Tag: Self-Development

Begin Again: How I FINALLY Re-Became a Gym Person Last Year at 41
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The simple and easy idea that finally worked.

For nearly six years, I struggled to get myself back into being a gym person.

Rewind to around 2018. I was about 34 then, and I was in the best shape of my life. I knew it was possible to be fit because I’d done it already, which made my inability to do it again feel even more insulting. But it was like trying to remember a password I knew I had used successfully for years, only to be locked out, over and over, until my computer started suggesting I contact the administrator (who, in this scenario, was also me).

I tried to restart, repeatedly, and couldn’t. I’d manage a workout here and there, just enough to remind myself what soreness felt like, and then I’d disappear again.

And the whole time, one thought kept looping in my head:

I’ve done this before. Why can’t I do it now?

In hindsight, I can admit what powered a lot of it: I was single and wanting not to be.

The times throughout my life that I was consistently exercising, I was also single. Not every stretch of singledom turned me into a gym rat, I had plenty of lazy bachelor phases too, but when I was motivated, I also happened to be actively dating.

I wanted to feel proud of how I looked, like if I was in better shape I’d be more likely to attract the kind of partner I wanted and to get those mental health boosts that come with regular exercise. That combination can make a man do almost anything. Including waking up early to deadlift.

During that era I was fully invested: going to the gym all the time, running on the track, and eating healthier (fewer midnight frozen pizzas, at least). I followed workout plans written by Brad Borland, Primer’s resident fitness guy, a natural bodybuilder and former military man with a master’s in kinesiology. I stayed consistent, saw results, and eventually got to a place where I was genuinely proud.

But then that chapter closed. And it turns out, “become more attractive” when the “…because I’m single” is scratched out isn’t a renewable resource.

After that high point in my mid-30s, I hit a long stall. I tried everything. Different gym memberships, home workouts with the weights left out the night before, lowering the bar to “just going is good enough”.

None of it stuck.

And when I’m not exercising consistently, my diet starts to resemble that of a raccoon in a dumpster. Bread everything. Cabinets open, Nutella from the jar.

Exercise was the anchor habit. Without it, the wheels came off elsewhere.

Part of the issue was a classic guy delusion: thinking I could just go back in, do the same routine, but you know, with marginally less weight given time has passed. Spoiler, I couldn’t.

Every time I tried to do “what I know worked before” it felt brutally difficult mentally.

Walking out of the gym feeling defeated made it really hard to convince myself to go back.

I blamed it on my willpower. Or that I wasn’t disciplined anymore.

But turns out, I was also aging, and so were my motivations.

Men Lose Muscle Mass Starting In Their 30s

By the time you hit 30, most men start losing 3 to 5% of muscle mass per decade if they’re not strength training. At 40, it’s closer to 1% per year. Jumping back in doesn’t just feel harder, it is harder.

At my peak, being in shape was tied to dating, confidence, opportunity, and identity. Now that I wasn’t single, that underlying drive was just gone, and “health because you should be healthy” was not strong enough to get me to the rack to do squats.

I kept trying to brute-force it with habit tricks and it didn’t work because I was trying to fuel current actions with outdated reasons.

And it wasn’t until that started to register that I could even ask the next question that ultimately led to the course correction:

Why do I want to exercise now?

A couple things happened at once.

One: I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror getting out of the shower, and… I didn’t love it. Meanwhile, my now fiancée still looked as good or better than when we met. I didn’t feel good about the sense that I was unintentionally catfishing her: meeting her at my best shape and then sliding into some of my worst so quickly.

Bodies change, sure. Nobody looks like they did at 35 forever. But it matters to me that I don’t drift into, “welp, you’re stuck with me,” while I prioritize everything except my health.

Just: Am I exercising? Am I trying?

And I wasn’t. And we weren’t even married yet.

That didn’t feel good.

Two: my dog Leela turned 12. She’s a large, barrel-shaped girl with the grace of a squirming beanbag chair. The bathtub is high and has a deep ledge so she can’t get in or out on her own, even with some step contraption. I have to pick her up to put her in and take her out and one weekend when bathing her the awkward tub shape and her weight emphasized that I did not have enough strength to hold and maneuver her outside of a burst.

That hit in a new way. I realized I want to be strong enough to care for my loved ones. To carry Leela if her legs give out on a walk and she can’t get them going again. To help her up the stairs so she can participate and not stay on the first floor for the rest of her life. She’s part of my life. I want her to stay part of my life.

And realizing I probably couldn’t and wasn’t actively working on it? That felt sad.

So around last January, during my end-of-year reflection process that we always talk about on Primer, I took inventory. Other areas, mental health, finances, family, career, had at least some attention.

Fitness had basically none. Like I had completely opted out.

And I wrote down something simple: “I want to feel like I am a person who exercises.”

A page from my 2024 year-end reflection, download your own here

James Clear, the Atomic Habits guy, talks about three layers of behavior change: outcomes, processes, identity. Identity is the deepest layer. “Every action is a vote for the type of person you want to become.” I didn’t need to win a bodybuilding trophy. I needed a vote.

But it still left a practical question: how do you measure identity?

It’s not like you can say, “Okay, done, I’m a gym person again.” I didn’t care about signing up for a marathon. I didn’t care about a one-rep max. I cared about becoming consistent.

So I needed a goal that was measurable and realistic enough that took into consideration the struggle I had getting back into it.

Around that time, I was talking to my friend Ryan Masters, who has been jacked since I met him 12 years ago. He has meat slabs that fold over on themselves where his chest is supposed to be.

I told him what I had been thinking and he told me the approach that had been working for him:

Instead of his goal being number of workouts, or specific body weight, it was total hours in the gym per month. He still tracked what he did and how much he would do for each exercise, but that was so he could know how much to do. Those weren’t his goal.

Just total time in the gym each month. That was it. Not reps or progression. Minutes.

And this wasn’t coming from someone dabbling back in after a long break. This is a guy who knows how to train, who’s built consistency over years, who’s done hard things just to see if he could. Which made the whole thing land differently. If someone with his background found real value in using time as his goal, maybe there was something to it.

If I wanted to feel like “I was a person who exercises” as a part of my lifestyle, how many hours per month would I have to exercise to feel like that?

So I stole the idea immediately.

Then I chose a number.

As our piece on how to set short-term goals that work explains, a good goal is S.M.A.R.T.: Simple, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

I didn’t choose an aspirational, heroic number. I chose a number that felt almost too easy, because I wanted something attainable I could hit even on my worst month:

4 hours per month for every month last year.

Yep. Four hours.

That’s about an hour a week total. It’s low on purpose.

Back in my peak days I was training 3-4 times a week for 40-60 minutes a session, easily 12+ hours a month. But I wasn’t that guy anymore, and I needed to start from where I was now.

With 4 hours a month, you can do:
- 9–10 25-minute workouts
- 5 45-minute workouts + a little extra
- 16 15-minute workouts
- One super workout and random short workouts that add up
It didn’t matter how I got there, as long as the minutes accumulated.

To track I used a free time-tracking app called Toggl. I’d tap “Start” when I began exercising and “Stop” when I wrapped up. I created an “Exercise” project in the app that my time entries were assigned to which meant I could easily see my progress as the month went on.

Two screenshots from Toggl showing two very different patterns for accomplishing the time goal:

What counted (and why that mattered)

One thing I decided early: As long as I was setting out “to exercise” before I started, it counted toward the time.

That included:
- strength training at the gym
- going for a run outside or on a treadmill, bike, rowing machine
- Inviting friends to play pickleball on a random Saturday
- workouts while traveling, even if it was short and in a hotel gym
This was the key mental shift:

Every minute counted.

That meant I stopped beating myself up for short workouts or ones that didn’t involve a metal plate. Even a 12-minute workout was still a win because I showed up.

Some days I would walk into the gym feeling blah and literally do three sets of squats (an exercise I despise) and walk right out.

In the past I’d have thought, what’s the point of even going for 12 minutes?

Under this system, 12 minutes had a point: It was 12 more minutes towards my goal, and it was proof I was still in the habit.

I even traveled to Hong Kong in April and still got my hours in using the hotel gym for 20 minutes at a time.

In the past, travel always derailed me. Now it didn’t, because I wasn’t chasing a perfect workout or schedule. I was just stacking minutes.

Also, once I had the habit, intensity started improving naturally.

By the second and third month I found myself increasing the weight or adding an extra set. I felt good and wanted to push more.

But I never made it a requirement.

The requirement was time. The habit came first. Evolution happened naturally.

The receipts: why it worked

I’m proud to say I hit that 4-hour goal every month last year.

The photo I sent Ryan after hitting my monthly exercise time goal every month last year.

It might not sound like much to fitness enthusiasts, but considering I’d spent years struggling to do anything consistent, it felt like a real victory.

And surprisingly, after only a month and a half in, I already felt like I’d achieved the actual goal:

“I felt like a person who exercises.”

The identity shift happened faster than I expected because the goal was so manageable that I stopped dreading exercise. I stopped overthinking it. And started contributing minutes to it.

It also fixed a big problem I always had with workout plans: if you have a goal to workout 3x per week, it’s easy to get to a certain point in the week, feel behind, and just toss that week up as a loss. Why still get 1 workout in if you only get credit for 3?

With a monthly hours goal, it was never too late to catch up.

If by the 15th I’d only logged one hour, no big deal. I still had half the month to chip away. I could do 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and still hit 4 hours. Heck, in a worst case scenario you could get all 4 hours in on the last day of the month if you split it up throughout the day. Still getting credit and likely jumpstarting the start of the next month.

The takeaway: steal this

If you’ve been struggling to become a person who exercises, or if you’re carrying the weird shame of once being fit and now not being able to get back there, I strongly encourage you to try a monthly exercise time goal.

Here’s how to do it:
1. Pick a tiny monthly number you’re confident you can hit even on a bad month 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours. Start low.
2. Decide how long your streak will be. You could do all year or two months at first.
3. Track it. Toggl is free and makes it easy, and by setting up an “exercise” project, you can easily see a report of total time logged right in the app.
4. Let all workouts count. Intense ones. Lazy ones. Short ones. Long ones.
5. Adjust without guilt. If you find yourself beating your goal, amazing! If you picked 12 hours and it’s just not realistic, recalibrate. Don’t scrap the system.
A year ago I was the guy who wanted to work out but didn’t.

Now I’m a guy who works out regularly (even if not spectacularly).

That change didn’t require a health scare or breakup or some training movie montage. It happened a few minutes at a time, month after month.

And if it can happen for me at 41, it can happen for you too.

All it takes is a goal small enough to hit, and a willingness to keep showing up, minute by minute, until one day you look up and realize:

“Hey. I’m doing it. I’m back.”
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Andrew Snavely

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January 20, 2026
Begin Again: 50 Short-Term Goal Examples You Can Actually Commit To That Will Change Your Life
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A step-by-step guide for making, achieving, and tracking better goals, plus 50 examples to get you going.

19 January,2026By Andrew Snavely / Additional Writing By Stillman Brown

Have you ever set a personal goal for yourself like “I want to lose weight,” or “I want to get a better job,” and then woke up 6 months later still in the exact same situation you were in?

Man, you must just be terrible at accomplishing things.

Or maybe it was something far simpler: Your goals were terrible. Why?

Because things like “lose weight” and “get a better job” aren’t good goals, they’re outcomes.

They’re desirable … but as goals, they’re useless. In fact, vague, overly-broad goals like that will actually prevent you from getting what you want in life and will just make you feel defeated.

I Used To Be Bad At Personal Goals … Here’s How I Got Better

For years I struggled with meeting my goals. I’ve always made lots of goals, like “Eating healthier,” “Getting in shape,” and “Doing more things with friends.” After I made a big, important life goal I always felt good – life transformation, here I come!

The problem was, I never achieved the goals I set.

Obviously, my goal-making process was broken and it was getting in the way of achieving the things I wanted in life. Instead of using goals to move toward a larger aspiration, they had become impediments. My goals were using me.

The Difference Between Goals and Aspirations

Think about the last few small goals you made. Were they something like…
- “Control my spending”
- “Write a screenplay”
- “Read more books”
- “Call my mom like ever”
- “Improve my communication skills”
Those aren’t goals. Those are aspirations masquerading as goals. When you say something like “control my spending” what you really mean is “Be financially secure.” Financial security is an excellent thing to want – and it’s a great aspiration.

But it’s not a goal.

Aspirations are desired outcomes not bound to specifics. How would you know if you’ve achieved your aspiration of “being financially secure”? Anything that isn’t clear cut relies on a feeling. It’s totally fine to aspire to feel certain things as the result of an outcome, but they make terrible goals.

Aspirations are dreams. Goals, as you’re about to discover, are systems – to be actionable, achievable, and USEFUL, and any goal you make must be short term.

Witness: The Gospel Of Short-Term Goals

Here’s the secret to, well, everything: you need to start setting short-term goals. Maybe just one. Maybe a whole bunch that build on each other towards something larger.

Are you currently in a state where you feel like you’re just going through the motions, lacking the drive and enthusiasm to make meaningful progress in your life? You might be experiencing what psychologists call “languishing.”

It’s that feeling of being stuck, where your goals and aspirations seem distant and unattainable. But don’t worry; you’re not alone in this. This is a common experience that I know all too well. The good news is that there’s a way out of this sense of stagnation, and it begins with setting short-term goals.

Whatever the case, your personal goals need to stop being big, ambitious, ill-defined desired outcomes and start being simple, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (more on that later).

If you’re already overwhelmed, don’t be. I’m going to walk you through the whole process.

In fact, let’s make a goal right now: by the end of this post, you want to have a full-proof method for creating small, short-term goals that you know you can achieve.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

What is a Short-term Goal?

Short-term goals bridge the divide from where you are to where you want to be in a way you can actually achieve.

Short term goals are “short” for a reason. They are things to be accomplished within a quick time frame, not more than a month or two. They may be explicitly part of a larger mid-term or long-term goal, but not necessarily.

Sometimes it’s the short-term actions that help you discover what you want your long-term goals to be. Nifty, huh?

Why Short-term Goals are Essential to Improving Your Life

Living life without goals is like banking your retirement on winning the lottery.

Without goals you’re just oozing through daily life hoping for improvement … without actually working toward it. Hope is important but it’s not a strategy. Hope is a feeling – not a plan.

Goals are how you operationalize your aspirations, desires, and dreams. Short-term goals are how you make day-to-day progress on the big, life-enhancing changes you want.

So, in summary: You need goals, and you need them to be good goals.

What Makes A Good Goal?

I used to frustratingly believe goals were kind of like genius – you either have this magical ability to make and achieve great goals or you don’t. People who are good at accomplishing personal goals are born that way.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

In fact, psychologists have studied good goal-making. A lot. To immediately start making better goals, try the S.M.A.R.T. goal technique.

SMART goals will be:

Simple.

Distill it into a few words and make it straightforward. More than that will begin to feel overwhelming, or worse, loose and scattered.

Measurable.

Your goal should be easily quantifiable. Find a way to tell whether you’re doing it or not and track that.

Attainable.

Deciding to run every day when you haven’t run since high school is a high bar to set. Be reasonable with yourself: It’s great to be ambitious in the long term, but short-term goals should be achievable steps toward growth.

Relevant.

Why is this goal important? Does it enhance or conflict with larger goals? Does it align with your current physical, mental, or financial reality?

Time-bound.

Goals should have a time frame assigned to them so you can adjust or improve as you go.

Losing weight is not a goal. How will you know if you are on track or not? Eating healthier is not a goal. How will you know at any given moment if you are doing it?

Here’s the key:

Do not aspire to be someone who benches 200 lbs. Aspire to be the person who lives a lifestyle that allows them to bench 200 lbs.
- They work out 3 times per week.
- They increase weight progressively based on a specific plan.
- They consume a specific amount of protein each day to allow their body to grow into something that can press 200 lbs.
Each of those can easily be turned into a S.M.A.R.T. goal for you to reach the outcome of being a person who can bench 200 lbs.

If you feel like you’ve tried setting goals in the past but never got anything productive from the exercise, a similar acronym to S.M.A.R.T. may help illustrate a new approach: A.B.C.:

A: Achievable, B: Believable, and Committed.

Often when we’re motivated to come up with goals, they may be far too ambitious based on where we are, our current state of productivity and emotional tools we have access to, or what we genuinely can commit to.

Using A.B.C. to validate our S.M.A.R.T. goals may help us recognize that what we’ve come up with is not believably achievable, either in the timeframe we’ve allotted or the real-world, day-to-day requirements making that commitment would require.

