Manvotional: The Gains of Drudgery

By drudgery, I mean work that in itself is not pleasant, that has no immediate effect in stimulating our best powers, and that only remotely serves the purpose of our general advancement. Such a definition may not be perfect, but it expresses with reasonable accuracy what we usually understand by the term.

Now, if this is what we mean by drudgery, it is clear that we are all drudges. We all have to do many things, day by day, which we would rather not do. Even in the callings that seem to present the most perfect correspondence between gifts and work, such as those of the writer or the artist, drudgery dogs the heels of all progress…We show some perception of these facts in our common sayings, that easy writing makes hard reading, and what costs a man little is usually worth little. But few of us have any adequate sense of the immense toil which lies behind the brilliant successes of the great artist or famous writer. And the same thing might be said of the lives of great statesmen, politicians, reformers, merchants, and memorable men in all walks of life. Examine such lives, and the amount of prolonged toil which lies behind all the glitter of public fame is enormous, and to the indolent even appalling. If any man of the Elizabethan period gives the impression of having achieved great things with a certain airy ease and instinctive facility of touch, it is Walter Raleigh. Yet it was of Raleigh that Elizabeth said, “he could toil terribly.” The same thing may be said of every great man, so that it is small wonder that we have learned to believe that genius itself is simply an infinite capacity for taking pains.

When a man grumbles about the drudgery of his lot, then I am entitled to conclude that he has not learned the discipline of work, and that it is native indolence rather than suppressed genius which chafes against the limitations of his environment. Browning, in his poem of The Statue and the Bust, has laid down the doctrine that it is a man’s wisdom to contend to the uttermost even for the meanest prize that may be within his reach, because by such strenuous contention manhood grows, and by the lack of it manhood decays.

The clerk who does not strive to be the best clerk in the office, the carpenter who is not emulous of being the best carpenter in the workshop, is not likely to achieve excellence in any other pursuit for which he imagines his superior talents better fitted….I have little faith in the youth who is always crying out against his condition, and telling an incredulous world what great things he could do if his lot were different. The boast of general talents for everything usually resolves itself into particular talents for nothing. The incompetent clerk, in nine cases out of ten, would be equally incompetent as writer, artist, or speaker. If I were adjured to help a youth to some sphere supposed to be better suited to his gifts, I should first of all need to be convinced that he had performed faithfully the duties of the inferior sphere in which he found himself. The superior talent always shows itself in the superior performance of inferior duties. It is the man who is faithful in little things to whom there is given authority over larger things. He who has never learned the art of drudgery is never likely to acquire the faculty of great and memorable work, since the greater a man is, the greater is his power of drudgery.

But the gains of drudgery are not seen only in the solid successes of life, but in their effect upon the man himself. Let me take in illustration a not infrequent case. Suppose a man gives up his youth to the struggle for some coveted degree, some honour or award of the scholarly life. It is very possible that when he obtains that for which he has struggled, he may find that the joy of possession is not so great as the joy of the strife. It is part of the discipline of life that we should be educated by disillusion; we press onward to some shining summit, only to find that it is but a bastion thrown out by a greater mountain, which we did not see, and that the real summit lies far beyond us still. But are we the worse for the struggle? No; we are manifestly the better, for by whatever illusion we have been led onward, it is at least clear that without the illusion we should not have stood as high as we do. So a man may either fail or succeed in gaining the prize which he covets; but he cannot help being the gainer in himself. He has not attained, but he has fitted himself for attaining. It is better to fail in achieving a great thing than to succeed in achieving a little one, and the struggle that fails is, in any case, to be preferred to the stolidity which never aspires. And why? Because the struggle is sure to develop certain great and noble qualities in ourselves. Thus, though such a man may not gain the prize he sought, he has gained a command over his chance desires, a discipline of thought, a power of patient application, a steadiness of will and purpose, which will stand him in good stead throughout whatever toils his life may know in the hidden years which lie before it. And even if he gain the prize he sought, the real prize is found not in a degree, a certificate, a brief taste of applause on a commemoration day, but in the deeper strength of soul, the wider range of wisdom, which the long discipline of unflagging effort has taught him. So true is this, that Lessing, who was among the wisest of thinkers, said, that if he had to choose between the attainment of truth and the search for truth, he would prefer the latter. The true gain is always in the struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a far higher question than what we get.

Lessons in Manliness from Charles Atlas

“Let Me Prove in 7 Days That I Can Make You a New Man!”

“The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac”

“Hey, Skinny! Yer Ribs Are Showing!”

It’s an ad the majority of readers out there can easily conjure up in their heads. A cartoon of a skinny, 97-pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face by a beefcake, uses the moment as inspiration to build his body, and comes back to the beach to give the bully his belated comeuppance.

The name associated with that image is just as familiar as the ad itself: Charles Atlas.

That these two images go hand-in-hand may have led you to see Atlas the man as a cartoonish caricature, or to view him in the light of the thousands of sometimes shady modern-day fitness hucksters who have taken Atlas’ old mail-order business model and ramped it up for the online age.

But Atlas was that true rarity, a man equal to the marketing hype—the real deal. He was a scrawny immigrant kid who transformed his body and launched a fitness revolution by creating a 12-lesson exercise course that was translated into seven languages and adopted by millions around the world, including King George VI, Joe DiMaggio, and Rocky Marciano. Even Mahatma Gandhi wrote to inquire about the program—no kidding!  The mail-order business Atlas started has now been around for 82 years (although it’s currently run by others—Atlas died in 1972), and thousands continue to look to his program for a way to get in shape.

For the men who lost confidence in themselves during the Great Depression, Charles Atlas was a source of hope and inspiration. Today he remains a symbol of virile strength and vitality, and his life offers us several lessons in manliness.

Lessons in Manliness from Charles Atlas
Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Charles Atlas was born Angelo Siciliano in Acri, Italy in 1893. When he was ten, his family immigrated to America, and he landed on Ellis Island not speaking a word of English.

Little Angelo swore he’d do great things, but his prospects didn’t look too promising. He was a skinny, sickly, slope-shouldered boy–easy pickings for the bullies in his tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Coming home one Halloween night, a bully beat him with a bag of ashes, knocking him out for an hour. “It seemed like he was beating the brains out of me,” Atlas recalled. When he came to, Atlas lumbered home, crawled into bed, and said a prayer, telling God he’d never let another man beat him.

But the pummelings continued. At age 15, Atlas really was a “97-pound weakling,” and said he really did get sand kicked in his face by a beefy lifeguard in front of a good-looking gal.

