Book Recommendations

 

Reading is the most consistent aspect of my life over the past couple of decades.

Women have come and gone. Friends have come and gone. I’ve made and saved and spent money. I’ve been fat and fit and jacked.

But books have always been there. I read a lot and also believe in using audiobooks to avoid wasting time. Here’s my review of Audible, an audiobook subscription service I subscribe to. You can get a free book during their trial offer period.

I have boxes of book from college stashed at my parents house. I have boxes of books that my ex-wife probably threw away. I’ve donated carousels of books to libraries over the years.

A few books stand out.

People want my book recommendations. You may be disappointed as you’ll notice something. I’m a nerd.

The only reason I’m such a bad ass now is because I was bullied as a child. I had to learn how to win a street fight or else suffer the indignities of never-ending ass beatings and the shame of knowing I was weak.

If I had lived in a sane, civilized world, I wouldn’t be this vanilla gorilla. I’d be a poet.

By the way, if you are used to only reading blogs, some of these books will knock you on your ass.

But you will have an understanding of the world and yourself that fewer than 1% of men have.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Amazon)

Unbridled will meets the Wild West in this tale of violence and savagery. Although the violence is extensive, it’s not gratuitous. McCarthy has a point.

Violence and war are as natural to men as sleeping. Men will always seek warfare. In the Wild Wild they will murder and maim. In the modern world, they will start businesses and start “Twitter wars.”

The means may change but the motivation remains the same – the will to conquer and destroy.

Blood Meridian is lyrically riche prose. If you grew up reading the King James Version Bible, you’ll find Blood Meridian to be damned poetic.

  Catch-22 (Amazon)

It’s fiction that you should read like it’s non-fiction, as it’s one of the best explication of human thinking around. It also got me over puppy love. I was 19 when I read it, and could not understand why this girl whom I treated nicely ended the relationship to date a jerk. She wants a nice guy but if you’re nice she doesn’t want you – that’s a Catch-22. More broadly: People want what they want until they get it, in which case they don’t want it anymore. This is completely nuts, but such is the human condition.

On the Genealogy of Morals (Amazon)

Where did morality come from? What drives it? What’s its purpose? Nietzsche was a philogist, and it showed. Through tracing the history and development of morality, we learn that morality exists for one reason – to oppress.

  How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie (Amazon)

I listed to this audiobook as a humble teenage boy during a road trip. It changed my life.

Dale Carnegie (yes, the same guy who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People) gives you countless methods to learn how to overcome anxiety.

It’s an easily accessible book that is also deep. In fact, I try copying his writing style.

Dale Carnegie was also doing lists before list posts were popular.

How to Break the Worry Habit Before It Breaks You

• Keep busy
• Don’t fuss about trifles
• Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries
• Cooperate with the Inevitable
• Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more
• Don’t worry about the past

Seven Ways to Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace and Happiness

• Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope
• Never try to get even with your enemies
• Expect ingratitude
• Count your blessings, not your troubles
• Find Yourself and Be Yourself (Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You)
• Try to profit from your losses
• Create happiness for others

Six Ways to Prevent Fatigue and Worry and Keep Your Energy and Spirits High

• Rest before you get tired
• Learn to relax at your work
• Protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home

Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry

• Clear your desk of all the papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand
• Do things in the order of their importance
• When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision
• Put enthusiasm into your work

The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzengger (Amazon)

Arnold is one of the most interesting men to have ever lived. His success is due to one thing – pain. Most people move away from pain. They think that the absence of pain leads to pleasure. Yet people who have lived pain-free lives are boring and almost always unsuccessful. Always seek pain in what you do, because pain leads to pleasure. That’s true of life inside the weight room and outside of the weight room.

The Moral Animal by Robert Wright (Amazon)

In the Moral Animal, Wright introduces evolutionary psychology to a wider audience. I read all of the original books (e.g., The Selfish Gene, Sociobiology) after reading Wright’s book. The Moral Animal does a great job of summarizing all of the earlier works and is a great introduction to evolutionary psychology.

The Nicomachean Ethics (Amazon)

While there is much good in the Ethics, most important of all is Aristotle’s discussion of friendship. No one after Aristotle has anything interesting to say about friendship, and if a person created his friendships based on the Ethics, he would live a fulfilled life.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Amazon)

Although I outgrew my childish objectivism, Rand does a remarkable job of describing the ressentiment (a concept from Nietzsche) that public officials and so-called public servants feel towards productive members of society.

Those who claim to act in the public interest – characters such as Wesley Mouch – are actually haters.

Public servants very often hate those who are more successful and directly undermine them.

