ABILITY 01
Opening 27 tabs
Then discovering the answer was in tab two. A triumph of modern cognition.
A personal essay · Film-inspired humour · October 2026
Limitless?
Terms & conditions apply.
A movie about an extraordinary shortcut. A man in Delhi who likes the metaphor, but still has to do his laundry, answer messages and finish his actual work.
No NZTNo superhuman claimsJust a useful lens01 / THE MOVIE AND THE MONKEY
The movie is fiction.
The curiosity is real.
In Limitless (2011), Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a struggling writer who encounters a fictional substance that radically changes his abilities. It is a thriller, not a user manual. The extraordinary abilities, miracle shortcut and pharmaceutical premise belong to the screenplay.
What stayed with me wasn't the pill. It was the more ordinary question underneath the spectacle: what happens when someone becomes more interested in using what they already have?
I've been trying to answer that question in my own rather uncinematic ways: writing essays, exploring human behaviour, learning to make websites, experimenting with perfumery, and helping with a family retail business in Delhi.
I am not Eddie Morra. I am a person with a browser, a notebook, a few unfinished ideas and a suspicious number of subdomains.
Sometimes those experiments work. Sometimes they don't. Neither outcome requires a movie soundtrack.
02 / THE REAL-WORLD EDITION
My very normal superpowers.
ABILITY 02
Making websites
Not teleportation. Just HTML, deployment, revision, and occasionally a missing favicon.
ABILITY 03
Changing my mind
New evidence comes in; an old belief gets edited. Less cinematic than mind-reading. Much more useful.
ABILITY 04
Running experiments
A draft, a small batch of perfume, a conversation, a shop-floor observation. Results not guaranteed.
ABILITY 05
Asking better questions
Especially the one my own research circles around: why doesn't understanding automatically become action?
ABILITY 06
Being an ordinary human
Eating, resting, getting distracted, being wrong, laughing, trying again. Astonishingly standard equipment.
03 / YES, LET'S TALK ABOUT THE MONEY
In the film: financial wizardry.
In Delhi: accounting.
The film gives Eddie an almost magical relationship with markets and money. Mine is considerably less photogenic: a commerce education, an MBA, a family shop, everyday trade-offs, and a healthy respect for cash flow.
Money matters. It can buy time, tools, stability, a course, a domain name, or a bottle of fragrance ingredients. It cannot certify wisdom, guarantee happiness or make an unfinished project finish itself.
The film: “What if the possibilities were endless?”
My spreadsheet: “Please specify a budget.”
My spreadsheet: “Please specify a budget.”
My version of abundance isn't a claim of unlimited wealth or limitless ability. It's the very human pleasure of noticing that some resources, skills and opportunities are available—and deciding what to do with them, one realistic step at a time.
Even the fanciest personal website is still subject to hosting bills, broken links and the laws of arithmetic. A tragic limitation. I will survive.
04 / THE USEFUL PART
Keep the metaphor.
Leave the magic pill in the movie.
The interesting lesson isn't that human potential has no boundaries. We have plenty: time, health, attention, obligations, luck, other people's needs and the simple fact that every day contains only so many hours.
The useful question is smaller and better: within those limits, what can I learn, make, repair, share or understand?
I like films that enlarge the imagination. I don't need to mistake them for a biography, a prediction or a scientific claim.
Limitless is a title. Not my medical report, bank balance or job description.
For me, this page is a playful lens on curiosity and execution. It is not a declaration of exceptional powers, a recommendation to use substances, a financial promise, or a claim that a fictional story is happening in real life.
05 / THE ACTUAL WORK
Less montage. More links.
If you're curious what the non-fictional experiments look like, here are the places where I put the work—not claims of a finished destination.
Phoenix
A personal metaphor for rebuilding and continuing.
Psychology
Human behaviour, the Identity–Action Gap and everyday observation.
Consciousness
Questions about experience, perception and the limits of certainty.
Meaning
How to live a worthwhile life without needing a perfect plot.
Perfume
Craft, scent, memory and making things with your hands.
JBIMS & Beyond
A personal alumni reflection about education and what follows it.
06 / CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
They made the movie.
I borrowed a question.
Limitless is a 2011 feature film directed by Neil Burger, with a screenplay by Leslie Dixon, based on The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn. The cast includes Bradley Cooper (Eddie Morra), Robert De Niro (Carl Van Loon), and Abbie Cornish (Lindy). Producers credited by the American Film Institute include Leslie Dixon, Scott Kroopf and Ryan Kavanaugh. Relativity Media was the US theatrical distributor; the film's production credits also include Virgin Produced and other production entities.
Official and reference links:
Relativity Media · Film page ↗American Film Institute · Credits ↗eOne Films · Trailer ↗IMDb · Cast & crew ↗Rotten Tomatoes · Film ↗
Independent commentary and rights notice: This is a personal, noncommercial reflection and affectionate commentary. It is not an official Limitless website and is not sponsored, authorized, endorsed by, or affiliated with the filmmakers, performers, studios, distributors, publishers or rights holders. All film-related names, titles and marks belong to their respective owners. No movie footage, soundtrack, posters, actor likenesses or dialogue are reproduced here. Links lead to third-party sources. This notice does not claim permission or grant any rights; rights holders may contact the site owner through the main website regarding concerns.
FINAL SCENE / NO CGI REQUIRED
Tomorrow's episode:
finish something small.
Maybe a paragraph. Maybe a fragrance experiment. Maybe fixing the favicon. The plot twist is that ordinary progress is still progress.