If you want to better guarantee improvement and movement on your goals, make them doable but a challenge just out of your comfort zone. Continue to increase the difficulty in each subsequent set of goals. Don’t rely on motivation alone, set your goals up as a system.

Short-term Goal Setting Template

50 Short-term Goal Examples

Let’s take a look at some examples of short-term goals to get your gears turning.

Bad goal: Start running. (Too vague, no achievable outcome, no deadline).

Good goal: Jog for 20 minutes twice per week for six weeks. (Specific, personal, realistic, time-based).

Short-Term Personal Goals Examples
1. Do a nightly gratitude journal for 1 week; or journal for 15 minutes every morning for 2 weeks
2. Limit social media screen time to 30 minutes per day, or get off screens by 9:00 p.m. everyday for 2 weeks
3. Do one lesson on Justin Guitar per week or finish one Coursera course within a month
4. Spend 90 minutes per week on a new hobby for one month
5. Try one new home cooked meal per week until the end of the year
6. Give 2% of your monthly income to charity each pay period for two months
7. Read for 10 hours each month
8. Water your houseplants every 12 days (not too much!)
9. Teach yourself one new home repair skill every month
10. Use a distraction-limiting focus mode on your phone for 1 week
Short-Term Health & Fitness Goals Examples
1. Go to the gym Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday with no required minimum workout
2. Only consume 1 alcoholic drink per session for 2 weeks
3. Meditate for 10 minutes before bed 4 times per week
4. Wake up 15 minutes earlier to make a real breakfast every workday for 2 weeks
5. Cut off caffeine at noon every workday for one month
6. Eat vegetarian on Mondays and Thursdays for 6 weeks
7. Set a timer to get up and stretch for 2 minutes every hour
8. Bike to work one day per week for a month
9. Do a Sunday morning hike every week for a month
10. Drink only water every Wednesday for 1 month
Short-Term Career Goals Examples
1. Complete one continued education online course or training program per month
2. Research and commit to attending an industry conference within 90 days
3. Invite one coworker or boss to coffee outside of the workplace per week for 6 weeks
4. Schedule one informational interview with a grad school counselor by the 1st of next month
5. I will spend 45 minutes updating my resume every Sunday for 4 weeks
6. Get to work 1 minute early every day for a week. Then make it 2 minutes, then 3 – all the way up to the optimal time you want to be at your desk
7. Reach out to one friend, family member, or acquaintance you admire tomorrow and set a date to discuss how they achieved success
8. Read 1 amazing book on leadership each month for the next 5 months
9. Seek out and attend a public speaking or leadership meetup in your town by next week
10. Visit TED.com and watch one talk by an industry leader per day on your lunch break instead of watching Youtube
Short-Term Goals Examples for Your Relationships
1. Call your high school best friend once per month
2. Plan a true date night for your partner on the first and third Saturdays of the month
3. Join a kickball team for a season
4. Host a game night with friends within the next 20 days
5. Simply start an interaction with someone you find attractive with zero expectations once per week
6. Make a meal for someone in the next week
7. Research 3 options for a couples therapist by the end of the week and have an appointment by the end of the month
8. Join a spiritual community of some kind for 1 month
9. Commit to being a better listener for 1 week
10. Ask someone out on a date, in person, in the next week
Short-Term Financial Goals
1. Drink only homemade coffee for 10 days, or bring your lunch to work 3 times per week
2. Any recreational purchase must be added to a Should I Buy This jar/folder/account that can only be acted on after it’s been on the list for 7 days
3. Move 5% of your paycheck to a savings account per pay period and assess if you noticed it missing from your wallet at the end of the month
4. Sign up for a budgeting app like Simplifi or YNAB, and use it everyday for two weeks. At the end of that time, see if you noticed any changes in your spending habits.
5. Open a high-yield interest account by the end of Sunday
6. Save on groceries and make a double portion of one of these recipes every week
7. Open some type of retirement account like an IRA in the next 14 days
8. Create a monthly budget of expenses and attempt to reduce it by 10% within the next 10 days
9. Schedule an appointment with a financial counselor within two weeks
10. Make a date with yourself and a bottle of wine to honestly look at any credit card debt that’s been lingering for more than six months. Just this could be a huge win for many
How To Track Your Goals

A great goal must be Measurable, so you must track it in some way. There are a few different ways to do this.

Bullet Journal

A longtime favorite method for tracking goals is in my journal. I’ve done this for about four years. At the end of each day, I’ll do an audit checking off the boxes for the things I did that day. They can be things that are positive goals like working out or meditating, or they can be things I’m trying to do less of, like checking off a box if I ate out.

At the end of the week, I review how I did – and here’s the critical part:

I assess the need to make changes or alterations based on my performance. If I’m trying to drink a gallon of water a day but am averaging 16 ounces, I need to come up with some serious adjustments to my routine.

Or – I need to adjust my goal.

Recognizing that a goal was too ambitious or not attainable in the time frame you’ve allotted is not failure. It simply means that after testing, it’s become clear the expectations need to be revised to be more relevant.

And in 6 months, I’ll be in a far better place with daily water intake if I recognize it fast and reduce my goal to 32 ounces a day to start than if I force myself into thinking I can just power through such a wide discrepancy.

Remember: Great goals are about creating the lifestyle that allows your desired outcome to exist. – Click to tweet

Goal Setting & Milestone Tracking Apps

An alternative to using pen and paper is using one of the great goal-tracking apps out there. What’s most important is finding one that is easy to use and convenient.

One of the more popular apps is Fabulous, developed in Duke’s Behavioral Economics Lab, which boasts 18,000 reviews with a 4.6 star average. A fun one to consider is Habitica, which turns your goals into a retro-slick 8-bit style game.

I previously tracked my calories every day for 2.5 years with MyFitnessPal as I worked on specific nutrition and fitness goals

For more specific goals you may need to use an app created for that purpose. For diet and weight goals and tracking, I tracked my calories for over 900 days with MyFitnessPal. It makes it super easy to find and enter food, and as you can tell by how long I’ve been doing it, is not a chore to do.

Using specialized apps like Waterminder to be able to effortlessly log water intake allows me to remember and track my water intake goals. The important part is finding a system that you will do.

For tracking and improving my water intake, I use an app called Waterminder that makes it fast to log a glass of water, from your phone or smartwatch. It can also send you reminders so you don’t have to rely on memory or feeling thirsty alone to stay hydrated.

For tracking gym goals I use the Strong app. It has a clean and fast UI and a lot of practical features like a set timer and it will remind you what weight you did last time so can determine if it’s time to increase resistance.

For tracking productivity goals, I’ve found several apps to be very helpful. Timelines is a mobile and Apple Watch app that allows you to very quickly start time tracking pre-determined things and can provide reports to measure milestones and progress. I’ve used it to keep track of everything from meditation, exercise, how long my morning routine takes me, to making sure I’m spending quality, intentional time with my pup. The nice thing about Timelines is you can use it to track and limit the time you’re spending on something; or use it to track time milestones such as spending 2 hours per week exercising.

→ Now read this: Why People Don’t Have What They Want: 12 Common Traps to Help Diagnose Stagnation

Buddy System for Accountability & Feedback

Being accountable to someone else for your goals can be extremely motivating. If you know someone who is willing to pair up with you to support each other’s goals, definitely take advantage of that.

What this looks like in practice can vary depending on your relationship and your individual goals. It could simply be texting each other each time you go to the gym. Or you could do a 20 minute weekly Facetime meeting where you identify challenges you’re facing in accomplishing your goals and help each other. If you and another creative friend have writing goals, you could set up a dedicated Slack channel that you both post your pages to as a way of tracking progress.

There are also thousands of online communities built for exactly this kind of thing. If you’re willing to put yourself out there, I highly recommend recruiting someone to be accountable to.

Embracing Setbacks Helps Motivation

Let’s talk about what happens when you don’t meet your goal.

First of all, goals are targets, and you don’t have to have 100% success with them.

I would argue that setbacks are at least as important as gains. Setbacks teach you how to fail quickly and efficiently. The more times you fall off and get back on, the greater your chances of turning your short-term goal into a long-term achievement.

How many times have you gotten into a good exercise routine only to stop completely for several months because the routine got tripped up with a vacation, holidays, or stressful work week?

In fact, the moment you realize you’re off course is proof your goals are working. If you’re able to quickly realize that you haven’t been doing your goal, it means it’s a measurable goal and you can make the necessary adjustments to get back on track right then and there.

This could be as simple as: Take a deep breath once you realize you’ve fallen off. Feel good about being self-aware enough to realize it. Let it go. Then–

Immediately take a step toward meeting your goal, like setting an extra alarm to wake up for your morning work out, or calling your goal-buddy to let them know what happened. Or didn’t happen.

Short-term goals are the building blocks of long-term goals because they create the critical momentum you need to get started and keep moving:

The creation of momentum is what proves to yourself that you are capable of establishing a goal and working toward it.

And once you’ve proven to yourself that you can accomplish goals, you realize you can accomplish anything with the right strategy.

Get moving toward the things you want. It’s just one week at a time.

What helps motivate you to make good goals? Let us know in the comments!
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Andrew Snavely

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January 19, 2026
Begin Again: How To Finally Find Time For What Matters With Backwards Planning
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The trick to hacking time to get what’s actually important to you.

I don’t know you, yet I know this about you: You don’t have nearly enough time for everything you want to do.

The list is long. Enjoy a romantic date night. Get away for a weekend and hike through nature. Work out at the gym to finally get in shape. Watch your kids play their first little league match. Read an investment book and work on your financial freedom.

But you’re busy with your morning coffee, daytime job, and evening news. You go through your established routines day after day, trying to squeeze things in “somewhere.”

But somewhere is neither a time of the day nor a day of the week. At one point, you look back and realize that despite your efforts, you’ve spent most of your time on banalities and distractions instead of the important things.

If you want to do what matters, you have to plan backward.

Step 1: Start With the End in Mind to Determine Your Values

Most people walk through life without a clear plan, so they follow someone else’s.

Society has funneled them into the 9-5, two kids, picket-fence house narrative.

Instead of creating the life they want, they’re stuck in insignificant routines that lead to nowhere, briefly interrupted by painful awakenings and empty promises.

On New Year’s Eve, they look at their life and bad habits, wonder where they have gone wrong, and pledge to do better next year – only to end up in the same spot again.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The best way to get to the end you desire is to think about your own.

Ask yourself: “When I die, what kind of life do I want to look back upon? How do I want others to remember me? How do I want to have spent my time?”

In simple words, death doesn’t screw around. When you realize that one day you’ll take your last breath, your excuses don’t matter anymore. Just the cold, harsh reality.

As I thought about my end, I realized that many things I spent time on didn’t matter at all. Who cares if I wore the fanciest sneakers, was the most hard-working employee, or had everybody praise me?

Instead, I realized I wanted the freedom to see the world, meaningful connections with a few select people, and the presence to consciously enjoy every moment of my life.

Whatever your end is, keep it in mind in everything you do.

Step 2: Use Small Commitments To Create Huge Change

Your dreams, goals, and ambitions mean nothing if you don’t act on them.

It’s simple – if you don’t make time for them, they turn into a dirty pile of should, wants, and wishes.

For years, I’ve wanted to improve the connection with my mom. I love her and don’t want to attend her funeral – or my own – with resentment towards her. But instead of letting it become another item on the long list of things I should do, I decided to cut to the chase.

I called her and told her about my plan to book a holiday together so we can soak up the Italian sun, eat copious amounts of pizza and pasta, and talk heart to heart. Now that we have a flight and hotel booked, the chances of this not happening are near zero. No excuses, no change of mind, no bullshit – just planning backward and forcing myself to do what matters.

Forward planning is trying to squeeze things in. Backward planning means having the end in mind and making time for what matters.

The reason squeezing things in is so stressful and prone to failure is it is inherently last minute. The Back Planning framework takes the values you identified in Step 1 and puts things onto your calendar that are important to you long term, forcing the rest of your life to flow around them when it’s finally time to do it.
- Put a date night with your spouse on the calendar for 3 weeks from now
- Want to spend more time with your kids outdoors? Choose a weekend in 8 weeks to go camping.
- Have a desire to be more social? Invite your friends to a game night next month.
- Want to be healthy and in good shape? Block three slots per week for exercise.
- Want to have a great connection with your family? Block time in 5 months for a weekend getaway.
- Want to be financially independent? Block a specific hour every day to work on your side-hustle.
It’s simple – yet most people still don’t do it.

Nothing will change if you keep going through your day-to-day and try to squeeze things in. Instead, you need to sit down and make time for what matters. You need to ask yourself what you need to do to get to the end you desire.

Do this every week, month, and year. Block the time. Put it in your schedule. Then, fight tooth and nail to protect it – because it matters.

The Choice Is Yours

Time management is simple – make what matters a priority.

But good intentions are nothing without actions. The waves of everyday life will always try to wash away your commitments. Keep the end in mind, plan backward, and stick to it.

Every day, you choose what your future looks like.

Will you say “I wish I had” or “I’m glad I did?”

Your time is your greatest wealth – make sure you spend it on what matters.
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Moreno Zugaro

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January 12, 2026
It’s Time to Begin Again: 3 Uncomfortable Frameworks That Will Make Your New Year More Meaningful [Audio Essay + Article]
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Each January, this strategy offers a reset: a way to refocus and set the tone for the year ahead. What you take from it evolves each time, shaped by where you are and what you need most right now.

Listen

How to Start Again Without Starting Over

Andrew hosts a short audio essay with a direct promise: to help you reset and re-orient when starting something new or returning after drift. The piece is organized around three frameworks, one for getting unstuck when you realize you’ve fallen off your last intention, one built on four ancient guiding principles for clarifying what matters to you, and one offering a troubleshooting lens for staying on course as you move forward.

There’s always talk of resolutions and life changes at the start of the year. For many, the holidays are a prime time to drift off course, whether it’s with fitness goals, creative projects, or career plans. Family gatherings, endless shopping, and the Q4 sprint can drain any energy you might have had for long-term ambitions.

And let’s be honest, once-a-year holiday meals tend to win out over calorie counting.

Now it’s January, and the “New year, new me” chorus begins.

Alongside it comes a rising tide of scorn. Cynics are quick to write off resolutions, predicting most will be abandoned by February. Gym regulars complain about the newcomers crowding the squat racks. Then there are those who pride themselves on recalibrating year-round, dismissing the idea of a calendar-defined reset with an air of superiority.

The tradition of making New Year’s resolutions goes back nearly 4,000 years to the Babylonians, who used the start of the year to make promises to their gods. Over time, those promises were made to the gods in our head as practice of self-improvement.

The flip of the calendar is a reminder to pause and refocus. A moment to take stock of what truly matters.

New Years Reflection = Meditation

Reflecting on a new year isn’t so different from meditation. Mindfulness meditation, for instance, asks you to focus on your breath. Distractions will creep in…sometimes immediately. The key is noticing when you’ve wandered off and gently bringing your attention back.

Some use guided apps like Waking Up, other traditions use the sound of a gong. Either way, the goal is the same: to create moments that prompt you to check if you’ve become distracted and help you refocus.

But just like meditation, in life it’s easy to come to and realize, oh wow, I’ve been distracted from what’s important, for like, a long time. In both situations it can be incredibly disheartening and frustrating. “I’ve tried to make goals before, and look, I got nowhere with them. What’s the point?”

To do this is to miss the point of the process.

The following 3 frameworks will serve as the mindset for determining what will create a fulfilling life for you and result in meaningful change. Over the course of the Begin Again series, we’ll build on that mindset with tools and new ways of thinking.

Framework 1:
Resilience Can Be Effortless – When You Get Away from Your Goals & Habits, “Simply…Begin Again”

Meditation teachers like Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein offer a simple tip for moments when you’ve lost focus: don’t dwell on the frustration or waste time beating yourself up. Just refocus your attention and begin again.

This idea also applies to daily life and New Year goal-setting. Realizing you’ve veered off course, whether with fitness, nutrition, or just your daily to-do list, can feel discouraging. But embracing the operating procedure of “just begin again” shifts the perspective, helping you reconnect with what matters and move forward.

It’s a practice rooted in resilience, recognizing that personal growth isn’t linear. Progress comes with distractions and setbacks, but each one is a chance to start fresh. As Harris puts it, this process is about letting go of the past and returning to the present.

But even when you wake up from distraction, how do you determine what’s important? Or what if you’re not emotionally connected to what you’re focusing on? What if you lack the drive to formulate what changes you want to make?

→ Have you downloaded our end of year reflection free printable workbook? It’s fantastic to do any time if you’ve never done an exercise like that. It will provide a lot of clarity, and our free workbook makes the process simple and straightforward.