When he turned 17, Atlas finally reached his breaking point and made it his goal to change his body so that he could finally stand up for himself. He experimented with different exercises and developed his own fitness routine, and when he emerged on the beach after months of training, his friends were astonished at his transformation. “You look like that statue of Atlas on top of the Atlas Hotel!” one exclaimed. (When he later legally changed his name, he paired that heroic moniker with “Charlie,” a childhood nickname.)

From an auspicious start, Atlas built his body into a man’s whose measurements would be buried as part of the Crypt of Civilization at Oglethorpe University, which won’t be opened until 8113. He turned his most hated-weakness into his most famous strength.
Be open to inspiration.

How did Atlas go from a scrawny kid to what one scientist called, “the absolute masculine ideal?” From inspiration he received at a museum and a zoo, respectively.

While on a school field trip to the Brooklyn Museum, Atlas gazed with wonder at the statues of Greek gods, focusing particularly on the muscular physique of Hercules. He asked his teacher how he could build a similar body, and he suggested that the young man try lifting weights.

So Atlas began a diligent exercise program. He couldn’t afford to buy weights, so he jury-rigged some together at home and used them every morning. But after months of training, he wasn’t at all satisfied with the results—his body was still lean and lanky. Young Atlas wondered how to proceed.

The answer came as he was walking through the Bronx Zoo—a place he would often go to think. As he stopped to admire the lion exhibit, he saw that jungle beast stretch, and observed the way in which its “muscles ran around like rabbits under a rug.” That’s when his light bulb went off: The lion was strong but had never used a barbell or any exercise equipment. “He’s been pitting one muscle against each other!” Atlas thought.

Atlas went home, deciding to try something different—“working out” like the lion did. He discarded his weights and developed a new exercise program for himself—this one based on isometric exercises.  Pushing one arm against the other, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, leg lifts, and so on.

Atlas’ business partner, Charles Roman, said that Atlas continued to observe animals his whole life, always on the lookout for a bit of inspiration on how he might improve his fitness regimen.
Carve out your own path.

Many men these days are constantly looking to other people to give them a plan for every aspect of their lives, but sometimes the best plan is the one you create yourself!

In the early 20th century, the use of weights and barbells was just catching on, and bodybuilding was a fringe movement—strongmen were curiosities who performed at carnival sideshows. That’s where Atlas saw the most famous of the oldtime strongmen—Eugen Sandow. Atlas used Sandow as inspiration and tried lifting weights like his hero. He also experimented with pulleys, calisthenics, and other exercise programs that were popular at the time.

When these methods did not yield the results he was looking for, Atlas stopped trying the established regimens, and created one of his own. While isometric exercises had been around for thousands of years as part of disciplines like yoga, and were popular among professional strongmen, it was a relatively unknown approach to most Americans. Atlas self-reliantly experimented with and put together his own exercise routine. And he was able to put these time-honored exercises into a program that could be followed by the average joe. He came up with a way to make fitness truly accessible—his course was so popular because it required no equipment whatsoever and could be performed by anyone in their own home.

Atlas went against the grain, and in so doing, not only found success himself, but launched a whole cultural movement.
Always seize an opportunity…especially when it’s to work for yourself.

Having a skill or talent doesn’t automatically translate into success.

After building up his body, Atlas’ life didn’t immediately change. He continued to work as a leatherworker, before quitting to take a job as a janitor and a sideshow strongman at Coney Island. He would lie on a bed of nails while an audience member stood on his stomach, rip telephone books in half, and bend iron bars into U’s. But these kinds of stunts were common on the strongman circuit, and Atlas might have labored in obscurity forever had he not been noticed by an artist in 1916.

The commissioning of public statues was on the upswing, but artists were having trouble finding worthy models to pose for their sculptures. When the artist spied Atlas one day on the beach, he asked him to come back to the studio to pose for him. Atlas was unsure about doing it, but decided to see how the opportunity played out. Other artists heard about the man with the incredibly well-proportioned body, and soon Atlas was in great demand, running from one studio to another, and collecting $100 a week.

But modeling did not satisfy Atlas’ great restlessness and ambition. In 1921, he submitted a picture to the “World’s Most Beautiful Man,” photo contest which was sponsored by the founder of Physical Culture Magazine, Bernarr MacFadden, and he easily won the $1,000 prize. A year later, he won MacFadden’s “World’s Most Developed Man” contest, beating out 775 men in a showdown staged publicly at Madison Square Garden.  This time, the prize was either $1,000 or a screen test for the starring role in a new Tarzan film. Atlas took the money. He didn’t want his future to be at the mercy of Hollywood execs; he wanted to start own business and be in charge of his own destiny. A wise choice…after all, who remembers the name of the actor who starred in The Adventures of Tarzan?
Be humble enough to admit when you’re in over your head.

Atlas invested his $1,000 in selling his fitness course by mail. In the first two years of business, several thousand orders were placed, allowing Atlas to open his own gym in New York City. But in trying to run the two businesses at once, both of them floundered. Atlas realized he needed to focus on just one thing—promoting his exercise course—and that he couldn’t do it alone.

In 1928, his advertising agency hired 21-year-old Charles Roman to help create better ad copy. Roman came up with the idea of giving Atlas’ isometric exercises a snappier name–“Dynamic-Tension”—and formulated the now-famous 97-lb weakling ads and their memorable headlines. Atlas could see that Roman was a marketing genius, and he offered him half of his company, on the condition that Roman run it. The ad man agreed, and the rest is history. Roman created irresistible ad copy and booked Atlas promotional gigs; Atlas showed up with his muscles and charisma. The two were a match made in heaven.
Practice what you preach.

An enormous part of the appeal of Charles Atlas was that he didn’t just sell his principles, he lived them.

“Live clean, think clean, and don’t go to burlesque shows,” Atlas was fond of saying. Living the clean life meant not only exercising regularly, but keeping your room tidy, getting fresh air, eating healthy food, and avoiding tobacco and alcohol. Atlas himself didn’t smoke or drink, and on the rare occasion someone convinced him to come out to a nightclub, he’d spend the evening sipping a glass of milk and trying to convince other patrons to swap their beer for orange juice. Unsurprisingly, he held New Year’s Eve celebrations that provided carrot juice instead of champagne. He was also a tireless promoter of the Boy Scouts. And despite becoming a multi-millionaire, Atlas lived modestly; only splurging when it came to his beloved white double-breasted suits.

