Apparently, during the late 1990s, Jeff Bezos woke up and ate a tube of Pillsbury biscuits every day. Every morning, he just rammed about 1,000 calories worth of soybean oil into his arteries, and then went to work. At this point in history, “work” involved changing Amazon from a bookstore into the mutant everything store that ended the era of retail as we once knew it.
If you’re not fascinated by this, perhaps you haven’t fully grasped the significance of the anecdote.
I feel like I’m surrounded by brilliant people who are all just about to enact their brilliant plans. Their business, their writing career, their documentary film, their whatever. Any day now, they’re going to Get Serious. But first, there are a few things they need to do. They need to get their lives in order—everything needs to be reasonable and well-organized and perfectly healthy. They’re about to pursue their dreams, but there’s this other thing first. One more purgative acid trip they need to have, or one more tweak to their supplement regimen.
This way of thinking supposes that the best way to do something extraordinary is to first achieve some ideal balance, and then, once in a balanced state, finally show the world what you’re capable of. Optimize first, then do. That sounds great.
But, on the other hand, here is the Jeff Bezos of the 1990s, stabbing himself with an insulin spike every day, then transforming global commerce forever. The fucking guy was fucking 35 years old and he was eating like a stoner mongoloid every day, and then making some of the most important business decisions ever in a carbohydrate-laden haze.
In light of this irritating counterexample, I would like to present an alternate model. Maybe people who act boldly are just as screwed up as you are. Maybe the difference is that they just accept that they’re screwed up and that you can’t fix everything, or feel a sense of certainty about anything unprecedented. Perhaps they just step on the gas even when they know that one of the wheels might fall off.
If you’re stalled in your plans, consider that, if you want to do something really interesting, you might have to accept some part of your life that’s not great, if not totally dysfunctional, for a period of time. Let’s call it your Biscuit. It’s whatever thing you’re choosing not to care about right now. Perhaps your personal Biscuit is dietary. Maybe it’s social. Maybe it’s a literal hole in your wall, or your loneliness, or your dread, or your lack of muscle fiber. It’s something that you shouldn’t ignore forever, but could ignore just right now, while you’re doing the thing you need to do.
It’s not wrong to strive for a balanced life. But, unless you’re incredibly wealthy or your life is utterly simple, perfect balance is a lot of work to achieve. It’s a priority of its own. Sometimes you want to work on something else. Biscuits, on the other hand, are quick and convenient. You shouldn’t plan for a life of biscuits. But they won’t kill you.
Now take a look at Warren Buffet's cranky diet, it is even more mad, but he gets stuff done til this day. Maybe certain forms of screw-ups never mattered at all, and that the critics should stop and think.
I find that my productivity ebbs and flows, and my focus is limited. So, if I do 20 things one month, then next month I'll want to cut back and chill. If I focus on skill development, then I'm probably not so focused on health issues (or vice versa). It's hard to maintain optimality on every domain at once.