Hacker Heart, Mind, & Body

What is hope and fear?  Sakyong Mipham in Running with the Mind of Meditation defines these as two emotions which arise from two kinds of pain: “the pain of not encountering what we want, and the pain of encountering what we don’t want.”  Most entrepreneurs start down their path with a vision driven by hope: 

• A hope to build a great product which benefits others
• A hope to gain wealth or financial freedom
• A hope for influence over others or to become well known

These hopes are often directly tied to fear when they fail to materialize:

• Fear of building something which isn’t used or doesn’t catch on
• Fear our risks will leave us poor and our time wasted
• Fear that we will be criticized, put down, or laughed at

Living in this cycle can both lead to the effect that entrepreneurship is like a roller coaster or a path to early burn-out or giving up. The entrepreneur whose first project is a flop can easily say that they aren’t smart enough or the market is against them. The blogger who’s posts don’t become popular can easily think they aren’t a good writer or they aren’t able communicate something of value (I recently felt this cycle when one of my posts made the front page of Hacker News and was viewed by 25,000 people but then my next post barely got any attention—I questioned my ability to communicate to this audience).

Ultimately we want to break this cycle and be able to work independent of it to do our best work and do it consistently.

“[This] is letting go of hope and fear—not as a technique to achieve our goal, but as a genuine recognition that hope and fear stifle our potential and infringe deeply on our mental well-being. They tighten our mind and limit our possibilities. It is just a vicious cycle in which hope is driven by fear, and fear is driven by hope. We cannot allow ourselves to have big dreams because we are plagued by our fears. To break out of this cycle, we must release ourselves from such small-mindedness by relaxing in to an even bigger space.” —Sakyong Mipham

Overcoming Hope

Sakyong Mipham describes “The practice of overcoming hope is recognizing our positive qualities.” Hope is the desire for more than what we currently have. It’s a feeling of what it would be like to have achieved more or to have more. You can counter this feeling by appreciating what you do have, and what you have achieved. Validating who you are and what you have done rather than dreaming of more helps you to feel good enough. When my blog posts get less attention than my more popular posts I appreciate my consistency in writing, my desire to learn about writing, and my believe I have ideas to share in this community. This helps me focus on what is realistic and what I am achieving. When I get critical reviews of my apps or projects I appreciate that users are using my applications and that I have the opportunity to address the feedback and make a better project in the future.

Overcoming Fear

Saykong Mipham goes on to say, “If our goals are unrealistic, then there is more reason for fear. So addressing our unrealistic hope first relieves our level of fear.” If we have addressed our hope then out of this we start to address our fear. Appreciating what we are able to achieve and who we are rather than what we hope to be allows us to be more grounded in the present and in who we are.

Another aspect of this is our attachment to our identity. As entrepeneurs we attach at least a part of who we see ourselves as to this label and what this means (and more than likely we attach a large part of our identity to it). What happens when this identity is questioned by the crumbling of the hope or the realization of the cause of the fear?  We start to question who we are and what we are doing. Our idealized versions of ourselves fall apart and we are left groundless and depressed. Then we either get on the rollercoaster again or we quit for good—both of which leave us only with a narrow path for success.

“Fear is not believing in our basic goodness. Hope is not trusting that it exists. […] hope is the inability to recognize the good qualities of our mind. Fear is not having confidence in the inherent strength of your mind.” —Sakyong Mipham

A new path might look like:

• Build a project to learn and grow by attempting to address user’s needs (rather than: A hope to build a great product which benefits others)
• Understanding wealth is only a means and your goals might be achievable on a different path (rather than: A hope to gain wealth or financial freedom)
• A belief that you have a lot to offer the world and will take the steps to share this (rather than: A hope for influence over others or to become well known)

Reorienting your thoughts to break the Hope Fear cycle might just give you the courage you need to take on things you never even thought were possible.

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What has been equalized in the tech industry:

• Intelligence
• Access to knowledge and technology
• Social background and status
• Access to an audience

What differentiates in the tech industry:

• Taking on scary problems no one else wants to touch
• Open and honest communication
• Ability to see in to the future and capitalize on it in the present
• Making others better

Where do you invest most of your time?

Hey, I’m writing a book on building awesome products by improving your physical and mental abilities.  Sign up for email updates here: Subscribe to our newsletter

In my previous post I discussed what I did to beat depression.  The discussion which took place after the post landed on the front page of Hacker News tapped in to something strong in our community and showed the strength we have for one another.  Thank You.

