Post: #1

A big part of lifestyle improvement strikes me as a question of improving processes, chores and everyday sundries so that more time is left over for one's life-goals.

It's Sunday afternoon. I just did all my shopping for the coming week (except for a few very perishable items). I'm prepping meals and recipes so that when Tuesday evening comes around, and I get back from work completely blasted, dinner is a tasty ten-minute affair and I have no temptation to grab some take-away. The roughly 3 hours of meal planning, shopping and prepping keeps costs down, saves me many, many hours throughout the week, and ensures I stay on track with health goals. Also, it's relatively doable even when hungover.

I use paleoplan.com as a source of inspiration, and usually use their recipes and a few sample meal plans I have saved. It's good stuff. I used to do the shopping online and have the groceries delivered, but after keeping tabs on the total monthly expenditure on groceries, I dropped that again.

I don't know if there's a better way of doing this, but I'm imaging a thread where we share all sorts of best practice tips for everyday chores for the average bachelor.

stuff like:

Grooming & hygiene
Exercise
Work tasks and planning
Etc.

Fire away

Post: #2

- Exercise - I got Insanity Workout, watched and learned the proper form of all exercises, converted all videos to mp3s, uploaded them to my phone and now I can workout literally anywhere anytime just by using phone and listening to the instructions. Pretty cool little hack.

- Nutrition - I currently stick to my variation of SLOW CARB DIET so I eat very simple meals that take minutes to prepare. What I found interesting and kind of surprising is that since I decided to execute my diet perfectly, like no exceptions (beside some HUGE family events), then my life has become much easier. I always thought it would be harder limiting myself so much, even from social standpoint (peer pressure ha ha), but no, it's easier, cause it's like NO!, end of discussion, the decision is already made, no negotiations. And then all these maybes and second guessing disappear cause I don't choose what to eat in real time, it's already set so any kind of meal i get offered is either YES or NO. No hesitance, no thinking what if.

- Tasks & Planning - I find the combo of 80/20 + PARKINSON LAW very effective. It's somewhat true that having too much time is exactly the reason we can't accomplish something effectively or on time. Kind of paradoxical huh? The more time we have the more we tend to postpone it, be distracted and slack off to fill the given time frame. Application those two "laws" brings results but it takes some discipline to ignore everything thing distracting around.

- Waking up in the morning - That's hard hahahaha.. I follow the rule of "no negotiations with the alarm clock". When it rings night is over. No naps. Of course in the morning it's the last thing i want to do however I remind myself that will feel better during the whole day when I get up (I always feel shitty when I sleep longer) so I blindly follow the process and drag myself to the bathroom cursing under my breath. And what's funny is that after 5-10 minutes miraculously I wake up for real and it's all good.

- Haircut - Fuck barbers, my haircut is messy enough to cut my hair by myself. Unless hair is longer that 40mm it's really easy. And it takes around 20-30 minutes.

- Clothes - I pick clothes that fit with each other so now I got clothing literally for every occasion, including my 4 pairs of boots. I'm minimalist by nature. Dark jeans and cool shirt fits almost everywhere.

- Clubbing - When solo I leave house before midnight, go by car, explore venues fast until I find good one, hit hit hit for 2 hours max. I'm like a total outkast but the next day I'm "just so fresh so clean".

my 2 cents

Post: #3

I have learnt from experience:

Open post as soon as you walk through the door

Do hindu sqauats to wake up in the morning.

Post: #4

I've always felt that there should be a consolidated thread for this...

Here's the routine I'm trying really really hard to live by. Every week gets better:

-I wake up whenever I want. I let my body sleep until it's rested.
-5 min of yoga decompression stretches
-Stronglifts 3x a week, exactly the way Mehdi prescribes (I just started recently after 6 months doing cables, convict, and cardio)
-2 shakes daily with Nitrean+, creatine, beta alanine, goji, maca, raw cacao, and as much yogurt as I can
-ACV and zinc daily.
-Filtered water from my Aquasana filter. Only this and the filtered water at work.
-Baking Soda deoderant
-1/2 C (dry) oatmeal every day
-at least 12 ounces of chicken a day
-4-6 eggs a day

As far as getting shit done, I don't have any incentives to operate at a low labor budget, so I overstaff the kitchen, giving me time to leave work in the middle of the day to take care of whatever menial tasks need to get done like DMV, mailing shit, bills, you name it. That way, when I'm technically "off" work, I'm really done. I can go home and play guitar, post on RVF, sleep, work out, hunt new poon, whatever the fuck I want.

