How To Develop Mastery, Make Millions, and Be Happy

How To Develop Mastery, Make Millions, and Be Happy

   January 19, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Idea #1: You don’t have a preexisting passion (nor should you want one).

Idea #2: Becoming really good at something and generously using your skills to help the right people is how you quickly succeed.

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In the book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport dispels the myth of what he calls, “The Passion Hypothesis.”

The most common and cliche’ advice about seeking a happy life and prosperous career is to “follow your passion.” Millennials are notorious for seeking fulfilling and passion-filled jobs, only to be left disappointed and disappointing.

The primary problem, according to Newport, with the passion hypothesis is that all the attention is focused on the self. People who want a job they are passionate about are less concerned about what they can give to the world and are more concerned about what the world can give to them.

There Is No “Right” Job

“Everything popular is wrong.” — Oscar Wilde

Most people are unsuccessful for a reason. They operate with faulty assumptions about how the world works.

One of those assumptions is that we as people have preexisting passions we need to “discover” and then follow. Famed psychologist and author of Mindset, Carol Dweck, would call this a “fixed mindset.”

Rather than selfishly seeking a life you’re passionate about, Newport recommends becoming a “craftsman,” wherein you develop rare and valuable skills. Newport calls these rare and valuable skills, “career capital.”

Here’s how this work:

• You determine skills and abilities that would be useful to the world.
• You set clear goals for mastering those rare and valuable skills.
• You engage in deliberate practice, pushing your skills and abilities to mastery.
• As you get better, you begin to develop confidence in yourself (confidence doesn’t create high performance, it is the byproduct of high performance).
• As you develop confidence, you begin to deeply enjoy what you’re doing — and become very passionate about it. As Newport explains, “Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”
• As your expertise, confidence, and passion grows, you begin to see your work as a “calling” or “mission” (like passion and confidence, your identity and personality are byproducts, not innate).
• Because you have developed such mastery of rare and useful skills, you have the perspective and context to discern the “cutting edge” of your field.
• You can then begin making distinct connections and projections into what has been dubbed, “The adjacent possible” which Steven Johnson described as, “a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.” In other words, this is how you become an innovator and a shaper of societal and global change.

Quick Re-Cap of Takeaways and Then A Road-Map of the “How”

Here is a quick recap of the core ideas in developing mastery:

• You don’t have an innate passion that you should “follow,” instead, your passion follows you
• Confidence isn’t what leads to success, instead, successful behavior is what leads to confidence
• As you develop “career capital” through mastering rare and valuable skills, you’ll begin to develop confidence, passion, and personality
• Thus, your personality doesn’t shape your behavior, but instead, your behavior shapes your personality
• You are the shaper of your identity, happiness, and the impact of your life’s work

If you believe the reverse of any of these things, you have a “fixed mindset,” which assumption will keep you stuck and rigid.

How To Develop Mastery, Make Millions, and Be Happy

“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).” — Cal Newport

This final section briefly sketches the “how-to” in developing mastery, making millions, and being happy. All three of these things are byproducts of making congruent, aligned, and consistent choices.

Develop Mastery

If you want to become successful, it’s better to follow what successful people did to get there than to follow what they do after achieving “success.”

What people do after becoming successful is often very different than what they did to get there. This is true for a few key reasons:

• “What got you here won’t get you there.” In other words, what got people successful isn’t what keeps them successful. There are levels, and your strategy must change the higher up you go. If you don’t evolve and adapt, you’ll plateau.
• Which is what most people do. They reach a certain level of success, become comfortable, and stop growing. To quote Greg McKeown, “Success becomes a catalyst for failure.”
• In order to get out of a plateau, you must embrace a learner’s mind, leverage your position, and laterally jump into new projects that force new growth and development.

If you look at any person who is honestly seeking a higher level of success, they are usually waking up early, studying and learning lots, seeking advice and feedback, and creating, testing, and failing.

