U PSTREAM E FFECTS #4: F IREBREAKS AND R APID R EPAIRS

THE BODYBUILDER IN COMPETITION

“Stay focused,” he commanded himself.
 
But it was hard. All the lights, the photography… the veterans had on a cool facade, but not him.
 
His first contest.
 
He didn’t want to over-do the oil: how much was he supposed to use?
 
So he did it slower than the other guys, pouring a tiny bit into his palm, about as much as a large coin, and then worked the oil over his body until his muscles started to glisten and reflect the light.
 
As he rubbed oil along the cut lines of his abdominals, memories flooded back of all the pain, all the reps, day-in and day-out… force-feeding himself green vegetables and plain chicken breasts until he was sick post-workout, and back at it again.
 
He implored himself again — “Stay focused.”
 
He’s read Arnold’s books, he’d watched Pumping Iron . He knew the other guys here might try to psyche him out. He wanted to stay focused, stay in his zone, remember his poses… play his own game and he’d be in his own league. It was only a regional, the biggest players wouldn’t be here; he wondered if he had a shot to win it all.
 
“But that’s not the thing to think about. Stay focused.” He was trying to stay loose, he didn’t want to go on stage stiff. The oil was almost done now, he thought — or should he use more? It was awkward stuff.
 
***
 
He pulled his stomach in as hard as he could, flexed the big muscles in his legs as he pushed them forth, feeling as if Doctor Frankenstein had tried to make a ballerina.
 
The crowd was going nuts, cheering… the lights were blinding, he could barely see anything, the noise was intense.
 
He turned away into a half lunge, came down with his fists like he was getting ready to raise a sledgehammer, and then — BAM — flexed all of the muscles in his legs, back, and arms into one rippling motion.
 
The crowd exploded with noise and cheers.
 
***
 
"But that was three weeks ago,” he said to himself, looking at the little trophy on his desk next to his computer for a moment with satisfaction, but then looking downwards at the container of Ben-and-Jerry’s ice cream half-eaten on his lap.
 
... and the second empty ice cream container on the floor.
 
“Maybe I should throw away the ice cream in the freezer… I don’t want to eat any more after this one.”
 
He munched away on the ice cream, but was frowning all the while.
 
“Why am I still eating this crap? I took a little break — it’s been three weeks . I should get back at it.”
 
The ice cream was gone now.
 
“I won’t eat another one.”
 
But then there was another ice cream in his lap.
 
“Why am I eating this one too? What the hell is wrong with me?”
 
***
 
“Maybe I should call back and cancel the pizzas.”
 
He looked down at the slowly-growing, smooth, rounded chub below his pecs and above his hips.
 
The lines that had present 10 weeks ago, when he won his first regional bodybuilding competition, were long gone.
 
He picked up the phone.
 
Started to click to call history.
 
“Ah, screw it. What the hell.”
 
He put the phone down, went to the freezer, and grabbed a pint of ice cream.
 
His pizzas would be here soon, he knew he’d tell himself that he’ll leave one of them for tomorrow, but deep-down he knew he’d break that and eat them all, going to bed with an engorged stomach, a headache, a stomachache, and a feeling of disgust with himself.
 
***
 
He picks up the trophy and throws it at the wall. 
 
The trophy flumps onto the carpet, leaving a small dent in the plaster but otherwise not breaking.
 
He picks up the half-eaten, still-mostly-frozen pint of ice cream and throws that, too, at the wall.
 
Nothing much happens, it also flumps to the floor harmlessly.
 
He flumps off the couch onto the carpet himself, sprawls out, and starts to cry.
 
***
 
BACKSLIDING IS COMMON; NON-BACKSLIDING IS NOT
 
I know a very few rare individuals who have such incredible composure, balance, and discipline that they do not ever backslide on new habits or patterns of action. Once they decide something — poof, it’s done.
 
Lucky them.
 
