I’m particular when it comes to things that cost me time or money. I usually do a good bit of research and personal testing in search of an optimal approach to the problem, but I’m not obsessive about it. This page contains some of my recommendations on habits and buying consumer product to maybe make your life better. Take what seems right and leave the rest.

Body

• Lift heavy weights with a barbell. Start off light and educate yourself on proper form and routine. Starting Strength is an excellent beginner resource, especially the blue book.
• Eat plenty of food, particularly a balance of fat, carbs, and protein. Especially important for bachelors who might be prone to missing/forgetting meals.
• Get good sleep. This can be tricky. I’ve found that using an alarm (I use this one because it’s simple, free, and works offline) that wakes me in-between sleep cycles ensures I wake feeling rested. I prefer sleeping on the floor rather than on a mattress, but I’ve had good sleep in both situations, so I can’t say it’s all that important.
• Learn to breathe properly. Breathe through your nose. If you’re exerting yourself, breathe out through your mouth. Throughout the day, consciously take a few deeper, longer breaths.
• Cold showers have a number of benefits. They are uncomfortable, so they make you a bit tougher and more disciplined, especially in winter months. They douse sexual impulses and encourage more selfless and rational action. They don’t dry out or damage the skin as much as hot showers. They’re quicker and cheaper. And according to some online weirdos, they help to prevent colds and sinus infections by “tempering” the sinuses. That last one may or may not be true.
• Avoid atomizing yourself or seeing yourself as a machine. You are too complex to be reliably divided into hackable “systems.” The above recommendations are not “one weird tricks” that will solve all of your problems. They are patches for the holes punched into your life by modernity. If you’re after a single practice that will reverberate goodness into every aspect of your life, follow the steps of your ancestors and pursue religion.

Attitude

• Don’t be naive or ignorant, but be curious, playful, inquisitive, joyful, and friendly. Other people will like you more.
• John Henry Newman recommended simply to “Keep out bad thoughts.” This is especially important today, when bad thoughts are clambering to get to the forefront of our minds. Again, the advice is not to pretend that “bad things” don’t exist, but to grant them no share of your attention. Practically, you should:
  • Avoid the news or social media feeds. It’s a waste of time that will make you distrustful of your neighbors.
  • Avoid unmeritoriously violent or sexualized content. Though perhaps not inherently bad, these types of media often degrade our estimation of others and welcome in “bad thoughts.”
  • Keep a regular mindfulness, meditation, or prayer practice that gives you the chance to detach from your thoughts, and to realize that you are distinct from the thoughts that emerge into your conscious mind.
• Read books. Aim especially for canonical (classic) books and history books. We moderns are at a great risk of losing sight of our historical context and human progress/regress, so educate yourself and keep your mind alive.
• Go out into the world and talk to real people. Don’t be scared. It’s the only way to know the people with whom you share your world. The Internet won’t cut it.
• Attempt things outside of your comfort zone regularly. You will learn who you are and what you’re capable of if you test and stretch yourself. You may face humiliation or triumph, but either way you’ll get valuable insights into yourself.

Grooming

• Shampoo is unnecessary. I use bar soap on my hair every couple months, right after I get a haircut. There are resources online to guide you through the process of getting rid of shampoo. Be patient and don’t complicate things.
• If you have any kind of skin issues (acne, dry skin, rashes, etc.) you may be having some kind of reaction to ingredients in your soap, namely SLS (Sodium lauryl sulfate, the stuff that makes your soap/toothpaste foam up). Perfumes can also cause adverse skin reactions. Choose a soap that contains no SLS or perfumes. I use the fragrance-free version of Kirk’s Castile Soap. It works well and is affordable.
• Use a safety razor instead of a cartridge razor. The initial costs are comparable, but safety razor blades are way cheaper and you have more options. For best results, opt for shaving soap and a boar bristle brush instead of canned shaving cream. There is a slight learning curve, but it is not complicated–don’t get into the weeds.
• Contrary to the insistence of many voices online, I have found no benefit to buying “higher quality” or “luxury” grooming blades like hair scissors or nail clippers. The cheap stuff from the dollar store works just as good. That being said, I’ve found cuticle scissors to be very useful.
• Toothpaste seems to be unnecessary if you brush and floss daily. Schedule a couple professional dental cleanings annually.
• Avoid using lotions, lip balm, or nasal sprays for anything but emergent issues. Prolonged use of these “moisturizers” can create dependence so that your lips will be chapped unless you use lip balm, your skin will be dry unless you apply lotion, and your nose will be stuffy unless you use spray.

