[LawrenceAshford]

I got this idea from Andy Frisella's Instagram.

Basically you do 5 basic tasks everyday, for 75 days.

IF you miss a day, you have to reset.

The key here is to do the tasks everyday. If life has taught me anything up to this point (I'm now 25) it's that success is much more about hard work and persistence than anything else. Some have the crazy talent and can skip the hard work and persistence. But those are extremely rare.

It's about making that 0.1% of progress on a daily basis, and creating the habits that will ensure you continue until you are at a proficient level. Excellence is a habit. Mastery is a long process. If you do this program correctly, I don't see how you could not end somewhere good within a year. As long as you at least somewhat continue past the 75 days. And within those days, you should already notice incredible progress. I already did within the first two weeks.

Here are my 5:
1. Approach 10 girls a day
2. Run 30 minutes + Chest workouts
3. Read at least 1 hour of hardcover book
4. Code at least 1 hour
5. Write at least 3 pages

I pushed really hard the first two weeks but came up on a day where I couldn't do them all, and just hit the reset button. The way I look at it, I've still made progress and it should be easier now that I have.

Anyone else think this is a good structure to build discipline and improve your life?

[scorpion]

Sounds like a good challenge, but your approach goal is too high unless you have insane logistics in a major city (even then, still probably too high). If you can manage just one quality approach per day you'll do well. Also, 75 days straight of running and chest workouts is not the best idea for your health. Maybe amend that to "30 minutes per day of moderate to intense exercise of some type". Good luck.

[LawrenceAshford]

(03-21-2019 10:21 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Sounds like a good challenge, but your approach goal is too high unless you have insane logistics in a major city (even then, still probably too high). If you can manage just one quality approach per day you'll do well.

I do have pretty great logistics. There's a popular street near my apartment where I was able to get the 10 approaches in the first week. Keep in mind I pretty much cook the numbers. I count talking to an employee, as long as I ask them about themselves and start a conversation. I went up to couples. And a lot of the time when I went up to a woman I just asked for directions or asked where someone got a piece of clothing. For my mom of course. (I got the second one from a Youtube video).

I'll keep what you said in mind... As 10 is pretty much impossible on a daily basis. Getting one is so easy though. And on days/nights I'm really social, I figure I can get dozens. So that's where I came up with the idea of at least 1, and then the rest up to 10 go into a bank. So it'll average at 10 a day by the end.

scorpion Wrote:

75 days straight of running and chest workouts is not the best idea for your health. Maybe amend that to "30 minutes per day of moderate to intense exercise of some type". Good luck.

Originally I wrote about how on Cross Country the team would run at least 5, sometimes 6 days a week. But writing it reminded me that there were days off during the week. I used to love those because I could go straight home after school. I also did some research and maybe I should take a day off.

A bit of context here: This challenge came to me at exactly the time I had already decided I was going to lose a bunch of weight. I was going to go on Keto and that coincided with seeing the Frisella challenge. I'm gradually lowering my carbs until I go full Keto, and I figured the exercise would help me reach my goals in the 3 month time period. I want to lose 40 pounds. I was 215 to start, and I want to end at 175.

When I started running again last year, I'd only do like 2 or 3 laps around the track. I eventually went everyday, and increased it to 3 laps around the track each time. Then I doubled it. When I doubled it again, I was running 3 miles a day. I topped it out there. And at the the peak of my running I lost 13 pounds(hurt my leg that month, which makes sense now -- bad form but probably also no rest). I lost this much weight even though I was eating entire pizzas for a meal and making myself 6 or 7 homemade Moscow Mules when at my parent's house. I was probably ingesting 3000-4000 calories. And still I lost 13 pounds.

SO I thought the running would help with the weight loss. But now I'm having second thoughts about the workout part. Thanks.

[LawrenceAshford]

If anyone's curious: I'm reading the book Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness. I read exactly 20 pages in an hour, which when I figured that out it made it even easier to gauge if I had hit the mark for the day. It's a great book for me as I'm pretty much a wannabe Howard Hughes.

As for the coding: I'm learning Swift. Mainly from Youtube. I've been in the app game since 2010 when I was in High School, but only started seriously learning to code last year. It's a long process, but so is everything worth doing. My new app is coming out soon regardless, thanks to my parent's financing.

The 3 pages a day of writing I actually got from a book lent to me, The Artist's Way. Writing 3 pages everyday was presented in that book as a way to unlock your creative potential. Supposedly there's many case studies of this. Even if you're not a writer. When I read the book this summer I originally wrote random stuff, then wrote a screenplay, and eventually lost the habit. Beginning it again with this challenge I started writing speeches. My own. Now I'm writing out the best historical speeches. At the moment that's Demosthenses speech against Philip II, The Third Philippic.

