Monk Mode

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• Monk mode is about mitigating distraction and focusing solely on self-betterment by filling up your time with activities that improve you as a human being.
• The sacrifice: you're going to be minimizing your time contribution to social obligations and junk activities. The reason for this is because these activities consume much of your time whilst yielding little to negligible increase towards your social market value.
• Junk activities:
  • Going out for coffee or sitting around idly.
  • Playing video games.
  • Movie/series marathons.
  • Porn.
  • Refreshing social media/Internet forums.
  • Being out of action because of a hangover.
• These confer no benefit in the long run, but are fleetingly pleasing in the short-term.
• Leading a life of continuous instant gratification leads to nowhere but a path of regret and failure.
• If all you do is distract yourself by spending your time on junk activities, there'll be no time left for the things that really matter: activities that build long term value.
• Cutting your social time to a bare minimum is incredibly important, more important than you think. It's nearly impossible to lead a productive life when people are telling you their problems, gossiping, and introducing otherwise vapid and unimportant nonsense into your life.
• Minimizing distractions: low quality people, low quality media. You need to quarantine yourself from all of it, and it is only then that you'll be able to focus on channelling your desire to be better into real life gains.
• If you hate yourself or do not value yourself, it's because you've not given a reason to value yourself. We don't just disrespect others who are low value, we disrespect ourselves for it too.
• If the bulk of your time goes to junk activities, you will be directionless. There will be no feedback loops in your life to give you self-esteem.
• There will be an absence of activity where you push yourself, see a small gain, and then feel the resulting pride that comes from becoming better at something and seeing yourself grow in some small way.

Core structure of monk mode

• Introspection. To look inward, to evaluate one's self. Identify your weaknesses, making yourself aware of them and then accepting them.

• If you accept your weaknesses, then you can gain the power to rid yourself of such afflictions.

• The most unintelligible thing a person can do is to ignore one's weaknesses.

• Willful ignorance of weakness: a farcical fabrication of confidence, it's not pure confidence but delusional, narcissistic confidence. By not addressing your weaknesses, you allow them to control of you in whatever manner it is they manifest.

• A conscious denial of an accepted truth for the sake of one's ego leaves you vulnerable to the potency of the truth. You want to be harmonious with the truth so that the truth is fighting on your side rather than at the side of your enemies.

• Nobody lucks into success.

• Isolation. As you have a certain number of things that you can contend with at one time, social obligations quickly obliterate your workload and leave you feeling overwhelmed when you're looking to achieve loftier goals.

• You have to have your own space and the freedom to self-govern and direct their desires, and a modicum of solitude is necessary to achieve this.

• You need clear, obtainable goals, an awareness of your position and the peace, space, and freedom to determine your self-governance independent of undue external manipulatory influence.

• Without the conflict of social obligation or the dissent of outside opinion, you are free in isolation to forge yourself into the very thing that you want to be. What you want for yourself is more important than what anybody else wants you to be.

• Ultimately, you're the one who is stuck with yourself for the rest of your days, forced to endure whatever weaknesses or failures that you may or will have due to inaction.

• Others can aid you in your goals--a personal trainer, a coach, trusted advisors, but nobody should be dictating what those goals are and making decisions on your behalf.

• Improvement.

• Self-improvement activities are things such as:

  • Lifting, jogging, playing a sport.
  • Tidying up your room.
  • Learning a language.
  • Reading non-fiction books.
  • Learning a martial art/instrument.
  • Learning to be funny.
  • Learning to cook.

• "I should have done this when I was so and so" should be replaced by "At least I'm doing this now."

• You need to maximize the efficacy of your time, time is your most valuable commodity and it's incredibly finite, like an hourglass, it trickles down, except unlike an hourglass you can't turn it around and start again if you wasted the sand granules that you have already dropped on pointless shit.

• Choosing friends: surround yourself with funny people, people who can take a joke and aren't overly defensive. Make it a habit to talk with friends who have a keen wit or sophisticated sense of humor, as well as watching stand-up comedy in your free time.

• Comedy should be important to you, as comedy is medicine for the soul. Not taking serious matters too seriously is a great coping mechanism for aiding one's mental endurance. Use comedy as a painkiller to aid you in your journey of self-improvement.

Leaving Monk Mode

• Monk mode is as much about learning self-discipline as it is engaging in self-improvement.
• You will be wrapped up in the self-importance of improving all the facets in your life, managing them with a keen eye and watching all your personal investments flourish (much like a stock portfolio.)
• Your schedule will be so packed that you won’t have time to waste on low quality, frivolously time hungry exercises.
• If someone’s got something going on and you know you’d get more done doing your own thing, then keep doing your own thing.
• You are the basis for your sense of direction; don’t get drawn in by other people’s whims.
• You should never feel like being the tag-along, you have the ambition, the vision and the determination to keep moving towards the top.
• Your time is far too valuable to even contemplate wasting it as a "tag along."
• Leaving monk mode: Does not mean you can become stagnant in your endeavors. Retain your hunger for betterment no matter what level you're at.