Benjamin Hardy Must Be Stopped
If Tony Robbins, Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk had a man-child and unleashed him on Medium he would be Benjamin Hardy. The know-it-all self help guru can’t seem to find his way out of the top stories page. We must stop clicking. Start unfollowing. Do it. Before it’s too late.
Why is Hardy so dangerous? Because like Seth, Tony, Gary and the other online gurus his advice is all sizzle and no steak. He is writing it because he wants to be popular, not because he has something unique and useful to say about the human condition. Don’t believe me? Well he told us himself in How I Used Medium To Get My First 20,000 Subscribers in Six Months.
He starts with his challenge nay, Quest! He wants to publish his ebook. (Don’t we all?)
As one agent shared, in order to even be considered by agents and publishers, writers need to already have a substantial readership (i.e., a platform). I told her my goal was to have 5,000 blog subscribers by the end of 2015. She responded, “That would not be possible from where you currently are. These things take time. You will not be able to get a top publisher for 3–5 years. That’s just the reality.”
“Reality to who?” I thought as I hung up the phone.
Determined to dominate the world of publishing and not wait the three years it might take to prove he’s writing something of value, Hardy took to Medium. Quest in mind he set out for big numbers, in the same post he proudly displayed his stats. I’ve helpfully annotated them below.
His article goes on to explain that he is trying to build a platform to get noticed by publishers. So I was a little perplexed when I read the next few paragraphs:
I was given my own Huffington Post blog and the Observer said they’d like to pay me to write exclusively for them. I didn’t know what I was doing, and it sounded awesome, so I agreed. For the next four months (from the end of June to the end of October), I published almost all of my work exclusively at the Observer.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting very much traffic at the Observer, and my number of subscribers didn’t budge. Please note, I wasn’t putting the “call to action” at the end of my articles at the Observer.
So after getting a viral hit on Medium he was offered a paid gig, presumably to a wide audience and he shunned it. Why? Because it’s not about what he’s writing it’s about building a personal following. He couldn’t game the Observer for big personal traffic gains so he had to drop it. Writing is a game to Hardy, it’s not about what he has to say, it’s about how popular he can make a post.
I’ve recently adopted Ferriss’ concept of doing short-term experiments. This has changed my approach to work. For example, a few months ago I stumbled upon a personal development article that had over 1,000,000 social shares. I decided to perform an experiment to attempt creating an article that would also get 1,000,000 shares. The result was this article.
Let’s think about this for a second. Rather than, say, starting from a deep personal insight or a stunning peice of research, he just wants to write something that will get shared a million times. This only proves to me that his writing is formulaic. It’s an attempt to game the system for big numbers, something the social web is kind of perfect for.
When I write an article, I’m not concerned about how long it will be. Instead, I focus on how good I can make it. I want my art to leave people better than it found them, including you.
If this were really true Hardy would care a lot more about his read rates and recommends than he does about raw clicks. Also, does he think other writers are posting just to post? He must be the only writer cracking open a Macbook Air who’s really concerned about improving everyone’s life — including my own.
Which brings me to his writing itself. Other than being obsessed with the number eight, Hardy wants you to think deep — really deep. I could write a much longer piece dissecting his work, but for the purposes of this piece I’m going to focus on his current masterpiece — 8 Things Every Person Should Do Before 8AM.
Never one to start small. In this post he wants to go big picture right from the top.
This article is intended to challenge you to rethink your entire approach to life. The purpose is to help you simplify and get back to the fundamentals.
Sadly, most people’s lives are filled to the brim with the nonessential and trivial. They don’t have time to build toward anything meaningful.
They are in survival mode. Are you in survival mode?
I started to wonder, maybe I am in survival mode? Our leader moves on:
…there is a growing collective-consciousness that with a lot of work and intention — you can live every moment of your life on your own terms.
You are the designer of your destiny.
You are responsible.
You get to decide. You must decide — because if you don’t, someone else will. Indecision is a bad decision.
It’s really just that simple. No matter your economic conditions, how many children you have or any other priors you must choose to design your own destiny, you know like writing Medium posts that get a million shares.
After extolling the benefits of 7+ hours of sleep (night shift workers, parents to small kids, people with long commutes, sorry you’re already out). He moves on to meditation and prayer to start each day.
Prayer and meditation facilitate intense gratitude for all that you have. Gratitude is having an abundance mindset. When you think abundantly, the world is your oyster. There is limitless opportunity and possibility for you.