Now, my life and work has brought me to dozens of countries. I’ve met all sorts of top performers. I estimate I’ve got over 2000 acquaintances around the world (my definition of an acquaintance is someone who, if I’m in their city for only one day, will meet me for lunch even if it’s a very busy day for them). Many of those people are doing something at a very high level.
 
And yet, I only know a handful of these never-backslide people.
 
If it’s you, and you never backslide — well, marvelous, carry on. For the rest of us, we’ll have to learn the skills, mindsets, and approaches to let us deal with the issues our young binge-eating post-championship bodybuilder deals with.
 
***
 
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE OPPOSITION 
 
I reckon there’s four big factors working against you when you’re trying to install new and better ways of doing things —
 
1. Entrainment: We already had a whole issue about this. Your natural tendency will be to do whatever you’ve been doing lately. Your default response to a stimulus will be whatever your past responses have been. Etc.
 
2. Homeostasis: Your body self-regulates through a variety of processes. If whatever you’re doing is changing your biochemistry, your body is very likely to react poorly — even if the change is long-term for the better. Running a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, like the bodybuilder above cutting for his competition, can get the body to start triggering all sorts of reactions and processes that generate physical and mental pressure to make you want to eat. If you’ve been a habitual caffeine user, your body has up-regulated the amount of the sleepiness-producing adenosine that caffeine blocks out — if you quit the caffeine cold turkey, you way tired and irritable for a while. There’s a whole lot of things like this.
 
3. The Neurons Thing: I’m not so hip to the exact science behind it, but apparently, any pattern of actions you do for a while gets encoded in your brain to make it more efficient at triggering in the future. Perhaps it’s like that board game Chutes and Ladders — you land on a chute, and you go all the way down to the end of the pattern of action you’re used to doing if nothing interrupts it. Like when a hard alcoholic completely quits, but then the single drink sends them back into a spiral of how they used to do it? All these neural paths of going to the bar, ordering whatever drinks they order, having one after another… even the familiar motion of a swirling a drink in their hand… all the neurons to do a past behavior are still there, dormant, if unused. You go back to them, you start doing it just like the good ol’ days (or bad ol’ days, as it were). “It’s like riding a bike — you never forget.”
 
4. “Ambitious Person Syndrome”: Is this already a thing? I just made up the term. But I’ll tell you, from observation, a lot of ambitious people are driven by some sort of neurotic drive to be the best, to show people up, to drown out some past hardship or humiliation, or whatever else. Nobody really talks about it, but I often see top people at what they do have a sort of obsessiveness about them, where they’re trying to out-run, or out-work, or out-drink their demons. When neurotic hyper-focus is turned to art or work or fitness, it can lead to amazing masterpieces. When it’s turned to some escapism, distraction, or self-destruction, it can be pretty ugly. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, congrats. If you do, ehh, you know how it goes.
 
So that’s what we’re up against — you’ll tend to automatically do what you’ve done in the past as a default (entrainment), your body starts throwing all sorts of alarms and bad feelings at you if you try to change how you’re doing things (homeostasis), memories and encoded past patterns of action never really go away (the neuron thing), and if you’re ambitious and driven, that same force that gives you superpowers during high times becomes a huge liability at other times.
 
Ok, that’s what we’re up against. How do we deal with it?
 
***
 
AN UPSTREAM APPROACH
 
I believe — and you might disagree with me, and that’s fine — but I believe that sometimes a battle is more-or-less unwinnable on a particular day if you’ve also got other obligations or commitments. If you only want to change one  thing, you can very likely get it done. But as soon as you want to fix that one thing and keep the rest of your life and duties going, it just might not be possible.
 
I don’t say that to be demoralizing, but because I think it’s just a fact of nature and worth acknowledging.
 
The flip side of this, though, is I think it’s really almost automatic to conquer anything given enough time and enough resources mobilized.
 
I think realizing this is a key part of maturity.
 
