The Online Companion
This is the Online Companion to the Freedom Twenty-Five book. It’s free to use, but if the content interests you – get the book!
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Using the information in Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide To Life, I’ve been able to live a much more effective life. But nothing I have done or written about is magic, nor am I a genius savante, to whom the secrets of the universe reveal themselves.
On the contrary, everything I know and everything I’ve done can be repeated by any reasonably bright and self-disciplined man, provided he is willing to check his ego at the door, and re-learn the art of modern living at the feet of some unconventional masters. The goal of this book is simply to publicize unpopular ideas, and demolish some of the myths and delusions that hold us back in our efforts to live better.
I know a great deal about the subjects in Freedom Twenty-Five, but if I have seen far, it’s only because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants. This online companion contains links to the absolute must-read sources of information that make up the foundation of Freedom Twenty-Five. All of it is either in the form of blogs you can access for free, or inexpensive books that are worth their weight in gold.
Disclaimer: I earn a small commission from any Amazon purchases you make through this page, at no extra cost to you, but otherwise I do not stand to benefit financially from recommending any of the products below.
1. Health
My undisputed favourite source of exercise, nutrition and health information online is Mark’s Daily Apple. Whenever I’m scrambling for reputable information on some obscure health topic, I simply Google: Mark Sisson + (whatever) and I am rarely disappointed. For a concise and definitive summary of the MDA Primal Health philosophy (and to support Mark) also check out The Primal Blueprint.
The next two sources I would recommend on this subject are Kurt Harris’ Archevore blog and Tim Ferriss’s The Four Hour Body. The physical performance category of Tim’s Blog is also invaluable.
You should read Dennis Mangan’s blog for many reasons, one of which is his frequent discussion of paleo and alternative health topics. Ditto for Hawaiian Libertarian, especially if you ever plan on having a Paleo Baby of your own.
Seth Roberts’s The Shangri-La Diet is an interesting read that I only got to after the book went to print, otherwise I would have included a paragraph or two on his unconventional approach to weight loss.
You can order a decent foam roller here. There are plenty of videos out there that will teach you how to use one, such as here.
Mark Sisson has a comprehensive and link-filled post on supplementation here,
Mark posts on how to engineer a proper night’s sleep here, as does Tim Ferriss here.
The Freedom Twenty-Five One-Month Plan
I recommend you design a fitness plan with your own schedule, preferences, and food availability in mind. For example, I live in Chiang Mai, Thailand as I write this, and it would be close to impossible to avoid eating rice. (Fortunately, almost everything else I eat is local produce, grass-fed meat, and veggie shakes, and I’m training Muay Thai 25 hours a week.)
That said, here’s the diet and exercise plan I used (or at times, should have used) while I was living in North America:
Diet:
- All kinds of MEAT, including game, poultry, shellfish, seafood and eggs.
- Lots of FATS, such as avocados, avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil, butter, clarified butter (ghee), lard, tallow, duck fat, veal fat, lamb fat, fatty fishes (sardines, mackerel, salmon), nut butters, nut oils (walnut, macadamia), coconut flesh, and coconut milk.
- All sorts of FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
- All sorts of NUTS AND SEEDS, such as Pistachios, Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds (pepitas), pecans, walnuts, pine nuts, macadamia nuts, chestnuts, cashews, almonds, hazelnuts
- HERBS, such as Parsley, thyme, lavender, mint, basil, rosemary, chives, tarragon, oregano, sage, dill, bay leaves, and coriander.
- SPICES such as Ginger, garlic, onions, peppers, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, vanilla, cloves, chilies
I am also adding high-fat DAIRY to that list. It may offend some Paleo purists, but I’m Scots-Irish so my gut can handle the stuff quite efficiently. Coffee is also exempt from the Neolithic-purge, I will continue to drink too much, though I will be making an effort to substitute red wine for beer and liquor.
Confine your deviations from this plan to one cheat day (or not, if you have the will power).
Day 1: Upper Body
Dumbbell or Bench Press: 5 sets of 5-10 reps
Pull-ups: 5 sets of 5-20 reps
Overhead Barbell Press: 5 sets of 5-15 repsDo one set of each exercise in succession, then go back to the first, aka a super-set. Each set is to failure, with the same weight all the way through. Obviously I get more reps in the first sets (current pull-up record: 18) and fewer in round five. There is no rest between sets.
