Simon Katkov is a mental performance architect, specializing in the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and physiological endurance.
He has a background in biochemistry, biomedical sciences, and cognitive psychology.
In university, he studied in the Psychology Specialist Program at the University of Toronto, with a focuses in memory enhancement and adaptive learning.
His methodology was not developed through a decade of rigorous self-experimentation and data-driven optimization.
Simon was a top student in high school, graduating with a 4.35/4.0 GPA and 1/11 (from a starting group of 150 students) who finished the 4-year BioMedical Sciences program.
Early in his university career, Simon struggled with the cognitive friction of ADHD, reading at a rate of just one page every 3 minutes.
The breaking point came during his freshman year, when a 37% midterm grade forced a total reconstruction of his study habits.
Refusing to accept the result, he engineered a proprietary system based on positive psychology and flow state mechanics to turn his diagnosis into a controlled "hyperfocus" advantage.
Within a year, he vaulted into the top 4% of the Psychology Specialist Program at the University of Toronto, while simultaneously cutting his study volume from 8 hours/day to just 1.5 hours/day.
He managed to increase his reading velocity to 20-25 seconds per page, being able to read most books in under an hour.
In standardized testing, he achieved a perfect 60/60 score on the operation span (OSPAN) working memory task.
On a normal distribution curve, this places his working memory in the 99.9th percentile, allowing him to manipulate complex data without decay.
Simon believes that cognitive capacity cannot exist without physical stamina. His understanding of stress management was forged through elite lightweight rowing and ultra-endurance racing.
During a physiological study [Link], he recorded a peak lactate reading of 19.8 mmol/L. For context, most athletes collapse near 10 mmol/L.
This reading represents a tolerance for systemic stress that is statistically rare in the human population.
He maintains a VO2 Max of 68 ml/kg/min, placing his recovery metrics in the elite tier of endurance athletes.
He placed 4th Overall in the Conquer the Canuck 12-hour ultra-endurance race (running over 53 miles) and successfully completed 9 marathons in 9 consecutive weeks, starting with a debut marathon run entirely on a treadmill.
Today, Simon applies these exact protocols—memory encoding, stress inoculation, and energy management—to the high-stakes world of university.
He founded UofTearless to provide students with the same resources and frameworks he used and created to go from almost dropping out as a university freshman to the top of his class.
His mission is to decrease the suffering of all students by providing them with the resources he wishes he had as a freshman.