Medical

• Many people know this already, but it might be news to people from my generation: most cough and cold medicines are counterproductive. Like many medicines, their aim is to cover the symptoms of an illness, but they do not help with recovery. In fact, cough medicines can prolong the illness. It seems that things like fever and runny nose are ways the body fights illness, so medicines that suppress those mechanisms can interfere with recovery, even though they might make the person feel more comfortable. If I am running a fever I avoid taking any medicines, including fever reducers, unless the fever gets high enough to be concerning (usually over 103°F). Similarly, I only take cough suppressants if I have an immediate need (I need to give an uninterrupted lecture, or my cough is so strong I can’t sleep) and then I take an isolated cough suppressant with no other additives.
• If you have chronic bad breath, you may have tonsilloliths–small, foul-smelling calcium deposits that sit in the folds of your tonsils. You can dislodge them by applying pressure to the surrounding tissue with a cotton swab. Gargling salt water can help, too. In my experience, they can be prevented by eliminating nonfat or lowfat milk consumption. Drink whole milk.
• If you have seasonal allergies, try to avoid taking allergy pills right away. Instead, expose yourself to the allergens. Ideally, you would spend time outdoors daily for a few weeks leading up to the first onset of your symptoms (tracking your allergy history is essential). When inside, avoid filtering your air with air conditioning or HEPA filters. Try sleeping with a window open. As with many of life’s annoyances, you can build a tolerance to your allergens by gradually exposing yourself to them.
• If you have migraines, try the following:
  • Common triggers: Foods containing sulfites and nitrates (wine, aged cheese, cured meats, etc.). Also chocolate, coffee, or artificial sweeteners like aspartame. It will be pretty unambigious that you’ve hit on a migraine trigger. For example, if I eat a small amount of shredded coconut, I will reliably and reproduceably have a migraine within fifteen minutes.
  • Weight training: You’re a modern person, so you probably sit staring at a screen a lot. If your neck is weak, this will cause strain, headaches, and sometimes migraines. Structured weight training can strengthen all of the little muscles that help your insides stay where they’re supposed to. Weight training also helps with breathing and blood pressure, and those seem to have impacts on migraine, as well.
  • Light: Try to avoid spaces that have a combination of artificial and natural lighting, like an open window and an overhead light. Be particularly careful of screen glare.
  • Sugar: Try to gradually reduce your daily refined sugar intake. It’s easier to do this if you’re weight training, since you’ll naturally crave more nutritious foods.
• I was able to eliminate regularly occurring canker sores by ceasing use of toothpaste. As it turns out, the foaming agent SLS causes skin irritation, and I know from years of toothpaste use that the body does not seem to build a tolerance to this compound. I really hate canker sores a lot, so I also entirely avoid citrus fruits like oranges, nor do I drink lemonade or any fruit juice. Those foods reliably give me canker sores. You may have the same results.
• At some point, most people experience some sort of joint or muscle pain. Often the instinct or medical recommendation is to “take it easy.” This is rarely the best advice. As mentioned above, our bodies require resistance to stay strong. If you’re not particularly active (i.e. a modern person), you can expect aches and pains to develop, and you can expect your doctor to tell you that your body is a machine that wears out over time, and that there are several options for medications that might alleviate your pain. Instead of becoming dependent on the immoral medical establishment to take away your pain, take matters into your own hands and strike at the root cause of your pain. Lift weights. Get stronger. Did you know that when you lift weights, your bones become more dense? Loading your skeleton triggers bone growth. Lifting strengthens your muscles, but also your tendons. If you are having back pain (or knee pain or shoulder pain or whatever), do not immediately fall for the story that you are “falling apart.” Unless you have a very obvious traumatic injury, take it as a sign that you have neglected your body and it’s time to get under the barbell and give it some strength.
• One of the relatively less-common problems you might experience is angular cheilitis, which is typically a type of fungal infection occurring at the corners of the mouth. It manifests as a swollen area that splits open when the sufferer opens his mouth. I experienced this when I moved from a city with a dry climate to one with a humid climate. The treatment is simple: apply an OTC antifungal (either vaginal or foot cream) to the affected area. The trick is to apply it at the earliest possible sign of infection, and not to cease regular application (4-6 times each day) until a day after the infection has disappeared.

