Eating One Meal a Day (Jack Dorsey) | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | So I think you and I eat similar diets, at least I was...
00:00:05.280 | It's the first time I've heard this.
00:00:08.280 | Yeah, so I was doing it before...
00:00:09.920 | First time anyone has said that to me, in this case.
00:00:13.000 | Yeah, but it's becoming more and more cool.
00:00:16.600 | But I was doing it before it was cool.
00:00:18.160 | So the intermittent fasting and fasting in general, I really enjoy.
00:00:21.720 | I love food, but I enjoy the...
00:00:25.720 | I also love suffering because I'm Russian, so fasting kind of makes you appreciate the...
00:00:34.120 | Makes you appreciate what it is to be human somehow.
00:00:38.160 | But I have a...
00:00:39.160 | Outside the philosophical stuff, I have a more specific question.
00:00:42.360 | It also helps me as a programmer and a deep thinker, like from the scientific perspective,
00:00:48.400 | to sit there for many hours and focus deeply.
00:00:51.640 | Maybe you were a hacker before you were CEO.
00:00:55.440 | What have you learned about diet, lifestyle, mindset that helps you maximize mental performance
00:01:02.240 | to be able to focus for...
00:01:04.720 | To think deeply in this world of distractions?
00:01:08.600 | I think I just took it for granted for too long.
00:01:12.960 | Which aspect?
00:01:14.280 | Just the social structure of we eat three meals a day and there's snacks in between.
00:01:19.800 | And I just never really asked the question why.
00:01:23.000 | Oh, by the way, in case people don't know, I think a lot of people know, but you at least
00:01:28.360 | do famously eat once a day.
00:01:30.560 | You still eat once a day?
00:01:32.280 | Yep.
00:01:33.280 | I eat dinner.
00:01:34.280 | By the way, what made you decide to eat once a day?
00:01:36.360 | Because to me, that was a huge revolution that you don't have to eat breakfast.
00:01:39.880 | That was like...
00:01:40.880 | I felt like I was a rebel.
00:01:41.880 | Like I abandoned my parents or something and became an anarchist.
00:01:45.560 | It does feel...
00:01:46.560 | When you first...
00:01:47.560 | The first week you start doing it, it feels you kind of have a superpower.
00:01:49.560 | Yeah.
00:01:50.560 | And you realize it's not really a superpower.
00:01:52.200 | But I think you realize, at least I realized, just how much our mind dictates what we're
00:02:01.840 | possible of.
00:02:04.840 | And sometimes we have structures around us that incentivize this three meal a day thing,
00:02:09.720 | which was purely social structure versus necessity for our health and for our bodies.
00:02:18.840 | And I did it just...
00:02:20.840 | I started doing it because I played a lot with my diet when I was a kid and I was vegan
00:02:26.760 | for two years and just went all over the place just because health is the most precious thing
00:02:34.840 | we have and none of us really understand it.
00:02:38.380 | So being able to ask the question through experiments that I can perform on myself and
00:02:45.640 | learn about is compelling to me.
00:02:48.600 | And I heard this one guy on the podcast, Wim Hof, who's famous for doing ice baths and
00:02:54.440 | holding his breath and all these things.
00:02:59.160 | He said he only eats one meal a day.
00:03:00.960 | I'm like, "Wow, that sounds super challenging and uncomfortable.
00:03:05.040 | I'm going to do it."
00:03:06.040 | So I just...
00:03:07.520 | I learn the most when I make myself...
00:03:10.600 | I wouldn't say suffer, but when I make myself feel uncomfortable because everything comes
00:03:16.400 | to bear in those moments and you really learn what you're about or what you're not.
00:03:25.520 | So I've been doing that my whole life.
00:03:28.560 | When I was a kid, I could not speak.
00:03:31.040 | I had to go to a speech therapist and it made me extremely shy.
00:03:36.400 | And then one day I realized I can't keep doing this and I signed up for the speech club.
00:03:44.000 | And it was the most uncomfortable thing I could imagine doing, getting a topic on a
00:03:52.720 | note card, having five minutes to write a speech about whatever that topic is, not being
00:03:58.280 | able to use the note card while speaking and speaking for five minutes about that topic.
00:04:05.360 | But it just, it puts so much...
00:04:08.320 | It gave me so much perspective around the power of communication, around my own deficiencies
00:04:14.200 | and around if I set my mind to do something, I'll do it.
00:04:18.600 | So it gave me a lot more confidence.
00:04:20.840 | So I see fasting in the same light.
00:04:23.360 | This is something that was interesting, challenging, uncomfortable, and has given me so much learning
00:04:32.240 | and benefit as a result.
00:04:34.760 | And it will lead to other things that I'll experiment with and play with.
00:04:38.600 | But yeah, it does feel a little bit like a superpower sometimes.
00:04:44.200 | The most boring superpower one can imagine.
00:04:46.680 | No, it's quite incredible.
00:04:48.440 | The clarity of mind is pretty interesting.
00:04:50.960 | (laughs)
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