The 12 things that can only make a guy more attractive. Feel free to comment on my list, but only add and remove things if you think they apply universally, not just to you.

1. being well dressed
they say clothes make the man. The clothes you buy should fit well, and stop short of having a style that screams “metrosexual”

2. having a car
especially one that feels awesome to get into. Bonus points for nice stereo system and comfortable seats. Make sure her leaning over doesn’t shift your gears

3. having enough money
you should be able to afford to take her out on a non-crappy date every single day without too much damage to your bank account. Not that you would, but you could — it’s a non-issue.

4. having a good social circle
people that really respect you, bonus points if it includes females in it. Oh, this is like he #1 thing that timid, intelligent guys need.

5. having your own place
bonus points if you have interesting things back there you can show her, or activities you could do together

6. having a style

be well groomed. Try going to a gay hair stylist. They might give you some good pointers. Something that fits with your actual personality, and doesn’t seem like a mishmash of frankenstein parts. Own your style, and have it together.

7. confidence and decisiveness
Confidence says you know you’ve got it going on, so focus on your good qualities. Also as a man, you should be able to be decisive, while at the same time having enough respect for social norms to not force people into awkward situations.

8. having an identity, a job
Be prepared to talk about what you do and a few things about how people you’re talking to might relate to it. How does it connect to who you are? Show, don’t talk, about what makes you unique and interesting.

9. working out and having a well built body
Women subconsciously ask, how is a man who can’t take care of himself going to take of me? Not to mention, a powerful man can make women feel weak in the knees This is especially true when she doesn’t know you well enough yet.

10. clean face, teeth, hair
It goes without saying, bad hygiene is a turn-off, although the standards vary a bit by culture. Use conditioner in your hair and try shaping it with paste. Some women like body hair on men, others don’t. If you’ve got a huge bush, try using a beard trimmer, to prevent itching as the hair grows back.

11. smell good, manly cologne
For the times one of you leans in to whisper sweet nothings in the ear of the other. Remember though, women on the whole have a more acute sense of smell than men do, so don’t put on so much that it’s overpowering. Consider getting a nice shower gel. And definitely use deodorant where needed.

12. be successful at something a woman can admire
There are so many things, I can’t even begin to list them. Okay, I can: cooking, photography, poetry, art, playing an instrument, etc.

A lot has been written on the topic of human male-female relations. I should know — I read a lot of it. And having done enough of my own “research”, I think I’m qualified to present my findings. Let’s paint a picture of what’s really going on.

The two factors

It seems to me that most of the dynamics we observe in male-female relations stem from two main factors:

1. Society’s restrictions on who we may meet, how many partners we may have, etc.
2. Attraction triggers in men are much more universal than in women.

Let’s take a look at each of these. The wide-ranging effects of the first factor can be observed by looking at different societies, both throughout the world and throughout history. Some societies are very restrictive and essentially enforce courtship and marriage (sometimes arranged) as the only legitimate option. On the other extreme, we have free love movements, where people can freely express their sexuality without necessarily shutting off all other options for the rest of their life. The changes brought about in this country by the sexual revolution of the 1960s affect us all throughout America. Older ideas about chastity, properness, dating and marriage, are hardly as widespread as they once were.

The second factor polarizes male-female relationships, and leads to interesting phenomena depending on the society. It can be characterized like this: place a beautiful woman in 10 different situations, each with 10 different men, and they will all find her attractive. Place a man in 10 different situations, and in some he will come out attractive (such as when he is in a band or captain of the football team) to pretty much all women present, and in others he will be looked over by almost all women (such as when he’s in a starbucks getting coffee). Now, it is true: certain physical traits are attractive to most women … height, well developed musculature, and so forth. But on the whole, they do not dominate the other attraction triggers, as women’s looks do in men.

Women have long learned that looks are extremely important in attracting the opposite sex. I should clarify, though, a woman’s sex appeal is not just based on looks — as is commonly said — but also the implications such as being in shape, physicality, etc. … in short her sex appeal is universally tied to how physically satisfying the potential sexually charged activities would be with her. (This is what most men imagine.)

