Lifestyle Report: August 2012
Last month I outlined my long term goals for this year. This LSR is to track my progress and set sub goals and mini projects to aid in progress.
Sleep
Most drastic improvement this month came from G Manifesto. His hangover cure is popping a multivitamin before bed. I decided to try this as a counter to early morning grogginess, suffice to say it works very well. Combined with a zinc tablet makes for a very good nights sleep and a good mood in the morning. Progress brah.
Work
No progress on work related goals, because I’ve been to busy doing actual paid work. The change I’m testing this month is not allowing myself to do any “leisure activities” apart from sex until after 6pm.
Read
Nearly finished 4 Hour Body.
Money
Slowly but surely I’m chipping away at my overdraft. I’m currently looking into freelancing as well as using wizpert. Once I’m out of debt I’m gonna begin a project in affilate marketing. More info on this to come.
Health
Convict Conditioning begins this month. I’m doing this first because it should aid in progress to other fitness goals. My other project is gonna be eating 4 meals a day rather than 2, and taking protein shakes.
Sex
1 new bang. My project for this (which will probably take more than 2 months, given how I don’t go out much) is to do 100 approaches. Social circle lays count towards my goal of 12 more girls, but don’t count as an approach. Only girls I’ve never met will count as an approach.
Write
Massively neglected. I aim to work upwards so the aim for this month is to write for just 20 minutes a day.
Lifestyle Report: July 2012
I’m gonna change.
This is a goal setting lifestyle report. I’m setting long term concrete goals for my 7 beneficial habits, to be achieved by a year from now. I aim to reach these goals by implementing specific behaviours for a trial period, then continuing them if they work for me.
Here are my goals for each of the 7 beneficial habits, to be achieved by July 11th 2013
Sleep
- Get up by 7:30 normally, 11:30 after nights out.
My plan for this simple – got to bed progressively earlier over time, nap and meditate.
Work (non paid work and GTD)
- Get a first (>70%) in my second year of uni.
- Get blog to 2000 unique visits per day.
- Play 50 shows.
- Release another EP.
- Play a show supporting a famous band.
Gonna have to turn up and work hard to get 70%, but I’m determined not to have a repeat of this year. The blog promotion will be achieved by writing regularly and promoting my blog in a way that still contributes to the manosphere, the other 3 will just take some serious band hustle.
Read
- Read 20 books.
I have a reading list I’m burning through, just finished Sex 3.0 and about to start 4 hour body.
Money
- Clear overdraft.
- Reach total savings goal of £10k.
- Earn £50 per hour.
The first 2 will be achieved by taking all the over time I can get my hands on over summer, combined with student finance and careful budgeting. The third will be achieved through the development of passive income businesses, affilate marketing and whatever else I may learn through the year.
Heath
- Be able to do 100 push ups, 100 squats, 100 sit ups and 20 pull ups straight.
- To reach intermediate level 7 on convict conditioning exercises 1 – 4, and level 3 intermediate on 5 and 6.
- Reach a bodyweight of 90kg.
- Have visible abs without tensing.
- Have a resting heart rate of 60bpm or lower.
The first will either be done with those android apps, or by adding a rep each day – I’ll dabble with both until I find something that fits. I’m restarting CC from the beginning. I’ll be experimenting with various diet and supplementation changes to succeed with 3 and 4. Goal 5 will be down to gradually more frequent walks and some form of high intensity cardio once a week, as well as reduced smoking and drinking and a paleo diet.
Sex
- Don’t masturbate.
- Have sex with 12 new girls.
The former requires the maintenance of my current unfenced relationships, the latter requires, to be blunt, going out more.
Write
- Write for 2 hours per day.
This will be achieved by gradually increasing the amount of time devoted to it, and doing it first thing every morning.
Lifestyle Report: June 2012
Hello, yes I am still alive. No my exams are not going well, but never mind. I want to talk about this site, and it’s direction in the coming months, before dropping my monthly accountability bomb.
PLANS FOR SUMMER
- New layout and updated blogroll
- Move house.