Public speaking is my one gift in life. I'm great at it, and never had to work for it. As such I figure writing out great speeches will hone my own skills in speech writing. And maybe I'll mix in my own speeches.

Any other ideas people have for this challenge are definitely appreciated. I'm curious what other skillsets I should build up after I feel locked in with these.

[KnjazMihailo]

This thread seems to be interesting. I absolutely like the idea and concept of increasing your productivity by starting from doing some very basic and simple things.

Productivity is also something that I'm having serious issues with myself.

Having said that, I don't know where you are at in life, but your goals seem to be a bit random and casually light. Unless you're doing financially well or have lots of income, I would personally make these goals more ambitious and aggressive, especially in a financial way.

[BlastbeatCasanova]

Nice. I struggle with self discipline and his seems like a good exercise.

[scorpion]

(03-22-2019 01:31 AM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

Public speaking is my one gift in life. I'm great at it, and never had to work for it. As such I figure writing out great speeches will hone my own skills in speech writing. And maybe I'll mix in my own speeches.

Any other ideas people have for this challenge are definitely appreciated. I'm curious what other skillsets I should build up after I feel locked in with these.

Public speaking is a great thing to be gifted at. Once you lock in precisely what you want to do with this challenge, you should consider carefully documenting your time over the next 75 days (pics, journals, video, etc...) with the goal of summarizing your experience in a presentation/talk when you finish. Not only would this give you another goal to focus your talents on working towards, it would provide you ample motivation to stick with the challenge and see it through successfully. And by sharing your experience and what you got out of it you might inspire other guys to challenge themselves with self-improvement in a similar fashion.

[BlastbeatCasanova]

I also want to ask you how early are you getting up in the morning, and what time are you going to bed? As simple as the list is with all the other day to day/weekly stuff like commuting, going to work, getting groceries, meal prep, meetings, social life, etc. it seems like one jammed packed day could really throw you off. I saw a video where a decent sized youtuber goes to bed at 8 pm and gets up at 2 am, and has his workout and most of his Youtube editing stuff done before he hits his regular job. Thought it was interesting yet somewhat extreme. 6 am is early enough for me when I actually do it

[Investment Bro]

I like the framework for this challenge. I'm going to give it a shot as well. Here are my 5:

1: Spend an 1 1/2 hours working on my consulting business - mainly lead generation, marketing, and task maintenance
2: Spend an hour a day working on my application to improve the efficacy of my consulting services
3: Wake up at 4:30 AM (Jocko style)
4: Write in my journal for 30 minutes a day
5: Meditate and perform yoga for at least 15 minutes a day

Signing on, let's get it done.

[LawrenceAshford]

(03-22-2019 09:30 AM)KnjazMihailo Wrote:  

Having said that, I don't know where you are at in life, but your goals seem to be a bit random and casually light. Unless you're doing financially well or have lots of income, I would personally make these goals more ambitious and aggressive, especially in a financial way.

Fuck no I'm not doing financially well. I'm broke.

It's interesting you think my goals are casually light then. Because honestly I think they're already aggressive. If I was to say: code 3 hours a day. That would mean 1000 hours in a year. That's great. But I almost definitely would fail at that. You need to pace yourself. An hour a day is very achievable, and there will be days I exceed that. But more importantly on the 95% of days I normally would do 0 hours, I actually do an hour. I've gotten back home at 5 in the morning, and proceeded to still do my hour of coding, along with any other remaining tasks. I won't go to bed until I'm done.

But what were you thinking?

If you're thinking along the lines of "make a million dollars in 75 days", I deliberately don't put stuff like that in my goals anymore. It doesn't work. Vague goals like that, or really ambitious end points, don't mean anything. You need a metric you can hit everyday.

If you're thinking I should put stock investing everyday as one, I would do that perhaps... if I had any money to invest. The only investment I've recently made was in Snap, for like 3 shares. The stock did double right after I invested, but I only had 3 fucking shares. I made like 15 bucks. Lol.

To take the best example for this: If you look at most billionaires, they rarely viewed money as their goal. The money was a byproduct of them mastering their craft. Zuckerberg of Facebook with coding and Spiegel of Snapchat with design. They had a great concept, pursued it relentlessly, and actually held off on monetization. (I'd include Howard Hughes too since money was secondary for him, but he was born so rich that it doesn't really count. And he surprisingly wasn't that great of a businessman, he just had so much money at his disposal that it didn't matter.)

[LawrenceAshford]

(03-22-2019 02:02 PM)BlastbeatCasanova Wrote:  

I also want to ask you how early are you getting up in the morning, and what time are you going to bed? As simple as the list is with all the other day to day/weekly stuff like commuting, going to work, getting groceries, meal prep, meetings, social life, etc. it seems like one jammed packed day could really throw you off. I saw a video where a decent sized youtuber goes to bed at 8 pm and gets up at 2 am, and has his workout and most of his Youtube editing stuff done before he hits his regular job. Thought it was interesting yet somewhat extreme. 6 am is early enough for me when I actually do it

The two weeks I was consistent I missed a lot of sleep. I was doing only 3 or 4 hours a lot. So I'd go to bed at like 3 in the morning and wake up at 6. That's not sustainable. I'm not sure how it'll level off for me but I'll let you know.