I shouldn't say too much here, but let's just say I use my job as a HUGE exploit. I do as much as I can through this place. Got a letter to mail out? I give it to the HR girl that I flirt with all the time and she mails it for me. I do all my weekly planning, scheduling, and budgeting when I'm at work on company time so that when I get home, it's truly free time. I do this with all my jobs. I interact with a lot of people; vendors, employees, other managers, on a daily basis. I'm always looking for the hookup. I just found out the head of our engineering department has a carpentry biz on the side. When I get a new bed frame next month I'll commission his ass to do it and buy it at cost. If I've got a bottle of nice booze I want I buy it wholesale through one of our vendors. If I want VIP concert tickets, I talk to one of the many concierge managers I know in this city through my job.

If you're in a job with management potential, bust your ass to get it and network like a mofo. It pays off in pretty outstanding ways.

I'm trying to work a laundry hookup. Currently my gf does it but something tells me she's not gonna put up with my bullshit too much longer.

Post: #5

I haven't had time to read through everyone else's, so apologies if I've reiterated or anything. Stuff I do though:

Plan every work thing on a Sunday night, and review your long term goals at least once a month. If you can, get a good spreadsheet or two going.

Get up early every morning. After the first ten minutes or so, you'll never regret getting that extra hour or two in a day. If you're tired, go to bed earlier. Get dressed fully, every day. Getting rid of my 'work from home clothes' and my 'lounging about' clothes was one of the easiest motivational fixes I've made.

If stuff needs doing and it'll take less than ten minutes or so, just do it.

If you're self employed, do your days work first thing. Schedule in times to deal with other stuff that comes up, don't let it distract you. I get up, look at emails to make sure tere are no emergencies, do my work, then send emails and stuff after lunch. Then I do any loose ends.

Do your exercise when you get up. Basically, most of my stuff can be summarised by: get yourself into the habit of doing everything that requires willpower early in the morning. You'll taper off in the evening and you should spend your nights doing whatever entertains you.

Have a couple of lists that 1) Motivate you, 2) You're angry about that go on your work desk or whatever. It'll hit more emotional drives, pressing you to succeed. For instance, if you want to earn more money or get a raise or whatever, have a picture of something you want to buy, next to a list where you say "I'm furious my bank balance is so low." If your ex cheated on you, stick a couple of glamour models on one list next to a picture of your ex on the angry list. It's a bit bro-sciency, but it works for me.

Post: #6

(11-26-2012 05:21 AM)Kitsune Wrote:  Get dressed fully, every day. Getting rid of my 'work from home clothes' and my 'lounging about' clothes was one of the easiest motivational fixes I've made.

GREAT point. That's definitely a huge bullet point on this list. I can't tell you how many times I've fucked up day approaches or my vibe for the day was shot simply because I was in the mindset that I didn't give a fuck about my appearance. That mindset carries over to other things and I wind up in kind of an apathetic headspace. On the flip side, if I dress nicely as if I were going out, and all I'm doing is heading to CVS to buy some toothpaste, I still walk into the store with a smirk like I own the place and my day game jumps up a few notches.

Post: #7

Mine is generally wake up, do a quick fasted workout, go to school, get whatever shit done, and go home to prepare one large paleo meal. While meal is cooking, do a heavier fasted workout.

Then do dishes, homework, fire up a couple of fags, trim beard, and read a book.

Weekends are similar but involve more slacking.

Post: #8

(11-25-2012 10:11 AM)ElJefe Wrote:  A big part of lifestyle improvement strikes me as a question of improving processes, chores and everyday sundries so that more time is left over for one's life-goals.

It's Sunday afternoon. I just did all my shopping for the coming week (except for a few very perishable items). I'm prepping meals and recipes so that when Tuesday evening comes around, and I get back from work completely blasted, dinner is a tasty ten-minute affair and I have no temptation to grab some take-away. The roughly 3 hours of meal planning, shopping and prepping keeps costs down, saves me many, many hours throughout the week, and ensures I stay on track with health goals. Also, it's relatively doable even when hungover.

I use paleoplan.com as a source of inspiration, and usually use their recipes and a few sample meal plans I have saved. It's good stuff. I used to do the shopping online and have the groceries delivered, but after keeping tabs on the total monthly expenditure on groceries, I dropped that again.