This is harder to do once you’ve gained a certain level of expertise and success. Once you become comfortable, it’s hard to go back to the discomfort of learning and humility. Some of the world’s most famous chef’s continually remake their menu from scratch, even after they’ve become world-class and received global recognition, because for them, it’s about the process of growth and creativity.

According to Tucker Max, many people who become good at something immediately believe they are good at everything. They aren’t. And this is a key reason many successful people plateau. They get “fat and lazy,” and stop doing high quality work and pushing themselves to greater mastery. They stop thinking about what they can do for the world and instead focus on what the world can do for them. According to Cal Newport, if you stop developing more “career capital,” it begins to fade away. You can only use up so much of what you got until you have to get more. Career capital is a resource that you use. And if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.

Make Millions

“Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.” — Joe Polish

Developing mastery to the point of making actual impact will not develop until you begin:

• Investing in yourself, and
• Investing in key relationships

If you invest in the stock market, you may be able to get a 10–15% return. However, when you invest in yourself and in relationships, you can often get a 1,000% or 10X return.

According to Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan, growing by 10X is actually easier than growing by 2X.

When you make investments in yourself, you shatter unhealthy and limiting subconscious patterns. You upgrade your sense of what you can be, do and have.

When you invest in key relationships, you put yourself into proximity to the best and most generous mentors available. You gain immediate access to people and ideas that could never have been possible without such relationships.

Investing actual dollars in both yourself and others dramatically changes the psychology of things. When you invest in yourself, you become highly committed to what you’re doing. Investing in yourself is an act that facilitates what Charles Darwin would call, “Selective Pressure,” which is a phenomenon that alters the behavior and fitness of living organisms within a given environment. It is the driving force of evolution and natural selection.

Investing in yourself creates internal supply to match the external demand of the investment. The bigger you invest, the bigger the psychological leap — which then facilitates a radical upgrade in behavior, confidence, harmonious passion, and outcomes.

Investing in relationships creates the optimal level of synergy — where both parties can go higher and deeper than ever before — because both are invested in each other. Crazy stuff happens when you invest dollars into the causes and cares of other people. It changes the dynamics of the relationship incredibly. Those you invest in will go above and beyond to help you in all you’re doing. It becomes more than a relationship — it becomes a mission to help you and what you’re doing.

Joe Polish, founder of Genius Network, has what calls the “Magic Rapport Formula,” which leads to 10X relationships and growth, and includes the following concepts:

• Focus on how you will help them reduce their suffering
• Invest time, money, and energy on relationships
• Be the type of person they would always answer the phone for
• Be useful, grateful, and valuable
• Treat others how you would love to be treated
• Avoid formalities, be fun and memorable, not boring
• Appreciate people
• Give value on the spot
• Get as close to in-person as you can

When you engage with givers who operate by these principles, incredibly synergistic possibilities arise. I’ve engaged in such possibilities, and can honestly attest to the 10X principle. My income has gone up at least 10X the last three years in a row — from making basically nothing to making seven figures — and I anticipate 10X continuing to happen as I humbly engage these principles.

The only way this is possible is by continually honing your “career capital,” investing in the right relationships, and then generously GIVING your rare and valuable skills to the success of other people’s goals.

It is by giving that your rare skills and abilities continue to develop and grow. It is by giving and investing in other people that your network becomes world-class and your ability to make lots of money becomes easy. Your network is your net worth.

Be Happy

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.” — Viktor E. Frankl

Happiness is a byproduct. You cannot pursue it directly. It comes from dedicating yourself to a cause you firmly believe.

In order to dedicate yourself to a cause you believe in, you must invest yourself in the development of rare skills and abilities, which then lead to confidence, passion, and purpose. That purpose is your “cause,” which you now have skills and passion to contribute to.

You love what you invest yourself in.

Happiness comes from investing yourself deeply into something and someone other than yourself.

Happiness can’t come from following a self-centered and obsessive passion aimed only at making yourself feel good. Happiness comes from self-growth and using that growth to make the world a better place.