Framework 2:
The Centuries Old Ground Rules for Change

When it comes to defining what matters and building meaningful change, starting with a set of foundational principles can make all the difference. An ancient Tibetan practice called Lojong, or “Mind Training,” offers a framework worth considering.

At the heart of Lojong are the “Four Preliminaries.” Despite the name, these ideas are anything but basic. They’re foundational: providing a clear, unflinching view of reality that helps ground future decisions about what truly matters.

These principles offer a refreshingly honest lens for shaping the changes you want to make this year. Reinterpreted through a modern, secular perspective, they can serve as guiding tenets for your goals and priorities moving forward.

First Preliminary: It’s Incomprehensible That You Even Exist

It’s easy to let life’s demands like work obligations, family routines, and cultural expectations pull you into autopilot, letting the flow of daily tasks define what your life is or could be.

But consider the staggering odds of your existence. Among the billions who came before you and the countless who will follow, the chance that life’s building blocks formed into you is almost unfathomable. In a universe where matter can neither be created nor destroyed, the atoms that make up your body could have become anything else: a cluster of space dust, a rodent scurrying through the Pleistocene, or my monstera plant that never stood a chance.

Yet, here you are: the result of an inconceivable culmination of billions of years of cosmic events. Literally everything that has ever happened in the universe had to happen just as it did for you to find yourself right here, reading this, probably on your phone, while using the bathroom.

And since matter isn’t destroyed, after you’re gone, parts of you may end up as space gas, a rodent, or some other writer’s dead plant. You’re here, in the face of improbable odds, only temporarily.

→ As we begin again, refocusing from distraction, the initial Lojong preliminary reminds us to get out of the flow of the apathy river prompted by the essential question: “What will I do with this rare human life?”

Second Preliminary: You’re Going to Die, Stop Ignoring It

Humans are wired in a weird way: we go through life acting as if death is something that happens to other people. We have a knack for sticking our fingers in our ears and going “lalalalalala” when it comes to thinking about our guaranteed death. It’s an uncomfortable, even taboo subject, one we all, culturally and individually, avoid.

Each of us will face our mortality, and how much time we have left can never be known. This second preliminary serves as a flag boldly planted proclaiming the impermanence of everything. Anything that can die, will die.

To suggest thinking about this could easily be described as morbid in our culture and that only drives home the point. Your inevitable death is science, not bad luck. Just because you feel uncomfortable when you think about it, doesn’t make avoiding it helpful.

Facing the reality of death unveils insights and benefits that transcend the fear or avoidance it often instills. As we grasp the impermanence of everything, including our own bodies, it becomes clear that excess money, possessions, and even the companionship of friends cannot provide solace when we inevitably face our death.

Think of the way a looming deadline can jolt you into action, surprising you with how much you can accomplish when time feels scarce. Embracing mortality works the same way. Understanding how little time we really have can bring urgency to the present, turning idle moments into opportunities.

Unfortunately for many people this acceptance only comes at the end of life, reflecting on how life could have been lived, if only they could have understood what’s at stake: One day, it will be the last day.

→ You can embrace this in every moment, from here on.

Third Preliminary: Your Actions – or Inactions – Have Consequences

In pop culture, karma often gets miscast as some mystical force, a cosmic referee ensuring bad deeds get punished. But at its core, karma is simply the law of cause and effect, a reminder that what you do (or don’t do) shapes the reality you’ll face later.

As a framework for starting again, this preliminary reinforces an obvious but often overlooked truth: your future self will live in the world created by your actions today. Joining a gym or starting a business won’t guarantee success, but between the version of you who tries and the one who doesn’t, only one has a shot at the outcome they’re after.

The same logic applies to self-sabotaging thoughts. No matter how real or convincing they may feel, they don’t excuse inaction. The truth is simple: inaction only leads to outcomes dictated by inaction.

→ If there’s something you want to change, no one else can set the wheels in motion for you. The third preliminary calls this out plainly: you are the cause that creates the effect.

Fourth Preliminary: Dedicating Your Life to Only Material Goals is Unfulfilling

When we hear about goals in modern media, they often revolve around familiar aspirations: launching a business to amass wealth, climbing the corporate ladder to secure a prestigious position, purchasing a home that exudes pride and investment potential, or getting shredded to be more attractive to potential partners.

The fourth preliminary challenges us to look deeper. While these aspirations aren’t inherently wrong, they can’t stand alone. Pursuing possessions, status, or validation as the ultimate aim creates a never-ending loop of desire and fleeting fulfillment.

And you’ve experienced this in your own life, I’m sure. The car at 17 that would just change EVERYTHING. The first big job with the first “big” paycheck that ended up being a slog 12 months in. The one partner you were sure was the one, but ended up…not so much. Or after you realized upgrading to the new camera didn’t magically make you take more photos after the first week (ask me how i know). As life goes on, the fourth preliminary becomes all but obvious: we chase things with a primal misunderstanding that the reward they offer when we get them is laughably short.

It’s not that we shouldn’t aspire to things or get excited about things we want.

As we refocus, it’s essential to embrace that while it’s acceptable to set goals that yield these outcomes, they alone will not break the desire-fulfillment cycle.

→ Think of the emptiness of short-term pleasures, such as binge-watching TV shows or indulging in excessive eating. Focusing only on superficial goals like wealth, status, and image across a lifetime create the same result.

Framework 3:
Rethink Your Entire Approach with First Principles

Now that we’ve let go of ego and embraced a clean slate, it’s time to focus not just on the why behind our goals, but the how. Enter first principles thinking, a concept rooted in philosophy and championed by figures like Aristotle and, more recently, tech leaders.

At its core, first principles thinking breaks complex, sometimes unknowable, problems down into their most basic truths, allowing for innovative solutions that aren’t constrained by conventional approaches.

In business, this method has led to breakthroughs by abandoning traditional practices and reconstructing problems from the ground up.

A well-known example is the office building plagued by complaints about slow elevators during peak hours. The building owners initially considered costly upgrades or replacements, but structural constraints made that impractical.

Instead, they simplified the problem:
- People are upset because the wait feels too long.
- The speed of the elevator cannot be changed.
With this clarity, the solution turned out to be both simple and affordable. Mirrors and televisions were added to the lobby, providing distractions like news, sports, and reflections. The wait times didn’t change, but the complaints stopped entirely.

The real issue wasn’t the speed of the elevators, it was the riders’ awareness of waiting.

This same approach can transform personal goals. Instead of defaulting to old methods that never quite worked for fitness, relationships, or career growth, break your goals down to their most fundamental truths. Start fresh and build strategies that address the real problem, not just the symptoms.

→ Ask yourself, “What is the true purpose behind this goal? What do I know is true and what am I actually trying to achieve?”

Over the course of the Begin Again series, we will be exploring tools and strategies that will help to begin again and refocus on what is actually important to you, using the ideas of these 3 frameworks as a foundation for dramatic and meaningful direction:
- Simply begin again: When you realize you’ve become distracted from your habits or goals, don’t get demotivated. Clear your head and begin again.
- All decisions and brainstorming should reflect the four preliminaries:
  
  Your life is unfathomably rare, make use of it.
  
  You will die. Your life is shorter than it seems, act with a sense of urgency while you still can.
  
  The universal law of cause and effect. If you want change, you must take continual action.
  
  Fulfillment is not possible from buying things or being seen as important alone. Don’t forget to anchor your ambitions to things that are not based on acquiring money, things, or status.
- Don’t just blindly continue on a path that may not be working. Break your ambitions, goals, or problems down to their base ideas and create previously unknown, innovative solutions using first principles thinking.
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Andrew Snavely

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January 9, 2026
Free Printable Year End Review Journal: An Easy, Structured Way to Reflect Then Build the New Year

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If you’d prefer to do the year end reflection exercise in your own journal, here is the framework:

18 Questions I’m Going to Ask Myself

Each year, I get the gears of my reflection going by asking myself 18 questions. It’s intended to be more of a quick brainstorm to get thoughts on paper versus coming up with a definitive Grammy winner-style list.

The goal is to devote some real time reflecting on the past year and taking an inventory of what I liked and what I didn’t. When I was happy, and when I wasn’t. When I felt my best, and when I was stressed. This will help orient myself so I can then begin to think about the new year in terms of what I want to continue and what I want to do differently.

Don’t read look at this and get scared away – most of my thoughts will be in the form of rough bulleted lists as a simple way of getting bits of ideas out of my head and into a collected place. I may write longer-form answers when inspired, these are tools, not rules.

For the questions like, “3 times I was happiest,” the number three is simply a placeholder for “brainstorm,” because a lot of these will be hard to answer. If the question was “when was I happiest?” I would likely work until I could think of one answer that seemed better than the others then stop. For these questions, the point is to just list with a stream of consciousness all of the times you can remember being happy, regardless of how intense the happiness was. Then, once you’ve done that, go back and pick the 3 that were the happiest.

One of the best tools to jogging my memory is to open my photos app on my phone and scroll back to January 1. From there, I begin taking notes in the “months” section of the reflection template, which get sorted later.

I’m always surprised to see what my answers and expect the result to be either A) Ok awesome, do more things like these 3, or B) Man, these 3 things were the happiest I was all year? I need to work on doing bigger and better things in the new year. Or if I’m unable to think of any answers to “3 times I did something that scared me,” I’ll know to prioritize that kind of growth. Once I do all the questions, I’ll then work to create some goals for the new year based on what I’ve realized about the last year.

One of the things I enjoy most about the exercise is the outcome usually does not align with my assumptions about the year pre-review.

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Andrew Snavely

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December 28, 2025
What Nobody Told Me About “That Feeling” We Keep Trying to Feel in Relationships

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Is it a compass or a chaos agent? And which one is actually more disappointing?

There’s a feeling that sneaks in early, usually between “What do you do?” and the second drink. It whispers, this could be it. They like to travel, you like to travel. They “yes, and” your jokes. Your brain starts casting them in every future plan, “what would they be like meeting your friends?”, a dog, Costco runs. You start noticing the signs: green light, green light, slightly delayed text response (fine), green light.

For some, it can show up frequently as quick fireworks that send plans with a new potential partner sprinting ahead of facts. My pattern ran different: I had felt the rush before, just not while I was actually going on dates. I kept hoping for that old voltage and left good first dates feeling satisfied but neutral.

There is a name for this, “limerence”. Clinical psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who deserves a plaque or at least a gift basket for trying to label it, described limerence as “an involuntary interpersonal state involving an acute longing for emotional reciprocation.”

That’s one way to put it. Another way is: the person texts you “hey” after ghosting you for a week and you suddenly feel like God has a plan again.

Limerence is tricky. Not in the sense of, “Is this mayonnaise still good?” tricky, but in the way your brain turns into a group of unpaid interns who start storyboarding your life together the moment someone you find attractive offers you gum. It’s that full-bodied infatuation, occasionally obsessive, mostly absurd, and deeply human.

I have treated that rush like a screening tool. No spark, no second date. Even when someone felt thoughtful, funny, steady, I would leave uneasy, convinced some vital ingredient was missing. When you have tasted that intensity even once, everything else can read like a copy with the volume turned down. Some people feel it all the time, constantly let down.

The real view comes later, after the fantasy gets downgraded to a memory of you pretending to like hot yoga because they once mentioned it. Eventually, the haze lifts and what you’re left with isn’t love or depth or meaning, it’s the sobering realization that being obsessed with someone doesn’t mean they’re a good fit.

Often, it’s a kind of false advertisement your own brain designs, and suddenly you’re stuck trying to return a product you can’t prove was ever actually sold to you.

There’s guilt involved, too. You like how it feels. You want more. You start asking if this is how it’s supposed to feel when it’s right and maybe you’re supposed to feel like this forever and if not, does that mean something’s wrong? You try to chase it, keep it alive, squeeze more juice from a rind that’s already been wrung out. You end up addicted to the high, like the guy who won’t shut up about the first time he did mushrooms and keeps trying to re-create the magic with a broken French press and some expired rooibos.

Something shifts, though, once you stop worshipping the feeling. One day you’re writing poetry in your Notes app, and the next you’re realizing the person in question doesn’t use turn signals and is cruel to waitstaff. The fog clears. limerence evaporates, and you’re left with what therapists might call “clarity.” It’s like going out at night and thinking you’ve met your soulmate, only to realize the next day, in the clinical setting of Panera Bread, that the unstoppable chemistry was mostly gin.

That brings me to equanimity. A word that sounds like a drug treatment center but is actually a foundational principle of Buddhist mindfulness. It’s about emotional steadiness, the kind that lets you want things without needing them to pan out exactly as you imagined. Joseph Goldstein, one of the West’s most respected mindfulness teachers, describes equanimity as “a balance of mind that is unshaken by life’s vicissitudes.” Which is a fancy way of saying “if a detour wrecks you, that isn’t wanting; it’s kid-meltdown-in-the-Hot-Wheels-aisle needing.”

Jonny Wilkinson, a rugby player with a surprisingly sensitive inner life, once said, “If I need things to be a certain way, I am hostage to them.” That one lands. It explains so much. Like why I’ve historically refused to submit writing unless I was absolutely sure it wouldn’t be criticized, or why I’ve stayed in relationships longer than I should’ve because I’d already told people it was going well. If I couldn’t guarantee success, I opted for silence. If I couldn’t guarantee romance, I tried to engineer it. As if life is a vending machine and I’m just bad at choosing snacks.

What I realized was my needing was so intense because disappointment is, for me, the boss level. It arrives with the weight of a grandfather’s sigh and the subtlety of a marching band. I’ve built whole scaffolding systems to avoid it: Don’t pitch if rejection stings. Don’t hope if you can’t handle loss. Don’t start if you can’t promise the ending.

But these safety measures become cages. The more elaborate the rules, the less room I had to live inside them.

It used to show up in dating, too.

Every new connection carried the weight of permanence. Each early text felt like an SAT question. Every pause between replies, an omen.

I’d think, “This has to be it,” because the alternative was sitting with uncertainty, which felt about as pleasant as standing up from the toilet after watching 30 minutes of Youtube.

When the spark stayed quiet, I treated the quiet like a coffin nail. Part of it was a fear calculation, that whatever you feel at the start is the strongest it will ever be, and from there it only dulls with time and routine. What I needed was more time, more information, simple curiosity.

Eventually, I saw what was happening. Limerence is fine, even fun, as long as you don’t hand it the keys to your judgment. It’s a guest, not a landlord. You can enjoy its company without letting it renovate the place.

Here’s where it all clicked for me: if limerence isn’t a reliable indicator of long-term potential, then it’s not required to have a fulfilling relationship either. For a while, I didn’t realize that. I mistook limerence for “having a crush,” for the early butterflies and late-night overthinking. But they’re different creatures. One is desire with a working memory. The other is a carnival ride you can’t steer.

Joseph Goldstein talks about craving: how it’s fine to want something, but if you need it to feel whole or certain or safe or content, then you’re caught.

Jonny Wilkinson would call that being a hostage. And that’s exactly how I’d lived, waiting for limerence to show up so I could finally feel confident about someone, only to realize I’d handed over all the power to a feeling that doesn’t even answer emails.

At first, this realization was awful. Not in a tragic, cry-in-the-shower way, more in the quiet devastation of learning that Santa isn’t real and the guy dressed as him at the mall is the same guy from the Orange Julius. It felt like all those past intense connections, the ones that burned bright, then scorched the earth, had been previews of something great that just got away. But they weren’t. They were flashy trailers for movies that shouldn’t have been greenlit.

Eventually, I saw it: I’d been prioritizing the presence of limerence over actual relationship health. Things like mutual interest, communication, humor, shared values, basic human kindness… all demoted because someone once made my stomach do gymnastics. Never mind that they might have forgotten my birthday or vanished mid-conversation for days at a time.

“But the chemistry…” I’d say, as if that alone could book the vet appointment or calm an argument.

Limerence, I’ve come to think, is like getting a surprise upgrade to a suite on vacation. It’s thrilling, a delightful bonus. But not getting one shouldn’t ruin your trip. And getting one doesn’t mean your partner won’t spend the whole time fighting with you about where to eat.

It’s fine to enjoy limerence. Be grateful when it shows up. It can feel electric, intoxicating, like a song you can’t stop playing. But don’t use it as an excuse to defend bad relationships or stay tethered to someone who doesn’t actually want to meet you halfway.

Just as importantly, don’t interpret its absence as a dealbreaker. “I don’t know… I’m just not feeling it” might mean you’re expecting limerence when what’s available is something more grounded, something slow-cooked.

If I could pass a note to my younger self, it would be this: the love I feel now, almost ten years into my relationship, is richer and more alive than anything I felt in the first six months. Which, looking back, makes sense. Why would I assume my brain and body could instantly identify my most loving and compatible long-term partner after two dates and a clever text exchange? That’s not love. That’s casting.