I don't know if there's a better way of doing this, but I'm imaging a thread where we share all sorts of best practice tips for everyday chores for the average bachelor.

stuff like:

Grooming & hygiene
Exercise
Work tasks and planning
Etc.

Fire away

I do't have anything in detail to say about the topics you mentioned right now, but the general principle you described is very useful. It's essentially batching routine tasks and doing them as infrequently as is reasonable rather than doing things repeatedly and randomly.

Especially at work, if you plan and batch tasks properly you can reduce your actual hours of daily work to a few hours. Even if you are high up on the food chain.

The power of batching is almost unbelievable once you get into it. You won't know what to do with all your free time. Also, I find that women don't really like batching itself, and often fail to make use of it's power in their own lives. The more hysterical ones will try to sabotage your plans as well. Anything for a bit of drama. They'd rather spend 10 hours doing a basic task and get some sort of emotional kick (good or bad) out of it than spend 10 minutes doing the same task without any emotional kick.

Post: #9

I do most of my planning the night before. This allows me to get as much sleep as possible and I dont have to rush to get ready.

Before I go to bed, I write down my goals and stuff I need to do the following day on my dry erase board.

I pick out my outfit for the next day.

Shower, brush my teeth, take some zinc etc.

Then I lay in bed and read until I am unable to comprehend anything.

I wake up within 30 minutes of me needing to leave for school or work (the only things I'm ever on time for).

I immediately head to the shower so I don't fall back asleep. Sit in the shower like a rape victim for about ten minutes.

When I get out all I have to do is brush my teeth, apply cologne, and put on my clothes. I'm ready to go.

Post: #10

I keep a small coffee maker in my room with coffee prepared the previous night. I wake up, flip the switch, and snooze while the coffee cooks.. Then lay around, read news/ rvf and drink it. Within 20 minutes I feel like a normal person and can get out of bed and start my day.

Post: #11

I strive for simplicity. In almost any system, the more simple the method the better the method. Fewer responsibilities, fewer tasks, fewer things to do, less steps, less stuff, less work, less bullshit.

Less is more.

I buy most of my food on sunday. My meals are ready to go. I make simple, easy meals.

My laundry is done. My clothes are ready.

My bills are paid. My "in box" is empty.

I have 2 dates this week.

Thats about all I worry about.

Consolidate, Simplify, Streamline!

Eliminate wasteful and unnecessary people, behaviors, and activities!

De-clutter your life. Create free time, free space, and freedom!

Simple is better.

Post: #12

(11-27-2012 03:35 PM)Giovonny Wrote:  I strive for simplicity. In almost any system, the more simple the method the better the method. Fewer responsibilities, fewer tasks, fewer things to do, less steps, less stuff, less work, less bullshit.

Less is more.

I buy most of my food on sunday. My meals are ready to go. I make simple, easy meals.

My laundry is done. My clothes are ready.

My bills are paid. My "in box" is empty.

I have 2 dates this week.

Thats about all I worry about.

Consolidate, Simplify, Streamline!

Eliminate wasteful and unnecessary people, behaviors, and activities!

De-clutter your life. Create free time, free space, and freedom!

Simple is better.

Damnnnn...this guy,,you go hard man

Post: #13

(11-27-2012 04:18 PM)pitt Wrote:  Damnnnn...this guy,,you go hard man

Thanks Pitt,

Me and you have always felt each other on this forum. I remember liking your posts like 3 years ago!

This shit is my life. I don't golf, I don't watch sports. I don't drink.

Power, money, pussy, food, sport, music, art, friends, family, rest.

What else is there?

If its not helping me get more of these, I don't care!

Post: #14

On point with the food on Sunday Gio.

I buy all my food on Sundays, cook it up, refrigerate and freeze that shit and all I do when I'm back home at night is microwave those veggies!

I aim to get protein and veg with every meal, except breakfast where I substitute veg with fruit.

Snacks either nuts or bananas.

I always have a new book to read, as soon as one is done, another one is ready to go.

The thing that has made the biggest difference to me recently is making sleep a priority. I'm usually asleep by 10.30 most evenings, latest 11. This means I can train first thing in the morning if I've got shit to do at night.

I think the smallest tweaks here and there lead to big changes in the long run for guys like us, i.e. prepping your food, being organised that kind of thing shaves hours off during the week.