectedly, narcolepsy also seems to enable Church’s extraordinary work habits. Asked about whether he got tired during his grad school 100 hour work weeks, Church said that he would just fall asleep while working in the lab and wake up and continue (I think this was on 60 minutes, but unfortunately I can’t access it because of a paywall). This suggests that the flipside of the narcoleptic’s inability to control sleep is the lack of issues around needing the right environment to sleep.

While Church’s dyslexia seems less connected to his alien status, it is also worth noting that his ability to focus seems to have helped him compensate for his slower reading. From another interview:

I would “read the pictures” growing up, and I gravitated towards STEM subjects that required less reading. [As an undergrad and grad student] I invented work-around skills. Because I would read very slowly, I would just read all the textbooks before the course started. I would just read them very slowly, but then I’d be done. The other thing I would do is just listen in class. Other students wouldn’t listen, so they had to read, but I could listen and remember just about everything. Reading is still very slow for me, but I figure it out like a puzzle. I also listen to books on tape, or e-books today.

Note the “I would just read all the textbooks” part. As someone who’s spent time reading math & science textbooks on their own (caveat being that I am also not nearly as smart as George Church), I can tell you that even for very smart people, this requires a lot of focus and time!

Leroy Hood is another biology methods pioneer who played a big role in the early development of DNA sequencing and synthesis and is often credited for inventing the term “systems biology”. Similar to Church, Hood has also played a role in founding numerous companies. The (highly recommended) biography of Hood provides ample evidence for, Hood being another member of the energetic alien club.

Discussing Hood’s study habits, the biography shares the following anecdote about how Hood would buckle down during finals:

Hood was gifted with unusual powers of concentration and stamina. During final exams, he would go through the cafeteria in the morning, load up on sandwiches that he could take to the library, and disappear. Having a daylong food supply at his desk kept his energy up without wasting time on formal meals. “He worked much harder than I did,” Adelberger said. “I started eventually adopting some of his practices. It did wonders for my GPA.”

This impressive work ethic persisted throughout his scientific career:

He kept eighteen-hour workdays. Viewing physical endurance as one more way to gain a competitive edge over other scientists, he ran a few miles and did one hundred push-ups every morning before class and lab work.

And:

Hood’s work habits started to become the stuff of legend as the lab scaled up. He’d often do his scientific reading until 11:00 p.m. or midnight, then sleep four to six hours. If he flew to, say, Tokyo to give a talk and arrived home at 2:00 a.m., he’d sometimes go straight to the lab, showing hardly a trace of jet lag, eager to find out what happened while he was gone, former students say. At first glance, unlike Church, Hood seems to be able to perform well while getting much less sleep than the average person.

Hood’s example also shows that being an energetic alien is not necessarily tied to broader neurodivergence. While I don’t want to psychoanalyze Hood, my impression from reading the biography is that, besides his tremendous energy, his biography doesn’t describe any obvious neuroatypicality. This comes through a bit in this quote from Hood’s thesis advisor about Hood’s style:

He’s superb as a scientist, and he’s superb as an administrator and fundraiser, but he wasn’t a risk-taker or an imaginative innovator or whatever.

Unsurprisingly, politicians need to have a lot of energy in order to meet with underlings, rally supporters, debate, etc. Since this post is more focused on outliers in heavy cognitive domains and also because I’m not very interested in politics, I initially mostly ignored examples from it. However, since I know politicians are interesting ot others, I decided to include two examples of people who seemed to fit the energetic alien criteria.

My knowledge of Napoleon is almost entirely based on Matt Lakeman’s amazing summary of his life, so my quote highlighting Napoleon’s boundless energy comes from there as well. Writing about Napoleon’s achievements, Matt Lakeman says:

Even more than speed, Napoleon was remarkable for his energy. A man does not fight 43 battles in 19 years by sitting on his ass. It’s almost hard to wrap your head around how much this guy did. He wasn’t just a prolific general, or politician, or emperor, or diplomat, or lawgiver, or aesthetician, he was all of these things at the same time. Napoleon basically spent 20 years flinging himself around every inch of Europe micromanaging things, including military conquests, government formations, diplomatic negotiations, the economy, universities, the media, theater, and once he weighed in a Parisian murder investigation. He did this by supposedly sleeping four hours per night (in his prime) and verbally dictating dozens to hundreds of letters per day (rapidly burning through personal secretaries in the process).

What strikes me about this is not just that Napoleon had high energy, but that, unlike many modern politicians, his achievements extended beyond the purely political. As Matt Lakeman beautifully captures, Napoleon was simultaneously an accomplished general, politician, lawmaker, and art critic.

