Boost Your Productivity the Old-Fashioned Way: Mellification

I was like you once. The computer’s fool. I had my Not Productive knob cranked up all the way to 13.

Until I stumbled on this crazy ancient method—a trick THEY don’t want you to know.

So what’s my secret? It’s honey, baby. Nature’s juice. The sweet golden blanket of the bees.

The bees whispered to me in their thousand voices: Productivity isn’t about doing spreadsheets or penning the next great American novel. It’s not about you at all.

Productivity means healing people’s wounds, in the future.

Are you ready?

The famous Chinese herbologist and scientific naturalist Li Shizhen wrote in his Compendium of Materia Medica (first published in 1596, three years after his death) of a rare and legendary medicine that he called “human mummy confection” or “mellified man”:

According to Thao Chiu-Chhêng in his Cho Kêng Lu, in the lands of the Arabs there are men 70 or 80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to save others. Such a one takes no more food or drink, only bathing and eating a little honey, till after a month his excreta are nothing but honey; then death ensues. His compatriots place the body to macerate in a stone coffin full of honey, with an inscription giving the year and month of burial. After a hundred years the seals are removed and the confection so formed used for the treatment of wounds and fractures of the body and limbs—only a small amount taken internally is needed for cure. Although it is scarce in those parts the common people call it ‘mellified man.’^[1]

Perhaps that sounds unbelievable to you. Perhaps you are a doubter, a hater. But listen: After years of rigorous clinical trials and countless heartaches, I’m here to tell you that it works.

The microbial properties of honey are well known. Don’t even pretend like you haven’t heard about the microbial properties of honey. The ancient Greeks believed regular consumption of the stuff would stave off disease and extend one’s life. Both Aristotle and Hippocrates mention its effectiveness in cleaning wounds and healing sores and do you think those guys were amateurs? In India, honey is still used by Ayurvedic practitioners to treat burns and other ails. Alexander the Great was embalmed in honey before his body was transported to Macedonia, probably.

But this is all just fancy talk, all just theoretical. I know what’s really on your mind. It’s written plain as day there on your face. You’re thinking, What about me? How can I, too, fuck up my entire body for the curing of our progeny’s ills and the delight of their taste buds?

I’m so glad you asked.

Here are eleven simple steps to safely and effectively mellify yourself in the modern era. Get ready for your productivity to go off the charts.

1~
Gradually alter your meals until they consist entirely of honey. This is easier than you think. Feel like a hearty steak? Grab a fistful of honey instead, Winnie-the-Pooh style. Replace that morning green smoothie with a beaker of honey. Chug honey after you rock some cardio on the elliptical (electrolytes). Rinse with it when you brush your teeth. Order a grande honey latte for your daily Starbucks fix, but be like, “Hold the espresso and milk.” Switch out your craft ales and your fancy whiskeys for straight, unfermented mead. This is it. You’re doing it.

2~
Once your diet is sufficiently horrifying, you’ve got to begin bathing in honey as well. There are several ways to do this: Contact your landlord or plumber to discuss your choices. (Fill your water heater with bees? Plug the taps directly into a wriggling hive? You’ve got options.)

3~
If at all possible (i.e. if you don’t already have a significant other, or others), at this point you should also begin to exclusively date honey. You have hell of things in common now. Take a nasty, dripping clump of it with you to the movies and just make it feel wanted, you know? Show honey a good time, is what I’m saying.

4~
That’s right; you are now experiencing delirium. As the levels of glucose/fructose in your bloodstream begin to skyrocket and your kidneys rapidly shut down from extreme dehydration, your body will likely begin to catabolize its own tissues to keep your nervous system and heart functioning. Your other major organs will probably soon follow. Get ready for hallucinations, shortness of breath, and increasing sluggishness. This means it’s working.

5~
Your body’s waste is unspeakable at this point. Everything is sweetness; your very vocabulary is altered. The word “savory” means nothing to you any longer, and you cannot conceive of what others mean by “salty” or “sour” or “bland.” When you open your mouth to speak, an explosion of golden light spews out instead. You feel delicate as a bumblebee’s membranous wing, thin as a hummingbird’s nectar-coated prehensile tongue.

6~
Finally succumb to this absurd diet, and expire. Which honey, as you probably know, doesn’t even do. This isn’t news to you because you are intelligent and cosmopolitan, but pure honey is more or less immortal: It won’t expire or spoil (as long as it’s kept sealed in an airtight container) due to its extremely low moisture content and high acidity. It also contains hydrogen peroxide, a by-product of passing through the stomach of the honeybee, which contains the enzyme glucose oxidase. The presence of hydrogen peroxide coupled with its viscosity makes honey an effective natural bandage, another reason it’s been used since antiquity to treat wounds.

So anyway, now you’re dead.

7~
Have an assistant (a family member or former lover will work just as well) inter your corpse in a large vat of fresh honey and seal it in a stone crypt decorated with vast and indecipherable glyphs for at least 100 years.

Please note that this is the MINIMUM amount of time your mummified remains should stay locked in their delicious prison. Anything less than a full century will result in a sadly inferior final product—a confection that only partly soothes one’s latest sword-wound or unsightly goiter. Patience.

8~
Your assistant—let us call him Randall—should also mark your sugary coffin with both date and year.

9~
After the full century has elapsed, Randall’s descendants should carefully remove the crystallized slurry you have become from your ancient tomb, taking care not to spill any of this nightmarish syrup from its casket. They’ll probably be wearing, like, future clothes. Silver robes or whatever.

10~
Marvel at your new body, this miracle, this magnificent death-honeycomb. (Like, posthumously.)

11~
After cleanup, have them sell portions of you at the farmer’s market (or future-times equivalent), between the tallow candles and the fresh rutabagas, and boom. Ills cured, limbs restored, scars erased. Sweeten to taste.

So put away your hardcover Business Cheese books with accompanying CDs, close out of your LinkedIn Learning video tabs, and head to the discount bulk grocery emporium for a pallet of Productivity Juice subdivided within a bunch of small plastic bears. Today is the day you change things. Today is the day you make your life mean something. It’s turn-yourself-into-medicine o’clock.

And that’s great. That’s what you want.