Or they seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the public. Al Gore says he is fighting global warming. Yet he flies on gas-guzzling private jets and lives in a Tennessee McMansion that sucks the power grid dry. Al Gore earns six-figure speaking fees. WHy doesn’t he give this money to the poor? Does he really need $100 million dollars?

Al Gore, like Goldman Sachs, lobbies for cap-and-trade and continues to propagandize about global warming. Why? Because the best way to enrich one’s self is to hide the profit motive underneath a cloak of public service.

Never trust anyone who says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence (Amazon)

Gerry Spence fills up a room. When he walks into a room, you feel it before you see him. Your neck hairs will stand up.

In fact, I have lot of rich people. I’ve met Mark Zuckerberg. I’ve had dinner at Sheryl Sandberg’s home with deci-millionaires and billionaires.

They have no presence, especially compared to someone like Gerry Spence. I’ve attended several of his training courses and there is something about him that you cannot explain with words. You meet the man and … you just feel something.

If you want to learn how to become charismatic, How to Argue and Win Every Time is a great start.

Bonus: Sometime I’ll tell how I got fired for calling Gerry Spence a limousine liberal on my old legal blog.

Great Dialogues of Plato (Amazon)

If you want to become a better writer or thinker, you have to learn how to ask better questions.

Socrates got me thinking philosophically, and changed how I questioned common truths.

I don’t agree with Plato’s metaphysics (Forms). The value in Plato is learning to question everything.

Theory of Positive Disintegration by Kazimierz Dąbrowski (Amazon)

I have had a “nervous breakdown.” Society teaches that such breakdowns are harmful, when in fact breakdowns are necessary for spiritual and personal growth.

In a world of child molestation, animal cruelty, false rape accusations, and all around oppressiveness: How can a decent person not have a nervous breakdown?

According to Dabrowski, every complex person will have a nervous breakdown. These breakdowns can lead to higher levels of consciousness.

The disintegration of lower-levels of consciousness is positive. Neurosis and breakdowns are not diseases. They are merely stages that a complex man will undergo on his question for truth.

The Little Prince (Amazon)

Yes, The Little Prince s a “kid’s book.” It’s also a book I’ve read at least a dozen times.

In 70 pages – with pictures – I challenge anyone to better describe love (the rose), the obsession with money (the fat banker), and vicious cycles (the alcoholic).

The Psychology of Judgment and Decisionmaking (Amazon)

More than any other book in the past few years, The Psychology of Judgment and Decisionmaking  changed the way I think. It’s an introduction to cognitive bias.

The Psychology of Judgment and Decisionmaking has changed how I think about my own life, and the means and methods I use when persuading others. I bought several copies to give as gifts, and recommended it to everyone I respected.

Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson – especially Self Reliance (Amazon)

I’ve been reading Emerson since my teenage years and still am inspired by his message.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” Free online, too, if you Google around. 

Original Article

 

6 HABITS THAT WILL MAKE YOU MORE PRODUCTIVE

Over the years I’ve developed simple work and life habits that have helped me get things done. I’d like to share six of those with you now.

1. Do work in blocks of one hour

Your brain can not handle continuous, neverending work. Like a muscle that becomes tired of exertion, it needs frequent periods of rest. Therefore you should only do work in blocks of one hour. During this hour, do not check your phone for messages, do not go on the internet, and do not socialize. The hour is sacred in that you must stay on your task until the timer says you are done. Even if you don’t want to do the work, you are only allowed to stare blankly at the task before you instead of seeking out entertainment or distraction.

This is the main strategy I use to write books. A significant portion of my one hour blocks is spent staring at the blinking cursor on my screen, but I prevent myself from doing anything else. It actually happens that staring becomes more boring than working, so gradually I pile words onto the document. Compare that to most normal people who perform work in short 10 or 15 minute increments. It takes them 3 hours to do 1 genuine hour of work.

2. Be deliberate, slow, and thoughtful in every task you perform

You should be as focused on performing trivial tasks as important ones because this trains your brain to work at high levels. Otherwise, lazy thinking and poor performance will seep into the tasks that you actually want to perform well at.

I dislike cleaning my apartment, but the energy I put into it is the same as writing this article. I clean slowly and thoroughly, knowing that this is training for other tasks that have more weight in life. Rushing also causes you to make mistakes, often prolonging the task longer than if you did it carefully in the first place. Creating a habit of excellency means you have to do everything excellently, no matter how trivial. Even when I wash dishes by hand, I make sure to do a first-rate job. If anything is worth doing in life, it’s worth doing right.

