Detox Diets and Disorganization

The meaning of the term “home” seems to become more and more vague the older I get. Part of that is because it’s been more than 2 years since I’ve lived in any one place for longer than four months. But in the technical sense, I still consider my parents’ place “home”.

That’s where I am right now. Lying on the living room couch, just relaxing after reading another chapter from one of my favorite books…The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. It’s good to be here and spend some time with my parents, little sisters, and my grandmother. I’ve been very fortunate to have grown up in a wonderful family that honestly cares about each other, and (at least for the most part), gets along easily.

If my memory serves me correctly, it’s been about a month since my last blog post. What a shame. So much has happened worth recording! I guess this fact alone is proof of the overwhelming disorganization I’ve been feeling since classes at Cedarville began 4 weeks ago. That’s just one of the two realizations I’ve had in those first weeks:

Realization #1: I’ve been tricking myself into feeling organized when I’m actually nowhere NEAR organized…I’m actually pretty inefficient right now, in pretty much every area of my life. Everything from my finances to my school notebooks is a scattered mess. This realization has been a great start. And I’m now focusing on turning this bad habit around. A couple of concepts I’m using to improve are 1) Batching (the act of putting similar activities together to avoid wasted back-and-forth time, which includes buying supplies in bulk to avoid unnecessary shopping trips). 2) Four week habit development (focusing on organizing one key area of my life every four weeks). 3) Outsourcing. I’ve found a great personal assistant in the Philippines who will be taking over a lot of those time-consuming, low-value tasks that simply have to be done.

Realization #2: The way our country’s college-level business schools operate is seriously lacking in effectiveness, and in very real need of an overhaul.

Evidence:

a) As part of a senior class, I constantly hear my classmates saying things like “I don’t feel like I’ve learned much of anything about actually succeeding in business”…despite the fact that we attend one of the top-rated universities in our region.

b) Getting good grades and a high GPA no longer means that you’ve necessarily learned anything. It’s become a silly game that can often be won by a near-anal memorization of facts (many of which are useless in the long run), and by applying test-taking strategies. 

c) Essential lessons go unlearned, and pointless lessons are stressed as critical for success in business. Why is it that International Business students are not required to learn even a single foreign language? And why is it that Marketing students overwhelmed by quantitative methods (a complex mathematical strategy class)…yet they aren’t required to take even the most basic class in Psychology? It’s stupid. And by the way…whenever I bring this up, I always hear “Well, because you should know how stuff like quantitative methods works even if you won’t use it.” Really? Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me like we should start by spending our time on the core skills and principles that will make us successful. Personal development is another missing key ingredient. A set of mandatory classes that teach students core success principles and strategies for self improvement would have a mindblowing positive effect on our graduates.

d) As an aspiring world-class entrepreneur, I have a small problem with learning business skills and principles from people who are willing to work 9-5 for $50,000 a year. If they really knew enough about success in business to teach me how to do it…then why aren’t THEY successful in business? Sorry, but I’m not impressed with those 5 college degrees on the office wall. A nerdy kid living in his parents basement with 10 years to waste could do the same thing. Now, of course there are exceptions. I’ve had two professors with considerable business experience who run their own successful companies and have chosen to teach college classes part-time as a way of giving back. That is an honerable thing, and I give those guys all the respect in the world. Their contributions are refreshing. 

And I could go on. But I won’t. There will be more to come. The idea of doing something to revolutionize the way American business schools do things is exciting to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that task is somewhere in my future.

Anyway, let’s talk about detox diets…

About a month ago, I was on a little vacation with my family and I had been curious about my recent fatigue. It never seemed to go away, no matter how much sleep I would get. One morning in the hotel, my sisters were watching Regis and Kelly talk about detox diets. That got my mind churning, and caused me to start wondering if an unhealthy diet could be the problem.

I ran into a book at a bookstore about detoxification, bought it, and read the whole thing that day. It recommended a 4 week liver detox diet, and described the whole plan from start to finish, including meal plans and recipes. It sounded like a great plan, and the author told story after story about people who noticed dramatic differences in their every-day feeling of health and well-being. Sounded good to me. So, not quite knowing what I was getting myself into, I decided to do it.

August 18 was my first day. My new diet basically meant eliminating any food that isn’t particularly easy for your liver to process, including wheat products, dairy, sugars, sweeteners, coffees, alcohols, fatty meats (like steak and pork), and absolutely anything that is packaged with preservatives or sprayed with pesticides. This meant that I basically could not consume anything besides organic fruits and vegetables, organic meats (like free-range, ultra-low-fat chicken), healthy grains, seeds, and nuts (no peanuts or cashews).

Today is September 13, and it’s been 3 and 1/2 weeks since my four week detox experiment began. Having always been one of those guys who can eat absolutely anything without gaining a pound, I never really understood the difficulty of dieting. I would hear the complaints of an overweight friend and think to myself, “Just stop eating so much pizza, dude. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

Boy, was I ever wrong.

In my next post, I’ll tell you all about what it was like to suddenly and completely abandon every non-natural food and drink for 4 straight weeks. I couldn’t believe how hard it was (even embarrassing at times), and I’ll bet you can’t guess the foods I ended up missing the most. Stay tuned, and check back for the rest of the story!

~ by Young Entrepreneur on September 13, 2008.