Atlas’ life was remarkably scandal-free, and his only brush with controversy, far from injuring his reputation, actually improved it. Bob Hoffman, who owned the York Barbell Company, sued Atlas, claiming that you couldn’t get an Atlas-like physique with just isometric exercises (which he called “Dynamic-Hooey”) or see a change in your body after just 7 days, and that Atlas was a fake. But the resulting Federal Trade Commission investigation found no evidence of false advertising or unfair trading practices, forcing Hoffman to drop his attacks.

Atlas was also incredibly devoted to his family and his wife. When she passed away in 1965 after their 47 years of marriage together, Atlas’ grief and depression were so profound he considered joining a monastery. But his parish priest convinced him to reconsider, telling Atlas his life’s mission lied not in the cloisters but in continuing to inspire young people.

The Father was not flattering the strongman. At the peak of his popularity in the 30s and 40s, Atlas received so much fan mail that he required a team of nearly 30 women to open and sort it. The letters, often written by young men, came from all over the world and expressed sincere appreciation to Atlas for changing their lives. Despite how large his company got and up until his 60s, Atlas always went into his office in the afternoons to answer some of the letters personally, and sign all of the replies himself. He would also sit and talk with fans who came by looking for advice.

As he grew older, be refused to let himself go, because he knew young people looked up to him, and he didn’t want to be a hypocrite and a bad example. So he kept up his morning exercise routine—50 knee bends, 100 sit-ups, and 300 push-ups–and at age 75, his measurements were almost identical to his measurements at age 30. He spent the last two years of his life reading his Bible and running on the beach, and died at age 79 in 1972.

The Four Archetypes of the Mature Masculine: The Lover

This is the third part of a series on the archetypes of mature masculinity based on the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading the introduction to the series first. Also, keep in mind that these posts are a little more esoteric than our normal fare, and are meant to be contemplated and thoughtfully reflected upon.

In our previous articles in this series, we focused on the archetypes of boy psychology. Today we take a look at the first archetype of the mature masculine: the Lover.

I originally planned on following how the book orders the archetypes by starting off with the King and finishing with the Lover. But Will, a longtime AoM Community member, suggested that I swap their places. Why? Because according to Moore and other Jungians, each archetype powers up at certain phases in a man’s life. The Lover (as we’ll soon see) is the archetype of youthful idealism and excitement and is usually the first of the archetypes to develop in a man. The King archetype usually power ups last and is a culmination of the other archetypes.

I thought this was a good approach, so that’s what I’ll be doing.  Thanks Will!

With that said, let’s get started analyzing the Lover archetype.
The Lover in His Fullness

When you hear the word “lover” you probably think of romance and sex.

But there are many types of love–a love for family, for friends, for God, and for life itself–and the Lover archetype passionately seeks after them all.

The Lover is the archetype of emotion, feeling, idealism, and sensuality. Like the word “lover,” sensuality is often exclusively associated with sex but really has a far broader application. Being sensual means opening up and using all of your senses in all areas of your life–touching, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing–or in other words–experiencing as many dimensions of life as possible, as often as possible.

Thus, when a man taps into the Lover archetype’s energy, he feels alive with vim and vigor and connected to the world and those around him. A man in touch with the Lover archetype feels deeply, whether those feelings are of joy or pain.

The Lover is attuned to the mysterious forces underlying our everyday existence; this is the archetype that fuels a man’s spirituality, and the one in which the Muses reside. When we get those flashes of inspiration or sparks of creativity, that’s Lover energy manifesting itself in our lives. A man who takes time to develop this archetype will experience those hunches, insights, and premonitions more frequently than men who don’t.

A man who has fully developed the Lover archetype in his life is also often adept at reading people and social cues. He’s empathetic with others and understands how to get along and connect with a wide variety of people.

Because the Lover is so alive and sensual, he enjoys all of life’s pleasures, whether it be good food and drink, beautiful art, or gorgeous women. This is the archetype that spurs our appetites. But these hungers aren’t just for “baser” pleasures like sex and food, but for a life of meaning and purpose. And in seeking the freedom to passionately pursue these ends, the Lover can see limits and rules as constraining.

This is why the Lover archetype has a unique relationship to the other three archetypes of mature masculinity. While the Lover’s energy seeks to be boundless, the King, Warrior, and Magician archetypes provide a man with structure and discipline. Thus the Lover’s passion fuels and powers these three life forces, and in turn, they channel and harness the Lover’s energy in a healthy way and towards worthy goals.

You can find the Lover archetype in myths and rituals that span culture and time. The Greek god Dionysus presents perhaps the most salient example. Dionysus was the god of wine, merriment, art, passion, and sex. His followers believed that when a man became so overcome with emotion that he appeared mad, Dionysus was to blame. The yearly festival held in his honor each spring was a ritual inspired by the Lover archetype: lots of drinking, lots of dancing, lots of theater, and lots of sex.

A modern story that exemplifies the Lover archetype is Zorba the Greek. Zorba is a man who lives life fully. He’s earthy. He loves good food and drink. He dances his heart out. Zorba understands that for a man to be truly free, he needs to have a deep emotional life; he needs a little madness:
That’s a man who has a healthy dose of the Lover archetype in his life.

The Lover archetype is usually the first that develops in a man. Look at most young men and you see that they’re often ruled by the passionate Lover archetype. They’re looking for new and exciting endeavors, they develop intense romantic and sexual relationships, and they’re filled with youthful idealism. Their experiences are marked by an acute intensity.

The Shadows

Remember that each archetype has both a pinnacle, which represents the fullness of the archetype, and a bi-polar shadow split.  These shadows are the result of the archetype not being integrated into a man in a healthy and coherent way. The two shadows of the Lover archetype are the Addicted Lover and the Impotent Lover.

The Addicted Lover

If the other archetypes do not harness the Lover’s energy, the Addicted Lover shadow can result.

A man possessed by the Addicted Lover is, as Moore puts it, “eternally restless.” He’s forever searching for that one thing, person, or experience that will make him feel truly alive. But whether it’s because he has overinflated expectations, or because he doesn’t even know what he’s searching for in the first place, the vague hunger that endlessly hounds him is never satisfied.

The Addicted Lover falls in love with every girl he dates, and then wallows in despair when she dumps him. He’s constantly getting ideas for inventions or businesses that will make him rich, but he never works at them long enough to get them off the ground. His apartment is cluttered with junk he bought on a whim and never used. His passport is filled with stamps, but he doesn’t feel any happier than we he left home to travel the world.

The Addicted Lover is a collector–of experiences, possessions, or women. But without any structure, any overarching life philosophy to connect the things he collects, his life feels fragmentary instead of whole. Without a channel through which to run, the Lover’s energy dissipates into a million directions.

