Ways to Get More Out of Life

Today’s post is geared more towards the younger men reading Making Men, but some of you over-the-hill gang members may find some of this interesting too. In today’s post, we’re going to look at some ways to get more out of life, as I’m sharing some tips for things to do and habits to start at an early age. I wish someone had shared these thoughts with me when I was just a teenager, and since I learned these things the hard way, I thought it would be a good idea to try and help you avoid some of my pitfalls.

- Mick

Do you ever feel like you’re just not getting everything out of life that you feel you could be? Most of us have dreams and ambitions, both short-term and long-term. But it seems like we just aren’t getting as much done as we could, and suffer from a general lackadaisical attitude that hinders us even further.

One of the causes of this is procrastination. It’s human nature to put off until tomorrow what we could be doing today. Relaxation is a good thing when taken in moderation, but if you fall into the trap of building your life around relaxing, you’ll never fully realize those short-term or long-term goals.

Personally, I wasted a lot of my younger years. I couldn’t see it at the time, but looking back now, I didn’t even come close to realizing my potential or building a solid foundation for the rest of my life. I spent my days and nights in search of good times when I could have gotten so much further ahead by balancing those good times with stricter adherence to doing the things necessary to advance myself. It’s not an easy mode to get into, trust me. But with just a little diligence, you can do it.

With that in mind, I’ve put together this very simple list of some tips that will help you get more out of life, and achieve those goals.

Develop and stick to a schedule

If you take your life day by day and don’t have a basic idea of how each day fits into your week, you’re going to find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands. And generally speaking, that free time tends to end up getting wasted with not much to show for it. No plan usually means more sleeping, drinking, and playing video games than being productive.

Get yourself a planner, and once a week (I recommend Sundays) sit down and plan out your week, or at least the things you know you have coming up. If you have a job, put your working days in your planner. Around those working hours, add in other things you may have going on like doctor’s appointments, getting a haircut, meetings you may need to attend, planned meet-ups with friends, and any date with a pretty young lady you may have already planned.

Putting your weekly schedule on paper like this helps you easily see where your free time is and allows you time in advance to plan how you’d like to spend that time. Trust me, establishing a schedule and sticking to it will help you get a lot more done in life.

Get plenty of sleep

I know that sleeping in until the sun feels warm is nice. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that on occasion. But that occasion doesn’t need to come around several times a week. Rising at a decent hour every day is going to help you stay on track with your schedule, and keep getting more done.

If you’re not getting your rest by sleeping in every day, then that means you need to get your rest on the front end. Because trying to coast by on just a few hours of sleep isn’t going to cut it. For one, you can’t be at your best with just a few hours of sleep. I know when you’re young you feel like you can take on the world with just a couple of hours of shut-eye, but you’re just fooling yourself. If you truly want to seize life, you need a consistent amount of sleep each night. Regardless of age, eight hours of sleep is recommended on a nightly basis for your body to function at its peak.

Exercise

While you’re young and in school, you may get plenty of physical activity playing sports. But when those days are done, you have to take it upon yourself to stay in some kind of routine of physical activity and exercise.

Try to get some sort of exercise every day. Whether that be by going to the gym or working out at home, keeping this routine is going to benefit you greatly throughout your life. If you don’t want to pay for those expensive gym memberships, consider investing in a set of free weights to use at home. Or even just a set of resistance bands for exercising at home. If you don’t have the means for even that low level of financial commitment, then look up the Charles Atlas workout plan. It is entirely based on the dynamic resistance of your own body without anything else. Atlas stayed in tremendous shape his entire life, so you know it works.

Other ideas would be to get out and walk every day, run, or whatever else keeps you active. When I was young, there was a free par three golf course nearby. (In all honesty, it was only “free” because I got there before the guard did every day) I used to grab my 9-iron and putter and go walk that course first thing every morning. It was a fun way to get out and get some daily exercise. Plus I became pretty dangerous on the big courses when we got close to the greens. I’m using my own example here to show you that if you get creative with it, exercise won’t seem like a chore.

Eat right

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way in life, as in my early forties I developed diabetes. Part of it was genetics, but the main cause was I spent my whole life not worrying about what I ate, and more times than not, I was eating and drinking some of the worst things you can put into your body.

Eating right does not mean going on a diet. Maybe if you’re already overweight, starting a diet to get your weight down at the start is a good idea. But generally speaking, just making good choices when it comes to food will be all you need to do.

Some examples of this include things like limiting your fast food intake every week. Limit your beer consumption. Falling into that trap of “just having a few” every night will lead to that dreaded beer gut rather quickly. Pass on greasy snacks and grab an apple or a banana instead.

The best example of eating right is to eat a balanced diet, watch your portions, and enjoy the really unhealthy stuff in moderation. Grabbing a Whopper or a Big Mac once in a while isn’t going to rock the boat. But eating that stuff multiple times a week and having a couple of beers every night will lead you down a dangerous road.

One of the simplest (and easiest to remember) rules for eating right is to eat as close to the source as possible. When you pick up a food package, the more ingredients it has, the more processed it is, and the more processed it is, the worse it is for you. Let me use corn as an example. A can of corn has three ingredients: corn, water, and salt. A box of frozen corn has one…corn. See the difference? A bottle of flavored coffee creamer has 17 ingredients. Adding milk and honey to your coffee has just two ingredients…milk and honey. And it’s damn tasty.

Get a job

Some of you reading this might already have a job, but I bet some of you reading this don’t. Whether you go out and get a full-time job, or a part-time job doesn’t matter. Just get a job. Any job.

