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[LAST UPDATED January 10, 2024] My Personal Resources/Guide to a Successful, Effective and Happy Life

Bob Kong
7 min readJul 20, 2023

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Hello, my readers! Welcome to this never-finishing Medium post! This article offers you all a list of useful resources/tips/self-reflections that I’ve collected throughout my life for an optimized and effective life.

The history of this article is interestingly perplexing. I, for the longest time, had collected countless life advice across multiple aspects of my life. As early as I can remember, it was always an idea in the back of my mind to assemble all of my life advice somewhere.

Furthermore, once I started blogging as early as 2014, I noticed that my preferred approach to my blogs focused on self-reflection (as opposed to just sharing about recent experiences). Specifically, I blogged about what doesn’t work in my life and then came up with ideas to do better. Originally, I wrote my self-reflections in individual articles, hoping I could retain each self-reflection. Then I employed several different writing techniques to help myself stick with all the self-reflection.

Every technique didn’t work at all!

What actually happened was I came up with so many ideas and life lessons that it was hard for me to follow all those proposed solutions. This article was created to gather as many, if not all those years of self-reflection. This way, I wouldn’t have to keep on revisiting each article. I could just revisit this one.

Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen! My guide to my own personal success!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Mental Health
  2. Exercise and Fitness
  3. Food and Supplements
  4. Money-making/saving
  5. Career
  6. Social
  7. Personal Development

Recent Updates

Displays the three most recent updates.

  • January 28, 2024: Added some of my favorite youtube channels and some rules on sodium/potassium purchases
  • January 10, 2024: Added a purchasing rule to only buy 1 item per brand when taking advantage of flyers.
  • January 9, 2024: Added a purchasing rule to buy food that is at least 100 calories per $1.

Physical/Mental Health

General Tips

  • Clean my room on Sundays.
  • Check my weight on Sundays to see if I need adjustments.
  • Shut the phone off completely when not in use.

Sleep Health

  • Sleep between 8–10 pm. Sleep no later than 10:00 pm.
  • Shut the phone off completely when not in use
  • Aim for 8 hours for non-exercise days, 10 hours on exercise days
  • Aim for around 18 Celsius when sleeping

Technology Control

  • Read at Toronto Public Library
  • Clean my room
  • Write on paper
  • Play video games only on Friday/Saturdays.
  • Use Facebook only om Saturdays.

Fasting

  • Incorporate dry fasting to reduce water weight.
  • Fast 36–48 hours if the most recent meal day is ketogenic or ~1500 calories
  • Fast 48–60 hours if the most recent meal day is high carb or ~2500 calories

Physical Health

  • Sauna for 15–30 minutes →Mediate
  • Steam room for 5–8 minutes
  • Cold showers
  • Cold air exposures
  • Soaking feet in the cold bath

Exercise and Fitness

Train with no phone.

Weight Lifting Routine

Every other day sessions (rest day between each session).

— Full Body

  • Squats + Bench Press + Rows
  • Deadlifts + Overhead Press

— PPL:

  • Hypertrophy if I have time.
  • Strength if I don’t have time.

—Upper/Lower

  • Monday/Wednesday Strength Legs/Upper
  • Friday/Sunday Hypertrophy Legs/Upper

HIIT

Train on rest days.

—a) standing leg raises or b) up and down rope slams

  • 10–15 sets of
  • 100–150 reps with
  • 1–5 minute rest in between

Cardio

  • Run 20–30 minutes: read while doing light cardio
  • Take the stairs
  • Bike for UberEats Delivery
  • Walk whenever I can

Food and Supplements

General Tips

  • Aim for daily 80% healthy food, and 20% junk food.
  • One junk food item max when purchasing from a grocery store.
  • Only one savory food item at home.
  • When utilizing flyers, buy 1 item per brand.
  • Buy junk food that can be consumed all in one go.
  • Buy food that is 100 calories per $1.
  • Buy foods with a more potassium than sodium
  • Aim for a maximum of 2000mg of sodium per day.
  • Aim to get 5,000 mg of potassium per day.
  • Sundays only: Buy sugar-based junk food and split junk food with friends at church.

Cost-Effective Foods for Bulking

I label a cost-effective food as a food item containing (250+ calories or 10+ g protein) per $1. The following list of cost-effective foods is rounded down in calculations :

  • $8.99 for 2kg of Cavendish Fries @ (160 calories | 2g protein for 85g) → $8.99 for (3764 calories | 47g protein) → (418 calories | 5.23g protein) per $1
  • $3.98 for 2kg of Great Value Potato & Cheddar Flavoured Perogies @ (170 calories | 3g protein for 90g) → $3.98 for (3777 calories | 66 protein) → (949 calories | 16.75 protein) per $1
  • $10.99 for 2kg of NO NAME Smooth Peanut Butter, Club Size @ (90 calories | 3g protein for 15g) → $10.99 for (12000 calories | 400 protein) → (1091 calories | 36.39 protein) per $1
  • $2.25 for 100g of Bulk Barn Almond Butter @ (640 calories | 21g protein for 100g) → (284 calories | 9.33 protein) per $1

For simplified calculations, tax is not included.