I see young people, more than older people, going into that self-hate spiral as described after the bodybuilding championship. (Which was based on a composite of three real stories — one from a bodybuilder I know, and two I’ve read that were written about in intimate detail.)
 
For me, at least, realizing that I can’t necessarily fix everything today  was liberating. Likewise, I knew I could fix, change, or improve whatever I wanted, if given enough time and appropriate resources.
 
I also think the mix of breaking one’s word to oneself repeatedly through half-assed efforts to stop a pattern of bad behavior are unhelpful and lead to the self-hate spiral described above. I know, I’ve been there, it’s awful. I know many friends and colleagues who have been there. The more reflective, honest, mature, and self-aware people eventually get out of that pattern entirely.
 
I still fail plenty, and backslide sometimes, but I don’t go through long bouts of repeated half-assed efforts to pull myself out without succeeding and all the misery, guilt, and loathing that entails.
 
So again — I recommend an upstream approach.  If you want to fix something, start putting the forces in motion that’ll really get it fixed over time.
 
***
 
STRATEGY #1: FIREBREAKS
 
Despite having amazing modern technology — we can drop chemical foam from airplanes to try to put out fires — one of the most reliable technologies for fighting fires is about a bazillion years old.
 
You dig up and kill off a small line through the forest encircling the fire. When the fire creeps to that area, there's no more fuel in its path and it burns out.
 
Bad habits like binge eating, self-indulging in being busy/distracted/unhappy and not doing your highest work, and all other manner of failing type behavior require ongoing "fuel" to get there.
 
Around 150 years ago, Emerson wrote: "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”
 
It’s a good prescription.
 
How do you put things behind you?
 
You put dedicated spots on the calendar to break out of the cycle you’re in.
 
I like to use as many time-based firebreaks as I can.
 
I do a Weekly Review almost every Sunday. This habit, by the way, took me three years of sometimes-doing-it, sometimes-not-doing-it before I got it down. But since getting it, it’s a godsend. I write down what I did last week, just jotting down quickly what was going on in general and anything noteworthy. Here’s the start of November 2015 —
 
1: Flew Dublin via Madrid.
2: Arrived Dublin. Met Nance.
3: Dublin WebSummit/Nance + sick.
4: Dublin WebSummit/Nance, biz dinner, sick.
5: Dublin WebSummit last day, flew at night.
6: Transit day all day, arrived Beijing.
7: Beijing — no internet day — massive action on PRO Marshlist + getting back in swing of things. 
 
That whole week sucked. Constant travel. A bunch of sick people on the flight to Dublin, I came down with a cold once I got there. Five or six of my really precious habits got broken — fitness and endurance, hitting true inbox zero, working on my most important project in the morning, and a few others.
 
But just writing it down and realizing, “Oh, hey, that was a crazy week. Let’s put it behind me” — just that simple action goes a long way.
 
I do fancy weekly reviews sometimes where I analyze a bunch of things, but the simplest version of one is looking at what happened the past seven days (as above), and then asking myself three questions —
 
"What’s really going on?”
 
"So what do I do about it?”
 
“What matters, what doesn’t?”
 
That’s the simplest version of a Weekly Review for me, and works as a great firebreak. 
 
I’ll basically use any possible thing as an excuse for a firebreak — I use New Year’s day, I use my birthday, I use any upcoming travel/vacation, I use any days where I know I’ll be offline entirely. 
 
I’ll also manufacture firebreaks if I’m in really bad shape. 
 
Young ambitious people try to do things by themselves too often. If I’ve been being a lazy bastard recently, or eating like garbage, I’ll ask one of my very productive or very healthy friends if I can go stay at their house/couch/air-mattress/whatever for a while. Guys like Kai Zau, Zach Obront, and Josef Wasinski eat super healthy. I can just say, “Hey, I’ve been eating like garbage. If I come swing through and see you in Vegas/Austin/London/wherever, can we make sure to cook everything and eat super clean?” People are really happy to oblige. Note you don't need to travel long distances to do this; getting anyone onboard with you and breaking your routine together is the combination.
 