Tech Tips

• To preserve privacy and have greater control over your computing, use GNU/Linux instead of Windows or MacOS. Don’t be intimidated: there are many user-friendly Linux distributions.
• If you’re curious about the data collection practices of a program you currently use, this website might offer some insights.
• Whenever possible, use RSS feeds instead of either manually visiting a site or using push notifications. This is especially important for sites like YouTube and Twitter, which are designed to steal your attention and control your perspectives.
• Use a browser plug-in that redirects you to privacy-conscious alternatives to mainstream sites. I currently use LibRedirect.
• Many people use cell phones mindlessly, and are so dependent on them that they feel they’d be alone, purposeless, and lost without them. Sincerely investigate your justifications for owning and using a cell phone. Then determine whether those justifications are sufficient reasons to give up the huge amounts of personal data and attention required to use the phone. If, like I did, you decide you only need your phone for extreme emergencies, consider getting a barebones phone plan like RedPocket Mobile’s special eBay plan. Or use this site to see if there’s a better deal.
• You may have noticed that in recent years, web search engines have stopped working very well. Many of the search results are sponsored content, or content generated by AI instead of human beings. Young readers may not even be aware that search engines used to work pretty well, and resign themselves to this fate. While not a perfect solution, switching to the metasearch engine “SearX” from Google or DuckDuckGo will likely improve your search experience. SearX instances can be hosted by anyone, including yourself. Try it out!
• If you’re trying to memorize new things–maybe learning a foreign language or studying for a test–you need to learn the basics of the spaced repetition phenomenon and start using Anki. While Anki appears to be a flashcard program, it actually delivers your cards to you in a pattern that a) reduces the time you spend looking at flash cards and b) increases your memory retention. The result is that you can memorize a massive amount of information in a short time. And there are a ton of great add-ons that make the program super functional.
• If you’re interested in learning Japanese, start with James Heisig’s Remembering The Kanji book. Also, make use of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide. Finally, Yomichan is a Firefox extension that allows for immediate dictionary lookups of Japanese texts. Very customizable and integrates with Anki.

