The Minimum Effective Lifestyle: A Lazy Man’s Guide to a Good Life

158 Pages·2018·0.75 MB·English

by  Karl. N Mark

Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Introduction
The Fundamentals
My Brain is a Dick
The Holy Trinity and the Simple Solution
The Average Joe
Systems Thinking
The Minimum Effective Lifestyle
The Lazy Man’s Sprint
Finance
I’m a Fucking Cyborg!
Following My Passion Is Bullshit
Being the General of My Career
Knowing My Number
Investments and Pensions
The Biggest Financial Decision
Budgeting
Minimalism and Savings
Early Retirement
Health
Self-Awareness and The Healthy Mind
The Lazy Man’s Diet Guide
Option 1: Maintain
Option 2: Rapid Weight Loss with Heavy Restrictions
Option 3: Rapid Weight Loss, Little Restrictions
Exercise
Weight Loss
Get Ripped (at current or while losing weight)
Muscle Gain
Emotional Health
Mental Health
Productivity
First Principles of Productivity
Doing Less
Creativity & Shock Meditation
Productivity in Practise
Fin
About the Book

The essential concepts for a lazy person to improve their life are actually not that
difficult to grasp. But they are spread far and wide across many books, websites
or individual thinkers. So not exactly within the grasp of a lazy person.

The purpose of this book is to bring together the fundamentals of these concepts.
Having all the techniques in one place.

This book will also share the results of applying these learnings to various areas
of life. Areas that many lazy people struggle to improve. Using the techniques
and fundamentals learned from many other sources we can leverage laziness and
find the simplest solutions to our problems.

This book is written in sections. The fundamentals section gives an architecture
of the minimum effective lifestyle. A scaffold to be applied to the areas of life
that the reader wants to improve on.

The finance section details the author's experience and learnings, applying the
minimum effective lifestyle to his wealth-earning activities.

The health section uses laziness as a tool to figure out the easiest ways to a
happy and healthy body and mind.

And the productivity section is a lazy man’s guide to getting more done.

If you like the book, please share it with others or write a review so others may
find it too. Or do both. Or do neither. I’m a book, don’t let me tell you what to
do.
About the Author

“Cherish those that seek the truth but beware of those who find it” - Voltaire

I use quotes to make myself seem smarter. I’ve already tried to associate myself
with Voltaire by using the above. All I know is that he was some French writer.
And he was using a single name before Cher and Madonna made it cool. I’ve
never read anything he has written. Yet I stole this quote anyway.

The about the author section is where a writer pitches to his audience about how
great he is. But like the quote above, I want to be very honest that I have not
found ‘the’ truth. Or any truth for that matter. I’m always seeking and will never
pretend otherwise.

I own three businesses. Two make no money at all. One makes a small profit. I
could say I’m CEO/Lead Dreamer of three exciting and profitable startups. I
could say I'm a successful entrepreneur. But I am not those things.

I’ve invested in a few of my friend's ideas. One of which makes a little profit.
The rest, not so much. I earn enough money to be an accredited investor. I can
buy options in Twitter right now if I wanted to. I could say I’m an early stage
startup investor - invested in companies such as Twitter. But I am not this either.

I have a degree in Theoretical Physics. A master's in Economics and a 10-year
career in investment risk. I could say I'm an expert in one or more of those fields.
But that would be an insult to actual experts in those areas.

I'm not an entrepreneur.

I'm not an expert.

I'm not an early stage investor.

I'm not a billionaire.
I could tell you otherwise, of course. And as you can see from the above, I could
claim some basis for doing so. Which is more than most who've lied about
similar.

People need to seem extraordinary to gain some attention. That fact won't
change anytime soon. But, over time, what people deemed extraordinary
becomes mundane, and vice-versa.

Being extraordinary in these times is to be honest and open about my flaws. It's
to be accepting of my average role in life. It's to know that I'm not some unique
flower that everyone will soon notice and applaud. It's to live a happy life, not
carefree, but to enjoy the simple and mundane.

Now, I can't prove I'm any of these things either. But we’ve all read the authors
with sometimes questionable résumés, I'm sure you can give me a shot too.
The Minimum Effective Lifestyle

A Lazy Man’s guide to a good life

Karl N. Mark
Introduction

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy” - Milan
Kundera

I’m inherently lazy. I’ve always looked for the easy option in life, the shortcuts
to success. As a kid, I would shout out to my mum when I finished in the toilet
so she could come in and wipe my bum. Too lazy to wipe my own arse. The fact
I can remember this means I was too old for it to be acceptable. And this was
only the start.