I’m lucky that I was able to transform a very challenging period in to one of growth and in the long run I developed a strong mental resilience. The groundwork I put in to place for this resilience has formed the basis of many new strengths and beliefs which are the topic of this blog and the book I am writing. In next series of posts I’m discussing additional changes I’ve made in my life which have taken me to a place of thriving and flourishing.  The first step in that process is developing the building blocks of physical health.

Physical Health

This is the foundation.  You can make progress at developing a stronger heart or mind while neglecting your body but at some point this neglect will be a hindrance to your progress.  Across our community of hackers and entrepreneurs the neglect of the body is widely seen as the cost of doing business or just something we’ll get to once we’ve cashed out (one example is Groupon ex-CEO Andrew Mason’s letter).  The aspects of physical health which I made part of my life in my post-depression growth are:

Healthy Sleep—On the first day of class my meditation teacher gave several instructions for what we were to do during the next week. The instruction which elicited the most concerned feedback was “Get eight hours of sleep a night.”*  Lots of people in the class were denying that to achieve more mindfulness they needed to take care of their body.  At some level meditation, coding, and writing are all a focusing of the mind to an intention.  If this instruction is a prerequisite to meditation then it’s likely a good instruction for anything else requiring focused effort of the mind.  I’ve gone from getting typically less than five hours of sleep in college to getting on average seven to eight hours of sleep a night now.   I’ve also improved my sleep quality and get to sleep faster while also achieve REM sleep more often.  The steps I took to do this were to moderate my caffeine consumption by switching from coffee to tea, and by reducing my stress levels.

Managing the Body’s Insulin Response—In my previous post on a Hacker’s Guide to Eating I discussed a few of the reasons I minimize foods which increase your body’s insulin response.  Heightened insulin response, usually caused by eating sugar or other highly processed carbohydrates, is the root cause of many chronic diseases. Controlling this insulin response is not only the key to avoiding certain diseases but is also the key to allowing your body to effectively use energy sources (such as fat) and healthy hormones.  In beating depression I went from a typical diet of processed carbohydrates and sugars to the meat and potatoes diet I was raised on.  Once I recovered and started to learn more about athletic and mental performance I further refined my diet to one based on entirely whole, low-glycemic index foods eaten in a proportion of 7g protein to 9g carbohydrate to 1.5g fat (the Zone proportion).  This lead to a rapid positive change in my both my energy levels (up) and my body weight (down).  This proportion and the food choices are specifically crafted to control insulin and promote healthy hormones and are described in Enter The Zone: A Dietary Road map by Dr. Barry Sears.  Ultimately I think one can get equivalent benefits from the Paleo and Zone diets—the most important thing both diets focus on is removing processed carbohydrate and sugars.

Micro-nutrients and Supplements—As I started managing my macro-nutrient consumption in the Zone ratio I also started exploring other dietary changes around the types of nutrients I was getting.  At first I found the most efficient way to eat with the Zone ratio was to eat lean protein and legumes (usually chicken and black beans in my case).  The challenge with eating 45g of carbohydrate per meal but only getting it from vegetables is that you have to eat a ton of them (for example if I were to only eat chicken and broccoli I would have to eat 5 ounces of chicken and 15 cups of broccoli, ugh). Thus I found eating in the Zone ratio I typically eat lots of legumes which packed a denser carbohydrate payload while still minimizing the insulin effect (and I only had to eat 1.25 cups).  As I learned more about how the brain functioned and was introduced to other sources of effective diets (the Paleo Diet started to get big around this time) I started to experiment more with my carbohydrate mix.  I maintained the ratio of protein to carbohydrates but also started adding in lots of fruits and vegetables.  Eventually I read Minding My Mitochondria by Dr. Terry Wahls which gave me the framework I needed to determine what micro-nutrients to eat and in what quantities.  I’ve previously discussed a simplified version of those recommendations in this in this post.