Tools/Household

• Older appliances are often higher quality than new appliances. Modern “energy efficient” items (including cars!) are often not worth the additional cost because you’ll be forced to replace those items (modern stuff is often designed to be impossible to repair) before you reap the energy savings. Try to work out the amortization for the item you’re considering. I’ve found that it’s probably worth it to replace standard lightbulbs with LED bulbs. Energy efficiency is more critical for battery applications, which is why it’s worth it to purchase modern battery-powered power tools–their mechanically efficient drive systems allow for significant gains in battery life and convenience over their predecessors.
• Online reviews generally cannot be trusted. There are several scams run by online retailers including Amazon. One of these scams is to allow sellers to change product descriptions–and the product itself–after the product has been listed for some time. This allows immoral sellers to rack up good reviews on a product, then swap it out with a lesser-but-similar product while keeping the good reviews. Online retailers often permit sellers to lie in their product descriptions, to solicit paid reviews from “customers,” or to allow reviews on categories of products instead of specific products. This is not to mention the tendency for sellers to generate large volumes of fake product reviews to artificially inflate their score. The takeaway here is that you should be skeptical of online retailers.
• Buy a bidet for your toilet. You will get cleaner and use less toilet paper. This is a no-brainer unless you’re of the opinion that bidets are somehow “not manly.”
• Whether you like it or not, it matters how you dress. People are often either too obsessive or too careless with their clothes. Obsessive types appear vain and ostentatious. Careless types appear slobby. Generally, women seem to be more obsessive and men more careless with their appearances. The result is that many women come to identify with their appearances, and many men look like slobs. Watch footage of men from the early 20th century. Nearly everyone–including the poor–took their appearances seriously without seeming like dandies. You can do the same, and you should. You know from firsthand experience that people judge others based on their appearances. Dress like the person you want strangers to see. More practically, it is a reasonable and worthwhile expense to find a competent and affordable tailor who can make your clothes fit perfectly.

Specific Product/Brand Recommendations

Most products are junk. Others work just fine. This is a list of products and brands that have actually impressed me so that I would go out of my way to buy them.

• If you like tuna, be aware that the “chunk light tuna in water” at your local grocery store is probably not actually tuna in water, but tuna in soy broth. You can check the back of the can to verify this. For various reasons I try to avoid consuming soy when it’s not explicitly part of a dish. I order tuna online from a company called MW Polar. You may be lucky enough to have their product in your local shops. Their tuna in water is, thankfully, tuna in water.
• I like to drink good tea, and I’ve found that the tea brewing vessel actually makes a difference in the flavor. Specifically, pouring brewed tea from a carafe results in a weaker flavor than dispensing the tea from the bottom of the vessel. I’ve tried agitating the tea in a carafe to more evenly distribute the liquid, but it never really worked. Now I use this Hario Largo Tea Dripper which is convenient, good-looking, plastic-free, and dispenses a really good (4 cups of) tea.
• As for the tea itself, it’s of course important to use loose leaf tea. There are some technical reasons for this, though there are occassions where I find tea bags work better (like in iced tea). But my favorite tea, considering flavor and price point, comes from Adagio Tea. Strangely, most of their teas seem totally disgusting to me–they’re fruity, candy blends that bear no similarity to standard black or green teas. But Adagio also stocks more traditional teas, and they’re really good. My favorites are Gyokuro, Irish Breakfast, Yunnan Golden Curls, and Ti Kuan Yin.
• It was tricky to find good quality dress clothes when I started teaching full-time. I like clothes with plain or simple patterns on natural fiber fabrics, and I don’t want to overspend on something like a dress shirt. Fortunately, I found Charles Tyrwhitt. Good deals on good quality dress clothes.
• I do a lot of writing, including journaling and calligraphy, so I care about my writing tools. I recommend owning a good fountain pen and a good mechanical pencil–it makes a big difference if you write a lot. Those things don’t need to cost a lot. I buy pens from JetPens. They’re cheap and simple and have a good selection. Good stationery, too.
• When it comes to journals and notebooks, nothing beats Hobonichi. They call their flagship journal, the Hobonichi Techo, a “Life book,” and that’s exactly what it is–a space to freely record the details of one’s life. I assume you probably have to be into this stuff in the first place to get the appeal.
• If you’re in the market for Japanese dishes or kitchenware and you don’t live near a DAISO (or you want something a bit higher quality), MIYA is the place.
• I know I’m not alone in appreciating good quality books. Baronius Press offers a selection of beautiful books. Topics are all from the Catholic tradition, so if you’re an atheist who has already discovered that science has proved God’s non-existence, or that religion is a lie for people who are scared of death, then you’ll want to steer clear of these fine volumes.