- Set up a SiME tumblr for all the stuff not meaty enough to be posted here.
- Follow the Roosh program.
- Get this site up to 1000 hits per day.
- Dabble in free-lance writing with the possibility of quitting my supermarket job.
- Monetise the site in a way that does not adversely affect the reader’s experience.
- Launch an information product to be sold through this site.
- Read a ton of books, fuck a ton of girls.
- Experiment with magic truffles/mushrooms, LSD and Nootropics.
That should keep me pretty busy then, onto the lifestyle report.
Sleep
No more sleep problems! I sleep 7 – 9 hours a night and although I sometimes go to bed at like 4am, this doesn’t cause problems the night after. The secret? Disco naps, meditation and zinc tablets.
Work
I’ve built my focus using the pomodoro technique, which is really helping with exams. My actual paid work is dull, hence the various money earning goals in the above list. The one I’m most excited about is freelance writing, essentially being paid to practice blogging. Neat huh. My next step in this area is going to be looking in to fixed schedule productivity.
Read
I was so sleep deprived last time that I forgot this bit. I finally got round to Frost’s revised version of F25. All I can say is that it’s much better than the first. This book has also started a friend on his own red pill journey. If you have any friends that need a bit of red pill therapy, but don’t want to force it down their throats, recommend this book to them. I also decided to read a psychology book called 59 seconds. This book is interesting in that it is a self help book where the advice is based on empirical, repeatable studies. This is a cool concept and offers some very insightful and interesting advice. The best part is the chapter on attraction. Any “game aware” guy reading this will see the core concepts shining through, as well as the clawing attempts to reframe them in a politically correct way. I’m currently finishing up Sex 3.0, review coming soon.
Money
All fine and dandy, I just want more of it. The site already runs google adsense, my intention is to add a “bookshelf” page of the books I’ve read and intend to read, with affilate links through which readers can buy the books. Once this is set up along with a new layout, I’m going to divide my time between freelance writing and growing the site’s audience via regular posting here (1 post every 2 days), tumblr (daily posts), twitter, the forum, and writing guest posts for other blogs. Once I’ve reached the goal of 1000 hits per day the promotion will continue, but with time spent on creating a saleable information product for the site.
Health
This part of my life is going very well. I’ve quit cigarettes for good, and have struck a balance with weed where it doesn’t affect my drive or ambition. I drink far less now. I’m eating SPFY as before, but now with the addition of eating liver a couple of times a week. Dat nutrient dense organ meat. I’m eating by a (rough) meal plan to help with gaining a bit of weight. Children’s multivitamins have joined the ACV and fish oil in my supplement regime. As for exercise – convict conditioning is slowly progressing. I’ve added a daily mini routine: 100 push ups, sit ups and squats, and 20 pull ups, per day, spread through the day. The eventual goal is just a straight set of each every day, but I’m not there yet. Over summer I intend to add a daily protein shake into the mix, along with doing a short, daily yoga routine. My only reservation here is whether eating to gain mass when doing convict conditioning could lead to poor results. Time will tell.
Sex
One new notch, a one night stand. Went radio silent on me for a week then texted me at like 2am, when I was asleep. Now she’s back on silence – never mind. The only bad point is that she is one of those “no means yes sometimes” girls. That’s kinda hot but when a girl goes silent on you after sex, and says that shit the night before, paranoia about false rape accusations sets in. Obviously I was over reacting, I probably just didn’t make her come. Outside of casual sex, I’m maintaining 2 or 3 unfenced relationships with those rare girls who are chill enough to let me do my thing.
Write
As you can see, I’m doing fuck all writing. The consequence of this is a file on my computer called “post ideas” being absolutely huge. I can’t wait to be back writing properly again.
Adios hombres, I’ll be free soon.
Lifestyle Report: May 2012
From a blogging perspective, this month was interesting. I published a series of posts that made April 23rd my busiest day ever, then making the 25th even busier. I was pretty chuffed that people were reading and commenting on my shit. (Thanks to Ferd at in bona fide for all the linkage).