Supplements are a hard thing to recommend as at best I personally find their effects are subtle and as with most nutrition science the laboratory effects are hard to isolate.  Over the years I’ve experimented with many supplements recommended from many sources.  The two I stick with which I mentioned in my previous post are high dose fish oil (Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega ) and a food based multi-vitamin (New Chapter Every Man ).  The fish oil I treat as essential in a modern grain based diet (or a diet based on meat that was fed grains) which has dramatically lower levels of omega fatty acids than diets prior to modern corn-based agriculture.  I treat the vitamins as cheap insurance to any missing micro-nutrients in my otherwise pretty broad diet.  

Fitness—Exercise has had many effects on my growth.  At the most basic level it formed one of the building blocks for distracting me from my depression and helped me grow out of it.  Beyond that it created an strong motivation to motivate me to keep my diet clean (Let’s admit it that not wanting to puke during a workout because you ate crap during the day is a stronger motivation than wanting to avoid getting sleepy from a sugar crash while you are at work).   

Before I was introduced to meditation my workouts became the first place I could focus on how my mind reacted to different challenging situations.  I developed the ability to listen to my negative mind patterns during a challenging CrossFit workout or climb—the self-talk which would tell me I would fail, or wasn’t good enough or should quit. I eventually learned these were the same patterns I was bringing to my work and my life. CrossFit and climbing became the laboratories where I could work to see these negative patterns and work to remove their effect—in the gym and in my life.  I now had a place to experiment, grow and learn.  Having mental breakthroughs which allowed me to get better at things like climbing 5.10 or finishing a CrossFit workout translated to also having those same mental breakthroughs in my work and life.  I had found a formula for translating these physical changes in to mental changes.  These mental changes will be the focus of my next post.  

Feel free to discuss on Hacker News.

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*I personally believe that the amount of sleep for each individual is different but the point of my teacher was to say that you are likely not getting enough be effective at practicing meditation.  I personally can maintain a strong meditation practice on 7 hours of sleep a night.  I’ve even seen references to people who have very extensive meditation practice sleeping for only 3 hours a night.  But if you start make sure you are getting more than enough so you aren’t working against a sleep defect.

I have cultivated an ability to produce ideas and things.  Yet I should not lose focus that my goal is to remove suffering and partake in daily mindfulness.  I vow to encourage deeper understanding, empathy and love through what I create.   

I will not confuse the tools I use to create with the people who use my creation.  I will focus on how to solve real problems and learn to help others.  I vow to stay vulnerable and open regardless of success or failure.  I vow to listen and look with understanding even if I’m separated from the person by technology.  

I am aware that desire is a path to suffering.  I will let go of these desires and engage with the world here and now.  In my heart I watch the seeds of mindfulness blooming.  I smile and breathe and am thankful that I’m able to walk this path.

Inspired by The Energy of Prayer—Thich Nhat Hanh

There are often discussions on Hacker News about depression or suicide.  Lots of the comments give helpful advice from people who have obviously battled depression at some stage.   Recently on Hacker News there was a post by someone suffering from depression.  That person was wondering how they could repay the people who were supporting him.   I’m lucky to have had amazing help and support in my path through depression. Looking back after a decade of ultimately beating this illness this is one attempt to give back to my community on this topic.

Aaron Swartz recently committed suicide after suffering for years.  The path out of depression is difficult and unfortunately there is no silver bullet.  Here I wanted to document the path I took which certainly saved my life from a similar consequence.  I’m documenting it specifically for the Hacker News audience since I share a similar attitude and life path with many on that site and I hope that my journey might be useful for someone in a similar situation to mine.

I’m not a doctor.  In this post I’m documenting what path ultimately worked for me in my situation.  This may not be the path for you and I’m not claiming any scientific basis for what I’m describing here.  I do believe there are likely similarities between my situation and others in our hacker community which is why I’m writing this as a guide.  That said there is one thing which overarches this message: you should get help. Depression is not something which is easy to conquer by yourself and help is out there.  If you are feeling like committing suicide these steps might seem long or too indirect.  You can get immediate help by calling 1-800-SUICIDE or 911 (at least in the US).  You should also find a medical professional whom you trust—see my recommendation below on some tips about finding one which works for you.

Let me be clear that I’m referring to clinical depression or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).  I’m not necessarily referring to low mood, though some of the things here can help with this.  If you are suffering from MDD the most important point to realize is that depression is a sickness.  I personally find it hard to describe what it felt like to someone who hasn’t been in this mental state.  Most people have experienced low mood at some point and when discussing it with them I usually feel they view MDD as low mood but worse.  My experience was different and MDD felt like something entirely different; it was both a feeling of suffering (like low mood but not derived from feeling sad about a situation) and of hopelessness but at the same time so severe it made doing very basic things very difficult.