Day 2: Legs
Unweighted Jump Squats: 5 sets of ~20
Leg Press: 5 sets of ~20 Lunges: 5 sets of a 20 metre unweighted lunge walk
Deadlifts: 5 sets of ~10
When I first wrote that post, I was shooting for just a half hour a week in the gym, but looking back I consider that a bit over-eager. Doing all of the above in two half-hour workouts is more realistic, and of course you’ll progress faster if you add more exercises on top of that, to a point of diminishing returns.
This diet and exercise plan is a good starting point, but the important thing to do is simply create a routine for yourself, and stick to it for one month. I find that time period to be ideal for forming a new habit and sticking to it.
2. Money
Tim Ferriss’ The Four-Hour Work Week is quite possibly the most important book of our generation. It is an excellent starting point to read about minimalism, entrepreneurship, location-independent businesses, and other strategies for escaping the conventional 9-5 prison. If you buy one book from this online companion, I recommend The 4HWW.
Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich is an invaluable guide to streamlining your personal finances to facilitate savings and headache-free cash flows. It’s also full of practical advice on reducing expenses, living frugally, and earning more. I’ve recommended this book to several friends and each has used the information it contains to almost instantly save many times the purchase price.
I regret that I only started reading Peter Schiff after this book had gone to the printers, otherwise I would have featured him prominently on the main stage. Crash Proof 2.0: How To Profit From The Economic Collapse is an incredible book, filled with practical advice on how you can get rich (or at least not go broke) in the looming implosion of the American Empire.
I believe that the easiest way to change your life is to change the people you choose to surround yourself with. If you spend your days among 9-5 drones who are willfully oblivious to the opportunities offered by unconventional career paths, it might be hard to immediately change that. Fortunately, you can virtually immerse yourself in the lives of interesting, intelligent and adventurous young men through their writing. Read about men like Ben Casnocha, Charlie Hoehn, Ryan Holiday , Colin Wright, and Nomadic Matt until their lives seem ‘normal’ to you, and those of your desk-jockey peers seem odd and alien.
The ultimate online guide to Zen, minimalism, and detaching yourself from a consumerist mentality, is the Zen Habits archive.
Mark Cuban is one inspiring motherfucker. His entire blog archive is worth reading, but his Success And Motivation series is a cut above the rest.
I used to use Mint.com to manage my personal finances, before my bank’s website started offering a similar tool. Mint is free and easy to use.
Putting a chunk of your life savings into gold may be a bit intimidating, so don’t take my word for it. Work through the logic yourself, and see if you agree.
3. Sex
There is a great deal of garbage out there, masquerading as quality information on the art and science of seduction. Before you go and spend a month’s pay on books, DVDs, and seminars, remember:
1) Most seduction material is crap
2) Lots of valuable information is available for free
3) What you read is nowhere near as important as how often you approach, and how much you learn from your experiences.
That said, Game is an invaluable tool, your success with women will be a huge factor in determining your overall enjoyment of life. If you can improve your chances of success by dropping a buck or two occasionally, it’s worth it. So while this section of the online companion is primarily composed of free sources, there are a few commercial products as well.
If you’re new to the world of seduction, you may want to start with Neil Strauss’s The Game, and The Mystery Method. Neither of these books are the most useful I’ve come across from a practical perspective, but the former in particular is a useful source for the early history of the seduction community. Are you the naturally curious type? If so, you’ll probably want to check them out. Skip them if you just want to dive right in.
Roosh Vorek has written two excellent and comprehensive guides to getting laid in North America: Bang and Day Bang, the latter covering day-time approaches. Neither contains a magic formula that will instantly turn you into a sex machine, nor do they claim to. Instead, they offer simple, natural-feeling advice that guys can use to grease their interactions with women, without turning themselves into feather-boa wearing clowns.
The entire Roissy/Heartiste Archive is also required reading. Start from 2008 and work your way forward.
Citation for the claim that Sluts Make Bad Wives.
I also think it’s essential to surround yourself as much as possible with other men who are similarly dedicated to improving their relationships with women. If this means recruiting some new friends, do it. In the meantime, you can virtually immerse yourself in the lives of writers like: A Private Man, Athol Kay, Badger Hut, Bronan, Dalrock, Delusion Damage, Donlak, Fly, Fresh and Young, G Manifesto, Gmac, Krauser, Naughty Nomad, Quest For 50, Rational Male, and Real Assanova.
Any ladies who have snuck into the room should take a look at The Lost Art Of Self-Preservation, Hooking Up Smart, and The Rules Revisited.
Finally, check out the original first generation of Manosphere writers – Tucker Max, author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell and Assholes Finish First.