The flip side of this shadow is the man who takes all of the Lover’s energy and focuses it on one thing. He can become so obsessed with the objects of his desire that instead of bringing joy, they bring destruction and ruin. Perhaps you know a man who became so involved in a vice, a project, or even a hobby that it ruined him financially and destroyed his relationships. That was a man possessed by the Addicted Lover.

I think Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby (my favorite book, by the way), is a perfect example of a man possessed by the Addicted Lover. He longs for the wealthy Daisy Buchanan for his entire life. He’s addicted to the idea of being with Daisy and spends his life amassing a fortune through criminal activity just so he can be with her. But in the end, Daisy disappoints Gatsby. The real Daisy didn’t match the fantasy of her that Gatsby had obsessed about for years. If you read the book, you know what happens to ol’ Jay Gatsby in the end. Lesson learned: being possessed by the Addicted Lover leads to ruin.

The Impotent Lover

The Impotent Lover shadow arises when a man is out of touch with the Lover archetype in its fullness. While the Lover in his fullness sees the world in vivid colors and textures, the Impotent Lover only sees gray. Men dogged by the Impotent Lover archetype feel depressed, flat, and dead inside. Nothing brings them joy anymore. They’ve lost their passion for life. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, struggle and falter for the man possessed by the Impotent Lover. Libido is non-existent in these men, as is their sex life.

While the Addicted Lover does not give himself enough structure, the Impotent Lover can arise in a man who disciplines himself too much. This is often the case with devoutly religious men, who, going far beyond the admonishments of their faith, laden themselves with overly prudish rules, and feel shame when “indulging” in life’s pleasures. The energy of the Lover archetype builds up behind this dam of limits, and without a healthy channel to pursue, sooner or later it bursts forth in destructive ways, like addiction to porn. The Impotent Lover becomes the Addicted Lover.
Accessing the Lover Archetype

According to Moore, the Lover is the most repressed and stunted archetype in men today. Men in the West aren’t encouraged to be “in touch with their feelings.” As men, we’re supposed to be coolly detached from anything and anybody. But the great men in history understood that emotion, properly harnessed, is what drives greatness. The ancient Greeks called this passion for life thumos. It’s a fire in the belly that propels a man to do great deeds.

So accessing the Lover archetype is vital to our success as men. But how do we do it?

The easiest way to tap into the Lover archetype is to take more time to really enjoy the stuff that brings you pleasure in life. The Addicted Lover is forever looking for the high that will last indefinitely. When he takes the first “hit” of something–whether a new drug, a new place, a new lover, or a new car–his brain lights up with pleasure. But our brains quickly get used to the same stimuli, and each additional hit brings diminishing returns. So the Addicted Lover will then take a bigger hit of the stimulus in order to feel the same pleasure he got the first time he tried it. But he’ll quickly get used to that “dose” too. And soon the Addicted Lover is stuck in a destructive cycle–restlessness and dissatisfaction plague him.

The answer to short-circulating this cycle and tapping into the Lover energy in a healthy way is something we have talked about a few times before: cultivating the virtue of moderation and being fully present in your life.

Instead of reaching for more, you stop to experience the things you already have and do in a deeper way, using all of your senses. You turn life’s little everyday activities into indulgent, pleasure-inducing rituals.

For example, do you like drinking coffee? Create a slow, relaxing, coffee-drinking experience for yourself a couple times a week. Take a whiff of the beans before you grind them, carefully create your brew in a French press, pour it into a mug you love, and slowly sip it on the porch, really enjoying the flavor.

Chew your food slowly and really taste the flavors. Enjoy touching and kissing your woman’s skin instead of just immediately getting down to the deed, take a walk after a rain shower and breathe in that fresh smell. Remember, the Lover experiences as much of life as possible, with as many senses as possible.

Another way to access the Lover is to take part in a hobby you’re passionate about, particularly ones that involves artistic skills or craftsmanship. Make it a priority in your schedule to spend time on that hobby. It doesn’t matter how silly it is. As long as it gives you joy, and offers you a creative outlet, do it.

A man seeking access to the Lover archetype should also make reading a lifelong habit. Immerse yourself in literature and writings on a variety of subjects to stimulate your brain and provide it with something to ponder other than whether to have a ham or turkey sandwich for lunch. Seeking knowledge will spur the Lover’s capacity for imagination and inspiration.

Spend time outdoors–hiking and camping. Nature helps you get in touch with the mysterious forces of life.

And of course you can access the Lover archetype by taking time for romance. Plan a surprise date for your wife or girlfriend. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive. And don’t just stop there. Write your woman love letters or, if you’re feeling particularly inspired, a love poem. Boom. Instant Lover access.

In addition to the above suggestions, Moore also provides a few techniques to access all the mature masculine archetypes more fully in our lives. These techniques require what Moore calls active imagination.

Moore suggests admiring and learning about men who exemplify each archetype. For the Lover, you can read biographies and study the work of great artists you admire. Maybe you can spend a month studying the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Or if you’re a Hemingway fan, read all of Papa’s novels.

A final technique to access the archetypes in your life is to “act as if” you’re already accessing the archetype in your life. It’s the old “fake it until you make it” philosophy espoused by Aristotle. If you feel as if the Impotent Lover has taken control of your psyche and you’ve lost your vim and vigor, act as if you were passionate for life and were accessing the Lover archetype fully.  If art never really interested you, force yourself to visit a museum and really look at the art. Act as if you’re really interested and pretty soon you might find yourself no longer having to pretend.

This Too Shall Pass

When I turned 16 years old, I got my first car. A red Isuzu Hombre pick-up truck. Yeah, my first car’s model was named Hombre, the Spanish word for man. Though, Hombre’s weren’t a very manly model of pick-up; they were actually kind of dinky. I really didn’t care. I just saw it as the object that finally granted me freedom from relying on mom and dad to take me places I wanted to go. The world was my oyster!

Two weeks after I got the ol’ Hombre, my best friend turned 16, and we went out for a night of fun. On the way back from an epic match of laser tag, I rear-ended a guy.  I got out and made sure the guy I hit was okay. After I saw that he was fine, I assessed the damage. The front end of my little Hombre was no match for the bumper of the F-150 I had collided into. My friends tried to console me.

“It’s not so bad, Brett.”

My response.

“MY CAR IS SCREWED!!!” Repeated over and over while I paced frantically back and forth.

The insurance agent declared my car totaled. And since I only had liability insurance, I was out of a car, period.