Here are the steps I took to ultimately beat that sickness, become healthy again, and prevent any return of the symptoms:

Depression is a sickness and you are sick.  The symptoms of this sickness affect your thoughts and make it hard to realize you are sick.  In my case the sickness caused me to think that my life wasn’t worth living.  There was nothing in my life which would prove that was true yet that’s what the symptoms of depression were telling me.   In the midst of my depression it was hard to stop trusting my thoughts and look at why these thoughts weren’t true—but you need to do that.  Attempt to differentiate the thoughts caused by the sickness and those that are your own.  Try to adopt the same view you would if you were injured—you need to address the injury and give your body (and brain) time to heal.  These symptoms might feel like they will never go away and that is part of what makes depression scary.  The more you tell yourself that the symptoms can go away and that the thoughts are not part of you but are caused by the sickness the more you can adopt a viewpoint which will help you heal.

Don’t let suicidal thoughts win.  This is an extension of the last point but is so important it has its own point in this guide.  About 60% of people who have committed suicide were found to have been suffering from MDD.  I certainly had suicidal thoughts.  The symptoms of MDD were telling me that ending my life would be the only way to end the suffering.  To counter this I set up a logical game in my head to help prevent me from acting on these thoughts.  For example I would set deadlines like “If I feel this way non-stop for the next two weeks then I’ll consider a way to kill myself.” when I knew I was only suffering the worse symptoms for 24-48 hours at a time and the condition was very unlikely ever to be true.  Or I would say that I could only attempt suicide at my parents’ house which is where I knew I would be safe and protected by them.  I believe this is the same situation people who jump off bridges during rush hour are trying to create. They are likely just hoping someone will stop them and keep them from listening to the thoughts coming from their sickness.   Whatever you need to do you can’t let these thoughts win.  Another trick I used was to think of people who were possibly suffering more than me and I watched at how they dealt with that suffering and ultimately conquered it.   One example of this is that I listened to this song by Ben Harper multiple times per day to help with maintaining this mindset: Ben Harper – The Will To Live. 

sdfSupport your brain by keeping a clean diet.  Remove the processed sugars from your body, eat whole foods, and eat lots of plants (greens, fruits, and vegetables).  I had just graduated from college when my depression started and I had been living on a diet of pizza, sugars, sodas, rice and other quick to eat foods.  I switched to a regular diet of whole foods based on recipes I had grown up with (I grew up on a farmers meat and potatoes diet, but I added salads as well).  I also found I needed to cut caffeine and alcohol out of my diet as well as these caused severe ups and downs in my mental state.  I also added a good food based multi-vitamin and a fish-oil supplement.  I use New Chapter Every Man Multivitamins and I take 3600mg Omega-3s from Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega Fish Oilsdaily.

Exercise at least 5 days a week.  At the low point of my depression I was unable to get out of bed and I sometimes spent hours even unable to open my eyes.  Exercise seemed out of the question even though I had been in great shape a few months earlier.  Every time I felt my symptoms worsen I started walking.  At first I just walked around the block or down a local street with shops where I could distract myself a little.  Eventually I started forcing myself to go on longer and longer walks sometimes multiple times a day.  It both helped me deal with the symptoms but also kept me doing some exercise when I didn’t feel like I could do any.  Eventually I took up more vigorous exercise which led to positive hormone release and helped counter the sickness.  

Medication is not a cure-all.  I took two medications during the depth of my depression: an SSRI antidepressant and a medication for my panic attacks.  The panic medication would work within minutes stopping my panic but leaving me light headed and out of commission until it wore off (which wasn’t a big deal since I would have been out of commission with the panic if I hadn’t taken it) yet the SSRI certainly did not have any immediate effects and had no noticeable positive affects within the first two weeks.  My depression actually got worse for the first two weeks after starting the medication.  That was hard and left me more hopeless.  At the time when you need relief from the symptoms because they are so bad you are turning to a doctor; the medication doesn’t have a direct and immediate effect.  At some point around two weeks after starting the medicine I did start to slowly get better.  I stayed on it for 6 months until the worse of the symptoms were gone and then stopped.  Stopping left me light headed and unable to work for a couple of days (I stopped cold-turkey but maybe tapering off would keep this from happening).  The medication can be the lifeline you need but realize that the effect will not be immediate if there is an effect at all.

