The Problem With “Monk Mode”

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I understand that this may come off as a little hypocritical. I get it, I mean this newsletter is called The Lonely Chapter.

But I think there is a big problem with the idea of “Monk Mode.”

“Monk Mode” is this concept where you go through extended periods of time without a social life to purely focus on self-development.

While I half agree that sometimes you need to separate yourself from others to achieve certain goals, over long periods of time this will be detrimental to your growth.

Avoiding social interaction completely will regress your social skills, for some they will regress far enough into being socially awkward.

The Lonely Chapter is the transitionary period once you made the decision to pursue new goal and have outgrown your old friends.

Actively avoiding developing connections and building relationships will harm your growth.

Once you reach a certain threshold in personal development you need to start building a network.

The fact of the matter is that humans are social creatures. We need others to help us achieve the goals we have in life. (As an introvert, I actively tried avoiding this reality)

A saying that I like about this is:

We know networking is important. We know that often times it’s not what you know but who you know.

Now the question is, how do we build this network?

One of the best books that I have read on networking is Never Eat Alone. by Keith Ferrazzi. If you want a deep dive on networking I would start with reading his book.

For now, here are some of my top takeaways from that book that you can use today.

1. Be generous with your network. Find ways to provide people in your network with value without keeping score on if they returned the favor or not. Give without the expectation of receiving.

2. Go to places/ events where the people you want to network with will be. Conferences, networking events, social clubs, etc. are good places to start. This is why being a member of a “country club” can be beneficial, the cost of entry pretty much requires you to be someone of influence or status.

3. Have frequent touch points with people in your network. In psychology, they have learned that we tend to like people and things we see frequently. By frequently sending quick touch points such as memes, birthday wishes or personal messages we can build our connection with someone over time and virtually. (Keith Ferrazzi points out that social media is a way to do this at scale.)

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