Real connection isn’t a lightning strike. It’s something you build, sometimes in messy conversations about nothing, sometimes while arguing about IKEA furniture. It grows through shared history, open wounds that heal together, and the mundane rhythm of choosing someone, day after day, even when it’s inconvenient. If limerence is a spark, earned love is the fire that keeps your house warm.

Equanimity helps with that. You still get to want, to love, to be thrilled but your peace isn’t dependent on whether it all works out like a screenwriter’s third-act montage. You stop building castles out of glances and start living in something closer to reality.

Movies like 500 Days of Summer or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind get it. They show people spinning themselves into emotional knots over projected feelings, only to find, on the other side, a quieter truth. It’s not tragic. It’s freeing. It’s the difference between being high and being awake.

You can feel things deeply without needing them to prove anything. That it’s ok to want connection but not let the fantasy of it replace your actual standards. Limerence, like glitter, is best enjoyed in small quantities and under supervision.

When the spark feels scarce, stop grading by it. When it shows up easily, enjoy it, but set the pace with facts and standards.

And when it leaves, you get your vision back. You stop squinting at the idea of someone and start seeing the world again. Turns out, there’s a lot more to enjoy once you stop mistaking intensity for intimacy.

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Andrew Snavely

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August 11, 2025
What Dressing Intentionally Actually Means

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Looking good isn’t the hard part. Feeling like yourself, reading the room, and still getting out the door on time is where it gets real. This is the framework for making that easier.

I’ve never considered Primer a “fashion” site. It’s a guide to showing up for yourself and others in a way that feels thoughtful and unforced. Personal style is both who you are and how you enter rooms.

I’ve used the term dressing intentionally, plainly and often, because it signals something deeper: how you show up, how you carry yourself, how you decide what matters. It gets to the root of what personal style is actually all about.

For longtime readers, this probably isn’t a new concept. You already care about what you wear. You’ve already made the shift from stressing over dressing up to dressing with purpose. But like anything else we do often, it’s easy to lose touch with the why behind it or to get stuck on autopilot without realizing it.

We all follow unspoken scripts: how we shake hands, pause before interrupting, put our phones away in a group. Not because we were explicitly taught, but because we’ve absorbed what’s appropriate.

Style works the same way. It’s one more layer of cultural fluency. Whether you’re heading into a pitch meeting or grabbing coffee with someone you might want to date, you’re saying something with what you wear. The question is whether you’re choosing and owning that message or just hoping you’ll get by with nobody noticing.

Dressing well and feeling like yourself shouldn’t be opposing goals. But that’s how it often feels, like you’re stuck choosing between polish and comfort, personality and appropriateness, effort and ease.

The reality is more nuanced. You’re balancing a shifting set of variables: what you’re doing, how you want to be seen, how you want to feel in your body and your head. That’s what dressing intentionally actually offers: not a fixed aesthetic but a process for resolving that friction in real time.

This piece breaks down the simple system I use to do that every day. It’s not about overthinking. It’s about thinking at all.

Consider where you’re going.

The first step to dressing with purpose is knowing the context. Most of what you’ll wear hinges on practical details:

Are you eating outdoors at a restaurant?

You’ll want a light layer and sunglasses.

Going to a business event?

You might need a blazer, or maybe something more casual, depending on your industry or if it’s a mixer of young professionals.

5 Blazer Alternatives

Heading to a movie theater that’s cold and then dinner afterward?

That might influence your desire to have layers.

My point isn’t just about temperature, it’s about the context.

Context isn’t always obvious. Some environments pull in multiple signals at once: a business event that’s also a rooftop bar and also kind of a dive, or a family gathering with new in-laws and old friends.

One person’s “underdressed” is another’s “relatable.” The goal isn’t to get it perfect; it’s to make an educated guess about the tone, then dress in a way that lets you move confidently through it.

Live Action Getup: The Everyday Outfit You Can Count On—Sweater, 501s, Loafers · Primer

Once you understand the context, it becomes easier to answer the next question: What kind of impression do you want to make in that setting?

Consider how you want to be perceived.

Personal style is visual communication.

As I’ve said, it’s as much a social exercise as it is a form of personal expression.

Do you want to be perceived as chill and artsy? Refined and elegant? Carefree and bohemian? Rugged and no-nonsense? Playful and attractive?

Jacket / Shirt / Jeans / Boots

All of these things can shift, not just based on your personality or general style, but also based on where you’re going and who you’ll be around. I wear all of these archetypes as a part of my own personal style, but it depends on the scenario.

Shirt / Necklace / Pants / Sneakers

I don’t wear a flowy open shirt with a necklace when I’m visiting my fiancée’s parents, and I don’t wear a tech polo to a birthday party at a poolside bar in August in Los Angeles, but I wear both of those looks in different contexts.

One of the most liberating realizations in personal style is that even if you’re maintaining some consistent aesthetics, you can still choose who you want to be perceived as based on where you’re going.

That freedom actually supports what you feel like wearing rather than restricting it.

Consider how dressy you want to be.

You’ve thought about where you’re going. You’ve considered what you’re doing. You’ve decided how you want to be perceived. Now, within that context, choose how dressed up you want to be.

The setting gives you the range. You pick your spot within it.

It’s a small choice that locks everything else into place

For example, I’ve been to many conferences full of guys in blazers, and there’s always at least one guy wearing a leather jacket with a dress shirt. He’s not out of place, but he is making a statement. His combination of an edgy element with business casual is an intentional choice about how he wants to be seen.

This is the Leather Jacket Style Every Guy Can Pull Off · Primer

Similarly, I’m often overdressed when I visit my fiancée’s parents because I want to convey competency and respect.

If you’re going on a first date, your personal style becomes a tool: If you’re a buttoned-up office guy, you get to decide if you want to lean into that or intentionally lean away from it to signal something different. Even on casual dates, how put-together you are can communicate social fluency, polish, or intentional nonchalance.

The risk of sending signals is they might not land the way you intended. A leather jacket with a dress shirt might read as confident to one person, try-hard to another. An untucked shirt might feel effortless to you, careless to someone else. Forgoing a belt may seem modern and rakish to me and unfinished to every Primer reader who always comments on it.

Blazer, No Tie: 5 Specific Tips for Hitting the Dressy Sweet Spot in a Casual Age

But dressing intentionally isn’t about getting it right every time. It’s about knowing why you did it. And even when it doesn’t hit, that clarity keeps you from second-guessing yourself all day. That’s why I emphasize the term “intentionally dressed” and not “well dressed”.

Accidentally Rediscovering Bond’s 2006 Casino Royale Venice Look in My 2024 Style

Understanding the context of the event and then tweaking the dressiness level to align with what you want to communicate is essential.

Our 37 Favorite Jean Jacket Outfits: Save This Massive Outfit Swipe File for Inspiration · Primer

Consider what’s comfortable today.

Then everything starts to fall into place.

Some days, I wear penny loafers when I don’t have to because of what it adds visually.

Office to Afternoon Rooftop Outfit: 1 Look, 3 Budgets · Primer

Other days, I feel like sneakers for comfort even if loafers would be more appropriate, and then adjust the rest of the outfit accordingly. It’s a push-and-pull equation.

You’re balancing variables. Swap a hoodie for a chore coat to elevate it. Swap a dress shirt for a t-shirt under your shawl collar sweater to make it more casual. Swap in chinos for jeans to add classic polish without overdressing.

What is Smart Casual? Complete Guide with Lots of Outfit Ideas

Comfort isn’t just physical. Sometimes an outfit technically fits but doesn’t feel like you today. If you’re fidgeting or second-guessing a piece all day, that’s useful data. Feeling confident in what you’re wearing is part of being comfortable too.

And sometimes, comfort conflicts with presence. You might reach for something familiar because you’re tired or anxious, but it doesn’t always help you show up fully. Other times, something slightly outside your usual comfort zone can actually pull you into alignment, like posture following a well-cut jacket. That tension is part of the equation too.

You’re not stuck choosing between dressing well and feeling comfortable. You get to have both when you understand how to swap in certain pieces to balance the look. That’s the real power of dressing intentionally: it gives you options instead of tradeoffs.

Dressing intentionally means you’ve considered the variables. And this framework helps you know what those variables even are. That’s what gives you freedom, not restriction.

Because how you get dressed is how you decide to show up. And showing up with intention, quietly and consistently, is what makes style feel like your own. ▪

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Andrew Snavely

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July 28, 2025
This Superman Movie Was a Disaster But It Said More Than You Think

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What if one of the goofiest Superman films actually held the clearest blueprint for what to do when you’ve lost your way?

Superman III doesn’t top many Best Of superhero movie lists.

The first Superman basically created the genre. The second one kept it going. The third? Starts with a slapstick street scene that feels like a rejected Pink Panther gag reel and gives Richard Pryor as a computer genius sidekick more screen time than the man of steel.

It’s a mess. But somehow, weirdly, it’s also one of the most unintentionally wise superhero films about losing your way and getting back on track.

I grew up a huge Superman fan and watched all the movies endlessly. Superman III was always my least favorite, except for one scene that stuck with me as a kid (more on that later). But rewatching it as an adult, this ridiculous sequel ended up cementing an idea I first heard in mindfulness meditation. I use it constantly. Every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Especially when I’m trying and failing to stay on track.

If you’ve ever tried to meditate, you know the struggle. You sit down, try to focus, and come to seven minutes later realizing you’ve been thinking the whole time and getting frustrated.

When you’re learning to meditate, the instruction is simple. Don’t dwell on the distraction or the frustration. When you’ve lost your focus, just notice it and begin again.

It doesn’t need to be heavy.

You don’t need to lean into shame or frustration or that sense of messing up before you’re allowed to continue toward what you’re trying to do. That principle of beginning again has been really influential in my life outside of meditation.

I’m very hard on myself. Constantly feeling like I’m not achieving or doing or creating or accomplishing what I think I want to. Before begin again, I’d do everything you’re not supposed to do when you realize you’re distracted. I’d beat myself up. And under the surface, I think I believed that was necessary to change my behavior.

But what I realized from that meditation instruction is that not only is that not true, it’s the opposite of what you’re trying to do.

If you’re trying to stay motivated, and you realize you’ve gotten off track, beating yourself up and spiraling into not-good-enough thinking doesn’t move you forward. It just keeps you stuck.

What’s wild is that, as ridiculous as it is, Superman III role models this perfectly.

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen Superman III, here’s the gist:

Pryor plays Gus Gorman, a down-and-out guy who lands a job at a major corporation run by a ruthless CEO obsessed with power and money. Gus learns computers, notices fractions of pennies disappearing when paychecks are calculated, and writes a little code to pocket those tiny amounts. He ends up with a huge check, something Office Space famously copied years later.

When his scheme is discovered, he’s blackmailed into villainous plots, including creating synthetic kryptonite designed to destroy Superman.

But when they analyze what kryptonite is made of, there’s a small percentage the computer can’t identify. “Unknown compound.”

Gus, under pressure and trying to finish the job, looks at a pack of cigarettes, sees the word “tar” on the label, and uses that for the unknown part.

The kryptonite still looks the same. When they give it to Superman, it doesn’t seem to hurt him. They’re confused and think it didn’t work. But soon we discover it’s changing him.

That’s what I thought as a kid, simply that Superman becomes evil.

Watching it as an adult, I see he becomes untethered from what makes him good.

What follows is this slow collapse into pettiness and selfishness. Superman indulges cravings. He ignores responsibility. He flirts with Lana Lang instead of running toward danger.

He vandalizes landmarks for fun, like straightening the leaning Tower of Pisa. He blows out the Olympic torch during a relay. There’s a bar scene where he gets drunk and flicks peanuts into a mirror. He slams into an oil tanker just to impress a woman, causing a spill and helping the villain.

And here’s what I never noticed: after the bad kryptonite shows up, Clark Kent disappears.

As a kid, I didn’t care. Clark was always the slow part before the cape and the lasers. I often fast forwarded through the other Clark parts.

But here, his absence is the point.

Clark Kent is the part of Superman that wants to do the right thing. Smallville values. The old-fashioned stuff. Grounded and humble.

Without him, Superman is just raw power. And that’s where it gets interesting.

Power without values becomes reckless. Values without power don’t go anywhere. They just worry and overthink and freeze.

That shows up in real life too.

You want to help a friend who’s struggling. But you don’t know the perfect thing to say, so you say nothing.

You want to start working out. You research the perfect plan, obsess over protein ratios, read five conflicting articles on what the science says, and never end up going.

You mess up, and instead of doing something about it, you get stuck in your head.

That’s what I tend to do. Spiral and replay everything I did wrong. And stay stuck.

Which brings me to my favorite scene in Superman III.

The junkyard scene

After a big portion of the movie of watching Superman just go straight off the rails, the tension comes to a head in the film’s most awesome, but head scratching scene.

Superman crash lands in a junkyard and physically splits into two beings. Dark Superman, the embodiment of selfish, unchecked power, and Clark Kent, the voice of morality and values.

In the gritty, chaotic scene of a junkyard, the two halves fight in a literal and symbolic battle for control.

I can’t help but picture the studio pitch meeting where the writer lays out a grand epic in the style of a Greek myth, getting shut down by the bean counters until the writer reluctantly agrees to create a significant, comedic role for then stand up powerhouse Richard Pryor in favor of salvaging the Greek hero’s journey.

And the mash up of these two promises is why this movie is just so wild.

Superman III pitch Meeting

In any case. At first, Clark is easily overpowered. He’s thrown into piles of scrap metal and crushed under debris.

Clark doesn’t yell or pound his chest, but as the symbol of our values, he keeps getting back up, even though Superman’s power just keeps flinging him like a rag doll across the junkyard.

All of this symbolizes how our values can feel overwhelmed when faced with unchecked impulses and outside forces, but Clark slowly finds his strength. He stands back up, grapples with his darker self. And finally gains the upper hand by choking Dark Superman into submission.

As a kid, I thought Clark somehow killed Dark Superman, and with him gone, got his powers back.

But as an adult (who, if it’s not already obvious, studied film in college and loves making a lot out of nothing), I see now this scene doesn’t show him destroying a part of himself.

He’s reclaiming and reintegrating it.

When Clark rips open his shirt to reveal the Superman emblem, it’s an iconic visual declaration that his power and values are back in alignment.

The fact that a major Hollywood superhero movie in the infancy of the genre had a full on symbolic fight scene with the main character, literally fighting the head trash of his mental demons–in a junkyard arena no less–is crazy to me.

The movie didn’t really work out, but you got to respect the attempt.

Superman’s journey here illustrates that even the most powerful person on earth sometimes gets distracted from their values in ways that we would have never thought possible. After reintegrating, Superman doesn’t wallow in guilt over his mistakes or beat himself up for how far he strayed.

He flies back to the leaning tower of Pisa and returns it to its iconic slant. He goes back to the oil tanker and uses his super breath, laser vision and strength to force the oil that he has spilled back into the tanker and weld it shut to the amazement of the crew. And he goes to take on the evil supervillain and the now out of control killer robot machine that they’ve created.

Instead of being consumed by remorse, he moves forward with ownership, addressing the harm he caused with humility and purpose.

This approach mirrors the teaching of mindfulness. When we stray from who we want to be, the most important thing isn’t dwelling on how we’ve messed up. It’s immediately returning to what matters and taking steps to act with integrity now.

Don’t misread this as suggesting that people shouldn’t apologize or be held accountable for their actions. We’re planting a flag between productive accountability and the paralyzing spiral of guilt and self-criticism. Marinating in internal shame doesn’t prove you care. The focus is on righting the ship, not sinking with it.

We think beating ourselves up is how we stay on track. If we are hard enough on ourselves, we will finally change. We picture ourselves as Clark in the junkyard, standing up for what is right and fighting our way back to who we want to be.

But most of the time, it is the opposite.

That voice in your head replaying what you did wrong, saying you are not disciplined enough, not present enough, not good enough is not Clark doing battle.

That is Dark Superman taunting Clark that he’s not strong enough.

And the more we listen, the more we forget who is actually trying to get back up.

Everyone loses focus. Everyone drifts from who they’re trying to be. The question is what you do when you realize it.

Maybe you’ve been snapping at your kid or partner. Maybe you’ve been numbing out at night and telling yourself it’s fine, even though part of you knows it’s not. Maybe you’ve spent months scrolling instead of being present with the people or parts of your life that matter to you.

Whatever it is, you don’t fix it by dwelling on it or pretending it’s not happening.

You have to realign your values and your power and simply

begin again.