Man, I took it hard. I didn’t go to school for two days because I felt so sorry for myself (*facepalm* how freaking lame). I had taken my first steps towards freedom and independence, but in a matter of seconds I was back to relying on my parents to haul me around.

In the middle of one my pity parties, my parents told me, “Brett, this too shall pass.”

Of course they were right. That car accident, which seemed like the end of the world, like an event of earth-shattering significance, is now just a little memory from my teenage years, a funny story to tell.

In the years since that day, I have faced challenges and setbacks far more trying than a totaled car, but that simple advice—this too shall pass–has stuck with me during those low moments, offering a bit of perspective and hope that what seemed permanent, wasn’t, and that things would turn around after all.
You’re More Resilient Than You Think

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, ‘this too shall pass’ might be true about totaling a car when you’re a teenager, or challenges of a slightly more traumatic variety, but not for real, soul-grinding adversity.

What kinds of things fall into that category? Becoming paralyzed in an accident? Losing your spouse after 50 years of marriage? Surely you never really recover from these kinds of blows, right?

Certainly that’s how we feel when we imagine these things happening to us. But the research doesn’t bear out our fears.

In studies done on older couples–those who had been married for decades–6 months after losing their spouse, 50% of the surviving partners experienced little to no symptoms of acute grief or depression, and only 10% of participants suffered from a chronic depression that lasted longer than 18 months. This is not to say the participants did not miss their deceased spouses a good deal, but that happiness did return to their lives relatively quickly, and their grief was not as debilitating as many people imagine it would be.

Another study that followed people after they had become paralyzed in an accident found that the happiness of the victims returned to near their baseline pre-accident levels within months following the injury. And they took more pleasure in mundane tasks and felt more optimistic about their future prospects of happiness than another group which was also studied–those who had won the lottery.

In contemplating these traumas and others, people routinely overestimate how devastated they’d be and how long their funk would last.

Why does the way we imagine our reaction to a tragic event not match the reality of how people actually experience and heal after one?

In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Dr. Daniel Gilbert describes the human inability to notice and think about absences. We think more about what did happen, than what did not happen. Gilbert uses the example of getting pooped on by a pigeon; it might seem from this experience that pigeons aim for people’s heads. But if you took into account all the times you walked in the same spot and didn’t get pooped on by the pigeon, you would quickly realize the folly of that conclusion.

This inability to consider absences applies to the way we imagine the future as well, as Gilbert explains:

    “Just as we tend to treat the details of future events that we do imagine as though they were actually going to happen, we have an equally troubling tendency to treat the details of future events that we don’t imagine as though they were not going to happen. In other words, we fail to consider how much imagination fills in, but we also fail to consider how much it leaves out.

    To illustrate this point, I often ask people to tell me how they think they would feel two years after the sudden death of an eldest child. As you can probably guess, this makes me quite popular at parties. I know, I know—this is a gruesome exercise and I’m not asking you to do it. But the fact is that if you did it, you would probably give me the answer that almost everyone gives me, which is some variation on Are you out of your damned mind? I’d be devastated—totally devastated. I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. I might even kill myself. So who invited you to this party anyway? If at this point I’m not actually wearing the person’s cocktail, I usually probe a bit further and ask how he came to his conclusion. What thoughts or images came to mind, what information did he consider? People typically tell me that they imagined hearing the news, or they imagined opening the door to an empty bedroom. But in my long history of asking this question and thereby excluding myself from every social circle to which I formerly belonged, I have yet to hear a single person tell me that in addition to these heartbreaking, morbid images, they also imagined the other things that would inevitably happen in the two years following the death of their child. Indeed, not one person has ever mentioned attending another child’s school play, or making love with his spouse, or eating a taffy apple on a warm summer evening, or reading a book, or writing a book, or riding a bicycle, or any of the many activities that we—and that they—would expect to happen in those two years. Now, I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that a bite of gooey candy compensates for the loss of a child. That isn’t the point. What I am suggesting is that the two-year period following a tragic event has to contain something—that is, it must be filled with episodes and occurrences of some kind—and these episodes and occurrences must have some emotional consequences. Regardless of whether those consequences are large or small, negative or positive, one cannot answer my question accurately without considering them. And yet, not one person I know has ever imagined anything other than the single, awful event suggested by my question. When they imagine the future, there is a whole lot missing, and the things that are missing matter.”

This really gets to the crux of why, when we’re in the midst of a funk, we feel like it will last forever, and yet it inevitably passes. When we imagine the future, we think we will always feel the way we do at that moment, but we do not imagine all the life events that will keep us from sitting in our room and brooding 24/7. The vast majority of minds cannot ruminate on the same thing indefinitely. Life goes on and takes us along with it.

This is not to say that the ache of some losses and setbacks ever completely goes away. The memories of painful events in your life can still hit you out of the blue like a ton of bricks  and take your breath away years after they happen. People say that time heals all wounds, which is true, but while the open, gaping wounds close up, the scar remains.

And yet,  battered and bruised we keep on trucking. Humans have an almost infinite capacity for adaption and a greater ability to bounce backs from trials than most of know. As the author on the aforementioned study on widows wrote, “Resilience to the unsettling effects of interpersonal loss is not rare but relatively common.”

Not only should understanding this fact give you a glimmer of hope when you’re in a season of despair, it should also buoy up your confidence about taking risks in the future. Too often we think, “I cannot try that because if I failed/lost that person/made a mistake I couldn’t go on living. In fact, you could, and you would.
Getting Through the Trial

Sure, this information does offer a bit of hope to those down in one of life’s low points, but information can’t really pull you out of it. It is quite difficult to pull yourself out of a funk by thinking it away.

Your mind may say that the dark time will pass, but it still feels like it will last forever. And that’s where a lot of the pain comes from during challenging times: you look ahead down the road and wonder how you will ever make it. You gaze all the way to the horizon and the path ahead looks so long, so daunting, you feel like collapsing under the weight of that huge burden.

How do you cope during those times?

Take a page from Alcoholics Anonymous. Staying sober is no easy task–if alcoholics thought about not ever having another drink for the next 50 years, they’d easily get overwhelmed and feel like it wasn’t even worth trying. So they take it “one day at a time.” Staying sober for decades seems impossible; staying sober for 24 hours seems very doable.

This is how Don Gately, a character in David Foster Wallace’s book, Infinite Jest, deals with the grueling drain of detox. Only he makes the period in which he must live even smaller than a day—he narrows it to “the space between two heartbearts.”