But unfortunately reality is a bitch so I’ve had to put this site on hiatus for a bit. These lifestyle reports are the only posts that’ll still be published before my exams are over.
My band also released an EP, the launch party was sick.
So how’s the rest of my life coming along?
Sleep
As I write this I’m in a sleep drain. It’s where you deliberately skip a nights sleep then go to bed early the next day to reset your sleeping pattern. Its not fun but it works, Breaking Bad is carrying me through. Yes, this demonstrates that I still cannot sleep right.
Work
I have a job as you all know, I got some tax back recently too. Regarding uni I’m still chipping away with my 3 hours hard focus a day – as well as using a lot of goal setting and planning techniques I picked up from the book I’m currently reading. Things are going pretty well in this department.
Money
Had to front a bit for the EP launch, and a handful of people owe me some cash. Around £100 total. Thankfully I have a glorious interest free student overdraft, and a job. So I’ve basically got this handled too.
Health
Doing convict conditioning, taking it very slowly and enjoying every rep. My diet isn’t as good thanks to a delivery kebab shop and my impulsive nature, but I’m just gonna rationalise that as the “fuck you” element of Frost’s SPFYD.
Sex
Regular but no new notches, not leaving the house enough. Flaked on by social circle prospects. The plan is to finish exams and ten follow Roosh’s 9 step program over summer.
Write
Hiatus suxorz.
Productivity Tip
I previously wrote about the importance of productivity, but didn’t detail as to how to achieve it. I believe that everyone has their own way.
Despite that, some pieces of advice are still gold. Here’s one of them.
Work for an hour, hard focus (no fucking facebook), then have a 15 minute break where you do jack shit. Rinse and repeat.
This can get you through a work day nicely and is more efficient than working for long stretches with distraction.
If the work your doing is academic, you ideally want to stop after three hours of work. Otherwise your brain gets over loaded. (I mean three hours in addition to class, not instead of).
Lifestyle Report: April 2012
It’s my birthday today. I’m not religious so good Friday can go fuck itself. Also, I worked yesterday and today, and I am again tomorrow – a true adults birthday.
I’m turning 19, which is possibly the most pointless age in existence. Purgatory between being allowed to get drunk and not being considered “one o’ them evil teenagers that goes around causing riots and stuff“. But I’m not complaining.
Honestly.
In fact I’m glad. I’m glad I’m not obliged to go out and get smashed. No don’t get me wrong, clubbing is one of my favourite pass times but as with all hobbies, it’s only fun when you don’t HAVE to do it. The same happens to be true for relationships, but I digress.
Also an announcement – I have my second year house sorted. I’m living with 4 friends and we actually managed to find a place I’d be proud to bring girls back to. I’ll post some pictures when I move in. We’re moving in in July so I get to work, party and fuck my way through Summer in Brighton.
Anyway – time for SiME’s monthly dose of accountability.
Sleep
I have a job now, so I kinda have to get up early. A useful tactic I’ve found is simply working out when I have to go to bed by, then writing it down in my badass journal. The increased accountability seems to help really well. The journal has also been good for writing down ideas so that I don’t spend the night scheming when I should be sleeping.
Work
Seeing as I now have a job, I’m gonna have to balance this with uni work. I’m still off for easter at the moment so I’ll reserve comment on maintaining a study/work balance just yet.
Read
Guess what, I have a job. This means a 1.5 – 2 hour round trip on the bus. This means lots of reading time. Since my last lifestyle report I’ve finished Day Bang
Money
12.5 hours a week at £6.50/hour, being paid every four weeks (why doesn’t every employer do this? It makes so much more sense than monthly paychecks), with a load of overtime available throughout the year. This means a minimum of £325 per month to supplement my student loans and savings. Because I’m moving in to my new house in July, rather than spending the summer living with my parents, I’m gonna save all my wages and stick to the same £100 a week budget as before. This should give me enough for rent and expenses over summer (when no student loans are paid, obviously).