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Andrew Snavely

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July 12, 2025
Fear vs. Freedom: How to Stop Overthinking Your Life – 3 Truths You Need Right Now

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Don’t let existential anxiety ruin your life.

Your mid-20s to early-30s are a heck of an exciting time. You’ve found your feet in the working world and are opening up new horizons of possibility. Your relationships—and romances—are more mature, rewarding, and committed. You’re beginning to feel like, well, a bona fide adult.

Or you’re paralyzed by anxiety and doubt.

If so, you’re not alone. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 18.1% of Americans experience an anxiety disorder, and anxiety is at an 80-year high amongst young people. It’s a major public health issue, and guys like you and me are far from immune.

Disorder can seem like a strong word. But simply put, if some hang up is interfering with your success in life, then it’s a problem.

Here’s my story: I graduated college with loans. A lot of loans. And paying them off was my number one goal in life.

For three years I saved like a miser. Suffered through the hottest summer on record with no AC. Worked by candlelight to save on bills. Got by on one pack of Ramen a day, and there were days that I simply didn’t eat at all. It was going to be worth it, I told myself, because debt was the one thing holding me back. And then it happened.

My loan balance read a beautiful $0.00 owed. I was a free man. I answered to nothing and no one. I could do anything in the world.

I was terrified.

Terrified of what? As much as I hated my debt (and I hated it with a fiery passion), my student loans were both a prison…and a shelter. As long as I was living with a single-minded passion to be debt-free, I could avoid the crippling existential questions lurking at the edges of my mind:

In a world where you’re told you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, what if I didn’t get to try everything I wanted? What if I wasted my time pursuing the wrong goals? How—how on earth—was I going to know what were the right decisions?

I was free from debt. But I was still losing sleep. I can’t count the nights that I laid awake in the darkness, trying to analyze and evaluate a hundred different options, a hundred different plans. Weighing one nagging “what-if” against another.

I was suffering from a kind of existential anxiety and it was wrecking havoc on the life I’d worked so hard to build. I’m guessing there’s a decent chance that you’ve wound up in that same place at some point in your life, and while I haven’t figured out how to exorcise the anxiety that haunts me—and maybe I never will—I have learned how to be stronger than it by using these three truths:

1. You Can’t Be Everything, You Have To Be Something

The fact that you can be anything doesn’t mean you get to be everything. Part of my problem is what psychologists call the Paradox of Choice: in a world of limitless options—for toothpaste and your life’s work—having so many choices actually increases anxiety and makes you less happy.

In other words, when it comes to choice, more may actually be less.

In my own short life I’ve come to understand how wasteful it is to whittle away time in ceaseless deliberation. I know that I would rather reach the end of my days having done something rather than wasted my time so paralyzed by fear that I never got to be anything.

A good place to start is identifying your long-term goals and priorities, and using them to rule out some of the more fringe ideas for what you might do. For example, you might value creativity and want more of it in your career, but it doesn’t mean you have to quit your life and go back to art school. Another idea is working with a life coach who can provide exercises to help you explore different options in a constructive (and not paralyzed) way.

You could also try a technique called “Dreamlining” developed by Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. Dreamlines allow you to define what you want your life to be in various areas and then work backward from there to create specific, achievable goals. Ferriss breaks it down here to help you get started. Dreamlines are revolutionary because they can help you see your ideal life is actually only a few steps removed from your actual life.

2. You Can’t Control The Past, You Can Control The Present

What-ifs are not your friend. “What if I had gone to a different school? What if I picked a different major? What if I asked her out when I had the chance? What if I stayed at my old job?”

I’ve spent more time re-hashing the past than I care to admit. Everyone has regrets but you don’t have to let them pull you down. And fortunately, all those what-ifs have a name: buyer’s remorse.

If you’ve ever made a choice and then regretted it afterward, you’ve experienced buyer’s remorse and it doesn’t just apply to cars or relationships. It’s a feeling fueled by the fear you may have made the wrong choice and it can eat up a lot of your valuable mental bandwidth. The first step in overcoming it? Accept what’s in the past and look forward.

There’s nothing more crucial to your success than your ability to leave the past in the mud where it belongs. You don’t have to be happy about it and we don’t have to pretend that you’ll never have a regret in the future. They happened and they will happen—it’s as simple as that. It’s only when we come to terms with the things we can never change that we have any hope of affecting the things that we can.

If you want to try a radical technique for orienting yourself in the present, consider trying the OODA loop method. The OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is a decision-making process developed by US Air Force strategist Colonel John Boyd that has spread from the military to business and learning applications.

For our purposes, the key insight of OODA is that we often get stuck in the Orient phase. This is where our past, conditioning, prior knowledge, and the data from the Observation phase all come together, often creating a logjam that inhibits further action. The whole idea of OODA is to speed up decision cycles so you’re getting to Action a lot faster. Try thinking of each decision you have to make about your life as a single loop that must end in action and watch how your thinking un-sticks.

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—and repeat infinitely to adjust the course as you go. Freedom isn’t about getting a major decision right, it’s making the commitment to allow yourself to make changes once you make a decision.

Ultimately, the willingness to take risks is freedom.

3. You Don’t Need Clarity, You Need Courage

You can spend your whole life asking yourself “what if things go wrong?” but what you need to be asking yourself is “what if things go right?” Courage is the ability to see the upside of a risk and be willing to accept the downside. Courage is that which allows you to live life boldly as you blaze your own trail. It’s not the knowledge that you’ll make the right choice but the conviction that what you’re fighting for is worth the risk.

Ultimately, the willingness to take risks is freedom. For all the anxiety and possible regret, it’s the only thing that allows us to live with true integrity, dignity, and on our own terms. For me, there are still terrifying days and there always will be. But if that’s the price I have to pay for freedom, well—I wouldn’t trade that for all the certainty and security in the world.

So where to find your courage? In my experience, courage isn’t a trait you’re born with, like blue eyes; it’s a habit.

And like any habit it can be developed with practice. A technique I’ve developed is called Appointments & Accountability. Here’s how it works:

Take the the smallest, most immediate task in your Dreamline from above and make an appointment to accomplish it this week. Then, tell a friend, partner, or your feed about your appointment, and use the social accountability to help you actually meet your goal. You need both the Appointment and the Accountability for this to work—a specific appointment in your phone or planner backed up by single person who knows about it.

It helps to start small—sign up for a class, join a discussion group, challenge yourself to just gain exposure to a life direction you’re interested in. Small courageous decisions turn into big ones with time. Add up enough Appointments—and you have yourself a new life.

Required Reading

The Myth of Sisyphus

While Camus’ iconic essay does have some less-than-charitable comments on suicide, he does give us one of the most stirring and compelling essays on not only finding freedom in the world, but taking joy in it.

Being and Nothingness

Jean Paul Sartre’s flagship work is no easy read, but for the intrepid reader, it will be one of the most rewarding, insightful, and thought-provoking books you’ll ever hack your way through.

The Paradox of Choice

Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice lands like a well-placed slap, questioning the modern gospel that more options lead to greater satisfaction. With wit and a bracingly practical edge, Schwartz shows how our obsession with choice leaves us anxious, paralyzed, and—ironically—unsatisfied, offering a guide for reclaiming sanity in a world gone wild with options.

Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind

Shannon cuts through the noise with sharp, practical insights on tackling anxiety head-on. She paints a vivid picture of the “monkey mind” that’s always hungry for worry, showing how feeding it only keeps you in a loop of stress and self-doubt. With a blend of humor and clear-headed advice, she lays out cognitive behavioral tricks to starve the monkey and take back your peace, making this a must-read for anyone tired of anxiety calling the shots.

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Gordon Brown

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October 28, 2024
Breaking the Brainstorm Myth: How to Really Solve Problems
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The good news is, brainstorming the right way means doing it as many times as you need to get results. So you’re going to get better!

How Can You Start Brainstorming Right Now?

We almost always think of brainstorming as a group activity. In his classic book on brainstorming, Applied Imagination, Alex Osborn actually said 12 people was an ideal number for a brainstorming session.

In the years since Osborn’s innovation, however, studies have shown that individual brainstorming can actually be much more creative. The reasoning is that in group settings, ideas tend to converge on the same few thoughts too quickly, limiting overall creativity.

If you’re working on a personal life question, you can launch your brainstorming by shaping your question and then using freewriting, word association, or drawing a mind map to start generating ideas.

Some personal brainstorms might include:

What can you do to be happier in your career

What do you want to do with you life

How to fight better with your partner

What is a new habit that will improve your life

How to make more money/get a raise

How to meet your life partner

How can you improve your marriage

What is the subject of your screenplay

If you have access to a group, like friends or coworkers or even social media outlets, tap them. An initial brainstorm with others may be enough to launch you on Action Steps that you can later refine on your own.

(Real) Brainstorming Can Solve Problems, Big And Small

The 5th Avenue ad men heyday. The Apollo moon missions. Silicon Valley.

Great moments in innovation often have a lot in common: small groups of highly skilled, motivated people who get together and brainstorm.

It’s pretty cool that anyone has access to the same process, isn’t it?

Done right, brainstorming is a skill that will boost your creativity and productivity both at work and in your personal life by giving you a tool to tackle difficult and vexing problems.

So – what’s your question?

How Do You Like To Brainstorm? Share Your Ideas, Buckets, And/Or Action Steps Below!
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Stillman Brown

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October 15, 2024
A Dad’s Summer Guide to Staying Sane When The Kids are Home

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When summer break turns your home into a whirlwind of endless energy and constant chatter, finding sanity as a dad becomes an art form.

My youngest daughter, Everly, shook me awake this morning at six. I figured she’d had a bad dream, but when I rolled over and said, “What is it baby?” She answered, “I have two interesting animal facts.” Splendid.

Usually during the summer, we keep Ev in daycare two days a week so that I can get stuff done around the house since I’m off. But since she’s headed into first grade, daycare wasn’t an option, and we missed the sign up for summer camp. My step daughter goes to camp; my oldest, Izzy, is with me half of the time and with her mom the other half. But Everly, she’s been my daily companion this summer. Guys, I’m exhausted. Nonetheless, after ten years of fatherhood and six weeks of daily summer hangouts with my littlest, here are a few lessons I’ve picked up for when I’m feeling a bit of kid overload.

Get Out of the House

I’m a homebody. I would always rather be home, working on some kind of project, than going out and spending money (the home project will inevitably cost enough). Even as a kid, I was fine being at home most summer days; I mean, someone had to watch Jerry Springer. But Everly isn’t a sit-still kind of kid; she’s a mover and a shaker, and trying to force her to just hang out at home makes for a miserable time for both of us.

That doesn’t mean we go do something big every day; the zoo isn’t cheap. But I’ve come to see the value in getting out of the house, even for a quick trip. A milkshake date only really costs me about ten bucks, but it feels like a big deal to Ev. We can talk, laugh, catch up on how she’s feeling about going into first grade. And while she won’t remember the content of these conversations, she’ll undoubtedly remember that we had them.

Remember Your Kids Are Kids

When I was little, my mom had a little book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Dr. Richard Carlson. I remember reading the book and coming to a chapter called “See the Innocence.” The idea, as I recall, was to stop assuming the worst in people (especially kids) and try to see their intentions as good, or at the very least, innocent. As a kid I thought, he’s right: I don’t understand why people get frustrated with their kids.

As a dad, I get it now. Everly is a lot: She has boundless energy, little interest in doing anything alone, and she talks incessantly. She’s also six-years-old and doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body. Yesterday I put a subwoofer in my car. My wife was off work, so I finally had a few hours that I could tackle a project alone.

As I was heating up a few wires with the soldering iron, Everly came out to the garage and said, “Hey dad!” startling the hell out of me, and bringing me within a centimeter of burning myself. At that moment, I wanted to scream. I needed time alone; I was working, and she knew I didn’t want any interruptions.

When I turned around to unleash my fury, I saw her holding a gatorade with a post-it note stuck to it that said “My dad.” She knew I was hot, and she was bringing me a drink. Her intentions were innocent and good, and in that moment, she was more excited to see me and do something for me than to leave me alone (even if that’s what I’d wanted). I had to recalibrate all of that negative energy into gratitude, put on a smile, and thank her.

Your Kids Aren’t You

The older you get, the more you appreciate the quiet. With three kids, my house stays pretty loud, and most of the time, I’m fine with it. After the girls go to bed, Katie and I will often sit on the front porch and read or just listen to the dull purr of the hummingbirds flying to our feeders.

With Everly, there is no quiet. If she’s awake, she’s talking or singing – to herself, to me, to the dog, to the cat, to the stink bug walking along the window sill, to her Barbies. She’s usually not talking about anything in particular; in fact, half the time she’s just narrating her life. I love how happy she is, but I don’t always want to hear a song about pouring a bowl of cereal. Annnnd theeen I spillllled some of my miiiiiillllk on the couuuunnnttterrr.

Last week Everly had been talking and singing for about forty minutes straight – no breaks. I couldn’t take it. I needed a few minutes of quiet, and I lost my patience. I didn’t yell, but I did that dad voice that’s quieter than a yell but louder than talking (Dads know what I’m talking about). It went something like this:

“Ev, you have to stop. Honey, daddy loves when you sing, but I just can’t take it anymore. I even went out to the porch to sit for a few, and you followed me out and kept singing. Seriously, you have to be ok with a little bit of silence sometimes. You can’t narrate your entire life and literally never stop making noise.”

She started to tear up.

“But daddy,” she said, “that’s how I’m made.”

In six words, Everly was able to articulate what I felt like I’d spent my entire childhood trying to say to my own dad.

I scooped her up, gave her a big hug and kiss, and I told her that I loved how she was made. I explained that we’re all made differently, and that I’m a person who likes quiet sometimes. We talked about it being ok for dad to need some quiet, and how I’ll do a better job of communicating that before I reach a boiling point.

Everly is my kid, but she’s not me. I can teach her that there are appropriate times for singing, for talking, for somersaults and cartwheels, and I can embrace who she is in the process.

The Time is Fleeting

I know we all know this, and I don’t mean to sound overly sentimental. But it feels like fifteen minutes ago that I was pushing Everly in a stroller, changing her diapers, feeding her from a bottle. And now she’s six. Tomorrow, she’ll be eight, and next week, she’ll be going to college. I can’t make every day an adventure, but when I go to bed at night, I want to feel like I gave it my all as a dad.

To be clear, you still need time for yourself. It’s ok to go to the gym, a concert, put the subwoofer in your car, take a no-kid trip with your spouse. I’m not the dad who thinks if you’re not spending every moment with your kid, then you’re failing them. But when you are with your kid, put your phone away, snuggle them and look them in the eye when they’re talking. Do what you can to make these minutes valuable.

Kids have little concept of time (and no concept of how quickly it passes), which means it’s up to us to make the time count and find ways to freeze moments so they may be seared into ours and our kids’ memories. I made a Gmail account for Everly when she was born, and I send her emails with stories about milestones she’s reached as a kid or funny things she says or does. It’s easy, fast, and will one day show her how much I valued this time we’ve had together.

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Mike Henson

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August 7, 2024
This Surprising Truth Will 10X Your Personal Growth
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Most guys have personal growth backward – and you might have focused on the wrong thing all this time, too.

We’ve all been unhappy with where we are in life, business, or our relationships.

And in a good, old-fashioned manly manner, we try to fix the problem.

This usually means:
- Work harder
- Talk to your partner
- Try a new, exciting hobby
These are a great start, but they have one problem in common.

They’re external fixes.

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.” – Dalai Lama

We do what we’ve learned – work harder, get better at flirting, buy a new car…

And it helps – for a short while.

Sooner or later, you fall back into the same old patterns like a rigged Roulette wheel. I know because I’ve experienced it many times.

I got a new partner but fought the same fights. I started a new business but faced the same problems. I bought new stuff but felt the same emptiness.

Why does this happen – and how do we stop the cycle and finally grow to a new level?

This Is Why You’re Stuck On The Same Level

If you experience the same issues repeatedly, it has one simple reason.

You’re still the same person.

Now, I know what you might think.

“I’m not the same person as ten years ago! I’ve changed! I’m much older, more experienced, my life is completely different.”

Yes, I agree with you. Your life is different – on the outside, just like mine was.

I sold everything and traveled the world for three years. I quit a prestigious graduate program to start blogging online. I changed my surroundings like Kim Kardashian lip fillers.

Yet, I still carried the same beliefs, emotions, and perspectives – and this created the same life experience.

Endless hustle. Toxic relationships. Never feeling enough.

Until I finally did what I should’ve done long ago.

I looked on the inside.

What Really Determines What You Get From Life

Most people have personal growth backward.

They work their butt off to create the life they want – but their core beliefs always pull them back.