Either you’re focused on:

• Growth or greed (“what can I give to the world” vs. “what can the world give to me”)
• Giving or taking
• Nurture or nature
• Possibility or rigidness

You’re happiest when you’re growing and giving. When you’ve become dedicated to something bigger than yourself. When you’re engaged in work you have control and autonomy over and which work is making a tangible impact in the lives of other people. You can only have this type of work by developing mastery, investing in others, and being a giver.

You ready?

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Compassion Raises Us Up Above Ourself.

Compassion Raises Us Up Above Ourself.

   January 11, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Photo by “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash

There is an appalling amount of real misery and suffering in the world. It is not far away from us. It lies at our very doors. All of us need a feeling of deep sympathy or sorrow for another who is stricken with misfortune, accompanied by the strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

Let your feelings be at hand, and feel and commiserate as soon as touched. Let your tenderest feelings come in contact with the miseries of the distressed as soon as ever they present themselves.

A feeling of their sorrows and weaknesses. A benevolence, which excludes no person, not even strangers or enemies, from its tender regards, which disdains no condescension, grudges no cost, in its labors of love! Inward pity and compassion to distressed objects, the most tender regard to persons in misery, and such compassion as is free from all hypocrisy and deceit is the need of the hour.

The heart, even more than the brain, determines you.

Real strength or weakness is closely linked with moral nature. One may have the beauty of Venus and the charms of Cleopatra, and another the figure of Adonis and still be void of “good” manners. Stand by the weak and defenseless. There is no nobler feature in anyone’s character than a determination to do this.

There is no good in a sour, misanthropic temper. None in rudeness, stiffness, and repulsiveness. None in violating the rules of good breeding.

Compassion prompts us to do good to all, to forget all national or sectional distinctions, and to aid all those who are in circumstances of poverty and want. It would be the most lovely and desirable principle on earth, and all, especially in their early years, should seek it. Nothing that a young person can gain will be so valuable as the feeling that regards all the world as one great family, and to learn early to do good to all. Be even to thy enemy in distress as kind, humane, and merciful. Let a young person have a large mental capacity, it will not weigh for much if that be all.

Compassion Heals.

All who are afflicted know how much it diminishes their sorrow to see others sympathizing with them. How sad would be a suffering world if there were none who regarded our griefs with interest or with tears! It would be miserable if every sufferer were left to bear their sorrows unpitied and alone and if all the ties of human sympathy were rudely cut at once, and people were left to suffer in solitude and unbefriended.

We owe sympathy to others because it is an effective means of contributing to their moral perfection, and because by withholding it we inflict on them a grave moral inquiry. We are tenderhearted or compassionate when we feel affection for someone else, when we look beyond our pain to see the pain of others. It not only lessens the misery of humanity but also unites humans to each other as to make them responsible for the good and comfort of one another.

While we differ in “opinions”, we should still treat each other kindly, that we should aid each other in necessity. A good thing done 3,000 years ago works now, and will work through all endless times and years. No good effort has ever been lost, or ever can be.

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Want To Be The Best Writer On The Planet? Do These 27 Things Immediately

Want To Be The Best Writer On The Planet? Do These 27 Things Immediately

   January 10, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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The amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many books — but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice adds up and makes a harder thing — an already difficult industry to navigate — even harder.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below, alongside some of the insights — or hacks as we call them today to get more people to click — from writers I wish were still alive to interview or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.

I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!

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Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First

“If I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done in vain.”

— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world

Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read

“I wake up around 5am. I have 2–3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired, high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special something inside, and often I will spend some time studying a game. Then I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to write.”

— James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations to Write

“It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront

Edit Ten Times

“I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.”

— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications

Nobody Gets Talker’s Block

“No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.”

— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books

Do the Three Passes of Editing

“[My editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book (or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd constructions or minor errors.”

— Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“The way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block.”

— Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“I’m an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs. I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my brain — Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling headphones.”

— Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

— Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“It really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind.For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”

— Rob Goodman, congressional speechwriter and co-author of A Mind at Play and Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar

Quit Your Bitching

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

― Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“Writer’s block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”

— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”

Get a Giant Sketchpad

“Notebooks have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant, chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”

— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”

It’s All Material

“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene, “It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything frustrating or delayed or disappointing — all of it can be fuel for a book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business, it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]

— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”

Understand How the Pieces Fit Together

“To write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how its various parts fit together — how a change here will affect something over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated, how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how ideas should be patterned, etc.”

— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

Run to Keep Yourself Sane

“The twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is not unlike many other writers — including Murakami and Malcolm Gladwell — who use running as a coping mechanism.]

— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award

Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking

“If I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing. Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know they’re likely to change, which I find liberating — no need to get it perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to feel.”

— Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Let the Play Accumulate

“Don’t start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate, as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words — anything you think you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”

— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway

Take the Necessary Medicine

“I tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor (Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I recognize that it is almost invariably good — a bit like swallowing disagreeable but essential medicine.”

— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”

— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”

— George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“Writers are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once, the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”

— Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”

— Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama

You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse

When asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”

— Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters — and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye. As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for writing different books. They serve as snapshots in time. So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts — lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman — and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”

— John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“I try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their reactions. They know I can take it.”

— Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After It

“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”

— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned” Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson

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The #1 Rule of Fasting

The #1 Rule of Fasting

   January 06, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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As we start the new year, many people are looking to lose weight. Fasting, the voluntary abstention from eating is an ancient weight loss method with a long track record of success. However, many people forget the cardinal rule of fasting, or indeed, of any kind of dietary change — always make sure you are doing it safely.

I highly recommend a great new documentary now available for purchase/ rent online called Fasting — The Movie. It presents the science of fasting and how people can lose weight and even reverse many metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and its related conditions. Given the importance of these diseases in modern day medicine, this is nothing short of revolutionary. However, taken to an extreme, fasting can also have its dangers. This is true not just for fasting but for anything. If you take veganism to an extreme, you may put yourself in danger, for example, of vitamin B12 deficiency. If you take the low fat diet to an extreme, you are at danger of vitamin D deficiency. If you take salt restriction to an extreme, you may be at danger of volume depletion. If you take exercise to an extreme, you may put yourself at danger of rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown). Everything must be done responsibly, with knowledge and with common sense.

Fasting is no different. Because fasting is already more intensive than most diets, taking fasting to an extreme can be problematic. The movie goes into some of the dangers of fasting and explores many of the variants of fasting that are popular and may be beneficial for people. Simply put, fasting is a weapon to be used in the fight against obesity related conditions and perhaps some aging related conditions.

But, like any weapon, it has two edges. It has real power, and that power can be used constructively and it can also, in the wrong hands, be used destructively. It is all a matter of context and applicability. Much of the resurgence of interest in fasting as a therapeutic option centers around intermittent fasting  — generally of shorter duration done consistently and frequently. The 5:2 diet, popularized by Dr. Michael Mosley is 2 days of fasting per week, but those ‘fasting’ days still allows 500 calories per day. Time restricted eating such as a 16:8 schedule, allows you to eat during only 8 hours of the day, so 16 hours are spent fasting. Many of the patients in my Intensive Dietary Management program use 24 hour to 36 hour fasts 2–3 times per week, and this is done under medical supervision with their physician.

Certainly I use extended fasting as well, but generally limited to 7–14 days, only in the appropriate person and with supervision. Clients are always instructed to stop immediately if not feeling well, and we also check in with them regularly. Longer fasts have more power, but more risk. To me, there is no reason to fast for 30 consecutive days just for the sake of argument. Why not do 4 separate 7-day fasts instead? It will have roughly the same beneficial health effects with far less risk.