Work with a doctor—but realize they might not provide you everything you want.  During the primary months of my depression I worked with three or four doctors.  Each was willing to listen to my symptoms and work with me on medication.  What I wanted, and what I didn’t get from them, was a feeling of sympathy and kindness towards my suffering.  This was awful and left me even more hopeless.  I was eventually referred to a psychologist and when I felt the same thing about that psychologist I was referred to another.  Eventually I found one with clicked with my personality and at some level I felt like he actually cared about whether I would get better.  He gave me challenges each week to work on and celebrated my success when I met the challenges.   It took time but I eventually found a medical professional who was helping me with this process (I had to stay with the doctor for the medication but worked with the psychologist in parallel).  There are many types of people out there so if you aren’t getting what you need from who you are seeing keep exploring.  

Stay open and allow others to help.  Realize you need people around you to who can be a support network.  This is the hardest thing to do when you are suffering from depression.  Forming this network and opening up to being helped was the main challenges I worked on with my psychologist.  Ultimately this made the single biggest difference in my recovery.  Going in to my depression I had purposely isolated myself from others.  I didn’t want to depend on anyone and I didn’t want them to depend on me.  When I got sick and I needed someone for the first time in my adult life I didn’t have a pool of people to lean on.  Luckily I had my parents and they did support me while I learned to grow my support network.  With my psychologist I worked on opening up, doing things my illness didn’t want me to do (like go out with people I didn’t know), sharing how I was feeling with others, and meeting new people.  If you begin to work on this also realize that opening up to some people too early, especially about your illness, can push them away.  There are some people who aren’t ready to take that on in a relationship.  Don’t let that put you off—those people just aren’t right for your support group.  I was lucky that I met one new person with whom I shared several interests (we both worked at the same company of programmers and both played the banjo).  He was also open and kind and he knew lots more people like that who he then introduced me to.  You need these kinds of friends and you deserve them.   It only takes one friend like this to be the beginning of your support network.  

Work on a positive outlook.  The book didn’t exist at the time but Flourish by Martin Seligman provides a framework, which in his research is effective in treating depression, called positive psychology.  His approach leverages techniques in five aspects of happiness: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Meaning, Accomplishment, and Positive Relationships.  As hackers and entrepreneurs we likely have both Engagement and Accomplishment built in to what we are already doing.  This book helps you build a larger basis for growing and believing in your strengths.  The positive emotion generated by that will help counter the symptoms of your sickness.  One of the things I did which helped during this time was improve my engagement by learning to climb.  Climbing brought me in to a state of flow where I lost a sense of time.  It also had the effect that it was also accomplishment focused, was social, and had exercise as an element of it.  

Realize you can get better.  I had the worse symptoms of depression for about 3 months and severe depression for about 6 months.  After that I still suffered occasional symptoms for the next couple of years.  Looking back now it’s been at least a decade since I’ve had any symptoms at all.  At the time I did the work outlined in the previous steps as a means for survival.  Looking back on it almost every one of these changes was the starting point of an amazing path which I’m following to this day.  

Feel free to discuss on Hacker News here.

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One of the fundamental changes I made when I wanted to do more with my life while staying healthy is how to improve my sleep.  I found I was unable to do this by adjusting my sleep alone.  I had a lucky coincidence which helped me discover a change which added two more productive hours to my day.

It was June and I had a partially implemented iPhone app and a deadline I couldn’t miss.  I was building an app targeted towards skiers.  The purchase season for skiers is short—running Oct-Feb.  This was my side-project so I also had a full time job, and a family to balance.  I needed to figure out a way to come up with more time to work to meet my goal of having the app live before the snow fell.  

Sleep
For most of my adult life I’ve been a light sleeper—getting most of my most restful sleep between 4 and 9 in the morning.  Going to bed around 10 or 11 would leave me in bed for 10-11 hours a day.  I figured that sleeping less was the obvious way to get more time to work (especially since I could work while my family was asleep).  I tried getting up earlier and it was horrible.  I was too groggy to work.  I tried staying up later but this wasn’t working for me either as I was also too tired to be really productive late at night.  Through a coincidence I found the answer in my diet.