Vegetables I like

  • Kale
  • Spinach
  • Avocado
  • Carrots
  • Broccoli
  • Cauliflower
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • Beets
  • Asparagus
  • Lentils
  • Chickpeas

“Healthy”/”Cost-Effective” Junk Food

  • Dark Chocolate bar with Almonds/Hazelnuts
  • Oat bars

Food Deals

Restaurants

I have very high standards for restaurants and order from most restaurants only once. If I order from a below-my-standards restaurant more than once, it is often due to a convenient location relative to where I was, it was cheap or it was with my friends. However, restaurants that surpassed my standards (and I voluntarily ordered from multiple times) are the following:

  • Rosewood Asian Cuisine [463 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5T 1G8]: Excellent assortment of AYCE Dim Sum foods
  • Bashu Chinese Restaurant [4559 Hurontario St Unit A-7A, Mississauga, ON L4Z 3X3]: Excellent assortment of AYCE Dim Sum foods
  • Ambiyian [1560 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M4T 2S9 or 149 Main St, Unionville, ON L3R 2G8]: Best Indian food I’ve ever had.
  • Yong He All Day Breakfast 永合 DT店 [428 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5T 1G7]: Cheap and wide selection of my favourite type of Chinese foods.
  • Tianjin Auntie’s Steamed Bun 天津阿姨包子铺 [77 Huron St, Toronto, ON M5T 2A8]: Cheap and wide selection of my favourite type of Chinese foods.
  • Gyugyuya: King Curry provides an assortment of different proteins after a workout.

Supplements

For my current preferences, I recommended the following body-building supplements:

  • Mutant All-In (pre-workout): 6g BCAAs to prepare me ready for a workout.
  • BioSteel Hydration (intra-workout): Excellent taste, uses only stevia, flavor variety, and comes in multiple serving sizes to prevent product commitment.
  • ISO-XP Piobiotic Whey Isolate (post-workout): Uses only stevia, and probiotic for health benefits.
  • Mutant ZM8 (Sleep / mineral supplement): Cheap and provides a lot of nutrients for its price.
  • Magnum Heat Accelerated (Fat Burner): Silences appetite and temporarily increases body heat for enhanced fat burning during fasting days.

Additional recommended body-building supplements (stopped due to sucralose):

  • Mutant 9.7: 9.7 BCAAs, cheap for large serving serving. Green Apple best taste.
  • Beyond Yourself AMRAP: 7g BCAAs, high Magnesium, cheap for the large serving. Strawberry Kiwi best taste.
  • BioX Whey Isolate: Excellent taste. Cheap for large serving. Chocolate Peanut Butter best taste.

Money-making & saving

Paid Research Studies

You can receive money (plus potential reimbursement for transportation) for 1 to 20 hours of work. Ranges from filling out simple forms/surveys, doing simple tasks , and being measured/monitored by a medical device. Only non-medically invasive ones listed below:

Sign up for >$15/hour (including commute time) studies.

Other Coupons / Good Deals

Social

General Tips

Say yes to a social only if I am >90% interested.

Fake “yes” becomes a “genuine” no that the other person/group can and will feel.

Hobbies

Career

Job Search Boards

Communities

Personal Development

YouTube

Workshops

Organizations for Self-Improvement

Purchase-Worthy Books

I recommend that everyone purchase own a copy of the following books due to the reread value:

  • 48 Laws of Power
  • Art of Seduction
  • Mastery
  • The 50th Law
  • The Laws of Human Nature
  • Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People

I only buy books after I’ve borrowed them at the library and know for certain that I will need to reread >50% of it.

Highly Recommended Books

I recommend everyone read each of the following books at least once

  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • How To Talk To Anyone
  • How to Instantly Connect with Anyone
  • How to Be a People Magnet
  • Nonviolent Communication
  • How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends
  • The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism
  • Toxic Men
  • The Prince
  • 12 Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos
  • Beyond Order : 12 More Rules For Life
  • Integrity: the courage to meet the demands of reality
  • The Analects
  • The way of the superior man : a spiritual guide to mastering the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire
  • Getting to yes : negotiating agreement without giving in
  • The entitlement cure: finding success in doing hard things the right way
  • The Relationship Cure
Life Lessons
Tips And Tricks
Success

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Bob Kong
Bob Kong

Written by Bob Kong

3 Followers
3 Following

Constantly Self-Reflecting and Optimizing My Life

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