Health
I’m blitzing through Convict Conditioning so that I can start this program. Otherwise body weight training is going well except that my pull up bar doesn’t like the doorframes in my halls. As for diet – semi paleo ftw. I’ve got an upcoming diet post that will be the first in a series about health. Stay tuned.
Sex
Rotation’s still (!) going strong, acquired a new notch. Turns out she wasn’t that crazy. So I might try and make her semi regular. Also working on other prospects. I have a feeling this new house will be an amazing tool over summer, for girls on a night out who are from a different town, and for prospects visiting to “hang out”.
Write
I wrote a bunch of posts that you should read, and decided to keep a journal (see yesterday’s post). Feels good to have a clear mind.
The Seventh Habit
Write.
You don’t need an epic and awesome blog, just make sure you write something. This isn’t even for the sake of creativity, it’s for accountability. If you record when you do things badly and when you do things well, you can focus on improvement over mere existence.
I keep track of ideas, exercise and sleep pattern in this baby
Dat sexy leather bound journal.
Timewasting
How guilty are you?
Wasting time is a problem that, based on this infographic, can be divided up into two categories: distraction and time filling.
Distraction is dangerous, as already discussed, but can be combated by limiting your exposure to distracting things and working in a state of hard focus rather than multitasking.
Time filling is also known as busywork. Asking coworkers pointless questions, emailing, trivial phone calls etc. The key here isn’t to end these interactions but to only partake in those which add value to your life. Just don’t be an arsehole about it.
Once you’ve tackled distraction and time filling on a pragmatic level, you need to internalise these behaviours. I don’t use an information diet anymore because I don’t have the urge to waste hours on facebook. I achieved this through trial and error. Some things, such as detoxing, didn’t work for me. Other things, such as minimalism, detaching myself from consumerism, and continually striving for self improvement, did work for me.
My current experiment is in training myself to be productive by nature. We’ll see how that goes.
Try these things and see what works for you.
Inertia
Physics: The tendency of a body to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.
Colloquial: Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change.
Me: The third biggest threat to our generation.
In case you were wondering, the top two are feminism and information overload. Consumerism is fourth.
Inertia is like a viral infection. It has some specific causes, but sometimes strikes out of the blue. Known causes include sudden change, traumatic life events, the aforementioned information overload, stress, and distraction. It is highly contagious; your risk of infection increases with exposure and proximity to the infected. Symptoms include depression, DERPression, laziness, apathy, decreased productivity, time wasting, excuse making, over thinking, and most importantly: not getting a single fucking thing done.
Take this week as an example – I started new job and started smoking weed again. This shift led me to stop writing blog posts. I’m not gonna make up bullshit excuses, I couldn’t be fucked because I was getting stoned, having sex and sleeping in (evening shifts ftw).
That doesn’t seem too bad a trade off, except that I easily still had time to write but filled it with google reader, my favourite forum and facebook (add me).
This is a small scale example, but inertia can also cause problems of epidemic proportions. Our resistance to change is what leads to blind acceptance of conventional wisdom about productivity, diet/exercise, sex and relationships. Then, even as we are surrounded by unproductive, fat, celibate loners, we cling to our faith in conventional wisdom.
This is because we are prone to inertia. Change can be hard, change can be risky, so we settle for what is comfortable rather than what is good.
We can partially blame ourselves for this, but we live in a society that shuns risk taking and encourages us to settle for what is “safe” and easy. The thing is, if we were accustomed to getting shit done rather than seeking comfort, our inertia would work with us. Our resistance to change would make us find being lazy too boring and uncomfortable to tolerate. Being “on a roll” would be a normal part of life.
The means is inconsequential, as everyone will find their own way of becoming someone who gets shit done. It doesn’t matter what you do either; providing it means something to you. A job you enjoy, voluntary work, a blog, songwriting, painting. Just become an effective and productive person.
I don’t have the definitive answer for how to do this – all I can say is get shit done and make it a habit. I’d also suggest looking into a guy called Cal Newport, and a book called “The Now Habit” as two starting points.