Caffeine
When I first moved to Seattle I was fortunate to live less than 20 meters from one of the top coffee shops in the city: Victrola Coffee.  I quickly became addicted to espresso and was consuming between 2 and 6 a day.  At the time, with only a very small caffeine tolerance from my college years, it felt like I spent the day on turbocharge.  Over a decade later the coffee did not have the same effect.  I was drinking coffee just to wake up and to just stay alert during the day.  My wife and kids would joke that they were unable to even get a response from me until I had my first cup of coffee.

One day in my meditation class, a fellow student asked the instructor whether he drank coffee. He said that he didn’t drink it. It made it hard for him to relax and made him jittery.  I had some of these same problems so I decided to try to get coffee out of my diet.  Over the course of the next month I used the following steps to transition from coffee to tea effectively cutting my caffeine consumption by more than 1/3:

First week: I went from 3 cups of coffee a day (two in morning, 1 after lunch) to 1 cup of full strength (morning) and 1 cup of ½ regular ½ decaf (after lunch).

Second week: 1 cup of ½ regular ½ decaf and 1 cup of black tea in the morning and 1 cup of black tea after lunch.

Third week: 2 cups of black tea in the morning and 1 cup of black tea after lunch.

Fourth week: 1 cup of black tea and 1 cup of green or lighter tea in morning and 1 cup green tea in afternoon.

Coincidentally I was also making this caffeine reduction towards the end of my failed attempt to wake up earlier (which I had spent 2-3 weeks on).  Unexpectedly I started having more success in waking up.  After the fourth week of caffeine reduction I was finally able to move my wakeup time to 5:30 am (giving me 2 extra hours a day from my normal wakeup time between 7:30 and 8).  I also found that I was able to wake-up, pour a cup of tea and get right to work.  I no longer had the groggy sensation in the morning.  At the same time I was able to work later at night without getting tired. My sleep quality also improved from what seemed like about 1-2 hours to get to sleep at night and a total time of about 10 hours in bed to getting to sleep in about 15 minutes and a total time in bed of 7 hours.  The extra coding time allowed me to ship and get the product out before the snow started falling.

During the two years since this happened I’ve noticed the following things:

1. If I add coffee back in to my diet my ability to get up early suffers within 3-4 days.
2. I now use coffee as a tool.  Since my body is now more receptive to a caffeine boost if I do need to pull a late night or counter a lack of sleep for some other reason I can do this with a cup of coffee.  I just have to be careful that I only do this for a day or two.
3. Tea provides some of the same alertness benefits of coffee but does so without causing additional jitteriness or lack of concentration.

I recommend you try this and give it at least a month.  Even if you aren’t trying to get up earlier you will likely see that removing coffee from your diet and replacing it with will have beneficial effects on your concentration and wakefulness.

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“You’ve got to come to Suffer On Saturday” said the test lab manager in my group at Microsoft.  “You would never believe how amazing these people are.”  I was an entry-level software developer, not really happy with my job, and certainly did not yet have the skills to be a great hacker.  I went out and was introduced to the workout Cindy.  I think I maybe got through seven rounds of five pull-ups, ten push-ups, and fifteen air-squats; other people finished 15 or 20 rounds.  I was humbled but for some reason engaged.  The exercise was only part of it but it was the teamwork, competition and desire to discover how good we could get which really drew me in.

Fast forward to now—over a decade from that first workout.  Looking back I’m able to see that was the first step in the path which has taken me to where I am today—not just physically but mentally and creatively as well (and the lab manager went on to open one of the earliest and most successful CrossFit gyms in the country).  How has getting good at CrossFit improved my abilities as an entrepreneur and hacker?

1. Confidence.  Almost everything in CrossFit workouts is measurable.  Being able to track your progress over time in an easily quantifiable way is important to improving.  Showing up and doing that often is a key to getting good.  Getting good at CrossFit workouts taught me how to show-up, deliver and measure, and get better at other things in my life.  Knowing you can deliver and achieve your goals is one element of building confidence.  You don’t need to be great to begin with: you need to know there is a path where you can become great. 

2. Making Others Better. Facing extreme challenges with others brings out deeper levels of connecting. In CrossFit you face extreme challenges multiple times per week.  CrossFit workouts give you a high frequency for opportunities to support others and to do it deeply.  Entrepreneurship is like that, if you aren’t making others better or solving their problems your project or startup will probably fail.  Making others better and doing it with an deep understanding of their needs is a key to success.  CrossFit gave me the practice I needed to give and receive support as an entrepreneur.