That's interesting about the Youtuber because I did that for a while. I'd go to bed early and wake up at 2 AM. I find 2 AM a great time to wake up because you have so much time to get things done before the day starts. You can also workout right when the sun gets up. So I'm gonna make that my goal, but if I have tasks at the end of the day, I just stay up and sacrifice whatever sleep.

Thankfully none of my tasks are that time consuming. The only hard one would be the approaching girls, but if you make it 1 approach a day you should be able to get that done during work hours.

[GoingHAM20]

Jesus, I’m one of the few guys left on here, or anywhere in the pickup community who still approaches, and yet even I acknowledge that doing 10+ approaches everyday for 75 days is just not feasible.

You’ll have days where you’re swamped with work or exhausted or there’s a massive thunderstorm or something. Maybe aim for 5+ approaches per day?

[Tactician]

Cool idea. If I may offer some suggestions, I'd say it's important to get the most out of these 3:

3. Read at least 1 hour of hardcover book
4. Code at least 1 hour
5. Write at least 3 pages

Re 3: Choose books which are related to your vocation or whatever career you're wanting to move into. Or choose a book which will teach you skills like cooking or fitness or how to have a solid stoic mindset.
Don't just choose any old book! Reading in and of itself is may make you more interesting over time, but you'll get the most benefits if you choose a book with actionable advice.

Re 4: Same idea, if you're coding to learn, that's cool, but try to work on a project that will make you money OR look great in a portfolio. Again, tangible benefits to your life.
On my end, if I were to jump back into coding I'd work on testing some algorithmic trading ideas or an idea for casino advantage play. Ideally you'll pick something related to your career.

Re 5: Same idea again. Unless you want to be a novelist or have a passion for writing, I'd suggest practicing copywriting with some specific goals like writing headlines or bullets for products.
This is basically learning a form of sales + you're learning to look at things from the customers angle. Lots of carry over to game and general social interaction.
The main idea is write with a goal of improving something.

Anyway, I hope you can align your challenges to work towards some specific goal.
This is a sweet idea and I'm going to do a similar challenge, too. All the best!

Edit: This whole thing reminds me of an old post by Roosh: https://www.rooshv.com/the-unit-of-man

[KnjazMihailo]

(03-22-2019 04:10 PM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

(03-22-2019 09:30 AM)KnjazMihailo Wrote:  

Having said that, I don't know where you are at in life, but your goals seem to be a bit random and casually light. Unless you're doing financially well or have lots of income, I would personally make these goals more ambitious and aggressive, especially in a financial way.

Fuck no I'm not doing financially well. I'm broke.

It's interesting you think my goals are casually light then. Because honestly I think they're already aggressive. If I was to say: code 3 hours a day. That would mean 1000 hours in a year. That's great. But I almost definitely would fail at that. You need to pace yourself. An hour a day is very achievable, and there will be days I exceed that. But more importantly on the 95% of days I normally would do 0 hours, I actually do an hour. I've gotten back home at 5 in the morning, and proceeded to still do my hour of coding, along with any other remaining tasks. I won't go to bed until I'm done.

But what were you thinking?

If you're thinking along the lines of "make a million dollars in 75 days", I deliberately don't put stuff like that in my goals anymore. It doesn't work. Vague goals like that, or really ambitious end points, don't mean anything. You need a metric you can hit everyday.

If you're thinking I should put stock investing everyday as one, I would do that perhaps... if I had any money to invest. The only investment I've recently made was in Snap, for like 3 shares. The stock did double right after I invested, but I only had 3 fucking shares. I made like 15 bucks. Lol.

To take the best example for this: If you look at most billionaires, they rarely viewed money as their goal. The money was a byproduct of them mastering their craft. Zuckerberg of Facebook with coding and Spiegel of Snapchat with design. They had a great concept, pursued it relentlessly, and actually held off on monetization. (I'd include Howard Hughes too since money was secondary for him, but he was born so rich that it doesn't really count. And he surprisingly wasn't that great of a businessman, he just had so much money at his disposal that it didn't matter.)

Okay, if you're working on coding as a means of getting paid money, then that's fine.

I agree that there are other things that matter in life besides money. My point is that you need more income and savings. Money has several forms, it is obviously more valuable in some forms than in others.

