Spoiler alert: This is NOT satire. Further the author does not have a history of, or current diagnosis for, mental illness. What you are about to read is true.
After almost a decade of hearing various commentaries suggesting how damaging prison life is to the poor sap in the cage (and being one myself for over nine years), I have come to violent disagreement with such silliness. While those imposing the sentences are not seeking to provide a gift, incarceration is a business opportunity. Incarceration is a feature not a flaw for inmates seeking to build a business or several businesses after they leave prison. Prison can produce business assets.
Incarceration allows one of the most exciting business opportunities available in America. The ability to grow existing assets and create assets by each inmate is, with some exceptions (e.g. the late Mr. Madoff), both unique and greater than any other setting.
The fact that every inmate is supplied with food and shelter removes obligations to engage in activities to acquire such essentials. This reality should not be assessed for what is lacking in these cost-free provisions (the food or sleeping conditions are suboptimal); that is a rabbit hole of lack and will be unending and unprofitable. Prison is not the Ritz, but inmates rarely die from starvation or lack of shelter. With survival basics covered, there is a chance to focus on growing and developing assets.
Incarceration allows each inmate to grow and/or acquire these assets:
- The mind
- Personal health, and
- Connection (family, social, and business contacts and the opportunity to generate original intellectual property)
The mind is an asset for every individual and can be enhanced with study and content in three critical areas all of which can be accomplished during incarceration:
A. Spiritual – a level of connection and personal certainty that the day-to-day cannot shake (or shakes less)
B. Academic knowledge and skills of reading, writing, and numeracy.
C. Vocational/business pursuits
Encountering a range of people in prison (perhaps the most concentrated diversity in America today) provides and unequaled array of example of how to fail. Simple, but thoughtful, reverse engineering reveals unlimited possible success paths. Growth of the asset that is your mind can utilize these positive paths. The fact that prison is an austere technology environment assures all of your learning (growing your mind) is brain focused and not degraded by tools (A.I. et al) that might add velocity to the process without expanding knowledge obtained. Additionally, the prison learning environment tests patience and coping with distractions with such intensity that application in a non-incarcerated environment will appear to be a superpower.
Quality health is the opportunity for inmates to distinguish themselves from a general American population (that is not incarcerated) that is overweight/obese, over-medicated, depressed, dehydrated, sleep deprived, and saddled with various lifestyle generated chronic conditions (see appendix for a health protocol outline that is easily implemented in prison and transfers well into a non-incarcerated setting).
Beyond establishing a baseline of quality physiological health, prison is the ideal setting to implement the health supporting strategies of sobriety and stress management. The reality is that intoxicants will always be available, but prison provides an absolute prohibition and multiple incentives to practice abstinence. When it comes to stress, incarceration clearly defines what is within and not within one’s control. Acquiring this self-awareness is of value beyond the razor wire world.
Connections are the platinum asset of most business models, and while incarceration may have degraded some relationships, incarceration allows the chance to establish a valuable list of contacts for the future which includes nurturing the existing or potential contacts with family and friends. The magical tool for building connections with family, friends, and past/future business associates is what we now call snail mail.
The average American (excepting, perhaps, certain celebrities) receives less than one snail mail letter each day. When an inmate establishes the practice of communicating with snail mail, there is a level of distinction in the mode of communication being used and hence the opportunity to develop a unique relationship with that contact.
Further, incarceration allows the creation of original content (intellectual property) that will be the tool of deeper and broader connections now and in the future. This isolation of incarceration allows time for business concepts to germinate and be refined. It is also the opportunity to create commentary and analysis that will have immediate and future appeal because of the unique location of its authorship. Written creative content or a business or marketing plan developed in prison will have insights that are simply not possible for a non-incarcerated author to create.
In building these assets, incarceration is a feature not a flaw for future business success.
Appendix
Build a Fitness Foundation with HASTE
When you have decided to implement meaningful wellness improvement through a new diet, exercise, or another healthful protocol, consider establishing a fitness foundation (a baseline of physical health) with HASTE before devoting time and resources to memberships, consults, plans, potions, or pills.
The marketers of this era suggest wellness starts with a purchase. While not all tools are free, HASTE leverages the three things that are already present in your life that are the most basic tools for health: water, air, and the existing hours of each day. With these three free tools, HASTE can be implemented.
HASTE is:
H – Hydration: Dehydration is a factor in all chronic conditions (including obesity) and degrades any new healthful protocol. Optimal daily hydration includes drinking water immediately upon morning waking, 20 minutes before every meal, 150 minutes (2.5 hours) after every meal, and sufficient quantities to maintain colorless urine. Your minimum daily total water intake (over and above other beverages and the water in your food) should equal one ounce for every two pounds of body weight. For example if you weigh 160 pounds, your minimum total daily water intake should be no less than 80 ounces of (“just plain”) water.
A – Air (Breathing Through Your Nose): For best bodily function, your breathing needs to be from the abdomen,inhaling and exhaling through the nose. This is the most efficient way to assure optimal levels of oxygen in the blood and minimal stress. Nose breathing stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system (the one that supports calm and connection not fight/flight), and the abdomen has greater lung capacity (66.6%) compared to the chest (33.3%). Nose breathing assures you are not treating your lungs like an external organ. Your nasal passages filter and treat air before it touches lung tissue. Breathing through your nose keeps the nervous system out of panic mode (or minimizes panic) and is most critical during the next element of your fitness foundation.
S – Sleep: With a significant number of Americans suffering from sleep deprivation (contributing to most chronic conditions), a properly functioning body requires, at least, six nightly hours of quality sleep. Quality sleep is accomplished (at a regularly scheduled time each night) by breathing through the nose in a quiet, lightless environment that is void of electronics to include the disruptive screen light of various devices. Also, your sleeping room’s temperature should be comfortable, and you should have stabilized blood sugar by minimizing/eliminating calorie intake in the hours before bed.
T and E – Timed Eating (also known as Time Restricted Eating or Intermittent Fasting) is a practice of limiting the daily time window for calorie consumption (from the first bite of the day until the last) below twelve hours and ideally eight to six. A body will naturally go into fat burning mode (the physiologically most efficient and healthy state to deliver energy for activity) approximately twelve hours after the last calorie intake or earlier depending on physical activity. Reducing one’s period of Timed Eating will increase the hours of fat burning, stabilize blood sugar levels, and may result in surprising increased energy, hunger suppression, and weight loss.
In the multibillion dollar wellness industry, many less-than-effective product offerings have masked their limited usefulness by directing their customers (as part of product instructions) to follow all or parts of HASTE. By starting with HASTE, you will be able to assess the efficacy of any new product or approaches, or you may decide none are needed, since you have built a fitness foundation with HASTE.
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