3.  Shipping.  Murph is one of the really tough workouts in CrossFit.  It’s a 1 mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 sit-ups, 300 air-squats and then another 1 mile run.  Unless you are going to get hurt in the workout you finish.  The fastest and the slowest people in the gym all complete this workout.  This is like shipping.  You get to the end no matter what and you deliver.  You may not have met your ideal but getting your idea out in to the world is the basis of being a hacker. 

Steps to take:

1. Read about getting started with CrossFit here (This was the first blog post I ever wrote for a startup my friends were building called HubPages.com which became largest websites in the world).

2. Find a local gym and show up.  http://map.crossfit.com/ (if you have multiple options you may want to look for recommendations or reviews).  Most gyms offer a free trial so look for one which supports the goals you have and the atmosphere I describe above.

I’m not affiliated with CrossFit in any way (though my first attempt at a startup was a CrossFit workout tracker—long since dead).

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The building blocks needed by our cells to maintain our bodies—micronutrients—are virtually absent from the standard American diet.  As a result, our bodies become weaker at the cellular level, we lose our vitality […]. Terry L. Wahls, M.D.

In Part 1 we began to stabilize the insulin response in our body.  Managing blood sugar levels is a prerequisite to any other diet change.  Minimizing the effect of sugar in your diet allows the other changes to be more impactful.  Since Part 1 was a processes of exclusion I’m going to focus on diet inclusion in Part 2.

Dr. Terry Wahls published a book which chronicled her food based self-treatment approach to Multiple Sclerosis called Minding My Mitochondria.
 Her food-based treatment helped her reverse her MS and she is currently expanding the trials and research around this.  Although her research and book are specifically targeted to countering the effects of MS on the brain her premise is that a diet which was healthy for the brain then she could potentially counter the effects of the disease.  We can leverage this information as a basis for a diet which helps increase the function and health of the brain even in the absence of disease.  

The quantities of the foods recommended in Dr. Wahls’ book are large.  They are quantified to deliver a certain amount of nutrient in a pure food based diet.  I’m adding the recommended quantities from her book below.  Treat these quantities as ideals, for the most part these recommendations will be new to your diet so any addition will be beneficial.  

Cruciferous Vegetables and Greens (3 cups/day ideal)

• Includes Kale, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Lettuce, Spinach

Onions/Mushrooms (1 cup/day ideal)

Red Foods (1 cup/day ideal)

• Includes Tomatoes, Watermelon, Strawberries, Beets

Blue/Black Foods (1 cup/day ideal)

• Includes Black Grapes, Black Berries, Plums

Yellow/Orange Foods (1 cup/day ideal)

• Includes Carrot, Squash, Peaches, Pineapple, Oranges

I personally make a smoothie in a blender almost every morning from some of these foods:

Brain Smoothie:

• 1 cup Frozen Strawberries
• 1 cup Kale (you can hardly taste it)
• 1 Banana
• 2 Tbsp Whey Protein Powder
• 1/2 cup Water
• 1/2 cup Ice
• 1 tsp concentrated fish oil or flax oil

-Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth.  Add additional water if necessary to achieve correct consistency.

There are a few more recommendations in her book which I’m leaving out of this list as we will deal with them in more detail in future blog posts.  Items such as Animal Protein, Supplements, and potential allergens have a complex role in our diet. 

Adding the above list of foods to your diet on a daily basis will increase the micronutrients necessary to promote a healthy brain.  

Watch Dr. Wahls’ TED talk on her book and diet:

Buy the Book on Amazon:

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High blood sugar wears on the hippocampus (Wu et al. 2008). Impaired glucose tolerance—a sign of eating too much sugar—is linked to relative cognitive impairment in older adults (Messier and Gagnon 2000). The best way to minimize sugar is to avoid refined sugar altogether (especially in sugary drinks) […].  Jan Hanson, L. Ac. in Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius

I discovered the effects diet could have on my life and work when I was 22.  I left college at 155 pounds and within a year hit 200 pounds.  A combination of factors contributed to this.  The main factor was that I started indulging   I could both afford any food I wanted for the first time and was also exposed to a much greater variety in Seattle than my midwest upbringing afforded me. I had no framework within which to know what was good or bad for me.  

