“You cannot fail if you give it your all.”
– C.T. Fletcher
Winning might be nice, but it isn’t everything.
The days keep changing, will you?
“You cannot fail if you give it your all.”
– C.T. Fletcher
Winning might be nice, but it isn’t everything.
“’I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’”
– Louis C.K.
Until I went shopping for cottage cheese I had never seriously thought about the universe. While in the dairy isle, I began to think about how lucky I was to be born into a first world country in the 21st century. It’s a statistically impossibility. I had an infinitely better chance of being either a single celled organism or insect, than I did a middle class American male. The more I thought about this the stranger it seemed. From that single thought, I branched out and began to ponder the cosmos, death, reality, and time. I went home, dusted off my copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, and spent all my free time contemplating the entire nature of human existence.
After nerding out with my science books I had another realization, I rarely think about anything serious. The vast majority of my time is spent thinking about things like earning money, what I’m going to do over the weekend, and jokes I should tell people. Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot of high level thinking going on. I want to change this, I want to start using my brain for higher level thought. And I plan to start today.
This weekend I want you to join me in contemplating something serious. It’s entertaining, educational, and completely free.
If you think up anything cool, or interesting let me know in the comment section.
By Robert 6 Comments
“I can tell, just by looking at guy, whether he will be a good fight. Some of this process is unconscious, but there are conscious factors present. Tattoos mean sh*t. Cauliflower ears mean everything.”
– Danger & Play
Fighting, along with finance and seduction, is a skill set that most men are completely unqualified to instruct on. Never the less, I hear tons of dudes pouring out horrible advice on how to win in street and bar fights. Their drivel essentially sounds like this:
“Do the triple dragon crane kick. Then put on a bandana and yell something vaguely Japanese, you’ll shoot lasers out your eyes. It works because I saw it in an anime once.”
In reality fighting is nowhere near as glamorous as it is in Jason Statham movies.
No one ever starts a fight if there’s a chance they’ll lose. That guy who tries to punch you at the bar probably has three buddies who will join in if things go badly for him. Or he’ll pick something up and use it as a weapon.
I have a friend who got in a shoving match with some drunken hick. The fight never escalated to blows, and the guy was eventually dragged outside. When my friend went out to his car at the end of the night, he discovered that “someone” had slashed all four of his tires.
When’s the last time you watched UFC or Boxing, and saw a fight between two random guys who’d never trained? I thought so. Reading an Internet article and doing a dozen bicep curls is not going to make you Adrien Broner. Real fights are sloppy messes. Go on WorldStarHipHop and watch a couple melees. In a real situation the average man isn’t going to have time to scroll through his mental Rolodex of martial arts maneuvers that he saw on TV.
When the opportunity to engage in a fight presents itself, walk away. I’ve had about a dozen opportunities to get in skirmishes and, with one exception that was unavoidable, have managed to stay out of all of them. Even in scenarios where you “win” a fight, you’ll still have to contend with possible legal action.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from punching it out with random dudes at the club.
By Robert 2 Comments
“Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.”
– Stefan Zweig
Every day since I started this site I’ve done a puzzle. Be it a crossword, rubik’s cube, word search, or brain teaser.
Two weeks ago I decided to do an almost-scientific experiment. I spent the first week recording my daily activities while continuing to solve puzzles and I spent the second week keeping track of my actions while not challenging my mind.
According to my shoddy recording, the results were as follows:
Overall these seven days were awesome. I accomplished everything I wanted to, I felt insanely focused, and I was on the ball with my school work.
In contrast, the time I spent not exercising my brain sucked. I procrastinated with all my work, I had trouble sleeping, I couldn’t concentrate, and I felt a lot lazier. During the previous week I had been working on a new book idea, now I was just sitting around watching Family Guy reruns.
I doubt figuring out that yam is a three letter word for potato is a miraculous cure-all for laziness and stupidity, but it does have some effect. If you’re interested in enhancing your cognitive abilities, I highly recommend that you start solving puzzles. You also have to be, amongst other things, great at puzzles if you ever want to work for Google.
For those wondering were they should start their brain training, I have a few suggestions. There’s a great subreddit filled with a vast array of problems to be solved. I also recommend The New York Times Light and Easy Crossword Puzzles. Lastly, if you want a really hard problem, try taking a crack at Einstein’s Intelligence Quiz.
By Robert 3 Comments
“Suddenly Star Wars came out while we were on hiatus, and we looked like the old Buck Rogers series, where they had cigarette smoke blowing out the back of the rocket ship.”
– Gregory Harrison
Until last weekend I hadn’t hit a golf ball in two years. After high school golf ended I quit the sport. At the time I was too frustrated with the game and decided it wasn’t fun anymore.
I’d make a mistake and it would drive me into an unfocused rage. I’d watch dozens of YouTube videos on stance and swing, and they would leave me more uncertain than I had been before. The combination of conflicting information and frustration made me pack up my clubs and seal them away for good. Or so I thought…
At the beginning of this month, I decided that I should start golfing again. The weather’s nice and I figured that playing a sport would be a great way to relax and unwind after several stressful months.
Before I dusted off my clubs and went out to hit some practice balls I made it a point not to watch any golf videos or read any golf related books. I wanted to see how bad I would initially be, and improve from there.
What happened shocked me. Almost every shot I took was fantastic. During the time I didn’t play, I’d actually improved at the game.
Of course this wasn’t some magical occurrence. I hadn’t “grown into” being a better golfer. In fact, I’d been passively improving my skills the entire time. All the weights I’d lifted had made me stronger and able to hit the ball farther. While my new found focus on maintaining a positive attitude and thinking successfully kept me from having a meltdown whenever I didn’t get exactly what I wanted.
If you want to improve at something, you’ll sometimes need to find an unconventional route to do so.