3. Have a readily accessible to-do list that you constantly update

On my laptop I use an old version of Google Desktop that has a To Do List module. It stays on top of my screen so that I can constantly see the tasks that I have to perform. Before I go to bed, I have all the tasks lined up for the next day, so that when I wake up there is no doubt about what I have to do. This list is always within view so that I can never “forget” my work. If there is one thing in life that I voluntarily enslave myself to, it’s this list, because it makes me extremely productive on the projects I want to complete.

4. Schedule more work than you’re capable of

The less work I schedule for the next day, the less likely I am able to complete them. When I wake up and see that my list is light, the slacking begins immediately. I know that I have much time to complete everything, so my brain allows me to dick around. Next thing I know it’s the end of the day and I haven’t finished everything.

On the other hand, when I wake up and see a crushing list of tasks, I get to work immediately, fearful that I may not finish them. Even if I don’t finish it all, I may end up doing twice as much work than if I scheduled a light day. Slacking begets slacking, and if you want to get a lot done, simply overwhelm yourself with work. Since you know you don’t have a minute to spare, you refuse to take “5 minute breaks” that prolong into hours.

5. Settle your mind before undertaking difficult tasks

In the past I recommended watching episodes of Seinfeld to get ready to chat with girls, since it gets your mind primed for talking. You should also prime your mind for hard tasks. The most reliably way is book reading, which acts as a transfer station for deeper focus. Read a book for 15-30 minutes to calm your mind and then immediately start your one hour block of work. With time you won’t need these training wheels. For example, if I now want to approach a girl, I can do it cold without any prior warm-up, but this the result of many years of practice. Use a warm up until you get to that point.

6. In times of stress, write down what is bothering you

Things tend to go wrong simultaneously. You were coasting along fine and then suddenly everything is turning upside down. You feel dread and anxiety, making it difficult to get through the day. Alleviating this is quite simple. Simply grab a piece of paper and make a list of everything that is bothering you. Then for each item write the next possible action you can perform to resolve it. Sometimes this means making a telephone call or simply waiting for a certain date to arrive. Within a day of writing the list, your anxiety will decrease because having concrete steps acts as a balm to anxiety, an emotional state that often arises from helplessness. The list takes away that helplessness and gets you through rough patches.

So these are my six habits that I’ve learned over the years and which are intertwined into my life. When you are seeing the results of my labor, you are actually seeing the above habits in action. I see no reason why men can’t implement them into their lives as well.

Master Red On Death

 

Master Red knows that a time will come when death takes a step towards his doorstep. He does not need to prepare for death because he is already prepared.

Master Red understands that his purpose is to join and serve, to fight for justice, to be modest, brave, and courageous, and to be an example to men younger or older. He aims to be a light in the darkness, the darkness which breeds wickedness and disorder.

As a light in the darkness, Master Red shines above to show the way, the way of the dream.

Master Red acknowledges that death involves decay, dissimulation, and separation, which are not the most positive vibrations humans can experience. However, everyone must go through this process, although it is unique to each individual.

And with that said, it can be supposed that death does not need permission to enter one's territory because unlike us, death has no free will. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid because death has no choice but to come. It is an honor to face death with dignity and preparedness.

Master Red’s Harem

Master Red is a warrior, and in addition, he has a harem of women who attend to his needs with care, enthusiasm, and an appropriate attitude (though not necessarily modesty in dress). Master Red has successfully led his harem and has come to realize the qualities that any woman, in his harem or otherwise, should possess for a harem to be successful.

The first quality is integrity, which is a more complex form of honesty and self-esteem. The second quality is flexibility, which means that any woman who should be in his harem needs to be understanding and adaptable because various situations can arise in a harem.

Another quality a woman should have is the capacity to give. A woman who is willing to give is also willing to be led. She is not rigid in her beliefs but is open and flexible about giving herself up to a bigger mission, which, in Master Red's case, is to be a mother or a divine huntress that protects the forest, also known as home, from harm.

Young men, do not be fooled by beauty, for it can also be a beast. I say this because some of you may not understand the female nature, the female social matrix, or how a woman works in general. But if you do understand them, Master Red has no further words for you. Instead, his words are aimed at the young men who do not understand them.

Young man, remember, and do not be dismayed. I am currently preparing a thesis, a body of work that I will introduce to you so that you, too, may learn about the female, her nature, and her social matrix.

There is a story which I will paraphrase about Hercules and two women, one considered vice and the other considered virtue. Virtue spoke to Hercules about toil, passion, reason, and will, while vice spoke of comfort and sloth.

