The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life)

by Chris Hardwick

You’re extra-special, and sometimes that’s hard.

Uncle Ben Parker was right on when he blabbed about great power & great responsibility.

Nerds slouch, they won’t look you in the eye, they stare at the floor mostly, and they seem to be on a mission to wrap their entire bodies around the center of their chest.

Mo’Nique (I still don’t understand the apostrophe’s role in making that name function)

it’s obviously a pun, mo’ as in more

I take umbrage with the concept of “being content with oneself.” It’s bullshit. You should be HAPPY with yourself. Contentment is a sedentary state.

spazzy

UGH

Call a few gyms near you and find what the going rate is for a trainer. Just because a trainer charges a lot doesn’t mean they are good, and vice versa! Also if you find a great trainer and can’t afford him, well, it won’t matter then either. Find what you can do, manage, and afford.

Tom is so much nicer, reasonable, and less “lol so random” than Chris. I want to read his book.

“But I’m broke!” may be valid, but REALLY think about it . . . How much money do you spend going out to bars a couple of nights a week? It’s probably about fifty or sixty bucks.

No?????

FEAR OF “GETTING TOO HUGE”

Wait, some people are actually worried about that, it’s not just a joke?

It’s a generally accepted rule that if you want to tone your muscles (pronounced “mus-kulls,” à la Popeye), you’ll want to use lower weights but higher reps, and if you’re looking to pack on meat, heavier weights but lower reps.

You will see rep suggestions listed below each excercise. Don’t kill yourself to meet them and don’t cheat with poor form to eke out those last few. It’s OK to go to failure. “Failure” here means “until you can’t do any more reps with good form,” or more specifically “muscle fatigue.” “Failure equals success in workouts,” Tom always says. In other words, it’s not the number that counts. If all you can do is five reps, then your muscles are being worked to their limit. If that is painful for ANY reason, next time try a lighter weight.

“Line. Speed. Beauty.”

ALWAYS focus on good technique first. Even if you can only afford a trainer one time a month to keep you on track with your technique, it’s worth it.

let’s say you start with five-pound dumbbells. If you can do fifteen to twenty reps of that, huzzah!

If you can easily do twenty to thirty reps with the five-pound weights, congratulations! Now start the process over with eight-pound weights.

Make sure to record your workouts in your Character Tome. And give yourself 10 XP each time you complete one!

achieve what scientists refer to as “lusciously fuckable” pecs.

ugh when can I be done with this book

Overtraining without enough recovery time will lead to injury. :( ← frowny

If you’re eating right, you won’t really have cravings for healthy food. In fact, if you do crave something over and over again, you might actually be allergic to it. WTF, Body??

This does not sound correct.

The word “carbs” is as bad as the word “fuck” to some people, particularly in our weird half-assed-version-of-the-Atkin’s-Diet-obsessed society. In truth, carbs are the fuel that your body needs to exert energy.

(peas, beans, pod fruit—“legume” is a dumb-sounding word that comes from the Latin legere, to gather; as in, these foods were commonly “gathered” by our ancestors).

GOOD FAT: Albert BAD FAT: Jabba the Hutt

eating better doesn’t mean starving yourself.

if you’re eating properly you should never feel hungry. If you feel sick to your stomach and zombielike, you’re not eating enough of the right foods.

going on a hunger strike diet will take off weight, but it will also take off valuable things like muscle, good fat, and your will to live.

Rather than just committing to work out and eat better, commit to the concept of consistency. It sounds strange, but this slight goal adjustment might help you have better results when you find yourself trying to justify eating a whole pie by yourself.

Supplements: multivitamins, vitamin B3 for men, and iron and calcium for women.

Men don’t need as much iron as ladies. This is because we don’t menstruate very often. Oh sure, it SOUNDS rad, but most dudes are just too damn lazy to produce eggs and then slough them through the penis. The calcium is helpful to women because they are more susceptible to bone density loss and the B3 (also called niacin) for men because it gives dudes the energy to support their typically higher muscle mass.

Weird sexism aside, this is actually useful?

Do not eat two to three hours before bed.

Do not grow in the gym; growth takes place with rest and proper nutrition.

(Hampton has the best beds in a pinch and are in all small towns. No, they are not paying me but certainly SHOULD.)

“It doesn’t matter what you do . . . as long as you check that ‘Did I work out today’ box with a yes!”

Tom would always point out that it was the sum total of all of the workouts that had gotten me to that moment. The crappy ones, he reasoned, were ESSENTIAL for getting to the good ones.

“EXACTLY!” (Tom gets charmingly excited while making a good point.) “It’s not any one thing that changed your life. It’s CONSISTENCY.

Think of your body as a bank account and today you open that account with zero dollars.

You can’t get into shape in a week, you can’t fall out of shape in a week.

When you have a spell where workouts are impossible, you’re never more than two or three workouts away from getting back to where you were.

Mine is primarily self-improvement.

Getting Things Done, Julie Morgenstern’s Never Check E-Mail in the Morning (I never got good at this), and Timothy Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek.

After your mind is calm and your body is fit, all that’s left is to fill your time with worthwhile events that will pay off for you in your present and future.

set up another Gmail account for non-interpersonal correspondence. Invest $0 in one and start giving it out to any Web site, bank, or utility company that wants to send you information about your account or “special offers.”

“Labels” tab.

“Create a new filter.” Here you’ll see a bunch of fields that represent the different fields of an email: From, To, Subject, and so on. The idea here is to set up an email rule that directs any email coming from the red herring email address into the “Lists” folder. In the “To” field, enter your red herring email and click “Next Step.” On the vertical list, select the checkbox next to “Skip the Inbox (Archive It),” then select the one next to “Apply the Label” and select your “Lists” label. On the bottom right, check “Also Apply Filter to XX Conversations

Gmail allows you to add + identifiers to your email address when you give it out. In other words, if your email is wienerpants@gmail .com, you can tag it thusly: wienerpants+bank@gmail.com. Emails to this address will still come to your main inbox, but the + identifier allows you to sort mail with that tag more efficiently.

Again, some companies’ email entry systems are confused by +tag and will scold you to enter a valid email address (but I AM, you robotic asscan!). If the tag doesn’t work, instead add a “.” anywhere in your Gmail address.

Every few weeks, I make sure that my in-box is full of stuff that I’ve taken care of, or I star the things that still need attention and move topic-specific emails into corresponding labels. Then I select the empty checkbox that floats above the vertical row of checkboxes. A notice will pop up: “All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all XX conversations in Inbox” (the latter phrase will be hyperlinked). I select it and consequently it selects every piece of mail in my inbox. Then I click the bolded “Archive” button in the menu bar just above my emails. They are sent to a label called “All Mail,” which is accessible and searchable whenever, and my in-box is CLEAN.

Download the free timer at NerdistWay.com (or whatever clock you have the strongest bond with) and over the course of a day click it every time you start doing something different.

“Went on Etsy to find clown paintings,” “Played Angry Birds while pooping,” whatever you do.

false productivity.

the web tricks us into thinking we’re accomplishing something because we are constantly absorbing information.