I also recommend the following sites as sources of information on Men’s Rights and Misandry: A Voice For Men, The Spearhead, and the classic essay, The Misandry Bubble.
4. Focus
Yes, this will be the third mention of Tim Ferriss in as many categories in this online companion. This is not a coincidence. the Four-Hour Work Week was my original introduction to the concept of the Low-Information Diet, and made me realize how much time and energy I was wasting on bullshit that I had no need or desire to know about. The category archive by that name on Tim’s Blog is also a great source of information.
My favourite book on workflows and productivity is hands-down David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s a bid dated – there is much talk of file folders and other remnants of the paper era – but the core ideas are still readily applicable to the digital world.
Cal Newport’s Study Hacks Blog is great, and useful for non-students alike. I haven’t read any of his books, but I recommend them sight unseen to any high school and college age readers.
Unplugging from the matrix and replacing your old sources of information with new ones is a challenging task, and you’ll have to make your own decisions regarding who is worthy of your trust, and who is not. Here are my suggestions of unconventional thinkers who will challenge ideas that you’ve taken for granted throughout your life, and expose you to some new ones that you may be afraid to consider.
First, a ragtag group of Reactionaries whose ideologies would be more at home in the 18th century (or 8th) than they are today: Unqualified Reservations, Foseti, Jehu, Devin Finbarr, and Dennis Mangan.
Next, a collection of writers who defy description, other than that they have rejected the cant and ideology of the modern mainstream mind, and are messily going about the process of reconstructing a sane interpretation of reality from the ground up: Chuck Ross, Hawaiian Libertarian, OneSTDV, Robin Hanson, Tao Of Dirt, Vox Populi, Simon Rierdon and Steve Sailer.
Once you start clicking, you’ll quickly discover that Freedom Twenty-Five is just one small part of a large and growing counterculture of mostly-young men who’ve figured out that much of what they’ve been taught their entire lives has been false, and are seeking new answers. The best place to start in your journey into this world is the hub of this community: Ferdinand Bardamu’s In Mala Fide.
5. Purpose
There’s a reason my chapter on Purpose is the shortest of the book: I haven’t quite figured mine out yet. That said, here are two books that have gotten me a few steps closer:
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca
My apologies for not being able to offer anything more definitive. If you ever got the impression that I had it all figured out, you were mistaken. Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide To Life is a handbook that will get you to where you want to be in every practical aspect of your life. I’m still working on the spiritual and existential answers myself though, and I’ll share ‘em when I get ‘em.
Administrivia
Like the Online Companion? If so, get the book!
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Read the Reviews
This Online Companion is a living document, so I’ll be adding to it as I read and learn and grow. You can help me out by suggesting books, blogs and other sources of information in the comments to this page:
So, Loyal Freedom Twenty-Five followers: What else should I be reading?
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
4. Cyborganize. The best productivity method out there. Check out the site cyborganize.org
5. Christianity. There is NO alternative. Trust me, I’ve considered them all. I’m convinced you will become one, probably when you leave Asia. Check out Eugene Rose’s “Nihilism”, and Kreeft’s “Pascal’s Pensees”. You say you read bgc but I don’t know if you actually *read*him. Go back through his archives. Pure gold.
That is an impressive list indeed. I guess I am going to spend the afternoon reading articles on Mark Cuban’s blog.
Also, Simon, Christianity!? I take rationality over blind faith every day of the week.
5). Interesting choice Frost for Purpose in stoicism… Christianity is a direct inheritor of that slave morality (Yes, Stoicism is in fact a slave morality). I feel that stoicism has a lot of false acceptance/resentment/internal soul preoccupation… I would suggest reading Nietzsche and a lot of Nietzsche starting with Truth and Lies in an Extra Moral Sense… I would be happy to talk stoicism with you at any point.
Sleazy, you need blind faith to use rationality.
No. All you need is to know what your rationality predicts and then see if you observe it, more than you’d observe it without taking actions deriving from rationality.
To say you need “blind faith” in anything, not just religious faith, is a short-sighted cop-out. Because technically, I could claim that you, Simon, needed “blind faith” that your very replies on this website would be interpretable, “blind faith” that we speak the same language and can use it to come to the same meaning. But that faith isn’t “blind”. Religious faith IS.
Thanks for making my point for me, Adam. I know I need blind faith that my replies are interpretable, and have the some meaning, just as I know I have blind faith that I have free will, or that my rationality is actually rational. I can handle that, it’s a part of the human condition. By the same reasoning, I have blind faith that there is a God, for without which nothing really makes any sense.
