The Enhancement Adoption Funnel
Track interventions from racehorses to wasting-disease patients to bodybuilders to athletes to the rich, and you see a decade ahead.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 86%
This is Ferriss's tracking method, endorsed and extended by Srinivasan in the same exchange. The insight is that the same trick used for technology, looking around corners to see what will be obvious or widespread in five years, works directly on performance enhancement. The mechanism is a fixed adoption ordering. Racehorses come first, because they are subject to the fewest constraints and the most money. Next are patients with wasting diseases, who or whose clinicians view an intervention as a means of last resort. Then bodybuilders, then professional athletes, then rich people. Tracking that progression lets you spot things extremely early, and Ferriss's cited example is modafinil, visible on this funnel roughly ten years before it was widely known as a possible cognitive performance enhancer, though he explicitly says he would not recommend people take it because it is still poorly understood. He notes he put the method into The 4-Hour Body when he wrote it in 2008 and 2009 and that it is still reliable. Srinivasan's addition is that simply monitoring and publishing this funnel on a quarterly basis would be one of the most important newsletters. The cost is manual labour: competitive horse trainers do not sit down over tea and describe their regimens.
Origin
Ferriss developed the funnel while researching The 4-Hour Body in 2008 and 2009, needing a systematic way to find interventions years before they surfaced in mainstream fitness or medical coverage, and reports that the ordering has held up since.
Core principles
- 01Populations facing the highest stakes or the fewest constraints adopt interventions first, so their behaviour is a leading indicator.
- 02The funnel has a stable order: racehorses, then patients with wasting diseases using it as a means of last resort, then bodybuilders, then professional athletes, then rich people.
- 03Anything visible in the early stages of the funnel arrives in general discourse roughly a decade later.
- 04The information is hard-won rather than public, because the earliest adopters have every reason not to discuss their regimens.
- 05Spotting something early in the funnel is not an endorsement; early-stage compounds are frequently still poorly understood.
- 06The same look-around-corners logic that works for technology adoption works for physiological interventions.
How to run it
- 1
Set up the five-stage board
Create explicit tracking lanes for racehorses, last-resort patients with wasting diseases, bodybuilders, professional athletes, and wealthy private clients. Each intervention gets placed in a lane.
Pro tip Date every entry so you can measure how long each stage transition actually takes.
Watch out Collapsing the stages into one watchlist destroys the leading-indicator value.
- 2
Scan the earliest lanes on a schedule
Work equine and veterinary performance sources and last-resort clinical literature first, since these are where things appear years before anywhere else.
Pro tip Wasting-disease and cachexia literature is public and underread relative to its signal.
Watch out The earliest lanes are the least documented publicly and require real manual effort.
- 3
Accept that the early stages require legwork
Recognise that competitive horse trainers will not sit down with you over a cup of tea on first meeting and describe their regimen, for understandable reasons. Build relationships and read obliquely.
Pro tip Banned-substance list additions are a public trailing signal that confirms what the early lanes already knew.
Watch out Absence of published evidence at the early stages is expected and is not evidence of absence.
- 4
Log movement down the funnel quarterly
On a quarterly cadence, review which interventions moved a stage. Movement, not presence, is the signal that something is about to become widely known.
Pro tip Srinivasan's suggestion is that this quarterly publication would itself be one of the most important newsletters going.
Watch out Ad hoc review loses the timing information the funnel exists to provide.
- 5
Separate spotting from adopting
Keep a firm wall between identifying something early and taking it. Ferriss flags modafinil as an example he spotted a decade early and still does not recommend, since it remains poorly understood.
Pro tip Record the open questions alongside each entry so the unknowns stay visible.
Watch out There are both medical and legal consequences attached to many items surfaced by this funnel.
In the wild
Ferriss cites modafinil as a concrete output of the funnel: visible through this progression roughly ten years before it was widely known as a possible performance enhancer for cognition. He pairs the example with an explicit disclaimer that he would not recommend people take it, because it is still pretty poorly understood.
→ The funnel delivered a decade of lead time on a compound that later entered mainstream discussion, while the accompanying caution kept spotting separate from adopting.
The same look-early principle appears in the myostatin discussion. Selectively bred Belgian Blue cattle and bully whippets show what myostatin inhibition produces in living animals, decades before the human conversation matured. Ferriss points listeners at the photographs as the most legible available evidence of what the pathway does.
→ Animal models occupying the earliest funnel stage gave a visible preview of a mechanism that only later entered human performance discussion.
Common mistakes
Treating funnel presence as a recommendation
Something appearing early in the funnel means it is unproven, not promising. Ferriss's own modafinil example carries an explicit do-not-recommend attached to it.
Starting the scan at the athlete stage
By the time an intervention reaches professional athletes it is already three stages in and most of the lead time has been consumed. The value lives in the horse and last-resort-patient lanes.
Expecting the early lanes to be well documented
The people at the front of the funnel have strong reasons not to publish. Requiring clean public sources before logging an item means you will only ever see the funnel's late stages.
Is it for you?
Best for
Researchers, writers, and self-experimenters who want a repeatable scanning beat rather than reacting to whatever the wellness press covers.
Not ideal for
People looking for a safe protocol to follow, since the funnel surfaces things precisely before their risk profile is understood.
From the transcript
“you can do that with performance enhancement sports very easily too you look at racehorses and then you look at say patients with wasting diseases…”
“and then you have bodybuilders and then professional athletes and then you have rich people right so if you just kind of track that progression…”
“just monitoring that funnel and publishing that funnel on a quarterly basis would be one of the most important newsletters”
From the episode
#606: Balaji S. Srinivasan — 5-10-Year Predictions, How to Start a New Country, Society-as-a-Service (SaaS), Bitcoin Maximalism, Memetic Warfare, How Prices Are Born, Moral Flippenings, The One Commandment, and The Power of Missionary over Mercenary