I’ll book long train rides, ferry rides, or book passage on a ship (more on rail, ferry, and ship travel in a moment) if I’ve been distracted and overwhelmed, in order to clear some space to get back on track — firebreaks.
 
Often, if I know I have a firebreak coming up, I’ll say — “Hey, ok, I’ve been eating like crap… fine, I’ll keep that up until [my birthday] [I go stay in Kai’s guest room] [whatever]” — and I’ll really enjoy my last hurrah of junk food until then. But I’ll make sure I’ve got ALL the resources lined up to switch back to whatever diet I want once I hit the firebreak. All junk thrown out, a clear and sustainable diet plan written that I know I can adhere to, perhaps even Amazon Prime ordering some basic healthy staples to whoever’s house before I arrive.
 
Note last two can be good tips as well — letting go of the guilt and really enjoying the last few days eating junk before the firebreak is very good; so is making it easy to sustain behavior by having good food waiting. It’s odd and weird, at first, to order a bunch of health food to someone’s house if you’re coming as a guest, or to a hotel if you’re staying there, or your parent’s place if you’re going for a visit, or whatever. But once you start doing it, you find it’s no big deal.
 
***
 
STRATEGY #2: RAPID REPAIRS
 
This is as much a mentality as any particular behavior.
 
These days, I anticipate all sorts of nonsense will happen.
 
I *will* get sick again someday, I *will* get injured, I *will* get overwhelmed, I *will* have some really bad news hit, I *will* have some project I put a ton of hours into fail through no fault of own…
 
It still sucks when it happens, but I’m ready for it. Instead of hoping and praying I won’t fail, I try to be ready for the inevitable minor failures.
 
Missing a single workout, eating a single off-diet piece of junk, spending a day on some past escapist media that you used to be addicted to — these really don’t matter all that much, if you dust yourself off and keep back at it.
 
It’s when you start to feel miserable that you went off-diet, so you eat two more pizzas.. and then start the next day by eating two more pizzas… and then follow up with three pints of ice cream and six candy bars…
 
… that’s the self-hate cycle going, and the opposite of Rapid Repairs.
 
“I’m such a loser — munch munch munch, Snickers Butterfinger Big Mac — why am I such a loser? munch munch ice cream french fries shake — why does this always happen? munch munch munch…”
 
That’s what kills you.
 
And really, this is where the mindset shift comes in. “Ok, I’m off-track. What do I do about? And I gotta be realistic, how and when do I address this, so I know it’ll get fixed?”
 
In mid-2015, I adopted a “Water Only” policy as an experiment. I noticed I was spending an asinine amount of money on coffee and tea — it was my highest discretionary expense — and so I started experimenting with only drinking water. Caffeine pills for the caffeine, on regulated doses. Then — nothin’ else. No juice, no milk, no tea, no coffee.
 
The policy broke down multiple times. The first was when I ran out of caffeine pills in Shanghai, and couldn’t find a single pharmacy that sold them. (You can buy caffeine pills over the counter anywhere in the USA. I tried over a dozen pharmacies in Shanghai with no dice.)
 
Not wanting to go off caffeine cold turkey in the midst of a busy work cycle, I said — “Well, ok, this is happening. I’m going to drink tea and coffee until I get back to the States. In the last couple days before I’m back in the U.S., I’ll really go crazy and enjoy myself with some wonderful high-end coffees and teas.” I did, it was nice, I got back on Water Only in the U.S. and stuck with it no problem. (I did ask my friend Kai to help police me for the first two weeks, when we were working on a project together at UChicago. “You have my permission to slap the hell out of me if you see me drinking a coffee; in fact, I’d consider it a huge favor. So slap the hell out of me if I do, ok?” “Ok, Sebastian, sure thing.” I didn’t drink any coffee on that program, and re-installed Water Only... though once when I was strongly thinking about it on a particularly stressful day, I mentioned it to Kai, and he said he didn’t think it was a good idea, and I didn’t do it.)
 