Nearly no one makes a permanent income from the stock market and don't think that you're able to because you randomly gambled once and got $15. Unless you are an expert that has a strategy or system that means you will make money at more than > 50% of the instances you invest, stay away from it. You will simply be gambling like literally nearly everyone else out there. If you happen to get a lot of money that you can afford to gamble with, don't let me stop you. Millions of other people do that anyway.

You're much better of sticking to coding and selling your personal coding services or finding a job. Even though the job market is overloaded with programmers, you at least have some guaranteed income.

If you're dreaming about becoming an app developer like the next Zuckerberg, forget it honestly. Everything i've heard about that market basically has no future. You're much better off going into Web Development where you can charge hundreds and even thousands of dollars from individual clients by altering the design of their websites and other web related programming things.


I'm not an expert on programming but just check this guy out (He is) and see what he has to say:

https://www.brettdev.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoZ_b54lGfI

[LawrenceAshford]

(03-22-2019 09:30 AM)KnjazMihailo Wrote:  

If you're dreaming about becoming an app developer like the next Zuckerberg, forget it honestly. Everything i've heard about that market basically has no future. You're much better off going into Web Development where you can charge hundreds and even thousands of dollars from individual clients by altering the design of their websites and other web related programming things.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

I originally decided to pursue this journey into app creation, or technology, or whatever you want to call it, when the movie The Social Network came out. At that time, it was all about websites. I had my first website that year. First company. And I read and watched everything I could get my hands on.... Within a few years, everyone was on their phones for most of the day, and app's were the rage. Thus I don't understand why you'd think that market has no future. Smartphones are gonna be with us. There won't be a million more Snapchats and Whatsapp's, but there will be a few more. And there will be many more smaller companies built on the mobile platform.

Why I'm learning to code so late in my progression is that I mainly focused on reading case studies of internet history and at times learning marketing. I don't want to dox myself, but at one point I did come close to a big success and had a team and nearly funding. Only like 1% of companies even get funding. It's just the hard cold reality. But I have an idea I've relentless pursued for a long time now, and I'm sure my app can at least be something. Maybe not a unicorn. But definitely profitable. And as I said earlier, the app is built. My parents helped me out. Yes, I'm lucky with that. (Though worth noting not as much as Zuckerberg or Spiegel were helped out by their parents.)

My plan with the coding is to be able to work on the app that is completed. Fix bugs, add features, and if the app goes nowhere, go ahead and build another one. Or if it comes to it -- go to work for a company. While there's a lot of people that have gone into the programming field, that's because there was a lot of demand. I don't know where the numbers stand now. But there's always many people flooding into the law profession. And becoming a lawyer is still a decent bet. So I'd say programming is still a good one as well.

[LawrenceAshford]

(03-22-2019 08:53 PM)Tactician Wrote:  

Anyway, I hope you can align your challenges to work towards some specific goal.
This is a sweet idea and I'm going to do a similar challenge, too. All the best!

Thanks, man.

I appreciate your suggestions. I was thinking for the reading I'd at least satrt with biographies: Howard Hughes and then maybe the adventurer-conquerors like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon. For me the challenge is about building the keystone habits that will improve every area of my life from certain roots of habits. Over time I may transition to more directly impactful learning, but for now at least I feel I want to be open-ended in the strategy while strict in the tactics.

With coding I had an experience a couple years ago where I dived in and tried to do it all myself with little knowledge. I did learn a lot -- Cocoapods, XCode, MVC -- but I burned out. And didn't deliver the goods. The point will come again with my app when I will need to dive in and work long days to make it move forward. My plan in doing the 1 hour a day coding right now is mainly to go through tutorials and just gain that 0.1% of knowledge daily, so later when the day comes for me to know what I'm doing on my main project, I can rise to the occasion and code what I need to code. And whatever learning gap won't be big. Then I can move on to other projects if need be.

[KnjazMihailo]

(03-22-2019 11:50 PM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

(03-22-2019 09:30 AM)KnjazMihailo Wrote:  

If you're dreaming about becoming an app developer like the next Zuckerberg, forget it honestly. Everything i've heard about that market basically has no future. You're much better off going into Web Development where you can charge hundreds and even thousands of dollars from individual clients by altering the design of their websites and other web related programming things.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

I originally decided to pursue this journey into app creation, or technology, or whatever you want to call it, when the movie The Social Network came out. At that time, it was all about websites. I had my first website that year. First company. And I read and watched everything I could get my hands on.... Within a few years, everyone was on their phones for most of the day, and app's were the rage. Thus I don't understand why you'd think that market has no future. Smartphones are gonna be with us. There won't be a million more Snapchats and Whatsapp's, but there will be a few more. And there will be many more smaller companies built on the mobile platform.

