Useful and cope habits for 2024

[kratjeuh]

Given many of us are creating New Year's resolutions, I figured I'd make a list of actual useful habits and coping habits that I see flying around the forum and redpill community. Some may be controversial but let's not make this a whole debate, please.

Useful habits
- Every single task that can be done within 5 minutes, shall be done immediately: Procrastinating small tasks only makes them bigger.
- Every time you find something interesting, you make a note instead of trying to memorize it: You found a cool jacket but can't buy it right now, screenshot or photo. You see a cool tattoo as inspiration, screenshot.
- Gym and diet: Self-explanatory
- Skincare: Same weekly routine
- Always smell good: Make it a habit to buy good-smelling soap, washing products and apply perfume every time you step outside the house. You want to be known as the man who always smell amazing.
- When someone asks you something and you're unsure, tell him/her you want to think about it: Make this a habit so you stop making rushed decisions based on emotions.
- Buy a 1.5-2l bottle that you can fill with water and make sure it's empty before 5pm: I do this personally so I'm sure I've drank at least 2l of water before I stop working. An extra 1.5l in the gym and I'm always close to 4l daily.
- Always wear a watch (except during sport): People with class wear watches just like fashionable men, don't forget it.
- No screens 1h before and after sleep: Your brain doesn't need dopamine after waking up and screentime before bed is proven to make your sleep worse.
- Bold actions: Try to take a bold action at least weekly. This can be saying hi to a cute girl or going to an event alone. Just make sure it's something out of your comfort zone.

Cope habits
- Meditation: If you spend time meditating and then do nothing for the rest of the day, you've done nothing that day. If it genuinely helps your focus and mood then it's ok, but many people cope by doing meditation when they just have nothing to do to make the hour count.
- Nofap: You only lose testosterone for a small period after fapping so it doesn't affect your muscle growth at all. Unless you are addicted to fapping, nofap is basically just made so that YouTubers can make easy self-improvement videos.
- Reading: Just reading books to read books doesn't make your life better. Unless you selectively choose books and take notes/do the exercises in the book, it's time you could've spent better.
- Learning theory: There's people who know everything about looksmaxing but barely go to the gym. There's people who know all game openers, but never cold approach. You can learn most necessary stuff about any subject you want in 1 day, spend your other time actually doing what you've learned instead of looking for more theory.
- Making your bed every morning: Common habit for beginners but this adds nothing to your life.


Hopefully this can help some people out with making their list.

 

[Squilliam]

- Meditation: If you spend time meditating and then do nothing for the rest of the day, you've done nothing that day. If it genuinely helps your focus and mood then it's ok, but many people cope by doing meditation when they just have nothing to do to make the hour count.

Meditation is good but it needs to be done consistently. Doing 10 minutes of meditation once a week isn't going to help you much. And yeah, if the only thing you accomplished that day is meditation, then you haven't achieved much. That being said I think most people severely underestimate the positive benefits of meditation, it can definitely help other aspects of your life. But you still need to take action in those aspects.

- Nofap: You only lose testosterone for a small period after fapping so it doesn't affect your muscle growth at all. Unless you are addicted to fapping, nofap is basically just made so that YouTubers can make easy self-improvement videos.

I agree, NoFap is only beneficial if you're addicted to fapping. This is something I can actually relate to though. All the other benefits touted are bullshit IMO.

- Reading: Just reading books to read books doesn't make your life better. Unless you selectively choose books and take notes/do the exercises in the book, it's time you could've spent better.

It really depends on the book and how you apply the knowledge in the book. I've used knowledge in self-help books I've read to change my life decisions. Or at the very least, it's allowed me to change my perspective on certain things. Obviously just reading a book and expecting your life to magically change is delusional.

Also reading is good for your cognitive abilities and helps expand your vocabulary. But yeah it's not going to fix your sex life or mental health or any of those larger goals.

 

[Bman]

I see what you're trying to do and it's beautiful. I am only commenting because I feel its doing more harm than good.