The second time? November 4th, I was really ill, when Nance and I had dinner with potential partners at a publicly listed industry-leading company that we’re in partnership discussions with. I got out of bed and pounded coffee to get through the dinner sociably, and it got me off my policy — which I then started debating which day to re-install it on. I settled on Sunday November 15th, a firebreak date of a weekly review.
 
I dare say the mentality here matters about as much as the mechanics.
 
“Things break, and I fix them when they do” is just about infinitely more effective than “I hate myself, why is this happening?”
 
I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people get this wrong.
 
Start thinking Rapid Repairs, not perfection. Empirically, trying to bank on perfection often makes people disintegrate.
 
***
 
STRATEGY #3: DAMAGE MITIGATION
 
Firstly, Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs are more important than the next strategy, by far.
 
If you start learning how to use Firebreaks to your advantage, and start learning and employing a Rapid Repairs mentality/skillset, that’ll get you there.
 
Damage mitigation isn’t as important, in my experience. But it does help.
 
There’s different types of damage mitigation. Here’s a few that I’ve found work well —
 
A. Cut off the damage source.
 
If you’re compulsively web surfing, use Freedom or SelfControl to block the internet, unplug your router entirely, take the sim card out of your phone if you need to. Throw the junk food out. Etc.

 
B. “Hold the line!” and other mantras
 
A “mantra” is a short phrase you say to yourself to prompt behavior. 
 
“Hold the line!” is one that’s worked for me. That’s, on a day I’ve done something stupid, resolving not to do it again.
 
C. Fail elegantly.
 
This is a cautionary note, in opposition to “cut off damage source” and “hold the line!” points.
 
This requires self-awareness and practice. Sometimes, I know I’m kind of screwed on some behavior.
 
In those cases, I’ll sometimes decide that a policy is revoked, instead of constantly trying to stop in a half-assed way and repeatedly breaking my word to myself.
 
I’ve seen research in the past that behavior that we feel ashamed or guilty of actually becomes more addictive. And I know that setting a resolution (“ok, I’m really  done eating ice cream”) and then breaking it (“oh god, I just ate another three pints of ice cream”) — I know this is hugely destructive to morale.

So… sometimes things have changed. Ok, I came down both ill and injured at the same time. So if I was running a strict no carb diet, I might say, instead of feeling miserable and binging, I’m going to revoke the policy and re-think it at a weekly review or other future firebreak date. Now, given the policy’s off, I don’t need to go crazy. I can drink orange juice and eat whatever normal carbohydrate foods without going off the deep end and making myself really sick.
 
D. Mix in something useful.
 
If you’re cutting — dieting to lose weight — and you just binge ate, might as well go get in an intense full-body weightlifting to put some of those calories to good use.
 
If you’re trying to not web surf, but just broke down, might as well at least go Wiki-walking on something that’s useful to learn.
 
E. “Fine, but first…”
 
And finally, if you’ve been eating like crap, tell yourself you’re allowed to eat whatever junk you want, just so long as you eat a salad first, or some lean protein, or sweet potatoes, or whatever. You’re allowed to go crazy on energy drinks, but first have to drink a half-liter of water. You’re allowed to vegetate in front of the TV, but first you need to put your running shoes on and walk outside — you can walk back in without running if you don’t want to, but at least suit up to go running and walk outside. You’re allowed to surf the net, but first you’ll write just a single sentence  for your writing project.
 
Sometimes the good behavior takes hold and puts an end to the undesirable behavior, but even if not, you’re getting a slight dose of goodness before doing the bad thing. This starts conditioning yourself to take the right action before the wrong one, making it hopefully easier to crowd it out in the future.
 