Why I'm learning to code so late in my progression is that I mainly focused on reading case studies of internet history and at times learning marketing. I don't want to dox myself, but at one point I did come close to a big success and had a team and nearly funding. Only like 1% of companies even get funding. It's just the hard cold reality. But I have an idea I've relentless pursued for a long time now, and I'm sure my app can at least be something. Maybe not a unicorn. But definitely profitable. And as I said earlier, the app is built. My parents helped me out. Yes, I'm lucky with that. (Though worth noting not as much as Zuckerberg or Spiegel were helped out by their parents.)

My plan with the coding is to be able to work on the app that is completed. Fix bugs, add features, and if the app goes nowhere, go ahead and build another one. Or if it comes to it -- go to work for a company. While there's a lot of people that have gone into the programming field, that's because there was a lot of demand. I don't know where the numbers stand now. But there's always many people flooding into the law profession. And becoming a lawyer is still a decent bet. So I'd say programming is still a good one as well.

You seem to know what you're doing with app development. This isn't my area of expertise at all. I consider programming to be horrible because its not something you can continue to do into old age. Your mental faculties will simply begin to crack and falter.

I know because my Dad is a control systems engineer and his job primarily concerns automation. Automation requires a lot of coding and that's really the crux of the whole AI technology leap but that's another matter. Basically my Dad has stopped heavy coding and now just trains young people on the basics of coding and other engineering systems. He's openly told me that he just can't mentally handle intense programming and that no engineer above the age of 40, let alone 50 like him, can actually seriously code at all.

Still as far as you're concerned with your app, I'd be wondering why it hasn't succeeded yet. Is it still not in its "release" cycle yet, or what is the reason? You need to make people actually use it and earn money buy having users pay to buy it or investors buy shares of your app company/entity. Focusing on that will give you more dividends than on programming. Unless you have this somehow sorted, meaning your income is "fine" even thouh you earlier said your broke lol.

Its pointless for me to argue with you if you're seriously dead set with this or know what you're doing. I've given about as many recommendations as i'm qualified to give. The rest is on you.

[KnjazMihailo]

I just realized that this isn't even the point of this thread anyway.

Lets not derail this thread further and lets focus on the original purpose of the 75day method.

That is with the 5 basic simple habits everyday for the next 75 days.

I'll get back to you once I've come up with my 5 habits for 75 days although my situation is a bit unique and its arguably a waste of time for me to be on RVF given what i'm supposed to be doing right now.

[BlastbeatCasanova]

(03-22-2019 04:15 PM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

(03-22-2019 02:02 PM)BlastbeatCasanova Wrote:  

I also want to ask you how early are you getting up in the morning, and what time are you going to bed? As simple as the list is with all the other day to day/weekly stuff like commuting, going to work, getting groceries, meal prep, meetings, social life, etc. it seems like one jammed packed day could really throw you off. I saw a video where a decent sized youtuber goes to bed at 8 pm and gets up at 2 am, and has his workout and most of his Youtube editing stuff done before he hits his regular job. Thought it was interesting yet somewhat extreme. 6 am is early enough for me when I actually do it

The two weeks I was consistent I missed a lot of sleep. I was doing only 3 or 4 hours a lot. So I'd go to bed at like 3 in the morning and wake up at 6. That's not sustainable. I'm not sure how it'll level off for me but I'll let you know.

That's interesting about the Youtuber because I did that for a while. I'd go to bed early and wake up at 2 AM. I find 2 AM a great time to wake up because you have so much time to get things done before the day starts. You can also workout right when the sun gets up. So I'm gonna make that my goal, but if I have tasks at the end of the day, I just stay up and sacrifice whatever sleep.

Thankfully none of my tasks are that time consuming. The only hard one would be the approaching girls, but if you make it 1 approach a day you should be able to get that done during work hours.

Good stuff man. I'm about to move so I'll be getting into a new city/place/job/etc. but once I'm adjusted I'll get on this and put them in this thread for accountability

[LawrenceAshford]

I'm gonna make a progress post, but I'd like to do it once I'm a little further in. I also reset a couple times since my first posts here. Had to deal with some drama and couldn't do all the tasks. I personally don't mind it because to me I've still seen significant progress. It's as much about the journey as it is about the result. And that is to say the journey is improving you, and the result is just increased confidence I guess.

I've also cut myself some slack on the approaches as I technically didn't get one yesterday. But since I added 10 to the bank to me it's still 10 a day. Provided I hit all of those by the end of the 75 days, that's an average of 10 a day. Good enough for me. Lol.

[LawrenceAshford]

Here's my update. I've lost 30 pounds on the Keto diet. I'm planning to lose about 10-13 more pounds in the next month before I transition to a low carb diet, with a weekly cheat day, for the long term. Even now I look like a new man. And I feel like one too. Though it wasn't one of my 5 having such an effective diet helped foster the motivation for the tasks.

