“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.” —Susan Sontag Journaling is not just for creatives. It’s not “woo woo.” It’s a tool for anyone who wants to think strategically. Here’s the idea: If you do it right, journaling is a tool for mind control — on yourself. That’s it. Want to stop with negative self-talk? Use journaling. Want to stay focused on a long-term project? Use journaling. No, don’t just “sit down and journal” and hope that it helps. Sure, that’s allowed, and it will help in a general kind of way. But you can also be ver ..read more

Steve Scott has an update on his book, Habit Stacking. The premise of the book is very simple: You stack a series of small but impactful habits one on top of the other, and then do them all, one after the other, at a specific time every day, so that each habit in the chain is a kind of cue or trigger for the next habit. I sent a message to my email list about it, and it got me thinking about free will. I have been thinking about free will a lot, recently. Let me make a recommendation: Create one, simple habit stack from the 127 ideas in the book.* (* then let me know how it goes.) Why try habi ..read more

I’ve seen plenty of nerds on Internet forums say things like this: “What! You ordered a Diet Coke instead of a meal when you went out to a restaurant! Ugh! Your diet has taken over your life. What are you… some kinda moron? Don’t you understand moderation is good?” Oh gosh, no, my good sir! I have never heard that before. What a ground-breaking concept. Moderation is… good?! Gasp! And… going to… unhealthy extremes is… bad!? As in – just so we’re clear – I’m… NOT supposed to go to unhealthy extremes!?! ~ A hushed whisper falls over the crowd at this shocking revelation… ~ I mean, seriously. Let ..read more

Learn how to design a meal plan customized to your personal quirks, tastes and lifestyle I’m going to show you how to setup the ultimate meal plan. I’m talking a meal plan that helps you reach your goals nutritionally, and in its very setup (which is your custom design), it makes it easy to stick to your plan even when life gets wonky. It balances flexibility and adaptability with clear-cut boundaries. As you’ll see, I’m not really talking about a meal “plan,” so much as a personal system that keeps you on track. Why Should Anyone Listen to Me? For the simple reason that when I first got into ..read more

Premise: The best way to “get more motivation” is to use motivation to render motivation obsolete. If you haven't read the post about The Habit Spectrum, read that first, as I'll be using a lot of the same terms. You can pretty much consider this post part 2.  Also, as a side note, in this post, I will be using the term motivation, but a lot of this relates to willpower as well. You need more motivation to take a step forwards, to grow — but then you stop, you pause, you become comfortable and acclimated to that new position. You get to a point where you don’t need more motivation to stay whe ..read more

The habit spectrum is designed to get you thinking about the forces at work in habit change, motivation, and achieving specific goals. The habit spectrum, and the way I've visualized it, designed to help you think about what is working for you, and what is working against you. (In other words, the habit spectrum is just something I currently use to organize my thinking about these things, and hopefully other people find this sort of thinking useful.) Illustrated above in that image of the habit spectrum are two sets of forces: outer forces and inner forces. The outer forces, represented by the ..read more

From an iTunes review of the Smarter Sculpted Physique podcast: So much informative and useful content as well as fun to listen to. Scott, Kevin & Mike do an excellent job in bringing forth their knowledge and expertise. I'm looking forward to hearing more. I'd also really like to see a before and after picture of Mike. [my emphasis] All the best to you guys!! — Matt7782 Matt7782, first, thank you for listening to the podcast and for the review. I've actually thought about posting some of these pics for awhile, but I've been holding back. Your review has pushed me over the edge. So: than ..read more

So, you wanna diet, eh? Well then, if you want to avoid cheating on your diet or giving in and binging two weeks into your diet, you'll consider hunger, cravings, and your brain.  Here are three principles about hunger you should understand, in order to create a meal plan and diet that works for you, and prevents cheating on your diet. No meal plan can prevent cheating 100%, but a good meal plan can go a long way towards helping with this. Principle 1. For Fat Loss, Certain Forms of Hunger Are Necessary You won’t lose weight if you ..read more

I’m one of those people who raves about Scrivener. (Affiliate Link: Mac | Windows)  I have used it for writing my dissertation (my drafts, notes and research are all organised into one huge file — that file is just getting totally nuts, by the way). I have also used it for organising other, unrelated research, for general note-taking and outlining, for compiling books for Kindle, and a bunch of other things. Oh, and sometimes I use it to write stuff. Today, I want to show you how you can use Scrivener to structure your non-fiction book… and do it in a way that your new template FORCES you to ..read more