    “Any one second: he remembered: the thought of feeling like he’d be feeling this second for 60 more of these seconds—he couldn’t deal. He could not f—-ing deal. He had to build a wall around each second just to take it. The whole first two weeks of it are telescoped in his memory down into like one second—less: the space between two heartbeats. A breath and a second, the pause and gather between each cramp. An endless Now stretching its gull-wings out on either side of his heartbeat. And he’d never before or since felt so excruciatingly alive. Living in the Present between pulses.”

Later in the book, Gately gets shot in the shoulder and, not wanting to relapse, refuses to take narcotic painkillers. He chooses to deal with the pain the same way he did during his detox–by living fully in the tiny spaces of time:

    “He could do dextral pain the same way: Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants lined up and stretching ahead, glittering…It’s too much to think about. To Abide there…He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live there. Not let his head look over.”

It’s hard to have the will to live a micro-second, but whatever the shortest amount of time is that you can build a wall around, just live in that space. Don’t look over the wall and think about the future. Just make it through that day. And the next morning get up and do it again. Live in that space for awhile, and the seasons will change around you. If you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, winter will eventually give way to spring.
Peaks and Valleys

I just wanted to leave you with a visual reminder of the “this too shall pass” principle that a friend once showed me. I often reflect on it when I’m going through a hard time. Make a fist and look at your knuckles. You see peaks and valleys. Such is the nature of life: peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. You may be in a valley now, but you will be on top of a peak once again. Just keep putting up your dukes each day and fighting the good fight.

Graphing Manliness

Everywhere you look, people are talking about men and manliness. Hanna Rosin argues that it’s “The End of Men,” Kay Hymowitz wonders “Where Have the Good Men Gone? and William Bennett knows “Why Men Are in Trouble.” Network television has gotten into the act with three man-centric and predictably dopey shows: “Man Up!” “How to Be a Gentleman,” and “Last Man Standing.” The question of the future of men and manhood seems to be at the forefront of many minds.

As we’ve talked about before, men have always worried about their manliness. But it isn’t true that they have always worried the same amount at every time in history.

Google Books has this awesome Ngram Viewer into which you can search for any word or phrase, and it will spit out a graph showing the prevalence of that word amongst the books in its library over time. Here’s what you get when you put in “manhood” and “manliness.”

I found this graph really fascinating, and I hope you all do too. I intend for the post to be a jumping off point for discussion of your theories on the rise and fall of our culture’s discussion of manhood. But first I’ll offer up a possible interpretation.

The number of books mentioning manhood begins to precipitously rise during the 1820s, and then begins to tumble around the turn of the 20th century. These dates also roughly parallel the timeline of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution created great change not only in technology and the economy, but in the way people lived. Especially how men worked. Families moved from farms in the country to live in the city and take jobs in quickly proliferating factories. In 1800, 3 out of 4 American males worked full-time in agriculture. By 1900, 2/3 of them were employed in the manufacturing and service sectors.

Not only were farmers affected, craftsmen were dealt a blow as well. After apprenticing for years to learn a trade that required deep knowledge, unique skills, and a steady hand, craftsmen found themselves replaced by machines which could do their hard-learned job in a fraction of the time.

For men who had felt their manliness defined by the owning of land or the membership in a guild, this was a wrenching change. What would being a man mean in the absence of the nobility of working with one’s hands and the dignity of true independence and self-reliance? Could a man still be a man while pulling the lever at a factory or sitting at a desk in an office?

Fast forward a hundred years and we find ourselves in the midst of another industrial revolution of sorts. Again technology–this time computers–is changing the way we live and work. Ironically, while the shift to men working in factories had society concerned for their manhood in the 19th century, today those manufacturing jobs are often used as the symbol of manly work–their disappearance linked to a crisis in manliness. The information age has made more and more jobs feel less and less tangible. At least the men in factories did something with their hands…can men still be men if they’re only using their fingertips? Today society wrings its hands about that question.

So how did our Industrial Revolution forefathers solve their “crisis” in masculinity?

By moving away from defining manliness by a man’s job, and re-rooting it in virtue and excellence.  We say “re-rooting,” because defining manhood this way was not new; it was the definition also espoused by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the books written around the turn of the century, books with titles like Stepping Stones to Manhood and The Making of Manhood, authors argued that being a man came down to character. A man was industrious and frugal, responsible and trustworthy, courageous and bold. This definition of manhood could be striven for by any man, no matter what sphere of life he found himself in. Whether he was tilling the land or working the assembly line or sitting in an office, he could live with honor. And so men adapted, and the crisis of manhood dissipated.

But men have slipped back into defining themselves by their work. As the graph shows, as the information age heats up in the 2000′s, so does talk about manhood. The Ngram Viewer only goes until 2008, but if it went further, we’d certainly see an additional rise in the last few years. But most of this talk only discusses the problem and rarely offers a solution. If a remedy is offered, it’s usually some variation on telling men they need to get married, get a job, and stop playing video games. Such steps may help to a degree, but a man can still be a man and be single, out of work, and marvel of marvels, able to play video games in moderation. What is needed is a definition of manhood that is timeless, one that applies to men in any situation in life. How about virtue and excellence, character and competence? If we have come full circle in a century, perhaps what is needed is not to reinvent the wheel but to find what worked for our ancestors, whether a working man in the 1800s or a philosopher like Aristotle. Obviously, that’s what we try to do on our site and especially in our new book, Manvotionals: Timeless Wisdom and Advice on Living the 7 Manly Virtues, which has many selections from the books on manhood written around the turn of the century.

Anyway, so that’s my theory (with a little rhapsodizing thrown in as well). What is your interpretation of the general rise and fall of discourse about manliness (and the little peaks and valleys too)? You may also find it interesting to examine the graphs when the search results are refined by British English and American English:

A few thoughts on these:

    On the American graph, you can see a spike in the 1960s during the counterculture movement, rise of feminism, and the resulting debate about gender roles.
    The British graph peaks earlier than the American one. Because the Industrial Revolution started earlier there? Something else?
    The British graph also has an interesting manhood rebound around 1915. Any Brits care to wager the reason? WWI perhaps?
    “Manliness” has never been as popular a word as “manhood.” But I certainly prefer it!

Manvotional: Character

Manvotional: Character
CHARACTER is one of the greatest motive powers in the world. In its noblest embodiments, it exemplifies human nature in its highest forms, for it exhibits man at his best.

Men of genuine excellence in every station of life—men of industry, of integrity, of high principle, of sterling honesty of purpose—command the spontaneous homage of mankind. It is natural to believe in such men, to have confidence in them, and to imitate them. All that is good in the world is upheld by them, and without their presence in it the world would not be worth living in.

Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect as men of character of its conscience.

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. But each man can act his part honestly and honorably, and to the best of his ability. He can use his gifts, and not abuse them. He can strive to make the best of life. He can be true, just, honest, and faithful, even in small things. In a word, he can do his duty in that sphere in which Providence has placed him.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one’s duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day existence.

Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence of character. “A handful of good life,” says George Herbert, “is worth a bushel of learning.” Not that learning is to be despised, but that it must be allied to goodness. Intellectual capacity is sometimes found associated with the meanest moral character—with abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to those of low estate. A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank after many a poor and illiterate peasant.

Still less has wealth any necessary connection with elevation of Character. A man may possess only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood. The advice which Burns’s father gave him was the best:

    “He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, For without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding.”

Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest in it—though they may not become rich in this world’s goods—will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won.

Simple honesty of purpose in a man goes a long way in life, if founded on a just estimate of himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right. It holds a man straight, gives him strength and sustenance, and forms a mainspring of vigorous action.

But the purpose, besides being honest, must be inspired by sound principles, and pursued with undeviating adherence to truth, integrity, and uprightness. Without principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to drift hither and thither with every wind that blows.

It is because of this controlling power of character in life that we often see men exercise an amount of influence apparently out of all proportion to their intellectual endowments. They appear to act by means of some latent power, some reserved force, which acts secretly, by mere presence. As Burke said of a powerful nobleman of the last century, “his virtues were his means.” The secret is, that the aims of such men are felt to be pure and noble, and they act upon others with a constraining power.

Character is formed by a variety of minute circumstances, more or less under the regulation and control of the individual. Not a day passes without its discipline, whether for good or for evil. There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

Every action, every thought, every feeling, contributes to the education of the temper, the habits, and understanding, and exercises an inevitable influence upon all the acts of our future life. Thus character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse—either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.

The best sort of character cannot be formed without effort. There needs the exercise of constant self-watchfulness, self-discipline, and self-control. There may be much faltering, stumbling, and temporary defeat; difficulties and temptations manifold to be battled with and overcome; but if the spirit be strong and the heart be upright, no one need despair of ultimate success. The very effort to advance—to arrive at a higher standard of character than we have reached—is inspiring and invigorating; and even though we may fall short of it, we cannot fail to be improved by every honest effort made in an upward direction.

It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels: one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins; the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong.”

Although the force of example will always exercise great influence upon the formation of character, the self-originating and sustaining force of one’s own spirit must be the main-stay. This alone can hold up the life, and give individual independence and energy. “Unless man can erect himself above himself,” said Daniel, a poet of the Elizabethan era, “how poor a thing is man!” Without a certain degree of practical efficient force—compounded of will, which is the root, and wisdom, which is the stem of character—life will be indefinite and purposeless—like a body of stagnant water, instead of a running stream doing useful work and keeping the machinery of a district in motion.

When the elements of character are brought into action by determinate will, and, influenced by high purpose, man enters upon and courageously perseveres in the path of duty, at whatever cost of worldly interest, he may be said to approach the summit of his being. He then exhibits character in its most intrepid form, and embodies the highest idea of manliness.

How to Quit Mindlessly Surfing the Internet and Actually Get Stuff Done

9 pm. A college campus in the Midwest. Rob sits down to study. His inner monologue:

Okay, time to hit the books. I’m really going to get crap done tonight. Let me just sit down here and crack open my giant textbook. Mmmm, interesting, interesting. But I don’t understand this term here on pg. 307. I should look it up on Wikipedia. Okay, got it. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check my gmail tab before I get back to the book. Oh, Amanda sent me a Facebook message, let me just get on Facebook really quick and write her back. Hey, the Art of Manliness put another article up. And I love pirates! I’ve got to check that out–I’ll just skim it really fast. That was good. I wonder if anything has happened on Facebook since I read the article, let me check that real quick. And I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give the front page of Reddit a fast little scan, and then I’ll get back to studying. Wow, this thread has links to a lot of interesting sites, I’m just going to click on a few…

12:00 am. Textbook is still open to page 307. Rob’s inner monologue:

Arrrrghhh! What happened?
Why Is the Internet So #$!# Distracting!?

Distractions have existed since the beginning of time, but the internet represents an entirely new level of itch. The desire to read Treasure Island and or listen to a radio show exerts a certain pull, but not like the force that keeps you surfing from page to page to page on the internet. Why is this?

Researchers speculate that evolution has wired our brains to be constantly scanning for changes in our environment; if a change is sensed, our minds direct our attention towards that thing. For our primitive ancestors this ability was a safeguard against dangers and predators. In the modern age, that sense has been hijacked by the constant stream of incoming stimuli. “Look, I see a bear!” has become “Look a funny video on Youtube! An interesting article on this news site! A photo of my friend on Facebook….”

So that may be part of it, although it doesn’t quite explain why when you’re siting on the couch reading a book, your mind feels an itch to check your phone or your computer. Indeed, there’s a bigger issue at play here. It used to be thought that the reward centers of our brains only lit up when dealing with basic needs, “primary reinforcers” like food and water…and, of course, those dopamine hard-hitters, drugs. But then experiments found that not only did money, food, and sex also activate these reward centers, even pictures of these things had the same effect. And most recently, an experiment done with monkeys showed that even a little bit of information stimulates our brains’ reward centers. And what is the internet besides a collection of millions of bits of information–hit after dopamine-releasing hit. The internet is really like a giant information slot machine. Every time you surf to a new page, you pull that lever, and wait to see what pops up. Pull the lever. Pull the lever. Pull the lever. Ding-ding-ding-ding. It’s easy to get entranced and lose track of time.

So what’s a man to do? Despite its sort of addicting quality, the internet is an amazing tool that most people absolutely do not want to give up. So you probably don’t want to chuck your laptop out the window, even if you sometimes feel like you do.

You can try to limit your penchant for mindless surfing through sheer willpower alone. But as we’ve discussed, your willpower is a finite resource which is depleted by every choice you have to make. Do you really want to use up your willpower trying to stay off of Reddit, when you really need it to work or study effectively? Instead, simply eliminate the decision of whether or not to screw around on the web from your available choices altogether, without taking a sledge hammer to your computer. Here’s how.
First: Perform an Audit of Your Online Time-Wasters

The first step in stopping the scourge of mindless surfing is to make a list of which sites you’re wasting the most time on. You probably already know what they are. Write those down.

