Six Beneficial Habits

I finished University for Christmas on Friday, and now have 4 weeks to do, frankly, fuck all. I could spend this time clubbing, smoking weed and playing video games; and I imagine I will spend a significant portion of the holidays doing that.

However, I still need something to do with the remaining time. Rather than get a job like my Mum suggested, I have decided to dedicate my break to self improvement. I am going to pick up positive habits that hopefully will have been internalised by the time I’m back studying again. This makes more sense than taking up a new year’s resolution because I’ve currently got 4 weeks free time, which would be wasted if I waited ’til new years.

So without further ado, I present my very own:

Six Beneficial Habits (to be internalised)

1. Get up early.
   I fell into a nocturnal sleeping pattern towards the end of term, I would typically go to bed around 5 – 6am, waking up around 4pm. This problem arose from sleeping through hangovers rather than suffering from them conciously and sleeping like a log the following night. It made me miss most of my lectures and generally suck at life. I will get up at 8 every morning, conceding to a 10am start if I’ve been out the night before.
2. Work efficiently.
   Another habit that I’ve needed to change all my life, but ironically never got round to. This came to a head recently when I didn’t finish a final assignment in time (luckily I had already passed that course). This goes for uni work, but also for things like internship/job applications, blogging and (more topically) Christmas shopping. I will get all work I’ve been set over the holidays, along with my christmas shopping and internship applications, done by this time next week.
3. Read books.
   I believe there is a hierarchy of information value, determined by its means of transference.  In ascending order: magazines, TV, tabloids,  newspapers, social media, websites*, forums, blogs and books. I don’t read magazines and tabloids, and use newspapers only occasionally for local news. I will, reduce my time on all other information sources except for books, and use that saved time to (you guessed it) read some fucking books!
4. Manage cash effectively.
   My budget after rent (bills are included in rent) is £136 per week for this academic year. Unfortunately I tend to blow money easily on things like Portal 2,  bottles of Southern Comfort, novelty rolling papers, kebabs and nights out at expensive bars (cheap clubs are great, but sometimes they get a bit samey). I’m around £300 overdrawn at the moment, with the weekly amount coming in directly and rent being paid from a separate fund. My mission currently is to clear my overdraft and find additional sources of income that aren’t soul destroying retail work. I’ve applied for a maths tutoring scheme that is paid, and am currently looking in to affilate marketing as a means of additional income. In the future I hope to monetize my blog, but I have fuck all readers at the moment so patience is necessary.
5. Live a healthy lifestyle.
   First the good – I eat well. I can cook, and enjoy doing so. My diet is healthy, avoiding simple sugars and over refined food, sticking to meat, veggies, dairy, fruit, nuts and some complex carbs. I will do a post about my diet in the future, but in short I would compare it to a “skinny man’s paleo. I am naturally thin so a paleolithic or ketogenic diet would be a poor choice for me, plus I love indulging in some nice pasta. The difference is rather than eating a massive bowl of pasta + sauce I’d rather have far less pasta to make room for some salad and a tuna steak.
   The bad – I’ve slacked on exercise, smoke cigarettes and weed, and binge drink. I don’t have access to a gym in the holidays because I’m living at home, I will however be adopting a body weight exercise routine until I’m back at uni, where I will be hitting the gym hard but efficiently. Inspiration: I took Frost’s 2 x 15 minute workout program and adapted it to my skinnyman needs.
   I will no longer smoke fags during the day. I like cigarettes, and they are an invaluable social tool when going out, given that in most clubs the smoking area is the only place where you can have a normal conversation. Furthermore, a well timed cigarette when you’re drunk is fucking amazing.
   The weed and alcohol stay. I don’t smoke weed enough for a statistically viable chance of health problems, and as long as I still boss my tests at uni I see no reason to stop. As for booze? I may binge drink, but I’m a lightweight. I average 2 nights out per week, drinking 5 – 10 beers a night. Given that your average bottle is about 1.5 units, this equates to 15 – 30 units per week. The suggested weekly limit for a man is 21 units. Thankfully, QI said this was bullshit and I, like any self respecting British subject, trust Stephen Fry over our don’t-do-anything-fun government. You also may be interested to know that regular drinking is actually worse for you than binge drinking, providing you don’t get in some retarded accident.
   
   
6. Get Laid.
   I hardly need to preach the benefits of sex, so I won’t. This subtitle is misleading, as I have no intention to simply post who I’m fucking in what arrangements. It’s boring, creepy and girls I sleep with read this blog. This habit encompasses game, and improving it. Given that I’m home for a month, and considering my current circumstances, I’m gonna work on improving my text/facebook game and approach anxiety (post coming soon). Recent game related experiences include ignoring someone for two weeks until they start flirting with you again, and noticing that lifestyle game is a great way to get people to come home with you. Namely “wanna come smoke a joint at mine?”
   Unfortunately, she was a noob and chundered from one joint. Oh well, on to the next one.

As you can see, these habits are generally useful, and good rules to live your life by. In the spirit of telling other people my goals so that I’ll look like a cunt if I don’t fulfil them, I will be publishing a monthly “lifestyle report”, where I write about how I’m keeping to each rule and how living life like a boss is going.

Til then.

* “Websites” refers to sites where the content is not user generated.