I stopped coding an hour a day in early April and figured I negotiate it down the line. I thought, maybe I'll just double the time in May. I got a new job and was working long hours which made it harder and I just stopped coding. But on May 1 it was obvious that doing the double times as I thought I'd do was not only gonna be multiples more difficult than a single hour, it also kind of undermines the whole point of the challenge. Which is to do these tasks everyday or, if you can't, to reset. So I reset. It took a lot of tries to finally get it today, and I'm not finished yet for the day but it looks like I'll get there.

The way I count it is midnight to midnight, but also not until you fall asleep. So technically if you sleep until 11 pm, that still counts as that day when the time goes past midnight. I'm on a weird sleep schedule but I stick to that principle. As one thing I do is -- if I still have a few more tasks from the previous day to do at midnight -- I'll do those tasks along with the tasks for the next day. After all, it's technically a new day, and provided I didn't sleep again I didn't totally end the previous day. This has been an effective method for me sometimes. For instance, the new book I'm reading it takes about two hours to read a chapter, so I'll just read a chapter starting about 1 am and count it for both days.

For the reset this time I'm giving myself basically no leeway to get around the task. It's just too easy to make excuses for not doing a task if you allow yourself to. I should never have let myself go a day with no approaches, for instance. I'm not doing the 10 everyday, but I am gonna force myself to do at least 1. And I have a bank of 1000 actually, which I've decided I want to exhaust before summer is over -- that comes out to about 10 a day for 3.5 months.

A good analogy I would use is its like carbs in the Keto diet. When I first stared Keto I was told I can't have more than 20 carbs. You get really strict and eat like 5-10 carbs. But then I read you can have as much as 50 carbs. And so I'd allow myself things with a little more, and a little more. Until you're going over 50 too. It's what I call carb creep. You cheat a little here and there, and after a while you're falling out of ketosis often.

But honestly, for me, even finishing that Howard Hughes book was something of a achievement. I rarely read a book cover to cover. Finishing something, even if it's just a book, is better than leaving it unfinished. So it's a keystone habit to build that I hope will spread to anything I do. It's not only concerning the book. It's about finishing what I start.

My advice is, if you fall out of your 5: reset. The point of this to me is to create habits that can lead to positive change in your life and less about the 75 day framework. The 75 days is a big achievement when you get there, and I do hope to go 75 days uninterrupted. It's like a goal to strive toward. But the process of the striving is where you'll see so much progress. Even if you don't get the 75 days uninterrupted on the first few tries.

Think about it: most people don't deliberately create any habits, much less five of them. Doing that alone is a huge success. There is a downside to resetting, which is that you feel like you've been set back. I was especially hesitant to reset it because I had already gotten ambitious in my head and had thought of doing a new five when I was done with these five. This is a typical error I see a lot, and a mistake I've made. You get really ambitious with stuff and the ambition keeps increasing regardless of the action you're taking. You know what the result was a lot of the time for me? I'd end up doing nothing. I've learned there's a magic in small, digestible chunks done everyday.

Also, to keep myself challenged and motivated this time I've decided I'm also going to stop 5 things. This isn't totally new as I had this notion in March from the start. I wanted to give up video games -- I was playing this stupid Castle Crush mobile game hours a day -- and also had thoughts of quitting smoking and soda. I didn't quit these right away, but I've quit all those things over the course of whatever this timeframe was, I guess the last few months. The video game was first to go because honestly that game got so fucking annoying I was eventually happy to delete it. Now it's just about not falling for playing some other game. Which if I'm focused on doing shit shouldn't be hard.

I also had wanted to do no fap, which is super hard for me, like near impossible, and I thought for a while maybe I just couldn't pull it off. because I like to indulge in that activity 5 or 6 times a day. Which is precisely why I concluded it's important for me to lose it as a habit. It clearly leads to less motivation and less energy and is just generally a waste of time. If I want to I can pick it up again later, but probably but not until I'm getting laid regularly. And then hopefully I won't even want to anymore. I mean, there's an impulse in every guy that, when he has an interaction with a hot girl, he wants to go home and just masturbate. Overcoming that impulse is actually a huge part of improving game, IMHO. Because it means you'll do more to actually fuck rather than just go the easy route. So no more fap for me.

I researched other bad habits to round it out to five I'm giving up, and the final one I've decided on is to stop daydreaming. This is individual to me, as I spend a lot of time on many days listening to music and fantasizing about an idealized future. In my opinion, daydreaming can be a positive thing, I think, because I thought it helped me clarify my vision and stay motivated. But anyway imagining an idealized life isn't really doing anything to get me there, is it? And then I was surprised that the research contradicts my thought and shows that any amount of daydreaming saps energy and decreases motivation (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1100031X). Since I already have a clear notion of what I want, there's really no way it's helping me anymore.

Now, I'm not gonna be counting the times I'm daydreaming while I'm listening to music on my runs, in the car/uber or on walks when I'm on break at work. Those are the instances I'll allow myself to daydream. Just not at home when I could be accomplishing things.