“On earth we walk by faith and not by sight; and he is mistaken greatly who thinks that having extinguished faith in himself, he can walk thenceforth by sight alone.”
Under Health I’d also throw in “Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes and “Wheat Belly” by William Davis. For anyone who needs the detailed case of why a diet change is necessary, these books do the trick.
Under Sex I’d add Vox Day’s Alpha Game blog. You have Badger, Dalrock, and A Private Man in your blogroll but it doesn’t hurt to give them a shout-out. Otherwise you hit on all the other good game resources. I’d maybe throw in Robert Greene’s Art of Seduction but mainly because his books tend to be interesting to read.
Under Purpose read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Odyssey. Each of these books tells the story of a man trying to survive in a hostile world with mostly only his cunning, force of will and good luck to aid him. Franklin’s give some straight-forward advice (his dieting schemes are way off to anyone who follows a paleo diet but the bigger lesson was his willingness to experiment; its a shame he died before he could finish the book which only goes up to the 1750s) while Monte Cristo and The Odyssey just make for some fantastic reading.
@ Jackson: could you expound on this stoic/slave morality theory
OMG, FROST!
“Honestly, my only answer:
God.
I will qualify that by stating that by any theological definition, I am an atheist, and always have been. But even though I justify it without referencing the magical or spiritual, I believe that humans should and do aspire to fulfilling certain ideals. This is why I choose to spend my time becoming a better version of myself, rather than just pursuing video games, hookers, porn, etc.
For the time being, I also prefer my current life to one spent pursuing pleasure via less ‘real’ channels. But give it a decade. The sex dolls and video games are just getting better. One day, the effortless pleasures they offer will top those that must be earned.
Still, I will keep living as I do, because I believe in a larger set of values than hedonistic pleasure.
From a hedonistic perspective, I”
I just came across this! It is astounding! I knew it, it’s only a matter of time mate, keep seeking, keep searching you will find.
“There are only three sorts of people:
1. those who have found God and serve him;
2. those who are busy seeking him and have not found him;
3. those who live without seeking or finding him.
“The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable.”
You’re 2. You will soon be 1.
Fucking good stuff mate, I’m actually pretty stoked at this. (Mostly because we are so similar.)
The fact this is so amazing to me is because I was an atheist my entire life, like you. I Couldnt even think to myself that God existed. UNTIL, I realised, like you, that unless I conceded the existence of God, or some supreme entity, there is no objective truth. This wasn’t something I was prepared to live with, so I accepted that there is a God.
To find out that this is pretty much the same thing you just did, just blows my mind. Which means, inevitably you will become a Christian.
Why not Muslim? Or Jew? Your reasoning supports these faiths (and others) just as well as it supports Christianity.
For those who haven’t seen it, that was a comment I left on OneSTDV’s post here:
http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2011/12/having-goals-and-means-of-pleasure.html
Since I’ve never really understood Religion, and how intelligent, rational people can believe, I’ve been on a mission recently to expose myself to Christian theology. Peter Hitchens, CS Lewis, Bruce Charlton, etc. So far, I’ve developed a better appreciation of Christian/Theistic philosophy, and have realized that my ethos goes beyond nihilism.
Or maybe it doesn’t. I am currently best classified as a nihilist who prefers to pretend he isn’t one. I’m doing my best to give Christianity a fair hearing, both as something I should have faith in, and as a vehicle through which to restore western civilization. So far I’m unconvinced on both counts, but I have a few more books and essays to read.
My prediction is that I’ll walk away from my wrestling match with faith a wiser person, but still a heathen. Simon (and others) disagree, and I’m interested in giving them a fair hearing.
I will ask though that we resume it in future upcoming posts, and reserve the comments here for comments and suggestions directly related to the OC.
Cheers,
Frost
No worries, mate, you can delete those comments, if you want.
Thank you kind sir for the inclusion to this excellent online companion. I’m enjoying the book so far and will write a review when I’m done.
Hi Frost,
thats an impressive link list but here is my adjustment for part 3.
To recommend the MM and Neil Strauss will just send the people to the whole pickup complex theory. MM and Neil Strauss are just pupolar.
Also I recommend you Mark Mansons “Models”. Please have a look at this book. Is full of good content. He also gives advice for Health(Paleo), Sport (Starting Strength), how to be a better men.
He has a great attitude.
Good luck,
my friend.
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