They follow strategy after strategy, set up fancy systems, and follow the super secret relationship hacks.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but you have to understand that the external world conforms to your internal world, not the other way around.

In simple terms:

What you believe, you create and experience.

Your brain is a goal-achieving machine. The universe responds to the energy you send out. If you combine both, it makes it easy to see that:
- If you believe you aren’t worthy of true, unconditional love, you’ll attract people who confirm this belief.
- If you believe you have to grind your butt off and can’t take time off, you’ll create endless hustle.
- If you believe you need more to be happy and aren’t worthy with what you have right now, nothing will ever be enough.
And if you believe the opposite, you will create the opposite.

I have seen it in my clients and myself countless times.

The person you are creates the life you experience – on every level.

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” – James Allen

The external is just a mirror of the internal. The optimist and the pessimist will look at the same event and see two completely different things. Glass half full. Glass half empty. Glass with Vodka (if you’re Russian.)

This means that if you want true, lasting, fundamental, through-the-roof personal growth, there’s only one thing to do.

Change your identity.

This 3-Step Process Will Help You Jump To The Next Level

Changing your identity is insanely powerful because it takes care of everything else.
- You won’t have to micromanage your social interactions if you are charismatic and socially confident.
- A great, healthy relationship will naturally happen if you heal old wounds and become the most amazing version of yourself.
- You will experience financial abundance if you focus on what you have and what you can do and stop focusing on a lack of resources.
This isn’t some woo-woo hippie stuff.

It’s simple cause and effect. Look at all the successful athletes, the big visionaries who changed the world, and the everyday people who made their dreams happen.

They believed in their desired reality on the inside before they experienced it on the outside.

They became a version of themselves who already had what they wanted so it’s only natural that what they wanted followed.

And you can do the same – here’s how to shift your identity quickly:

Let go of your limiting beliefs

Repeated thoughts become beliefs.

When these beliefs tie you to your current reality, they limit you.
- “Making money is hard”
- “All women are irrational, emotional, etc.”
- “I have to work my butt off to get XYZ”
Like a ship that sets sail for the next harbor, you have to loosen the lines and hoist the anchor that keeps you stuck in your current reality.

Use these questions as starting points:
- “What do I believe about the thing I want and myself regarding it?” (e.g. I’m not good at making money, I always attract these kinds of people, I can’t this and that…”)
- Where does this belief come from and is it necessarily true?
- What evidence do I have for the contrary?
- What’s a better belief that serves me more?
Take some time to journal on these.

What you think, you believe.

What you believe, you create.

What you create, you experience.

Start feeling like you already have what you want

Thought alone is a good start.

It helps you set the route to the harbor of your new identity.

But to steer your ship, you need to look at your emotions – they’re like the rudder adjusting your course.

Feelings are the bridge between body and mind.

If you feel stressed, it creates more anxious thoughts and causes your body to tense up, making you more likely to act out of scarcity and fear.

If you feel relaxed, you create happy thoughts and make your body feel bliss, making it more likely to act out of abundance and inspiration.

So, ask yourself:
- How would I feel if I had already achieved the thing I want?
Envision this experience. Close your eyes and step into that version of yourself. Feel it.

What you feel, you become.

Take aligned action

Actions drive results.

But most people fall victim to the classic “when… then” fallacy.
- “When my wife acts right, I’ll be more understanding and calm.”
- “When I have more money, I’ll tip better and worry less about cash.”
- “When I see results at the gym, I’ll double down on it and eat healthy, too.”
That’s like saying “When we get our ship to the next harbor, we’ll set sail and start rowing.”

Instead, act like the version of yourself who already has what you want.
- How would you deal with money if you were wealthy already? How would you spend, invest, save, and earn?
- How would you show up in your relationship if you were the most amazing, understanding, loving, and supportive husband and had an equally amazing wife already?
- How would you go through your life if you were already happy, free of worry, and at peace?
You don’t need to blow your retirement savings on a Ferrari. Your millionaire self wouldn’t break his bank with an out-of-budget mansion, either.

It’s about the energy and motivation your actions come from – e.g. “I buy the healthy, expensive food because it’s an investment in myself.”

This is how you align yourself with your new reality, in everything you do.

Internal change creates external results.

Wrap-Up to Help You 10X Your Personal Growth

You’re probably familiar with Thomas Jefferson’s quote:

“If you want what you never had, you have to do what you’ve never done.”

Today, you have the chance to understand it on a much deeper level.

It’s not just about doing new things.

It’s about leaving your old patterns behind because they created your current reality.

Instead, start thinking, feeling, and acting like the person who already has what you want.

This will boost your personal growth and massively improve your results for three reasons.

1. You will no longer repeat the same patterns that got you into your current situation.

2. You will walk your own path, one that is focused on creating the reality you want.

3. What you believe, you create and experience. Your beliefs shape your reality.

Thoughts. Feelings. Actions.

They are in your control.

Stop responding to your reality.

Create it instead.
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Moreno Zugaro

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July 10, 2024
Please Be More Selfish (For Real)
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What you can learn from airlines about creating a better world for yourself and everyone around you.

Being selfish is the best thing you can do for others.

Wait, what?

Popular advice tells you to serve your community, your family, your friends, and even your annoying neighbor Joe who loves to max out his subwoofer at 2:30 am.

Serving others makes you feel fulfilled and turns the world into a better place. However…

I often notice that men sacrifice themselves for others, yet still feel like they’re not doing enough.

One of my clients did everything he could for his family. He worked hard, was loyal, showed up consistently, and always tried to take a load off his wife’s back. He was a textbook husband and father – but he forgot one thing.

He didn’t show up for himself.

When he went to the gym, read a book, or relaxed with his favorite video game after a long day, he felt selfish and guilty.

This meant he suppressed his needs and burned himself out like a forgotten pot of chili on a hot stove.

When that happened, he couldn’t support his family like he wanted to anymore.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing more and more for others because:
- Social pressure makes you feel like you have to
- It makes you feel more helpful and worthy
- That’s what a “real man” does
But if you want to serve the people around you – and yourself – you might have to be more selfish.

Here’s why.

How To Create A Better World For Everyone By Being More Selfish

Airplane safety briefings are as boring as counting rice grains, but one part gets me every time I hear it.

“…put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others.”

This makes sense – you can only help others if you’re still breathing. Selfless sacrifice won’t get you anywhere.

Life works the same way.
- You make more cash = better lifestyle for your family
- You get more sleep = more energy and a better mood when playing with your kids
- You do the inner work = being more compassionate and supportive with your partner
The question is just when do you stop focusing on yourself? When do you say “I have enough, now it’s time to spend my resources on other people?”

In other words: “When do you stop slapping oxygen masks on your face and help others breathe?”

Do too little for yourself and you might pass out. Do too much and your loved ones will suffocate.

There’s no clear-cut solution because life is complex.

However, I have three simple principles (and a question) I often use to decide who needs the oxygen most right now.

Fulfill your basic needs

I’m pretty calm and collected usually, but when I get hungry…

…I turn into an absolute monster. People best get out of my way and wait until I’ve inhaled two plates of dumplings so I turn back into a normal human being.

Hunger isn’t the only thing that makes us go nuts sometimes. Lacking sleep, too much stress, and not enough time for yourself are a few more. These “basic” needs are called basic for a reason.

If they aren’t fulfilled, you can’t show up at your best – either for yourself nor others.

Like a marathon runner without water and shoes, you’ve got a severe disadvantage.

Prioritize your basic needs.

Fulfilling them is crucial for everything else.

Focus on your patterns

Putting yourself in the focus doesn’t mean you only get the happy-feel-good stuff.

It also means you use your time to examine your patterns and how you react to things. The victim perspective of “this is happening to me” won’t help you much. Instead, take the approach of “I can decide how I respond to that.”

This means you might have to draw new boundaries or change the way you communicate with others. It often requires courage and puts the responsibility on you – but that’s what’s so freeing about it.

Nobody has power over you unless you give it to them.

Take responsibility for your happiness

There’s an old saying that “life won’t make you happy – you have to bring happiness to life.”

It’s the same with your relationships. Relying on the other person to fix your problems or fulfill all your needs is a recipe for disaster. It creates unfair expectations and pressure – even if they happen subconsciously.

But if you realize that your happiness is your responsibility, you can now be more selfish with a clear conscience.

Do the things you want to do. Go after what makes you happy. Give love to yourself.

Do it all while being mindful of the people around you – or even invite them to join you on your path.

Happy people create happy connections.

Use This Powerful Question To Keep Yourself in Check

“I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.” – Ram Dass

Last but not least, there’s a question I often ask when I don’t know whether I’m being selfish in a good or bad way.

“Does this serve me and turn me into a better version of myself?”

You can play video games as a coping mechanism or conscious relaxation and reward. You can have me-time to evade your family responsibilities or to recharge your batteries. You can work on yourself because you think you’re not good enough or from a place of inspiration and love.

Like with so many things in life, what you do is only one part of the equation.

The other part is what energy you’re doing it with.

So allow yourself to put yourself first – in a healthy way.
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Moreno Zugaro

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June 18, 2024
Gen Z, Crew Socks, and a Needed Perspective On Style Trends as We Get Older [Reader Question]
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The surprisingly challenging aspect of style: navigating changing trends when what’s ‘cool’ isn’t designed for you.

Long time reader Matt sent an email with the subject line “Gen Z Socks”:

Apparently ankle socks are out and crew socks are in. As a millennial, I’m devastated. Is this true Andrew??

The most important thing to consider, when asking yourself this type of question – especially as we get older – is, “crew socks are in, for whom?”

Gen Z, like every new generation, has taken what’s come before them and decided how to edit/augment/create their own thing. The 18-30 set will always command the attention of clothing trends, retailers, brands, and designers, and they inevitably push the overall cultural aesthetic forward. It’s interesting to see how pervasive these trends become over time; take the older men in my life, for instance. I’ve noticed they’ve started to adopt the same style of fit that I was wearing about ten years ago because these trends have become so culturally widespread.

Most of them would never have considered the looks or fit when millennials started wearing them, but as the overall cultural aesthetic slowly morphs and shifts, they feel more standard or inclusive for the demographics outside of the 18-30 set.

Personal style is a tool used for two things: Tell the world about our personality and who we are; and also to incorporate ourselves into the community. This is a spectrum, where both of those things are in opposition at the extreme ends. I’m ok wearing ankle socks because if a Gen Zer were to judge me as a millennial, I would embrace it as fact and not an insult. The reality that they mean it as one is a reflection of their age.

It is always up to us to choose what works with our personal style and on what timeline it evolves. What’s most important is that you’re wearing things that you like as well as being open to evolution, even if it’s slow.

So while it’s cool to see what the younger generation is into, at the end of the day, it’s about what feels right for you. Whether you’re slowly integrating new trends into your wardrobe or sticking with what you know works, the most crucial thing is that your style feels good to you.

It’s important to realize that as people, we don’t live within a monoculture. What is true about my Gen Z counterpart, even if we’re nearly identical otherwise, will still be wildly different because I’m at least 13 years older. What I’m experiencing at this life stage, the types of people in my immediate community bubble that I value being included in, and what I consciously or subconsciously do to attempt to be viewed as a part of it, is significantly more nuanced than the general question, “how do I look culturally appropriate by American humans aged 10-100.”

The essence of personal style lies in this delicate balance—it’s not just adopting what’s in vogue but interpreting it to match your personal narrative. Something to emphasize about Primer and the “style advice” we provide, is that it still needs to be transposed to your own reality. The examples and aesthetics we show match mine and the other contributors; it isn’t right, I could list 10 types of people without even trying who would find Primer’s aesthetic recommendations incongruent with their experiential observations within their immediate communities. It’s how you tweak these ideas as well as the broader influences to resonate with your personal ethos and aesthetic.

In this way, style becomes a powerful medium for expression, not specifically in an artistic way, but a deeply personal and inherently social one. It allows us to signal our identity and values to the world while also finding our niche within a community. This dynamic is where the true art of fashion lies: not in us as individuals darting from fashion change to fashion change like a school of fish, but in recognizing how it relates to me.

Music has always been a helpful metaphor for me. It seems strange to stop listening to a style of music you connect with because it’s no longer popular with 18-30 year olds. It similarly seems strange to start dressing in a style you don’t connect with because it is popular with 18-30 year olds. And yet, in 10 years I will more than likely enjoy that music as its influences have slowly evolved the overall sound of music into something else.

Take country music for example. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in the 90s, and artists like Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, and Toby Keith were superstars. Consumers of that music didn’t connect with the musical sensibilities of artists in other contemporary genres like Eminem and Foo Fighters. Today, the entire country genre has shifted dramatically, heavily influenced by hard rock and rap, with a bit of twang and steel guitar thrown in. Many of the same people who listened to country in the 90s likely still listen and enjoy its current form.

The overall color of a music genre or fashion aesthetic shifts in hue as each generation and community adds their contribution.

All of that is hyper-philosophical; on a practical level what I enjoy about shifting trends is finding the opportunity in them.
- Slim and skinny jeans had been a core component of my (and our generation’s) style and a more fitted silhouette still feels more refined when I’m hoping to look “well-dressed.” But I’ve really enjoyed the benefits of including straighter/looser fits now that they’ve become more popular again: I can wear chunkier shoes, they’re no doubt more comfortable and maneuverable, and there’s more clearance as to whether they “fit right” or not.
- Similarly light jeans have provided a new tool to dress down other dressier elements like a blazer or button up shirt.
- And for as much as we all defend ankle and no-show socks, there’s no question they can be an absolute headache sometimes. No-shows slipping down and bunching up or finding that precise height for an ankle sock where it’s visible but not too high(!). The re-emergence of crew socks gives me the opportunity to use them as a part of an outfit, not just a necessity that I’m trying to avoid drawing attention to. Similar to how Daniel used lighter socks with his loafers in a way I would have never accepted 10 years ago, crew socks with shorts provide different comfort/convenience benefits as well as adding a vintage aesthetic touch.
For me, regarding crew socks or ankle socks specifically, it is not whether I wear them but when do I wear them. I get to use them to my advantage for my personal style. And in a way, that’s a privilege I get as a person not in the pop trend age range. If I were 22 today and surrounded by other young people with a strict vision of what is in or out of style, my sense of what is socially acceptable may be so concentrated that it’s crew socks only.

With every new trend that emerges from the 18-30 set, whether that’s today with Z, tomorrow with Alpha, or in fifteen years with “The Third Greatest Generation” or whatever they’ll be known as, the question isn’t, “ankle socks are out, is that true??” it’s “young people are wearing crew socks, to what degree and on what timeline am I open to including them?”

My advice for this, or any change, is just to make sure the answer isn’t “never”.
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Andrew Snavely

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June 10, 2024
5 Promises Every Modern Guy Should Make to Himself

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Staying true to yourself will get you what you want, but it won’t always be easy.

Between the stress of adulthood, the challenge of our careers, and all the trials and tribulations that existence throws at us, it can be difficult to forge our own way. Instead of charging into the rough waves we might start taking the path of least resistance, one that inevitably leads us further and further from the direction we’re supposed to be heading. It can be tough to stay on track.

Tough, but not impossible.

When we’re feeling lost in life, these are the five critical commitments that can help us reorient on things that truly matter and the people we want to become:

1. Promise To Set Time Aside For Reflection

As much as we might like to think of ourselves as a simple people, the truth of the matter is that every last one of us is a tangled mess of experiences, instincts, hopes, fears, and passions. At any given second there are a thousand competing thoughts and feelings flashing through our minds, shaping and directing our every waking moment.

In spite of that (hell, because of that) most of us simply stumble through life without ever knowing why we feel what we feel or do what we do. We’ll dig through the trash to double-check the baking instructions on a box of chicken strips, but when it comes to figuring out this funny thing called “existence” we simply look away and hope for the best.

It never works.

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

Make no mistake – one of the single best promises we’ll ever commit to is routinely setting aside for reflection on who we are and what we’re all about. This might come in the form of morning meditation or it might mean that we journal on a daily basis, or dedicate a few days out of the year to contemplation. The “how” isn’t important – what’s critical is that we try.

How to Journal +14 Journal Prompts to Get Started

Deliberately setting aside time for unpacking our thoughts and feelings gives us the all-important opportunity to truly understand ourselves – both the things that propel us forward and the things that hold us back. When we’re able to objectively dissect our worries and fears, we’ll find just where they’re coming from and how we can start to overcome them. Even just having a more complete picture can help us pitch to a job or more effectively build and maintain relationships. It gives us a stronger sense of what our weaknesses are, and how we can keep from sabotaging ourselves.

We can’t progress towards our best self until we know who that is. It’s as simple as that.