By contrast, in Fasting — the movie, director Doug Orchard tells the story of a young lady who decided to join a 30 day water-only fasting retreat. As far as I can tell, there was no medical supervision, and there was no bloodwork being checked and there was no professional who even determined whether this was appropriate. One of my primary rules for fasting is that if somebody is underweight or there is concern about malnutrition, then they should not fast. Underweight is defined by Body Mass Index < 18.5, but for a margin of safety, I don’t recommend that anybody fast longer than 24 hours if they have a BMI< 20. The reasoning seems rather obvious. During the fasting period, the body must survive on the nutrients and energy stored. If you have lots and lots of body fat (stored food energy), then you should be fine. If you do NOT have lots and lots of body fat, then it’s NOT fine. It’s stupid.

People get into trouble with extended fasts because they don’t follow common sense. Many of these fasting retreats offer 30 day water only fasts. If you become depleted of sodium (quite common), there are no doctors there to monitor for warning signs. If you become very weak and unable to get out of bed, there is very clearly something wrong, and you should not continue fasting. This is common sense. In my IDM program, clients know that they may feel hungry, maybe a little irritable, constipated perhaps, but they should not feel UNWELL. If you are really feeling poorly, you must stop. There is no reason to continue, because fasting is free. It is far better to stop and try it again (if you want) in a few days when you are feeling better. The problem with these fasting retreats is that people have paid money to be there and therefore they push on far beyond the limits of good safety practice and far beyond the limits of common sense.

Further, people undertake extreme fasting without any kind of preparation. Instead of undertaking shorter fasts and gradually extending it, they immediately opt for a full on water-only extended fast. This is like a rookie mountaineer that decides that he/she will tackle Mount Everest, without oxygen and push on to the summit irregardless of weather. The experience mountaineer would immediately recognize this as a death wish, but the rookie has no inkling of the dangers and may come home in a body bag. It’s pure stupidity. Yet fasting clinics promote this very same idea. Taking the most extreme fast (water-only fasting, as opposed to allowing some bone broth or some caloric intake), to an extended period of time (30 days instead of 1–2 days), in anybody irregardless of whether this is medically appropriate, without any adequate medical supervision or access to bloodwork? I can tell you right now, that’s pure stupidity.

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Marathon[/caption]

A recent article in the New York Post “Is this the most dangerous diet ever?” tells of a man who, in an attempt to lose weight, decided that he would fast for 47 days. At day 5 he was feeling great. At day 28, he was so weak that he could hardly get out of bed. NOT smart. This is NOT something that I would advise. The Daily Mail shared similar concerns in its own article.

Consider the story of the marathon. According to legend, in 490 BC the Greek soldier Pheidippides ran approximately 26 miles from the battlefield near the town of Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of the defeat of the Persians. He shouted Niki! (Victory) and then promptly keeled over and died.

Suppose a sedentary, middle aged, out of shape man decided to run a full 26 miles at maximum speed tomorrow, without any type of preparation or knowledge. He might very well keel over and die, too. Indeed, in 2014, a 42 year old man died after the London Marathon, the event’s second death in 3 years. Later that year, a 31 year old man and a 35 year old man died in a North Carolina event. Since marathon is a relatively extreme event for most people, it takes some preparation to do safely. That’s easy to understand so you don’t see hysterical headlines saying “Running, the most dangerous thing ever”. If you want to run a few minutes, that probably won’t kill you. Running a marathon in an untrained state could very well do so.

So the bottom line is that fasting, done properly and with knowledge and experience is a powerful tool in the fight against metabolic disease and obesity. But tools can cut both ways and can sometimes harm the user. A chainsaw is a powerful tool for cutting trees. It may also kill you if used improperly. But the proper lesson is not to abandon the chainsaw. Instead, we need to learn how to properly use the tool. Fasting, used responsibly can be a powerful force for health. Fasting, used inappropriately can hurt or kill you. Fasting by starting out skipping a meal here and there — good idea. Fasting by starting out 30 day water only fast come hell or high water — bad idea. There’s a ton of free information on fasting that I’ve written extensively on my blog. Just search for the 40+ posts I’ve labelled with ‘Fasting’. I’ve also posted free videos and podcasts, too. So cost is not an issue. Be safe, everybody.

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