Now I’m all for gratitude, but being grateful has nothing to do with thinking abundantly. True gratitude is realizing you are lucky for whatever you have not thinking about having limitless opportunity. There’s no such thing as limitless opportunity. I’m 34 years old and 5'9" as grateful as I am for professional hockey the opportunity for me to play it has passed, no amount of gratitude will change that. I’m grateful for NASA and math, but I’ll never be an astronaut.
Next up is exercise. It’s hard to argue that exercise is good for you. So he says exercise. Whether its the gym or in Hardy’s case, apparently yard work. Then eat 30 grams of protein, because Tim Ferris says so.
So once I’ve medidated and done the yard work and eaten a three egg breakfast, then it’s time to jump in a cold shower. Mostly because Tony Robbins does it, Hardy explains.
Cold water immersion radically facilitates physical and mental wellness. When practiced regularly, it provides long-lasting changes to your body’s immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems that improve the quality of your life. It can also increase weight-loss because it boosts your metabolism.
He goes on:
A 2007 research study found that taking cold showers routinely can help treat depression symptoms often more effectively than prescription medications. That’s because cold water triggers a wave of mood-boosting neurochemicals which make you feel happy.
Now a singular study is a mountain of research (science!), but what if I’m not clinically depressed and I really just want to feel warm and cozy as I get clean? Too damn bad. Do as Robbins does! Still freaked out? Hardy can help:
To me, it increases my willpower and boosts my creativity and inspiration. While standing with the cold water hitting my back, I practice slowing my breathing and calming down. After I’ve chilled out, I feel super happy and inspired. Lots of ideas start flowing and I become way motivated to achieve my goals.
Personally, I don’t need to test my willpower first thing in the morning, every morning. I test my will power every time a client says something stupid. At those moments I too slowly breathe in and out. My theory, he’s in a cold shower every morning because he’s horny and can’t do anything about it.
So after you’ve shrunk your balls to raisins and/or your nipples could cut glass, it’s time to consume uplifting content. Hardy uses audiobooks, probably because the shivering makes it tough to read text.
OK, you’ve raked the yard gratefully, you’ve eaten a 1/3 of a steak, you froze yourself and you got a quickie audiobook education. But have you really moved the needle? Not until you’ve reviewed your life vision.
If you read your long term goals every day you will think about them every day. If you think about them every day, and spend your days working toward them, they’ll manifest.
Achieving goals is a science. There’s no confusion or ambiguity to it. If you follow a simple pattern, you can accomplish all of your goals, no matter how big they are.
It really is that simple. Define your life goal. Read it every morning. The rest is simple. Ben Hardy’s goal is to be a popular writer. See? Simple.
OK now that you reviewed your life’s mission, do at least one thing to get closer to it. No not email or a task list do the really important stuff.
Willpower is like a muscle that depletes when it is exercised. Similarly, our ability to make high quality decisions becomes fatigued over time. The more decisions you make, the lower quality they become — the weaker your willpower.
What Hardy fails to realize is that mundane stuff most of us mere mortals do first thing in the morning is the stuff of our life’s vision. Most of us want to be successful in our career and have a family we love. (I define family as any group of people you care about and/or for).
So the Mom who’s making lunches for her kids at 5:30AM before jumping in her (fucking hot) shower is doing something toward her life’s vision. Her vision is raising her kids to healthy adults. Today’s lunch is just one small step toward that. So is prepping for that status meeting.
The single dad who spent the morning replying to emails so he can take his kids to school is living a life of gratitude, he loves his kids so he’s giving up his time to make sure they are taken care of.
What Hardy is selling is just another version of what all the other self-help gurus are pitching. That it doesn’t take work. That it will always be pleasant and inspiring. That if you simple focus on the right stuff the universe will in it’s vast abundance provide for you. I don’t know who’s making his foster kid’s lunches, I don’t know who’s providing for them while he pursues his PHD, maybe his wife? Maybe a caregiver? All I do know is that most of the people I come across are happy warriors. Fighting the everyday battles because that’s how they show their love for their families. They aren’t exhausted because of a lack of gratitude or vision, they aren’t getting too little sleep because they’re binge watching. They are busy and tired because their life demands it. The life they designed demands it. They aren’t writing false promises into Medium posts to build an ever-bigger audience. They are working to make an honest living.
Medium, Benjamin Hardy is a snake-oil salesman who’s cluttering our feed. Stop promoting him, please.
Before I go I’ll take a page from Hardy’s book.
Connect Deeper
I don’t have a blog or a book I’m promoting. I’m just a mediocre writer sharing fiction and what I believe. Follow me here.