“What’s the point?” you may ask. The point my friend is that when civilisation teeters and finally tips over the edge, lazy people will be the least survivable. Those who have internalised the act of getting shit done will rise to the top. Our generation is severely lacking in this type of person, so solve that shit.
Lifestyle Report: March 2012
February was a month of personal development. I forgot Lent, giving up cigarettes and drugs like a week early, but whatever. It still counts. I think I’ll still smoke socially after this experiment, just not during the day. Not sure about weed and other drugs, but as long as it’s for fun and not habit I’m not worried. Luckily I have a handy checklist (since taken offline, thank you evernote) so that if things turn bad (unlikely) I’ll notice.
I also dabbled in vlogging, and intend to again. I think I’ll save the vlogs for more emotive topics. 3 – 5 minutes is enough time to persuade, but not enough time to properly inform.
I wrote my first guest post, with more in the pipeline depending on whether the other bloggers accept. In tandem to this I laid down my value system. From now on all game related posts will be written from this frame so I’ve made the post into its own page as a quick reference.
And how have I been keeping up with my 6 beneficial habits?
Sleep
This is on and off, but getting better. I’m getting a bit paranoid about how difficult this is, as poor sleep can have serious long term health effects. As a consequence I’m going to start just forcing myself out of bed, even on no sleep, then nap every day. I’ll be posting about napping and how to do it properly (yes, it isn’t as simple as going to sleep) in future. Meditation wasn’t as helpful as I hoped so I’ve ditched it in favour of napping. The biggest improvement to my sleep came from sleeping without a pillow, it’s awesome.
Work
The minimalism has lead to me ditching to do lists. My due assignments are stored online anyway, and things like laundry, hoovering etc get done as the need arises. My approach to the information diet has changed fundamentally. Now I just pick something I want/need to do, give myself an hour, and do it. If I finish early, I’ll do nothing for 10 minutes then pick something else and repeat. If the hour passes and I’m not done, I’ll have a 10 minute do nothing break then resume. This helps with focus etc and is nicer than strict meditation because I can just lie down or go for a walk. I’ve also discovered Khan Academy. This has been invaluable for patching up my understanding of some topics. Everyone in education should be using this site.
Read
Fail. My book to blog ratio is awful. No excuses, I just fucked up. I’ve added Cedo Nulli part deux to my reader. The guy’s writing style grates with me at times, too arrogant and too “fuck society” for me, but he has some good ideas so check him out. I promise I’ll finish Day Bang one day.
Money
Cash management is going fine. I’m currently applying for part time jobs to save for housing costs next year. If you know anyone in the Brighton area who needs some part time staff hit me up with contact details. The same goes for anyone needing tutoring in physics or maths up to A-Level standard.
Health
Fuck meditation, take naps. I’ve phased beer back in occasionally because it’s inexpensive and delicious, otherwise I’m still all about the cider. I now take ACV and cod liver oil before every meal (2 – 4 times a day), and have ditched grains entirely in favour of the potato’s cooler older brother: sweet potato. That stuff is the shit, I’ve only tried them mashed or boiled so far. My bodyweight training is going well. Just push ups, sit ups and squats at the moment, with a pull up bar in the post. I have some apps on my phone for those exercises. They help you train to a pre selected amount of reps. For example 50, 100, 150 then 200. I’m easily bored so the plan is to train to the minimum amounts (25 pull ups, 50 push ups, 100 sit ups and squats) then do a harder version of the exercise. For example, weighted pull ups, plyometric push ups, box jumps etc. I figured this will be more fun, and is probably healthier than just knocking out endless BW reps of the same 4 exercises.
Sex
I went out twice. Once with friends and once with an FWB. On the former I did pull. We were making out and things were going well – then she was sick. I ditched the bitch with her friends as my mind filled with images of chunder breath and false rape accusations. I was also faced with this conundrum. She’s coming down soon, condoms will oh so definitely be used.
As you can probably tell from my writing style, end of term burnout is approaching. It’s week 9 of 10 and I’m exhausted. Next year we’re switching to 12 week terms so fuck you Sussex uni. Fuck you and your misunderstanding of science student workload.
Peace.