All in all, I've really enjoyed this process. I hope a few of you tried this as I think it can help a lot of people. I've honestly questioned this forum at times based on some of the material I've seen elsewhere, a lot which wasn't helpful, but some of the advice I've gotten here indeed was. Especially the bit about taking a break from physical exercise, which somehow nobody mentioned to me in person. I didn't realize I needed a break day until I researched it after reading it here. I dodged a potential injury. Thank you.

Let me know how it's going for any of you that tried this. It's really helped me, so I hope it's helped some of you too!

[Bizet]

(03-21-2019 09:36 PM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

1. Approach 10 girls a day

I'd like to to hear more about your experiences doing this. I assume you're doing daytime approaches? How long does it take you to do 10 approaches on average? I'd need two hours minimum to do this myself. Do you find yourself getting burnt-out by approaching at such a high volume (70 approaches a week)?

Your dedication to self improvement is inspiring.

[ChefAllDay]

(05-13-2019 02:42 AM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

I also had wanted to do no fap, ..... I just couldn't pull it off.

Haha! I see what you did there.

Great thread, nice to see you working so hard on self improvement. Don't forget to get some quality sleep in there somewhere. If you need motivation to sleep, less that 6 hrs of quality zzz's can lower your T levels.

[LawrenceAshford]

(05-13-2019 03:57 AM)Bizet Wrote:  

(03-21-2019 09:36 PM)LawrenceAshford Wrote:  

1. Approach 10 girls a day

I'd like to to hear more about your experiences doing this. I assume you're doing daytime approaches? How long does it take you to do 10 approaches on average? I'd need two hours minimum to do this myself. Do you find yourself getting burnt-out by approaching at such a high volume (70 approaches a week)?

Your dedication to self improvement is inspiring.

Thanks man, it means a lot to me that my story is meaning something to anyone else.

Yes, I was mainly doing daytime approaches. This was only for a few weeks though. It became too difficult to maintain the approach level. Funny enough the first day I broke it, I was coming back from a trip and was sure I'd get approaches at the airport. But I didn't really. Then I went to a fucking bar hoping to squeeze some out there, even though there was only like an hour left before closing time. Couldn't swing it. At the time I came up with a way to rectify this, but now I'm only mandating 1 approach a day. I have a bank of 1000 that's now down to 990, and I'm going to try to exhaust this by the end of the summer. When I have active nightlife nights this summer, I'm planning on getting dozens of approaches which should even things out. I noticed that parties especially can make things really easy if you do it right. I got like 5 approaches in 20 minutes at one.

I live about 30 minutes from a pretty busy LA retail area. Honestly, I thought some of the other areas I'd been to when I was growing up were good. A lot of the prank videos and PUA shit happens at them. I saw some of the PUA dudes there too, and once talked to Ross Jeffries briefly. He creeped me out and I shook his hand and left lol. But when I went back to those areas, I was surprised to find it hard to approach. This one I live close to now, like 80% of the people there is a woman. And most are not in a hurry or anything. Not only do I not want to doxx myself, I also wouldn't want other dudes ruining this area.

I counted everything as an approach so keep that in mind. I can still remember the first night I made the walk to try it. On the way there I was at a crosswalk and there was a girl next time. I did a "hey, what's up?" That was honestly really hard for me. Even though I did all kinds of approaches when I was 18-20, the raw numbers probably came out to under 100 in a few years. Usually I was with friends, drunk, and I don't know, I just never developed that raw skill I guess. Which was my intention here. She did a "whattup" in a cool voice, which instantly reassured me. We got in a short conversation and, as she walked away she walked backwards with a smile on her face and told me how good the spot she was going to is. This is honestly why it can be such a rush to approach like this. Women generally really like it. I'm not a weird or creepy dude either though, so if you are it'll probably turn out differently.

As I kept walking there was a woman filling up her tank. I approached her about her dog in the car. I already had 2 approaches. Then I got to the street. I was a machine. Keep in mind my approaches were short and mainly designed to overcome anxiety. I asked random people for directions and made remarks about a piece of clothing they were wearing. I was looking for something for my mom, of course. At one point there was two mom aged woman, both attractive, and when I asked a super basic directional question I can tell they kind of realized I was just making conversation. As I walked away the hotter one kind of scoffed, like she's played this game before. Even then, I can tell she liked being approached by a young guy, like it was affirming for her.

Just as I'm writing this I got back from a late night wings place. As I left there was a cute girl at the counter, and I started a conversation with her about her food choice. We chatted for a while. I brought up my diet, her height, exercise. And then I went on my way. As I was leaving, I could tell she was disappointed I was leaving without at least getting her number. She checked me out and did a half hearted bye with a smile. But I'm not pushing myself yet too far.

