The story behind the asterisk

In September 2026 a chart went around on X. It claimed to show the things people rate most "life changing" for their minds, and "Doing Math" sat in the top-right corner, next to Adderall.

It was a joke. Someone took a real chart from a 2022 survey of nootropics users and edited it: they added "Doing Math", added fake entries, stretched the scale and moved real entries around. A Community Note on the post says so. The survey itself never asked about math.

We liked the joke enough to try to make it true. That is all the ✱ in our headline means. The only promise we make is a small one: you will get faster and more accurate at the math you practice here, and every course page shows you the numbers.

What the real survey did find is worth knowing: hard daily habits, like weightlifting, more sleep and meditation, were rated more life changing than most pills.

Shown small, as commentary. The original chart belongs to the author of the Troof blog; the edit belongs to an anonymous meme maker.

sources

• What I learned gathering thousands of nootropic ratings, the original post and chart (Troof, March 2022).
• Scott Alexander's commentary on that survey, including its selection-bias and placebo caveats.
• The viral post with the edited chart and its Community Note.
• The "math versus meth" follow-up, the joke the meme was made for.

why an asterisk

In every spreadsheet and program, * means "times". So the name reads "doing times math". Ten minutes a day.