Like with many of these stories, it is important to maintain a little skepticism regarding some of the more extreme claims. In particular, while we know short sleepers do actually exist, it can often be hard to distinguish true short sleepers from people who are motivated to exaggerate their ability to go without sleep. Napoleon seems to be a case of the latter. Writing about Napoleon’s supposed 4 hours of sleep a night in a memoir, his private secretary offered the following quote:

“If his enemies, by way of reproach, have attribute to him a serious periodical disease, his flatterers, probably under the idea that sleep is incompatible with greatness, have evinced an equal disregard of truth in speaking of his night-watching. Bonaparte made others watch, but he himself slept, and slept well. His orders were that I should call him every morning at seven. I was therefore the first to enter his chamber; but very frequently when I awoke him he would turn himself, and say, “Ah, Bourrienne! let me lie a little longer.” When there was no very pressing business I did not disturb him again till eight o’clock. He in general slept seven hours out of the twenty-four, besides taking a short nap in the afternoon.”

Note: all the quotes in this section were contributed by a combination of TheTrotters on the SSC subreddit and Fergus McCullogh (via private communication). Thanks to Misha Yagudin as well for pointing out Moses as a candidate for alienhood to me.

Famously popularized by Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, Robert Moses was “the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York” during the early to mid 20th century. Moses was also an energetic alien. To the degree it’s possible given I made up the term, Caro basically said so himself, “Moses’ energy seemed inexhaustible.” He repeatedly emphasizes this same point:

The passion that fired that man-who in 1948 celebrated his sixtieth birthday-was the passion that had fired that man at thirty: the passion for tangible, physical accomplishment, and for the power which that accomplishment produced. And if age had not slaked his appetite for power and achievement, neither had it slaked his appetite for the means to power and achievement: work.

As alluded to in the above quote, Moses’ endurance extended to both the physical and the mental:

Up in the morning at six or seven, he often made breakfast for his wife and brought it to her in bed. In the evenings, at the far side of twelve or fourteen hours of unbroken toil, he would head not for home but for the swimming pool. One weekend, he invited Ingraham to Babylon and told the reporter to come up to Randall’s Island Friday evening and drive out with him. Arriving at five o’clock, Ingraham found Moses in conference, and settled down in the Commissioner’s waiting room. An hour later, he was still waiting; the conference was still on. When it broke up around six-thirty, Ingraham was invited in, and Moses told him he still had a few things to attend to. He was still attending to them at seven o’clock and eight o’clock, and nine o’clock and ten. Rising finally, he said, “Let’s stop off at Earle Andrews’ place on the way out.” The “place” turned out to be Andrews’ glass-enclosed swimming pool in Huntington. Letting himself in with his own key, Moses changed, plunged into the water and began swimming. Watching the muscular arms windmilling endlessly up and down the pool, the drowsy reporter dozed off. Some time later, he awoke. The windmill was still turning; if anything, Ingraham realized with a start, Moses was swimming faster than before. It was, he says, “late” when the Commissioner clambered out of the water, looking as fresh as a youth, and very late indeed when the two men finally arrived at Thompson Avenue. As Ingraham climbed the stairs to the guest room, he saw the Commissioner’s broad back disappearing not into his bedroom but into his study, yellow legal notepad in hand. When Ingraham fell asleep, he knew his host was still working. And what awakened the reporter the next morning-“at some ungodly early hour”- was the smell of bacon and eggs. Hearing him stirring, Mary called up the stairs: “Come on down. Bob’s cooking breakfast.

I’m not going to include all the quotes here, but Caro quotes several others emphasizing Moses’ tremendous endurance and power in the water.

Like other aliens we’ve looked at, Moses was prolific, except with memos instead of books:

During the 1920’s, Moses had established a routine under which, when- ever he was living in Babylon, the chief engineer of the Long Island State Park Commission, Arthur Howland, called every morning at 7:30 at Thompson Avenue to pick up a big manila envelope bulging with the memos, letters, press releases and directives to his executives that Moses had written since leaving the office the night before. Now, after twenty-five years of picking up that envelope, Howland was gone. But the envelope was still there. Every morning, without fail, Howland’s successor, Sid Shapiro, would call at Thompson A v e n u e – a n d every morning, without fail, he would find it sitting there on the newel post at the bottom of the banister. “My God!” says one of his secretaries. “He was a dynamo! Every morning there would be a manila envelope this thick, and six girls .would be working all day to do the things he had done overnight.” Working, that is, after Hazel Tappan had deciphered his handwriting-unintelligible except to his Junoesque chief secretary.