Why does someone who spends a majority of their time in front of a computer need to care about what they eat?  In a community famous for late night Mountain Dew, and pizza where is there room for a different model?  The reality is not only is this diet killing you (you can find that message in the media every day) but its also making you a less capable hacker.

This is the first in a series of posts about guidelines a Hacker should follow when eating.  This diet will keep you more productive in both the short and the long run.  I will also help increase your confidence and ability to take on deeper mental challenges. 

Step-1: Remove all refined sugars from your diet.

The carb heavy food you eat (especially sugary foods like soda and junk food) keep you on a roller-coaster ride of insulen production which results in frequent crashes during the day (sleepiness).  You likely prop this up with more carbohydrates and enter a cycle of highs and lows.  You are squandering hours a day in low blood sugar states.  Our goal is to even this cycle out and improve your overall alertness.  Over the course of a week follow these steps to remove all refined sugar from your diet.

Day 1: Remove all soda from your diet on the first day (You can probably acheive the affect by just moving to diet soda but its not a path I recommend as its more powerful to break the sugar taste altogether). Replace with water, sparkling water or tea.

Day 2-3: Remove between meal sugar snacks in the second and third day.  At this point you will be seriously craving surgar—a result of your additicion to it.  I use nuts (Macadamaian nuts from Trader Joes) or milk (serves as an appetite suppresent) to counter cravings during this stage.  

Day 4-5: On the fourth and fifth days remove any juices and desserts you’ve been eating.  Replace the juices with tea (fruity herbal tea goes really well with breakfast in place of juice).  The first time I removed desserts I replaced it with Scotch and more nuts.  In the short term this worked but in the long term it ended up also affecting my sleep negatively. 

Try and go sugar free for at least two weeks.  The second week will be much easier than the first.  After the second week you can try and add a single dessert in after a meal.  Note how you feel after doing this, I typically feel very poor and will be very sleepy about an hour later.  Doing this adds to my perspective on how I’m affecting my mental state when I eat this kind of food.  

I personally like sugary foods (chocolate and ice cream are my two favorites) and I add them back in as a special treat once or twice a month.  I do this when I’m not working and usually as a small celebration.  Doing this with a consciousness about it rather than a habit lets me savor the treat more and it keeps me healthier and more productive the rest of the time. 

Once you are past week two start to take note of how you feel throughout the day.  Do you have more energy?  Do you have fewer crashes or times with brain-fog?  At this point we’ve a big single step  towards improved productivity.  All other things equal your body fat percentage will probably also start dropping.  Evening out your insulin response will make more of the energy stores in your body more available.

In part 2 I talk about the second step of adding more foods which are healthy for your brain and body.

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When we commit ourselves to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to our own likes and dislikes, opinions and prejudices, projections and expectations, new possibilities open up and we have a chance to free ourselves from the straitjacket of unconsciousness.  —Jon Kabat-Zinn 

Early in our practice it may be unclear how meditation will benefit our lives.  Many of us are involved in demanding startups, side-projects or jobs.  Thirty minutes of meditation a day is a lot to commit to.  

Hackers rally around work that has the potential to impact consumers, businesses or fellow hackers.  We may not be fully conscious of why we work or how we work on these projects.  Through meditation we become aware of many of our unconscious motivations.  Once you become aware of these motivations and see their effect on your work you will be able to use them or change them.  

You can only change that which you are conscious of.

One of the things we will see as we progress is that desire underlies many of our motivations.  Lots of us create for financial gain, to improve our reputation, or to get more power.   As we meditate we will see this more clearly.  

Why do we want the financial gain (the VC investment, the big IPO) and how do we react if it doesn’t come?  If it comes, then what?  Did it satisfy our desire or does that desire shift to more or something else?

Does our work get noticed (was it on the HackerNews front page, featured in TechCrunch)?  Are we motivated to continue to create work which doesn’t get noticed even if we beleive in it?  When it does get noticed do we crave more of it?

As you deepen your meditation practice you will be able to see these motivations clearly.  What was unconscious becomes conscious.  We are then free to choose our motivations and we become more likely to choose motivations which minimize this craving (like helping others, learning, or creating).  Financial gain, reputation or power may follow but it won’t control what we do.   

Feel free to discuss on Hacker News.

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