Sanctioning certain habits as useful and others as not, is an elementary view. All of them are tools or strategies to be implemented for a particular purpose.

Every one of your "cope" habits were tremendously valuable to my improvement at particular points in my journey, and I would not be the man I am today had I not done them.

• Meditation: I started meditation 6 years ago and have done it consistently every day. At the time it was to help with anxiety. Now I use it to gain a clearer view of reality. Everyone is wearing shit colored glasses and does not see reality. When my thinking is too narrow, I do meditation to expand my view. When my thinking is too wide, I do meditation to focus inwardly. When my thoughts are looping, I do meditation to see the space between the thoughts and quiet the mind. When I have anxiety, I do meditation focusing on the breath to regulate. Recently, when I feel insecure, I do the ideal parent figure protocol meditation to find security. I know this has had a direct effect on my dating life by women telling I have a very calm, stable, confident demeanor which makes them feel safe.
• NoFap: I also stopped constant masturbation at the beginning of my self improvement journey. I identified that it was keeping me from connecting from my wife and I was not in tune with my own pleasure.
• Reading: If I were to say one habit that has changed my life more than any other, it's reading. I don't think anyone reads to just read. Sure, some books I read and they did not immediately have a direct correlation to my life in that moment, but they compounded my knowledge and worldview which does change the trajectory of your life over time. Yes, it's more effective to choose books that you can apply to improve your situation. But books also help you in the identification phase. I also may not be alive without reading. You label it as a cope habit, but coping is not necessarily a bad thing either. One goal of mine when I started reading was coping with the reality of my existence as human. Had I not done so, I may have continued my nihilistic view on my life, called it quits, and stepped in front of a car, something I had contemplated a few times. Furthermore, an hour spent reading a book can be the highest leverage item of that day. The right books have a decade or several decades of another human implementing tools to improve their life, or lives of millions, and you can learn it within that hour. How many men have improved because they read Andy's tinder guide? The key is to read, ask yourself "How does this apply to me?" while reading, and then apply.
• Learning Theory: Same as the above. It's only a problem if you're not applying. Learn > Apply > Learn > Apply, repeat ad nauseam until death.
• Making your bed every morning: My wife used to do this for us. After the divorce I continued to do so. This is a perfect example of understanding what the purpose of the habit is and how it serves your life. For me it kick starts a set of habits in the morning, which keeps my mind free for contemplation. Some of my best thinking is born during that time. All the guides I've written on this forum started in my mind during that time. Furthermore, I live in a studio apartment. If I did not make the bed in the morning, I would see it all day long. It would continue to grab my attention. Attention which I would rather have focused on work. So this simple habit adds a lot to my life.

I could also go through each of your "useful" habits and show when they are coping. I paticuraly laughed at the watch one.

Every man needs to take stock of his own life, asses where it may be improved, and choose effective tools for making that improvement. Where people go wrong is when they follow a habit given by another without understanding the purpose of the habit. Without understanding the purpose of the habit, you are unable to effectively evaluate if that habit will improve your life in the way you wish.

What may be more helpful for this post is for everyone to list habits that have been helpful to them, given their context, and others can decide if it my be useful to them.

 

[Squilliam]

I could also go through each of your "useful" habits and show when they are coping. I paticuraly laughed at the watch one.

Yeah, I had the same thoughts honestly. Meditation and reading are cope habits but wearing a watch isn't?

I'd be curious if kratjeuh has actually tried meditating for an extended period of time before spouting stuff like this

 

[Zug]

Kinda agree and disagree with everything here. I think the analysis is too surface level.