And:

The mail, a huge stack of it, would be waiting for him on the desk of whichever one of his four offices he was using that day. Summoning three secretaries to ring his desk, he would plow through the letters so rapidly- scribbling instructions on some, snapping off orders about others, dictating replies, tossing the letters to the three women in rotation-that within thirty minutes the huge stack of paper would have melted down to the bare desktop.

Moses also showed a characteristic impatience and need to make optimal use of his time regardless of the situation. He’d work in the car on the way to work:

During the 1920’s, Moses had turned the big black Packard in which he had to spend so much time into an office, holding conferences in it with aides whose own limousines trailed behind, waiting to take them off when the conferences were finished, carrying with him always a supply of legal notepads and sharpened pencils and using the time in the limousine for work. Now the limousine was a Cadillac instead of a Packard. But it was still an office.

He’d work on a sailboat while he was supposed to be fishing:

Beneath the big cruiser the flounder might be running. But on more days than not his only catch would be another full manila envelope. The captain would cruise back and forth over the bay hour after hour; hour after hour the figure sitting silently in the deck chair at the stern would be hunched over memos and maps and blueprints. Late in the afternoon, he might take the wheel himself, but the charts his mind would be seeing would not be charts of the bay; once Captain Pearsall forgot to keep watch for a few minutes and Moses ran the boat straight onto a clearly visible sand bar.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, he used vacations and social events for political purposes:

He still invited “friends” for weekends at the rambling old house on Thompson Avenue in Babylon, went clamming with them and his family on Fire Island, was the most charming and gracious of hosts-but the more perceptive among them knew always that they were there not because of friendship but for a purpose, and that before the weekend was over, Moses would be putting his big arm around their shoulders and working for the vote, or the administrative decision, that he needed from them.

Finally, Moses seems to have maintained his productivity as he aged. Caro again:

Age withers the output of most men, but as decade succeeded decade in the career of Robert Moses, his output seemed only to increase. The flow of broadsides delivered daily to a thousand desks never slackened. “Every morning when you came in, there on your desk would be [the mimeographed] memos that Moses had sent to someone and circulated to everyone else,” Law~ence Orton says. They had been on Orton’s desk from the day of his appomtment to the City Planning Commission in 1938; they were on his desk in I 948 and I 958-and there seemed to be more of them than ever. Orton, who read the memos–out of a fearful fascination-says, “It took the first half to three quarters of an hour every day to catch up on your Moses correspondence.” Says Latham: “During the time I knew him-and I knew him for forty-five years-hours didn’t mean anything to him. Days of the week didn’t mean anything to him. When there was work to be done, you did it. That was the way he was then and that’s the way he is now.”

Or, put more poetically:

A quarter of a century before, he had sloughed off the last remaining amenities of living and set before himself a life that would be a feast of work. In 1958, at the age of seventy, he would be still sitting before that feast-with undiminished appetite.

Shifting back to STEM, while I hope the examples I gave of biologists already debunk the notion that energy only matters in business or physical disciplines, I also want to show that energetic aliens also exist in even more abstract domains.

Alexander Grothendieck, who I also discussed in my review of The Art of Learning, was one of the most productive, generative, and eccentric mathematicians of the 20th century. Grothendieck was also an energetic alien. According to multiple sources, he went through a ten-year period during which he invented (I suspect he would say discovered) algebraic geometry while spending 10-12 hours a day doing math at a blackboard. Quoting from this article remembering Grothendieck:

By letter and in conversations, Serre later confirmed this view. Considering that, as a colleague put it, Grothendieck had done mathematics twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and twelve months a year for twenty years, one can only agree.

To some, Grothendieck’s workload may seem light in comparison to Church’s and Hood’s 80-100 hour works. However, anyone who’s taken a pure math class knows that thinking about these ideas is difficult in a way that’s incomparable to most other cognitive activities.

Grothendieck seems to have been non-neurotypical even amongst mathematicians, although how / whether this connects to his stamina isn’t clear to me. Discussing his own mathematical style, Grothendieck wrote:

I can illustrate the second approach with the same image of a nut to be opened.

The first analogy that came to my mind is of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better,and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more flexible through weeks and months – when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado

A different image came to me a few weeks ago.

The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration… the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it.. yet it finally surrounds the resistant substance.

This led him to conclude that his strengths differed greatly from his peers’, writing:

Since then I’ve had the chance in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a