I hated this about myself, my laziness, not my lack of arse cleaning abilities. I
tried to 'fix' it many times. I read every article and book I could find on how to
stop procrastinating. How to start being ‘successful’.

‘10 ways to stop being shit at life’. The summary: be better at everything.

‘15 things Steve Jobs did in the morning so you should too (number 2 will
surprise you)’. Spoiler alert, number 2 is he takes a dump.

'Warren Buffett's 10 simple rules for investing'. Number 1 is to have loads of
money to start with and number 4 is to be able to predict the market.

I got fed up. Everyone was an entrepreneur. An expert or an inventor. A startup
guru or an early stage investor. But that wasn’t me. Their methods didn’t seem to
work for me. I’m not even sure it ever worked for them. I was fighting an uphill
battle the whole time.

I then had my own eureka moment, although altogether less dramatic. I thought I
could flip the problem on its head. What if laziness was a good thing? It is not a
desired trait, of course. But was it telling me something? Was it a symptom and
not the actual problem?
The common cultural narrative is that I lack drive, I'm giving up on my amazing
potential. The truth though, is that I didn’t enjoy what I was doing. I thought I
wanted something, I wanted the end result, but the process to get there sucked.
And so, I’d put it off, I’d sit and watch Netflix, I’d go on Reddit, Facebook,
anything but the task at hand.

The real problem was that I was punishing the end result. I was not fixing the
root cause of my issues. Like locking away junkies to solve a drug crisis. It
turned out, either the methods to get what I wanted were terrible. Or the ‘what I
wanted’ part of the equation was too complex and I didn't want it at all.

I was using flawed methods to get what I wanted in life. I was thrashing against
the flow of the river. I needed willpower. I needed motivation. All the stars had
to align for me to get to my goals. All things which seemed outside my control.

Or what I wanted was something that had been thrust upon me by a broken
society. Six-pack Abs - that require me to go to the gym every day for 2 hours. A
massive house - that I have to clean on a daily basis. A beautiful car - that I have
to work 14-hour days to afford.

But what if I could leverage my laziness, Judo style. What if I could see laziness
trotting towards me. And I grabbed its arm and used its own power against itself.
Flipping it over my shoulder and slamming it on the ground behind me.

To use another less confusing analogy, what if I stopped swimming against the
flow? What if I, instead, let it take me down the river a little while I steer. See
where it would take me.

This is what I like to call the minimum effective lifestyle.

The Minimum Effective Lifestyle

We all have shit we need to do but have zero motivation for. We all have
aspirations to be super amazing human beings. But we can’t handle all that work
that's meant to go with it.
Is there is a way to do the bare minimum that gets us there?

Is what we want not actually what we need?

Do we have to be the next Richard Branson? Is being average and happy a pretty
fucking good result?

The Minimum Effective Lifestyle is a lazy man's guide to a good life. Its aim is
to simplify. Complexity is hard. Laziness is my reaction to complexity. But once
we simplify, laziness will no longer be the issue.

I’m a lazy man, and proud of it. My motivation is in finding the easiest solutions
to my problems. It took me a long time, and a lot of experiments to finally find
what works for me. And I’m always learning and trying to improve.

Likely, it will be the same case for you. I do not have all the same goals, dreams,
needs or wants as you. So, I wrote this book more as a set of guidelines, for
myself and others. I’ll give you specific examples of what worked for me, but I
know all too well that this may not work for you. So, we must experiment with
the minimum effective lifestyle as our guide. Experimenting will be key to any
improvements.

In this book, I want to talk about the fundamentals of this method. I've not had
an original thought in my life. This is a collection of ideas I've got from others
and patched together to work for my lazy mind. The fundamentals will allow
others to experiment in their own lives.

I will then discuss some common areas in life that myself and others want to
improve. Finance and wealth. Health and fitness. Productivity. Using the
fundamentals, I applied the minimum effective lifestyle to these areas. I'll give
my examples and ideas, but I encourage others to experiment.

Now, let’s get on with it.