The benefits of getting and holding a job are numerous. First and foremost is the pay. Having money at your disposal for paying bills and funding your hang-outs and dates is a wonderful thing. You certainly don’t want to go through life depending on others to pay your way.

Having a job also gives structure to your life. Going back to keeping a schedule that we talked about at the beginning of this post, having a job will certainly give you the framework for your entire week. It also helps instill in you the drive that you will need for the rest of your life.

One of the best things about getting my first job when I was young was it opened me up to a whole new world of people. I took a job in the next town over from mine, so I was working with people who went to a different school and whom I had never met before. Having that job created so many more opportunities for my free time, as I now had a whole different set of friends with a whole different set of interests than I was used to. Not to mention that I met a lot of new girls at that job, so I had more dates on my schedule too.

Create a budget

If you’re working and have money coming in on a regular basis, it’s very easy to find plenty of things to spend it on. But you have to be careful not to spend too much on frivolous things and not leave enough to cover your necessities. And those necessities aren’t always obvious. No one really plans to have a tire blow out, or accidentally tear a hole in a pair of pants. You have to plan ahead for these unforeseen circumstances by budgeting your money. If you establish a budget and work it with diligence, you’ll always be in a much better place for dealing with these financial hits.

Everyone’s circumstances are different. From your rate of pay to the cost of living in your area, and a lot of other factors. So the best advice I can give on establishing your budget is to consider doing it by percentages. Figure out what percentage you want to put into savings from each paycheck, a percentage to invest if you’re interested in that, a percentage for your entertainment, and some percentages for things like eating, wardrobe, vehicle maintenance, etc. You certainly don’t want to cash your check, spend a substantial amount of it on a night out, and then find yourself digging through the couch looking for coins to buy gas with before the next check comes.

One little piece of advice that I CAN give though is to avoid credit cards if at all possible. The high-interest rates make them nearly impossible to pay off, and you certainly don’t want to accumulate debt early in life. It only hampers you later on.

And I’ll share with you one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten…” it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you save”.

Get involved in an organization

Becoming involved in some sort of organization is going to give you many benefits. Much like getting a job, it’s going to introduce you to a lot of new people. Meeting new people usually leads to making new friends, and one of the big benefits of meeting new people through an organization is networking opportunities. You may meet someone who can help further your career, or just help you get into a better-paying job or one that you like more than your current one. In joining most organizations, you get a chance to help your community too.

Some examples of organizations to join are:

• student government if you’re still in school

• various clubs like DECA, FFA, and FBLA if you’re still in school

• Church

• Kiwanas Club

• Lions Club

• Habitat for Humanity

• Elk Lodge

• Other organizations that may be in your area

Limit video games

A trend I’ve noticed in the young guys that come around here a lot is the constant fascination with video games. I mean, that’s all these guys talk about, and they discuss how much time they’ve spent on certain games. Every hour you spend on a video game is an hour you’ve lost from something else. And this doesn’t just include Playstation or Xbox games, this means games on your phone as well.

Now there’s nothing wrong with enjoying video games, but like everything else, you need to practice moderation with them. An hour spent here and there on them is entirely different than playing games for hours on end. Plus, if you spend most of your time playing games, what are you going to have to talk about when you find yourself in conversation with someone?

Don’t limit yourself to just hanging out with high school friends

As we talked about in the Get a Job and Get Involved in Organization sections, meeting people outside of your old high school friends circle can be immensely rewarding. Besides meeting new people with different ideas and different interests, you won’t find yourself doing the same old thing and having the same old conversations all the time.

Keeping up with old friends is something you certainly want to hang onto, but broaden your horizons and fill up your schedule with activities with people besides the ones you’ve always hung out with.

Learn some basic skills

One of the best things you can do for yourself and for your future is to learn to be self-reliant. I’m not talking about being able to survive alone in the woods for a month (but that isn’t a bad thing either), I’m talking about just basic everyday things that you should be able to do for yourself. Don’t just rely on your mom to do your laundry. Don’t let yourself be dependent on someone else cooking all of your meals for you. If you don’t already know how to do some of these things, take the initiative to learn. I’m sure your parents will be more than willing to take the time to teach you what you want to know if it means it will lighten their load some. And if you don’t have parents around to ask, or they don’t have the time, most any adult will take the time to help you if you show interest. Heck, if you want to know how to do something and can’t find someone to explain it to you, get in touch with me. I’ll be happy to help you learn it if I can. Some basic things you can and should learn to do on your own include:

• learn to cook two or three meals

• learn how to do your laundry

• learn how to iron a shirt

• learn how to tie a tie

• learn how to clean your space

• learn how to change a tire

• learn how to rotate tires on a vehicle

• learn how to check and change the oil in a vehicle

Have some fun

I know it may seem like this list was designed to sap all of the fun out of your life, but it really wasn’t. While it may seem like doing these things will take all of your time, they won’t. Once you develop a schedule and stick to it, you’ll find that you have a surprising amount of free time on your hands. Real free time. As in, you’re not wasting your time because you’ve been taking care of things that need doing in a timely fashion, thus leaving more playtime than you imagined.

Use this time to meet up with friends, or take a girl out on a real date (and not just “hanging out”). Use it to get into a new hobby, or go enjoy the outdoors. You can even use some of it to play some video games…in moderation.

But trust me, if you try to develop a schedule and routine, stick to it the best you can, and work on the other things on this list, you’re going to find you’re getting more out of your time and getting further ahead in life than you thought possible at an early age. One day you’ll thank yourself (and maybe me too) for starting down this path.