2. Promise To Be Prepared For Opportunity Before It Comes

Life doesn’t always go the way we’d like. It’s not a steady ascent, it’s not a rollercoaster of highs and lows. While those will all hopefully be included, more often than not, we’ll find ourselves simply coasting. It won’t be a crisis, but our situations certainly will be less than everything we’d hope.

We might be working jobs that pay the bills while we wait for the dream position to open. We might be swiping our way through a host of dating apps, waiting for the right person to like us back. We might wander through our days, hoping for the chance to chase down some purse-snatcher or rescue a kitten from a burning building or single-handedly defeat a rival dojo.

It’s easy to daydream about these things, but what if the perfect opportunity were to actually happen?

If our ideal job were to open up right now, would we be qualified for it? If the perfect person were to cross paths with us, would we be seen at our most charming and handsome? If that building down the street were to explode into flames, would we be fit enough and fast enough to react?

Be honest.

The reality is that when we’re spinning our wheels, it’s easy to take our eyes off the prize. Sure, we might spend our hours fantasizing about how awesome it would be to be living the dream, but in doing so, we might trick ourselves into think that’s all it is – a dream. If those perfect opportunities do arise, we’re too rusty from inaction to capitalize on them – or even recognize them – and we might even try telling ourselves that isn’t something we ever wanted to begin with.

That’s not just a defeat – that’s a betrayal.

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan

We can’t always get what we want, but we have to promise ourselves that we won’t be so fearful of disappointment that we’ll try. Lost in the doldrums, we have to commit to preparing ourselves in whatever way will make us most ready – whether that means training our bodies, sharpening our minds, building up funds, or prepping ourselves to take charge during a crisis. Remember: there is nothing in this world quite so agonizing as the four little words “it could have been.”

3. Promise To Challenge Your Concept Of Masculinity

If we were to picture the manliest of men, what image might pop into our heads?

Perhaps some calloused, grizzled lumberjack-type. Perhaps a towering, muscle-bound figure with a piercing stare and a voice that’d make James Earl Jones sound like a soprano. Maybe he’s killed more men than Rambo. Maybe he’s seduced more women than James Bond. Maybe he’s a detached, emotionless machine who takes what he wants when he wants and never bothers with “sorry” or “please.” Maybe he’s brash and loud. Or maybe he never says anything at all.

If that image, or something like it, is what we imagine when we think of masculinity, then that’s the image we need to promise ourselves we’ll reconsider. So long as we measure ourselves against it, we’ll never be free to become our best and most-authentic self. Which is the absolute manliest thing you can do, regardless of what that looks like.

In spite of our steps away from the cold-blooded action heroes of the 80s, almost all of us have some downright poisonous ideas of what men should be. That’s not to say that the average Primer reader or even the average guy is a raging “alpha-male” dick, only that even the best of us is susceptible.

Without ever meaning to, many of us may be pressured to conform to some depressingly limited model for what a man can be.

How do we escape that? Just as with self-reflection, we’re going to need to promise ourselves that we’ll regularly review and challenge our concept of what actually makes the man. We’ll need to expose ourselves to skills, abilities, and viewpoints that might not have even been on our radar. This is about challenging the very way we perceive and handle emotions.

Or the way we don’t handle emotions.

Truth is, somewhere along the line people started mistaking being stoic for being borderline sociopathic. Emotions – the critical component that makes humans so effective and dynamic – have managed to get cast as the enemy of logic and reason, instead of as a complementary tool.

The response many guys have is to attempt to suppress emotions entirely. Of course, we can hide our feelings, but we can’t help but feel them, and rather than grant us any sense of self-mastery, we wind up becoming the guy shrieking in the middle of a little league game or having a stroke in an Arby’s drive-through.

Repressing emotions doesn’t give us control, it gives the illusion of control. It’s a kind of self-inflicted illiteracy – a pointless handicap we give ourselves that keeps us from being healthy and self-actualized. In the words of master carpenter, writer, actor, and actual badass Nick Offerman (who became a household name for his masterful satire of underdeveloped masculinity):

“Crying at something that moves you to joy or sadness is just as manly as chopping down a tree or punching out a bad guy… If you live your life openly with your emotions, that’s a more manly stance than burying them.” – Nick Offerman

4. Promise To Walk Away When It’s Time

This, perhaps more than any of the other recommendation here, is going to be tough to follow through on. As counterintuitive as it might at first sound, giving up can be one of the most difficult things.

It’s easy – far too easy – to get so caught up in the struggles of everyday life that we lose track of what we were fighting for to being with. Maybe we put up with a miserable job by telling ourselves that it’s to fund our long-term goals. The boss is a sadist and the clients are abusive, but we’re doing it to support us and the people and things we care about. That’s fine if it works, but more likely than not, we’ll find ourselves coming home so utterly burned out that we barely have energy to meet our basic needs, let alone pursue our actual interests .

Or maybe we’re in a relationship which even at its best didn’t fulfill us, or one that’s run its natural course. Or perhaps one that used to be good, but has lost its healthiness, helpfulness, and fulfillment as life changes (be it us, them, or our needs and values).

The hard part about walking away from relationships is two-fold. First, it can feel like an upending experience. Sure, the relationship isn’t great but the fear of change may seem worse than just trying to ignore the things that make it a bad relationship. But that’s a pretty sad and terrible reason to stay in a relationship, and one that is definitely unsustainable over time.

Second, in our culture we’re told a lot of stories of struggling marriages that are on the brink of divorce, but get salvaged at the last possible second through hard work. And that does happen, and there are people who should do that with life-changing results.

But there are also times when ending a relationship is the right thing – and that’s just as life-changing. The hard part is knowing which situation you’re in. But try to trust yourself. Do the work.

There’s nothing wrong with sweating and struggling for the things we’re passionate about. Suffering just for the sake of suffering? Or worse, suffering because it feels easier than trying to change? That’s another matter altogether.

For the sake of our own sanity, we need to promise ourselves that we won’t be too proud to quit something that’s lost all meaning. And not just for ourselves, but for others as well. Don’t waste someone’s time in a relationship because you don’t have the nerve to break it off. Don’t squat in a position that you despise but someone else might thrive in. There’s no defeat in walking away from something unwinnable to you.

5. Promise To Try Again When You Screw Up

More than anything else, our success with these resolutions is going to hinge on mastery of this final promise: to get over ourselves when we fail.

And we will fail.

For all our best efforts and noble intentions, we will eventually fall short of the standards we set for ourselves. And you know what? That’s ok. Failure is a fact of life – our job is to make sure that it doesn’t destroy our ability to try again.

That might sound melodramatic, but the simple truth is that many people see the world in all-or-nothing terms. Someone might resolve to jog every day, but when they do eventually skip, they’ll figure “So much for that perfect streak – better luck next year.” But what’s keeping that person from running tomorrow, Or the next day, Or the day after that?

The problem here is with that single, insidious word: “perfect.” Vain creatures that we are, we care more about being flawless execution than about making real strides towards our goals. The end result is that we don’t push ourselves beyond the bounds of our comfort zones for fear of confirming what we always suspected – that we’re only human. Even in the rare instances where we do, we give up when we’re not immediate experts. We try comforting ourselves by saying “Well I’m just not athletic/artistic/ /charismatic/business-minded, etc.” or some other lie that we imagine will free us from responsibility.

We’d rather wall ourselves off from an entire aspect of existence than dare admit that we’ve got room to improve.

Much like the problem of not walking away, this issue has its roots in a warped sense of pride – one that bases self-esteem not in the presence of accomplishment but in the absence of failure.

Of course, all this offers is a false sense of security. The world’s a tough place. Whether we like it or not we’re eventually going to encounter embarrassment or failure – it might as well be in the service of something that actually helps us grow.

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” – Jodi Picoult

Even a stumble counts as progress if it’s towards the right direction.

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Gordon Brown

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June 5, 2024
How To Find Time To Better Yourself Even If You’re Super Busy

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My tried-and-tested techniques for finding room to grow.

Real talk: I’m a self-improvement junkie.

I love working on myself. Reading, meditating, journaling, podcast-listening, and exercising are my daily bread and butter.

But I’ve also been running a business while traveling the world for three years.

What I’ve learned from that is no matter how busy you are, no matter what you have going on in your life, you can always find time to work on yourself.

I know it’s tough – especially if you have kids or want to keep your spouse happy.

That’s why I’ve collected the techniques and mindsets that I’ve found to be the most helpful from the last five years.

Apply them and you’ll thrive.

Avoid This Common Trap To Change How You Play The Game

Men often fall into the trap of “overserving.”

We thrive on providing and protecting our loved ones. We want to support our friends. We strive to make the people around us feel good.

But what about us?

I have many clients who feel selfish when they do something for themselves.

They learned that their only purpose is to serve others, so their self-worth depends on it.

But you need to serve yourself, too.

“Self-care is giving the world the best of you, instead of what’s left of you.” — Katie Reed

Every Saturday morning, I have a few hours blocked for my self-improvement. I record affirmations, journal, write letters, work through courses, or read.

Every Sunday morning, I have at least an hour blocked for self-care. I get a tasty coffee, sit on my balcony to enjoy the sun, put on my favorite tunes, and spend time chillaxing with myself.

What exactly you do doesn’t matter much – as long as it serves and nurtures you.

You don’t have to be constantly available for others.

Work on yourself. Care for yourself. You deserve it. And so do your loved ones.

A Simple Trick Most People Dismiss (I Wish I Did It Earlier)

Chores can eat up time like the cookie monster a few packs of soft baked triple chocs.

Changing the tires, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, cooking, driving the kids around, making repairs, doing your taxes – the list goes on.

One of the biggest mental shifts I got through growing my business was that I didn’t have to do everything myself.

I hired a virtual assistant. At first, he just helped me with some admin work around the business. But then, I also outsourced personal things like research about the places I travel and looking for a suitable Airbnb.

Then, I hired a cleaner – right now, I’m looking into options for a private cook or at least someone to do the grocery shopping.

“Do what you do best and outsource the rest.” — Peter Drucker

The amount of time I’ve saved through this outsourcing is off the books.

I know that not everyone can afford a whole team of staff to look after their house, but most people outright reject the idea without ever looking into it.

If you save yourself two hours a week cleaning and shopping, that’s 100 hours a year you can get for fairly cheap. That’s more than enough to learn a few new skills, do a bunch of date nights, or spend more time with your kids or hobbies.

You don’t have to do everything yourself – focus on what you’re good at and enjoy doing.

Outsource the rest.

How To Start Taking Control Of Your Time

Let’s be honest here.

If I held a gun to your head or told you I kidnapped your family and will force them to listen to Bruno Mars dubstep remixes for twelve hours a day, would you find time to get something done?

Thought so.

The problem isn’t that we don’t have time – it’s how we spend our 24 daily hours.

When I tracked my activities, I realized I scrolled through my phone for an hour almost every day. To combat it, I created a tech-free zone and used a second phone with only apps that added value to my life. If you’re on iPhone, check your own phone usage in your Screen Time reports.

If you don’t have enough time, be honest with yourself and see where your hours are going. Track how you spend your time by documenting everything for a week or two.

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.” — Charles Buxton

I’m not saying you should be up and running every single waking minute. Give yourself a break to become still. But we all have a few things we know don’t serve us.

If you can’t get rid of them right now, try cutting the time spent on them in half every other week until they’re no longer part of your life.

Life’s too short to waste it.

Change Your Default Answer And Never Worry About Having Too Much On Your Plate Again

In the first “Matrix,” protagonist Neo gets beamed into an artificial world and walks through a crowd of Average Joe people, all dressed in the same dark grey suits on their way to work.

Suddenly, a woman in a red dress appears, distracting Neo. When he turns around and looks at her again, she has transformed into his arch-enemy Agent Smith, pointing a gun at him.

The Matrix is just a movie, but this scene is an amazing metaphor for our lives.

Every day, we walk past the woman in the red dress. Every day, we have things that distract us from what matters – our mission, our purpose, our values. Every day, we must ignore shiny objects and stay focused.

That’s why I made “no” my default.

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” — Warren Buffett

If something wants to make it on my “yes” list, it has to actively convince me of being worth it.

Does it serve me? Does it bring me closer to my goals? Is it something I feel called to? Is it more important than spending time with myself, the people I love? Does it bring me joy?

If the answer is no, my answer is no.

This doesn’t mean you have to reject everything you encounter.

But defaulting to no will protect your time.

Only give a yes if it’s truly worth it.

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Moreno Zugaro

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April 30, 2024
5 Surefire Ways To Find BIG Motivation For Things You Dread
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How to use reverse psychology, hack the lazy part of your brain, and kick yourself into gear.

Let’s be brutally honest here.

You already know what you need to do to reach your goals – if not, you can find out quickly with the good ole’ Google.

Maybe you even know that building the right habits and discipline is key for long-term change.

Knowing is one thing, doing it is a different beast altogether.

We all slack off sometimes and kick the can down the road. And even though sustainable change and discipline are important, sometimes you just need a low-voltage taser in the butt.

Here are my best unconventional ways to find motivation when you need it.

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
– Derek Sivers

Shift Your Focus In A Way You’ve Never Done Before

We often approach tasks in a way that’s inherently demotivating.

Why?

Because we focus on costs rather than benefits.

Look at your calendar, your to-do list, and all the things you need to do that you’ve stored in your mind.

They’re called “do this, do that, check this, check that.”

No wonder you don’t want to “do a tax return.” You immediately think of all the forms you have to fill out, receipts you need to collect, and the dance battle with bureaucracy and your accountant.

What if you’d call it “get back tons of money?”

What if instead of “go to the gym” you said “get shredded and have a six-pack?”

What if you called “mowing the lawn and cleaning the house” “living in my personal paradise?”

Ask yourself how you can reframe your dreaded to-dos.

Focus on the benefits. You’ll still have to do the work, of course. But you’ll be a lot more motivated to make it happen.

How To Hack The Lazy Part Of Your Brain

Humans are inherently lazy.

Evolution hardwired us to conserve energy. It’s one of the reasons why we prefer instant rewards over future ones – we don’t have to waste time and energy waiting. Psychologists call this effect temporal discounting.

Unfortunately, this means we often don’t do things that would pay off nicely in the future.

Eating healthier, building a side hustle, regular reading… the list goes on. We know they’re the right thing to do, but we have no immediate payoff.

Over the last few weeks, I struggled to take walks during lunchtime and hit the gym in the afternoon.

I was stacked with a big project and any effort on top of it felt like being stuck in tar up to my hips.

What helped me was to connect immediate rewards with these things.

For my lunch break, I listened to some music while walking and allowed myself 20 minutes of video games once I came back.

For the gym, I took some sweets with me as a post-workout nutrition.

Both helped me step into gear a lot.

Make a list of all the small rewards you can give yourself – then connect them with the things that pay off in the long run.

The Simple Mindset Shift You Have To Make

Almost everyone has a massive misconception when it comes to reaching their goals.

What matters isn’t how much you want it – but what you’re willing to do for it.

When I got ready for my bodybuilding competition, I often didn’t feel like working out. I watched videos of donuts while eating dry chicken and rice. Many times, I cursed because it was so damn hard.

However, throughout every meal, every workout, and every gag-inducing protein shake, I remembered one thing:

“This is part of the job.”

When you face something unpleasant, you often subconsciously wish for things to be different.

That means you argue with reality.

Instead, eliminate these thoughts from your mind and accept reality as it is right now.

Once you accept that, you can motivate yourself to do it.

You can thrive in the fact that you’re doing what’s required and who you will become through it. You no longer waste your energy on doubting, complaining, and wishing.

You just do the job.

“Suffering is not objective. It depends largely on the way you perceive. There are things that cause you to suffer but do not cause others to suffer. There are things that bring you joy but do not bring others joy.” ― Hanh Nhat Thich

Do A Switcheroo With Reverse Psychology

I’m a rebel at heart.

When I was a kid, I never wanted to do what others told me. In a way, we’re all like that. If someone shows up demanding you do something, your first reaction is likely to introduce their left cheek to the back of your right hand (reverse if you’re left-handed.)

Psychologists call this trait reactance – it’s our human tendency to rebel against orders.

The most straightforward way to exploit this would be to tell yourself “You’re not allowed to go to the gym.”

Unfortunately, your brain isn’t stupid and will see through the bluff.

Instead, I’ve tried something else – I only allow myself a certain time to do something.

20 minutes for answering my emails. 60 minutes for cleaning the house. 90 minutes at the gym.

This does three things:
- First, you’ll want to see whether you can make it within the time limit.
- Second, it reduces the commitment because you won’t be stuck with the task any longer than you want to.
- Third, it creates scarcity, which makes it more valuable.
See which of these effects triggers you most and use it.