 According to the story, Virtue and Vice approach Hercules and each try to persuade him to follow their path. Virtue speaks to Hercules about the virtues of toil, passion, reason, and will, while Vice speaks of the comforts of sloth and pleasure. In the end, Hercules chooses to follow Virtue and her path of hard work and self-discipline.

Master Red’s Guns

 

Image 1 

Master Red believes that Guns are tools as well, subsequently the first tool in Master Red’s Tool-Box is The South Korean K2C, which is equivalent to the American M4, with some coming with a foldable-buttstock that is less than 30 Cm short, and a handle for prescion assistance and better aim control. 

The South Korean K2C has entered Master Red’s Tool-Box because of its size, weight and feel. It is also a selective fire, gas operated weapon-chambered for a standard NATO 5.56x45 ammunition. 

Master Red Seeks Solitude

If you've ever struggled with addiction, you know how powerful the highs can be and how low the lows can take you. Once the high is gone, so is the excitement that comes with it. Without enough discipline, it's easy to fall into a persistent state of addiction.

Master Red has found a way to catch the dragon for life and have him do as you will. But just like any capture, you need skills, weapons, traps, vei, and experience to catch this mighty beast. In your quest to beat addiction, Master Red recommends that you prepare yourself mentally by finding solitude. In that solitude, remember why you wanted to beat addiction in the first place, who you've been chasing the dragon with, how long you've sought the dragon, and what purpose does this chase serve in your life.

Some of you might find that the dragon serves no purpose in your life, while others might find that it helped them reach maturity. Indeed, for most men, the dragon serves the purpose of growth, a moment of awakening. The chase is almost like a test of will and skill.

If you find that this dragon does not serve you, then your next step will be to catch the dragon by changing the scenery in which you're in, including the alliances you have, so that you can evaluate your purpose. Changing your scenery and finding your purpose will allow you to become aware of your own actions as you engage in self-conceived tasks and goals.

Master Red has the luxury of being born in the belly of mountain ranges. If he wills, he can walk to the bottom of a few mountains away from the eyes and ears of people. However, Master Red cannot tell you how to make time for your solitude in this writing. He's only here to inspire you to be by yourself for some time.

Remember that you don't need to go far to find solitude. Ironically, the further you go, the more you lose the way. It's best to be like the clouds in the sky, without form, ever-changing, ever-growing, within the kingdom that you'll always be king of – Master Red

Master Red on The Power of Silence

 Why Embracing Quietude Can Benefit Us All

Master Red has discovered that he thinks more clearly in silence. Consequently, he has compiled four compelling reasons why embracing silence can be advantageous.

1. Silence holds significance:

The majority of what we consider humanity and culture consists of memories, organic or spiritual, and lessons. Unless you have something truly valuable to contribute, silence reigns supreme. This applies not only to young men but also to women of all ages. Ladies, please consider the wisdom in being quiet. This is said with deep respect, as sometimes men simply yearn for moments of introspection, devoid of external voices.

While I acknowledge that women often process information through conversation, it's important to advocate for men who, for the most part, do not prioritize idle talk. Unless your life is in immediate peril, most of what you have to say to a man is inconsequential to his purpose. Moreover, even if it is relevant, he will always find solace and clarity in the embrace of silence.

2. The art of discretion:

Speaking reveals our true selves, and without caution, we may unintentionally expose our vulnerabilities to our adversaries. Therefore, it is prudent to cultivate a friendship with silence.

3. Harnessing the power of mystery:

Silence shrouds our plans, potentially unsettling our foes. Maintaining secrecy is vital in achieving victory in any endeavor, as silence breeds intrigue. Throughout history, silence has consistently kindled curiosity, which in turn stimulates interest from potential partners. It is important to note that this does not imply a complete cessation of communication; instead, conversations should be lighthearted and infused with humor. In doing so, one conserves words while simultaneously safeguarding against defeat.

4. The tranquility of solitude:

Solitude, known to alleviate stress and prevent depression in men, is a product of silence. Master Red concludes that the more a man talks, the more stress he accumulates. This theory stems from the understanding that men and women are polar opposites. Consequently, spending time in solitude serves as a powerful stress-reliever for men. Similarly, women find solace in conversation, which eases their burdens.

In light of these reflections, it is fitting to offer advice to women: allow your thoughts to quietly flourish, granting your partner the space for contemplation. Likewise, to young men, I encourage moments of silence, as they facilitate profound introspection.

Conclusion: 

Master Red's insights on the value of silence are profound. By embracing silence, we can attain clarity, safeguard our vulnerabilities, cultivate intrigue, and find solace. Let us honor the power of silence and its transformative potential in our lives.