***
 
STRATEGY #4: A MINDSET TOWARDS PRACTICE AND LONG-TERM IMPROVEMENT
 
When I see people fail, I see them focusing myopically on just one thing.
 
“Oh god, if I could just ________” (lose weight, make more cold calls, procrastinate less, study more, eat better, get fit, whatever)
 
Instead, I recommend you take a long-term approach to learning these skills. Look, you’re going to be you for many decades.
 
You’ve got plenty of time to figure this stuff out.
 
The people that myopically focus on one thing, and keep failing and feeling miserable, they get into a bad loop and sometimes make no progress for months.
 
I’m re-assessing on a weekly basis. I have bad weeks fairly often, occasionally I have bad months. But I basically don’t bad quarters and never have bad years any more.
 
Again, the whole point of this Upstream Effects is that I believe our moment-by-moment agency and control over our lives is a lot lower than commonly thought, even among the most driven and excellence-oriented people.
 
The next time something goes wrong — and something will go wrong sooner or later, eh? — you can use is as an opportunity to practice navigating the flow of your life.
 
Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs have been some of the most useful things for me in the long-term journey.
 
You can lose any particular short-term battle of will, but if you give yourself dozens, hundreds, thousands of opportunities to improve with a stacked-deck and best practices in place, you’ll be able to wear down and achieve just about any goal. Then, you’ll find yourself with all those factors — entrainment, homeostasis, the patterns encoded into your neurons, and a general drive and intensity about life — these will all be working for you to continue the pattern of ascent.

***
 
SEAT61 FOR TRAINS, CRUISESHEET FOR SHIPS

In terms of firebreaks, one of my favorite ways to get them is to book travel where I'll have no internet, no phone, and no distractions. I'll bring a book, a notebook and pens, sometimes a computer — and just think .

How often do we get to think with nothing comes at us all day, or for two days in a row, or longer?

Rarely.

Not often enough.

I almost always get gains out of these long, slow travels.

So here's a recommendation: instead of flying, try taking a train or ship next time you're traveling.

You can find train timetables and costs along with ferry schedules at  seat61.com

I love the site. I take trains on all sorts of routes other people don't. Going San Francisco to Denver (or all the way to Chicago), or going Seattle to San Francisco, Austin to SF, Boston to Miami... these are great routes in the USA.

You can go from Beijing or Shanghai to Taipei without flying, you take the train to Xiamen and the ferry across the Straits. 

Saigon to Hanoi is a great two-day train run.

The trains in Europe are excellent; the ferries are good too. Amsterdam to London is two trains and one ferry (Amsterdam -> train to Hoek van Holland -> night ferry to Harwich -> short train ride to London).

Most parts of the world have much stronger train and ferry coverage than you'd think. It's slow, but that's the whole point. It's amazing.

I also like to take ships when I can. I've gone Florida to London twice on a cheap cruise, with all expenses included. There's a gym on the boat and all you can eat reasonably healthy food. I eat tons of chicken breasts, cheese, guacamole.

My friend Tynan runs  cruisesheet.com  which is a search engine for cheap cruises. You can put in any sets of location and see if you can get to your destination by ship cheaply. I love to be on a boat for a week or two if I want to do deep thinking, to write or edit a book, or just to get clarity.

Whenever time allows, I use Seat61 and Cruisesheet to get to where I'm going without flying. Try them the next time you want some time and space to get clarity and work on your habits, your goals, and your life.

***

CAN YOU PUT A FIREBREAK ON YOUR SCHEDULE RIGHT NOW?

So, there's a bunch of little guidelines in this chapter you can implement. Go back and pick some out.

Biggest piece of advice: schedule some date in the future you can use as a natural firebreak. Instead of being upset if your life isn't perfect right now, pick a date with enough time, space, and bandwidth that you can reassess everything and put new policies in place.

It's a game-changer. When things inevitably go wrong, Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs are how you stay sane and on your game.