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Chris DeMuth Jr's avatar

This is excellent. So dangerous because he is as you say "average" not obviously terrible. Not robbing banks and taking heroin, just small insidious habits that build over time. The hoping/planning/good intentions without action are particularly deadly as they appease the conscience a bit without accomplishing anything. Averageness isn't simplicity. In fact, he seems to overthink everything. Life is actually simpler than he makes it: the solution to pull-ups is pull-ups. The solution to waking up early is waking up early. Ask the girl out. Simple stuff.

Also: generosity is a paramount virtue but be generous with your outputs. It is okay, necessary even, to be quite selfish with your inputs. Farmers shouldn't give their seeds away to charity and men shouldn't give their time away to anything but their best and highest callings. These things should be extremely healthy, lucrative, useful, and/or joyful. Without apology. And that means saying "no" to everything else while outsourcing everything that needs to be done but that anyone else can do.

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Prismatico Magnifico's avatar

you touched on it a bit, but must be stressed: regularly drinking alcohol *cripples* your chances of being above-average....especially as you age.

find me 10 people over the age of 35 who are Winning At Life (fitness, financial, family) and i guarantee you 8 of them have cut out drinking almost completely, one of them still drinks heavy on occasion (but regrets it) and the other is one of those outliers that everybody points to to rationalize their own continued use of booze.

calorically horrible, kills sleep, lowers drive, awful practice. "i just like wine with dinner" is cope--in all but the rarest cases (you arent one of them) booze is the most -EV habit you could ever have.

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