If you want a more thorough audit, you might consider signing up for one of the many online services that show you how you spend your time online. Such as:

RescueTime. RescueTime is a paid service that allows you track how much time you spend on certain websites and even how long you use certain apps on your computer. You simply create an account with RescueTime, install the RescueTime program on your computer, and RescueTime takes care of the rest. At the end of each week, RescueTime will send you an email report that gives you a breakdown of how and where you spent your time while sitting (or standing!) at your computer. It also has some other nifty features like the ability to block distracting websites and create goals for how you want to spend your time online.

Time Tracker. Time Tracker is a free browser extension for both Firefox and Chrome browsers. Pretty simple.

    Download Time Tracker for Firefox
    Download Time Tracker for Chrome

There used to be a whole slew of free time-tracking plugins for Firefox, but it looks like most of them are dead. Such a shame. They were good ones, too. Support your developers, folks.
Quit Screwing Around Online Method 1: Block Time-Wasting Sites Entirely (AKA The Nuclear Option)

If you want to completely banish time-wasting sites from your computer, you’ll needed to get into your computer’s host files and do some hacking. Don’t worry. You won’t break your computer in the process. What we’ll be doing is simply telling your computer that these time-wasting sites live on your computer’s hard drive. Because these websites don’t really live on your hard drive, you’ll get a “server not found” message when you try to surf to those addresses.

What’s great about this method is that it blocks these sites across all browsers. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Firefox, Chrome, or Explorer, if you try to visit sites on your blocked list, you’ll get a message saying your browser couldn’t connect with the site.

Another benefit to this method is that it provides a pretty strong firewall to prevent backsliding into mindless surfing. While this method is reversible, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to change. Any time you want to visit your blocked sites, you’ll have to go through the rigamarole below and “comment out” your added lines (add a # to the beginning of the lines) in your host file.

Obviously, using this method is best for sites that you really think are pointless but still find yourself addicted to reading–sites where you’d rather do without the temptation entirely. If you’re going to use this method to block sites that you still want to read occasionally, I recommend having a set-up such as the one I use myself and outline at the end of the post.

Here’s how it works, using Facebook.com as an example:

Mac

    Open up Terminal
    Type  sudo nano /etc/hosts
    Enter your computer’s password
    To block your time-wasting sites, type in the following: 127.0.0.1   facebook.com
    Repeat step 4 until you’ve entered all your time-wasting sites
    Save the host file by hitting ctrl+o and then the return key
    Flush your computer’s cache by entering the following line: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

Windows (Windows 7/Vista/XP)

    Open Notepad and click File –> Open
    Open up the following file:  C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOST
    To block your time-wasting sites, type in the following: 127.0.0.1 facebook.com  www.facebook.com
    Repeat step 3 until you’ve entered all your time-wasting sites
    Save the file and close

Linux

If you’re using Linux, you’re probably a geek and don’t need some guy who blogs about manliness to tell you how to edit your host file.
Quit Screwing Around Online Method 2: Block Time-Wasting Sites for Certain Periods of Time

Another, less drastic way to avoid the pull of time-sucking websites is by using various browser plugins that allow you to block sites for certain periods of time. This option gives you the flexibility to plan periods where you want to work distraction-free and periods where you want to be able to surf at will.

This is also a good method if you want to limit how much you check your web-based email. You probably want to be able to access your email during the day, but maybe you only want to be able to check it at certain times. This method will allow you to do that.

Firefox

Leechblock. Leechblock is a super robust plugin for Firefox that allows you to block time-wasting sites in several ways. First, you enter which sites you want to block. Next, you tell Leechblock when you want them blocked. For example, you can set Leechblock to block your designated sites until 5PM on weekdays, but keep them available to you all day on the weekends. Another way you can set up Leechblock is to block certain sites after you visit them for a certain amount of time. So if you want to limit your Facebook browsing to just 30 minutes a day, you can have Leechblock block Facebook after you’ve reached your 30 minute time limit.

This is a fantastic plugin. It helped me stay focused while I was in law school.

But keep in mind that Leechblock only works for when you’re using Firefox as your browser. You can still switch over to Chrome and surf freely. So if that’s going to be a temptation for you, you’ll need to put blocker plugins on your other browsers too.

Download LeechBlock

Chrome

StayFocused. StayFocused is a super simple site-blocker for Chrome. You simply enter in your time-wasting sites and then allot yourself an amount of time you want to be able to screw around on these sites each day. When you’ve used up all your time, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.

To prevent you from changing how much time you’ve allotted yourself to surf freely, StayFocused gives you a highly annoying challenge. You have to type this long paragraph, letter for letter, without making a single typo. If you make a typo, everything will be cleared from the text box, and you’ll have to start all over again. And no, you can’t just copy and paste the challenge text. I tried that. It knows when you’re trying to cheat.

Download StayFocused

Concentrate. Concentrate allows you to set how long you want to block specific sites. Add your time-wasting sites, set the timer, and get to work. While the timer is going, you can’t access your time-wasting sites.

Download Concentrate

Chrome Nanny. Chrome Nanny is the Chrome version of Leechblock for Firefox. It works pretty much the same way. Unfortunately, the developer of this extension recently took it down from the Google Chrome Web Store without any explanation. Hopefully he’ll bring it back or someone will develop something similar.
My Personal Set-Up

I currently have a screwing around firewall system that incorporates both methods.

I’ve edited the host file on my Macbook so that it blocks my biggest time sink offenders. These include news sites and web forums I enjoy browsing, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Google Reader. I can’t access these sites at all on my work computer. Yeah, I could change the host file back to what it was, but like I said, it’s kind of a pain to do that, so I don’t even bother. My laziness is actually a boon here. Huzzah!

If I want to check these sites out, I use my iPad. When I need to get work done, I’ll just keep the iPad in another room or drive to a coffee shop and leave the iPad at home. Also, by having a computer just for work, I find myself getting into a work frame of mind much faster than before.

I use the second, less restrictive site blocking method to limit my time spent on gmail and a few sites that monitor web traffic on AoM. These sites are important for work, and I still want to be able to access them on my work computer, but they can distract me from actually getting work done. I use Chrome Nanny (got it before the developer took it down) to grant me access to my gmail account and my web analytics during short time windows throughout the day.

By implementing these methods to curb my mindless surfing, I suddenly found myself with a ton of free time I didn’t know existed. It was amazing. Give it a try if you’re looking to be a more productive, industrious, and successful man.

What tactics do you use to reduce the amount of time you waste online? Share them with us in the comments!