The Ultimate Motivation (Not For The Faint-Hearted)

This will make you uncomfortable, but it’s almost guaranteed to work every time.

Again, we’re going to use psychology here – something called the endowment effect. People place a higher value on something they already own rather than the same object without owning it.

In an experiment, participants wanted more money to sell a cup they owned than they were willing to pay for that same cup in the first place.

Here’s how you can use that.
- First, grab yourself a really good friend and tell them what you want to do.
- Then, give them an amount of money that would sting if you lost it.
- Last, tell them to not give it back to you until you’ve completed the thing.
Technically, it’s still your money, which means you value it even higher than face value due to the endowment effect. It hurts more to lose money you have than it is rewarding to earn money you don’t.

That’s why it’s so powerful and James Clear, author of the New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, recommends this approach for adding extra motivation to your actions.

Commit and you’ll be motivated to make it happen.

Summary To Help You Find Motivation For What You Dread Doing

Everything you do is a battle between motivation and resistance.

If something’s unpleasant to do, you’ve got a lot of resistance – so you need high motivation to make it happen.

These five approaches will help you tap into it:
1. Focus on benefits instead of costs.
2. Give yourself small rewards until the big ones come in.
3. View it as “part of the job” instead of something you can avoid.
4. Use reverse psychology and limit how much time you can spend on it.
5. Pay a friend money and only get it back after you’ve done the thing.
Motivation isn’t the end-all of your problems – but it’s a damn good place to start.
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Moreno Zugaro

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April 22, 2024
This Is The Only Guaranteed Shortcut To Success

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The no-nonsense truth you need to understand to achieve your dreams.

Deep down, we all want life to be easy.

I’m no exception.

Thank god, there are shortcuts: Get-rich-quick schemes, miracle diets, and dating hacks.

You can guess by my choice of words – they aren’t what they seem to be.

“This is something I learned the hard way. You spend so much energy trying to find a shortcut to success only to realize that success requires hard work. And without it, you will never get there. The sooner you realize it, the faster you’ll reach your goals.”
– Angel investor Paul Kroger

Evolution hardwired us to conserve energy – why make it complicated when it can be simple?

But once you’ve taken enough shortcuts, you realize they’re actually detours.

It’s like buying a cheap counterfeit knockoff that breaks after one month of use: failed investments, yoyo effects from crash diets, attracting the wrong partner. You’ve wasted time, money, and energy and are just where you started.

That’s why there is only one shortcut that truly works.

The Harsh Truth About Success And Growth Most People Don’t Want To Admit

One day changed my life more than any other.

No, it wasn’t a psychedelic trip, or going on a 14-month solo backpacking trip to Australia.

It was when I first stepped foot into a gym.

For twelve years and counting, I’ve lifted weights, sweated buckets, and eaten protein. Through this time, the iron temple has taught me more about life than anything else – mostly discipline, consistency, and dedication.

When friends ask me for advice based on how I improved my appearance and increased strength, I always give them the same answer:

“Train hard, eat healthy, sleep well. Repeat for five years.”

They look at me like I’m insane. They expect some sort of secret trick, a miracle exercise that makes their muscles blow up like popcorn in a microwave. They think there’s an easy way, but…

It’s supposed to be hard.

It was the biggest lesson I learned in over a decade in the gym – growth comes through hardship.

This doesn’t mean you should purposely grind yourself to the bone or make things extra hard just for the sake of it.

But stop looking for easy ways out, when you could just be doing the work.

Doing the work is the shortcut.

How To Fall In Love With What Matters

Deep down, 99% of people know this already.

Yet, miracle diet pills still sell like hotcakes, get-rich-quick schemes are actually making some swindler rich, and magic workout solutions are a billion dollar industry.

Why?

Because we don’t like to feel uncomfortable.

I’ve faced tons of hardships over the last few years with my business, going to therapy, and traveling full-time.

You can’t avoid the hard work – but you can fall in love with it.

Here’s how:

Doing the work is the reward

Most people act based on results

Work hard so you get money. Support your partner so they’re happy. Exercise so you get a six-pack.

The problem is this leads you to duality thinking. Do something you don’t like to get something you like. Subconsciously, if the reward is good, you’ll view the work as bad.

But what would happen if you turned the work into the reward? What if you felt the gratitude and beauty in the hardship? What if you focused on the pride and self-esteem you get from putting in the effort?

Hard would turn into something good.

Face the pain. Be grateful for your challenges. Dedicate yourself to the creation.

“The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.” – African Proverb

Think in 100s

I first heard this idea from prodigy entrepreneur Alex Hormozi.

He built a business valued at over $100 million, goes viral on social media every day, is super jacked, and has the rare combination of being off-the-charts smart and super humble at the same time.

Instead of thinking about how many hours he needs to put in or how many times he needs to do something, he uses a 100X multiplier:

“How many 100s of hours do I need to spend on this? How many 100s of tries do I need to become good? How many 100s of times do I need to do this until I’ve accomplished my goal?”

This thinking instantly shifts your mind to longer time horizons and more commitment.

It pulls you away from expecting results quickly and giving up when you don’t have them.

Instead, you’re in it for the long run.

100s of workouts until you get jacked. 100s of hours until you master a skill. 100s of iterations until you get it right.

It’s harder, but it will get you 100 times the results.

Consistency over Intensity

Cheetahs are the fastest mammals, with top speeds of 75 miles per hour.

However, they can only hold that speed for about 30 seconds, which equals a distance of .62 miles covered.

At the same time, the African Buffalo covers large distances every day by slowly trotting across the lands between grazing sessions. However, it has to walk all the time – and sometimes gets eaten.

If you can combine both, you’ll have the best of both worlds.

Don’t burn or bore yourself out by doing too much all at once or too little forever.

Go hard at it, rest, repeat.

Remember This And You Will Go Far

Shortcuts are seductive.

They lure you in through grand promises with little effort. But a dead investment is still dead, even if it’s small.

If achieving big goals was easy, everybody would do it – but most people don’t have tons of money, a magazine-cover body, or a textbook healthy relationship.

The truth is most good things in life are hard to get.

View the work as the reward. Think in 100s. Put in intensity consistently.

The only shortcut is doing the work.

The only way to speed it up is patience.

The only easy way is the hard way.

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” – Jerzy Gregorek

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Moreno Zugaro

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April 15, 2024
5 Simple Strategies I Use To Be Super Productive After Work
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Improve your life, not just your performance on the job.

You are not your work.

You know that, but like lots of men, you don’t treat yourself that way. You spend your best waking hours at the job, come home exhausted, and have no energy and time left to work on yourself.

I don’t judge this – it’s what society encourages and normalizes.

But if you’re honest with yourself, you know that if you spent just a fraction of your time and energy on being productive after work:
- You’d look in the mirror again and be proud of how fit you are
- You could achieve the dreams you’ve had for so long
- You could be a better dad and husband
But when you come home, you’re just too tired and don’t have enough time. All you want to do is relax after a long, hard day.

“Don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” – Dolly Parton

The truth is, the situation won’t change by itself. You’ll have to figure out other ways to make time for your self-improvement.

Here are five of them.

Use This Powerful Physics Principle To Your Advantage

Physics can teach you a lot about life.

For example, the energy needed to get an object in motion is much higher than the one needed to keep it in motion.

This is true for life as well – overcoming initial friction often takes a big push.
- Getting up from the sofa to go to the gym
- Turning off the TV and picking up a book
- Dropping your ego and learning something you aren’t good at yet
In our minds, there’s a massive mountain to move. We often feel like if we don’t do a lot of something, it isn’t worth it.

You can reduce this initial friction by committing to just five minutes.

Even though I’ve been working out regularly for over a decade, I still have days where I don’t want to go to the gym. When that happens, I commit to only one exercise. I allow myself to leave after if I want to.

By the time I’ve completed it, I’m already warmed up, hyped, and in the flow of lifting weights. Paradoxically, it becomes harder to stop than it is to keep going – this is another physics principle known as Newton’s First Law:

“An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an external force.”

All you need is the initial push. Make the perceived challenge small enough so you can get started easily. Then, you just have to keep rolling.

Five minutes is all it takes.

Don’t Lose Your Momentum

Laziness is a luxury.

There’s the adage “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” It’s true. During times in my life when I didn’t have much to do, the simplest tasks could overwhelm me.

I just wasn’t in the mode of doing anything.

However, when I worked full-time, did a side project, and went to the gym six days a week, time seemed to magically appear out of thin air. Looking back at it now, I realize it was because I didn’t make time for being lazy.

Instead of heading home after work, I went straight to the gym. Instead of plopping down on the couch after, I warmed up my meal prep. Instead of leaving the dishes in the sink, I cleaned them up straight away.

This doesn’t mean you should stuff your schedule to the brim and burn yourself out.

Just don’t lose the momentum – do things while you’re still in “doing mode” from work. It seems harder, but makes it easier.

Once you’re done with working on yourself, you can fully enjoy your relaxation.

Turn It Into A Shoulder-By-Shoulder Activity

Ever heard of shoulder-by-shoulder activities?

It’s when you’re doing something by yourself, but with each other – like going for a hike with your buddy or hitting the gym with a training partner.

Psychologist Paul Wright observed men tend to be more comfortable with these shoulder-by-shoulder activities than women.

I’ve noticed it myself – doing things with others adds a level of accountability, commitment, and enjoyment. If you have a slow day, your partner can get you up to speed – and vice versa.

So instead of tackling everything as a solo mission, get someone to do it with you.
- Read with your partner on the couch
- Watch self-improvement courses with a friend
- Do house or yard work with your kids
Often, the other person doesn’t even have to do much.

I’m perfectly happy with my partner sitting next to me reading a book while I’m working. Them just being there can be enough motivation, accountability, and support to get me going.

Walking the path can be tough, especially when you’re exhausted – so get someone to walk with you.

Use These Approaches To Deal With All The Small Tasks

I love the German language because of all the quotes and sayings.

One of my favorites?

“Small animals also shit.” (There’s a reason we call ourselves the country of poets and thinkers – this sentence isn’t it.)

The English equivalent would be “many a little makes a mickle.”

Small things are often overlooked because they’re, well, small. But if you collect enough of them, they pile up and become a tough mountain to climb. Before you know it, you have a to-do list that’s longer than Santa Claus’s beard after a long night of drinking with the elves.

The good news?

If you approach these tasks properly, you’ll plow through them in no time and feel great for accomplishing so much.

Here are my favorite techniques:
- Batch processing
  Group similar tasks together – for example, anything that’s exercise-related, e.g. finding a gym, creating a meal plan, and watching a video on proper form. It’s much easier to do them all because you’re already in the right mode.
- Two-minute-rule
  If you can do something in under two minutes, do it right away. This gives you a quick win instead of wasting mental bandwidth by keeping it in your mind.
Small things can add up – use that to your advantage.

Hack The Motivation-Friction-Equation

All human behavior follows the same equation.

Motivation > friction = you do it.

Friction > motivation = you don’t do it.

Being tired, having big tasks you don’t like, and not knowing where to start create friction. Having energy, doing what you enjoy, and an enjoyable outcome increase motivation. If your willingness to do something is bigger than the resistance associated, you’ll do it – simple as that.

This also explains why it’s so hard to do things after work. You have little energy, willpower, and drive. Your motivation is as low as the shawty with the apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur in Flo Rida’s song.

I’m living in Colombia right now and although I’ve committed to taking Spanish classes, doing them after a long workday was a pain in the neck.

Then, I found a learning website that has interesting documentaries and entertaining videos with native speakers explaining why some penguins’ poop is pink in Spanish, sorted by language level.

It made learning a breeze because this skyrocketed my motivation – I was looking forward to the videos every day.

Make your tasks fun and you’ll be much more likely to do them:
- Turn on some music while you’re doing household chores
- Make it a game of seeing how much you can get done in 20 minutes
- Combine it with something you enjoy (e.g. watch your favorite show while doing cardio, have a nice tea while reading, etc.)
- Set challenges (e.g. read 20 pages) and reward yourself immediately (with a nice drink or your favorite tunes)
The higher your motivation, the more friction you can overcome.

How To Stay Productive After Work And Focus On Your Self-Improvement

There’s more to your weekdays than your job.

The last thing you want to do is spend all your energy in the office and then survive through the rest of your waking hours until it’s time to sleep and start the whole cycle anew.

Use these five strategies to make sure you invest as much energy into yourself as into your day job.
1. Make getting started easy by committing to just five minutes.
2. Keep the momentum going after work.
3. Turn your tasks into shoulder-by-shoulder activities.
4. Use batch processing and immediate action to take care of the small stuff.
5. Add something that makes your chores fun.
Invest in yourself – it will pay off for the rest of your life.
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Moreno Zugaro

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April 1, 2024
This Unusual Approach Helps Me Beat Procrastination 99% Of The Time
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One of the biggest lessons I learned from spending eight days in total darkness.

This sounds paradoxical, but…

…I learned one of my biggest lessons about stopping procrastination by doing nothing for eight days.

Last year, I spent over a week in a darkness retreat, where I sat in pitch-black without anything to do. Okay, that’s not 100% correct – I actually did a lot. A lot of feeling.

Because there’s nothing to distract yourself, you have to sit with whatever emotion comes up. It’s an incredibly tough, yet very healing experience. But what does that have to do with procrastination?

A lot.

Procrastination can be super frustrating because you:
- Don’t move forward
- Feel stuck and get mad at yourself
- Don’t reach your goals, which frustrates you even more and starts the whole cycle anew
“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.” – Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa

This means the reasons behind your procrastination aren’t what you thought they were.

The True Reasons Why You Procrastinate Aren’t What You Think

Forget everything you think you know about procrastination for a minute.

Let go of all the beliefs you have about it – that you’re lazy, not disciplined, can’t focus, are bad with schedules, or whatever story you’ve been telling yourself.

Instead, look at procrastination from a different angle. If you want to know why you aren’t doing something, look at what doing it brings up in you:
- Discomfort because it’s hard or you don’t enjoy it (e.g. going to the gym)
- Fear of failure because you might not be good at it (e.g. learning a new skill)
- Fear of success because it would add more responsibility (e.g. having to deliver value to the clients of your side hustle)
To evade these uncomfortable emotions, your subconscious presents you with a simple solution.

“I’ll just watch one YouTube video, scroll a little bit, do this other thing…”

“Procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder.” – Mason Cooley

This means that instead of managing your time better, you need to regulate your emotions better.

You need to learn to deal with the fear, discomfort, stress, and everything that comes with doing what you need to do.

This will allow you to dive head-first into it rather than finding cheap excuses and easy ways out.

Here’s how.

How To Stop Procrastinating – By Doing Nothing

When I was in the darkness retreat, I did not have an easy way out.

There was no YouTube, no Instagram, and no other things I could do – all I could do was sit with the feeling.

To beat procrastination, you can do the same.

Instead of grabbing whatever distraction is within reach, take a deep breath and stay where you are.

All you need are five minutes in which you don’t allow yourself to do anything but the thing – or feel what comes up.

This will cause either of two things to happen:
- You feel through the discomfort, fear, and other emotions until you release them and get to work
- The discomfort of doing nothing becomes so big that you start working on the thing instead
This requires a heightened awareness so you can stop yourself before the distraction.

It’s okay if you don’t make it on the first try. When I started doing this, I sometimes only noticed after half an hour of scrolling through my phone what I was doing. Then, I pulled myself out of it and sat still.

If you struggle with this, here are a few tips that will help:
- Work on your awareness
  A few times during the day, stop what you’re doing, take a deep breath, and check in with yourself. This will help you recognize how you feel and when you’re trying to escape.
- Feel into your body
  Emotions are connected to physical sensations, usually in the chest and stomach. If you have a hard time exploring your feelings, simply observe the bodily sensation until it dissolves.
- Learn your patterns
  Most people have a specific pattern they engage in when faced with an overwhelming task. Mine is resistance, frustration, overwhelm, and then losing my train of thought because my brain gets foggy. Once you understand yours, you’ll have an easier time catching yourself.
Remember, you don’t have to do anything – you just have to sit still until you don’t want to anymore.

Wrap-Up To Help You Stop Procrastination Once And For All

If you procrastinate, you don’t have a time management problem – you just struggle to regulate your emotions.

Doing nothing to beat it might seem silly, but it’s exactly what will help.

The fear, discomfort, and overwhelm are much tougher to deal with than to reach for a quick distraction. But if you want to stop procrastinating, there’s no way around them. You can only go through.

Don’t allow yourself to do anything but the thing – or go through the emotions it causes.

Paradoxically, doing nothing like that will make you a lot more productive.
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Moreno Zugaro

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March 24, 2024