One big thing I took away from this many approaches is how much opportunity I let pass me by. Most of the hottest girls I came across were ones I didn't approach. One time when I was walking by a trendy bar, I turned and saw a fucking gorgeous model looking woman looking around for her uber. She gave a little grin like she liked that I was looking at her. I just kept walking.... And honestly, there's the rub. I want to develop the killer instinct to, when that kind of instance happens, turn around and fucking approach. Who cares if she blows you out, it's better than just masturbating to her later like 99% of dudes do. You never know, the relationship with her might change your life.

But I'm not too hard on myself. It' the same as the runs. If I pushed myself too hard when I started running, it would've been too easy for me to quit. I'm not sure if other people would've given me different advice, but since I'm running 3 miles 5 days a week now like it's nothing, and when I started I could barely muster a couple laps, I know what works in slowly building this kind of skill. Even if you quit for a while, creating those callouses on your mind will change it forever. And if you come back, it will be far easier for you. Over time, the approaches become longer conversations, and I push myself a little further and then a little further.

If I had advanced game, I could've gotten that girl's number and invited her back to my apartment and fucked her tonight. 100% that's what she wanted. There's been a few interactions I've had like this recently where that's very evidently the case, even before I was doing the 10 a day (and had a situational opener that was handed to me on a fucking silver platter) But at this point I don't push myself like that. Not yet. I may change my mind later. Because there's a good chance I would've messed it up, I don't want to discourage myself. And funny enough I also don't want too big of a victory at this point. I feel like that could create bad habits, or de-motivate me. When I start getting laid regularly I imagine it'll happen naturally. I won't even need to try to do it anymore. I'll just have build that instinct up. I'll let you know if that's how it ends up happening.

I think skill grows best this way. You need to be metric oriented, not results focused, and make sure you get your reps in consistently. That's it. Still, when I was doing my 10 approaches a day, mainly at the busy retail district, I would go into Starbucks to get a water. This became my routine. It's something to do to start with, and then something for me hold onto. I usually would go into the line for the bathroom too and can get an approach out of that. I wasn't even thinking about it when I started talking to the girl in the line this one time, this is only like a few days after I started, she was a cute Southern girl with noticeably artsy makeup on her face. We chatted for a while about all kinds of stuff, and I got her number as her friend came out of the bathroom. Funny enough all her friends were Asians. That was kind of random. I could tell she was really happy I asked for her number, and again once I have better game I'll be pushing this a lot further. But for me even this was a big victory. Probably more than I even realized at the time. It came so naturally, so effortlessly, and so so successfully.

I've looked this girl up on Facebook and she's a SJW college student in Tennessee. She wasn't as cute in her pictures as she was in person, which could be because in person she had makeup that improved her face a lot, but because she also had a really cute and innocent personality, I was really into her. Like a month later, in early April, I texted her a few times. This was her reply: "Awh, you're so sweet I would love to hangout next time I'm there! I wish it would be sooner rather than later :cryingemoji:? but yeah that would be fun, you seemed like you were really cool & easy to talk to!"

I don't think that interaction would've even happened in the first place if I hadn't been putting in my numbers on a daily basis. Yes, I eventually want to get to the point where I meet girls like this and bring them back to my place and sleep with them. And they want that too. If I'm gonna improve my baseball game though, I'm not gonna judge my swings or whether I hit the ball to begin with. I'm just gonna say: swing the bat 1000 times a day. Over time, I will hit nerve points where I have to make decisions on how to do certain things. And I will make those decisions. And some other improvements will come gradually. And that's how I do!

PS:
I honestly don't really buy a lot of the boastful stories on here about getting laid because it takes a pretty developed skill to do that. I'm inching my way there and that's taken a lot of effort and time. And I have some natural talent for it. It could have to do with standards. One of the guys I hang out with who has decent game, he'll show me pictures of some girl that's supposed to be soooo hot. I usually think they're pretty average. He's like "youre gay!!!", and I have to make him realize that to me, a hot girl is a hot girl, not a fucking average girl. Megan Fox is hot. To call a 6 "super hot", that's not what I do dude.

[BlastbeatCasanova]

OK here are mine. Going a little light on this first round as my work schedule is already working against me:
1.) Practice guitar for 1 hour a day
2.) Read from a *book* 30 min a day
3.) oil pull + floss every day
4.) get out of bed before 8 am every day
5.) go to bed before midnight every day
6.) do facial skincare routine every night

Nothing too crazy here. I've got my fitness routine and diet down, I'm in an LTR so I'm not gaming so hard these days. Using this to get my little habits nailed back down, this also coincides with No Fap/pr0n and my efforts to waste less time on the net by deleting IG and some other dumb apps on my phone. Also doing a weed break after I finish this little bit I have left. Will update later