Theory/Reading has been very, very important to me, but I am rarely a person who masturbates to theory. I try to actively use it right away, and see it as a special form of practicing where I can get exposed to new ideas to try. Early on, theory can be too stick and very harmful when the theory is wrong. Lots of stuff I read early on I considered gospel and it took a lot of exposure to seeing the theories fail over and over and over before I was willing to discard bad theories. I noticed the earlier in life I got exposed to any theory, the more difficult it was to dislodge later if it proved to be false. When you have a large base of experience, theory reading can really help you form connections in your experience and also expose you to blind spots. Reading theory without experience is useful but very dangerous. If you read something that's wrong you have no means to question or evaluate it and have to either accept it or reject it axiomatically due to your inexperience. On a few occasions I got exposed to really, really good beginner primers in a new endeavor it was EXTREMELY helpful. It is borderline impossible to evaluate what is a good primer when you have no experience in the field though.

If it wasn't for reading and theory I would never have been able to conquer being an incel.


NoFap one is complicated by the difference between porn watching, habitual porn watching, extreme kink focus, chronic/habitual use, and purely physical effects.

The purely physical effects are pretty minor, but not zero.
Habitual porn use and extreme kink focus effects, are extremely extremely harmful, especially over long periods of time.
Early exposure and use of porn is also extremely harmful.
Long term porn use by incels is also extremely harmful.
Non extreme genre porn use by people having regular sex is minor, unless they're having trouble performing sexually.

Water consumption is highly overrated. I haven't seen anything make less difference in my life and be talked about more.

Bold action / Doing scary things / Facing fears head on is extremely, extremely beneficial and rarely discussed. Most people break down the success formula to being: Hard work + Good strategy. That's true a lot of the time, but courage and the ability to face fear is a roadblock that cannot be overcome by either hard work or planning. Success in many fields does not require courage, but there are a few avenues of life where it completely negates your ability to move forward. I know a lot of very smart people who work very, very hard that are failing or have minimal success because they're completely throttled by their inability to take action when things become scary. Courage is the rarest and hardest virtue. You have to be willing to look at things that are ugly and scare you.

 

[kratjeuh]

Yeah, I had the same thoughts honestly. Meditation and reading are cope habits but wearing a watch isn't?

I'd be curious if kratjeuh has actually tried meditating for an extended period of time before spouting stuff like this

Obviously, I've tried all these things and I've explicitly mentioned that they are very cope if you're just doing them to do them.

Bman This post is made because many people don't use these strategies for a particular purpose. You'd surely agree that reading a book a month is useless if the set book didn't move you closer to any goal. At that point, you're just tricking your brain that you're doing things to progress whilst in reality, you don't. I got stuck in this cycle hence the warning to not do them for the sake of doing them. You'd be surprised how many people meditate for 30 minutes and then do nothing for the rest of the day but be content they self-improved for 30 minutes.

As for the watch and perfume part, these are perfect examples of no drawback easy habits. It takes 10 seconds to spray perfume and wear your watch, unlike greater time loss on other habits.
Being called fashionable (a watch is proven to be the nr1 accessory women like) isn't earned by having 6 good fashion Tinder pics and looking good on a date, you get this by being consistently fashionable. The same goes for always smelling good.


I made this post with the best intention to help beginners navigate through all the information they've been receiving from various sources. The issue with the cope habits is that they require some form of experience to not mindlessly do them. Calling it like this grabs the attention of beginners whereas experienced posters understand that there are benefits to reap if the conditions are met.

 

[Zug]

Some habits are good, but I wouldn't exactly call them marks of character.

Wearing a watch and 1-2 other pieces of jewelry, good fashion, nice and clean shoes, always smelling good, taking care of your skin, teeth, and hair. Having a clean place, being able to entertain. All these things are good and useful, and they're habits worth internalizing. They don't make you a good person, or a strong person. They make you more useful and desirable. That's not a replacement for anything else though.

Some of these habits take some real effort to get comfortable with. Its work worth doing.

99% of the reason you make your bed in the morning is a symbolic act of aiming up and keeping promises to yourself. It simultaneously true that it doesn't really do anything while it acts as a powerful internal and external statement. If you want to be cynical about the latter, convince a kid who lives in a broken home to start cleaning their room and making their bed every morning, then have them tell you how everyone else in their home reacts. There is a reason they react so strongly, and the fact that they react so strongly is proof that its not bullshit.