Men, on the other hand, may shine in some situations but not others, even sporting the same exact look and style. There are lots of nuances but the bottom line is this: traits that women consider attractive — whether they realize it or not — are almost always correlated with the man’s social circle and his status within it. For example, a man who is confident and uninhibited — let’s call him the “bad boy”. This man is attractive not only because he is more exciting, but there is a deeper implication: his social status among his friends is different from the men who are proper and try to fit in. Those men probably occupy average positions in social circles. The bad boy doesn’t try to please everybody, so those people who remain with him do so because they love to be around him. Thus, when a woman is out with him, she knows she is also surrounded by a social circle that gives him a lot of respect (which in evolutionary terms leads to better protection and resources, and in modern terms leads to more fun). We can see lots of similarities to this in nature, with the “alpha male” expressing himself without trying to fit in, etc. These traits may run counter to other qualities the woman is looking for — tenderness, responsibility — so her search is a more difficult one.

Consequences

Let’s start with some direct consequences of this situation. Because women’s beauty is a much more universal attraction trigger for men, it is polarizing. Women who are really beautiful, from the time they are teenagers, start realizing that men are always after them wherever they go. In societies where men can meet women freely, the majority of men are fixated on these women as their main choice whenever an opportunity arises. This leads beautiful women to believe they can get almost any man at any time.

Traditionally, women were to be sheltered and protected, and it was a man’s role to take risks and physical challenges. Nowadays, our society is very different and diverse, but these gender roles endure — even though they are outdated and sometimes wind up hurting both genders.

As an example, here is the typical way these historical ideas about gender roles hurt people today: it is commonly accepted that the man should make the first move and approach a woman. He should “ask her out” and possibly risk getting a polite “no”. Sounds fine, except let’s combine it with what we already learned about, above. The men will wind up asking out lots of beautiful women — because they are the ones the men are attracted to the most. The beautiful women are a small part of the overall population, and they are almost always seeing someone, because every time they go out they can meet men who’d like to date them — and some of those men do.

But there’s a dark side to all of this: many women are tired of constantly getting “hit on” by men everywhere they go.  Their responses are no longer polite — the man might come up all nice, and they’d give him a scathing look or ignore him altogether. That leads to the modern notion of beautiful girls “all being bitches”, or something similar. It’s true that their life is different and even their friends might be jealous of it. Some do become conceited or have high expectations (e.g. money to be lavished on them). They want to enjoy their time as much as they can, because their beauty is temporary (which is another factor). They are less willing to settle down than their plainer-looking counterparts, as can be readily seen in the studies.

Men’s experience is much more varied. Most men don’t have qualities that automatically draw women to them (such as fame and money, which can constantly put a man into situations where he appears attractive). So unlike beautiful women, it is up to them whether to engage with the opposite sex. On the average, men get approached much, much less often than women. So it’s up to them to choose how they will meet someone. Some men take the shot whenever they see a woman that they like — be it on the street, in a coffee shop, or in a bar. Almost all these men get rejections the majority of the time. And these are not your grandmother’s rejections. Looking at what we’ve established about modern male-female relations, we have the following:

• free dating — meet pretty much anyone, no social pressure to make a long term commitment
• this leads to lots of men asking the women they want out
• social stigma from having too many partners (being “such a slut”, etc.)
• this leads to women being as selective as possible, to protect their image
• this, in turn, leads to more women being obnoxious to the random guys, because there are no consequences
• this leads to nice guys getting tons of emotional abuse, and bad boys playing the field
• finally, this means that these days the men who don’t have a problem with constantly chasing skirts, get most of the women. Because the others just get out of the game because rejections are too paintful, and settle down.

Social Dynamics

Women are social creatures. You’ll rarely see woman out at night by herself — she is either with friends or with a guy. Obviously, this is for protection, but it also developed a secondary function — social display. Women spend hours getting ready to go out for a reason.

We already spoke about how most of a man’s attractive qualities are tied to his social circle and his standing within it. It would do well for men to appear in groups, then. A solitary dude has a much lower chance of conveying his social circle status. Yet most men are pretty much “each man for himself” when they go out — completely the opposite of women. It’s true, they don’t need the “protection” that women seek, but they also significantly reduce their opportunities to display their social circle. At that point, their best bet is to show their social skills among the ad-hoc group that forms in the bar, or at the party. The man who masters this consistently becomes one of the most attractive men in the room.

Among animals, there is a behavior called lekking. This is where males put on competitive displays to attract females. Some women in today’s feminist-influenced society may talk badly about “macho behavior” or “guys always being so competitive”, but there is a counterpart in human society which attracts women despite anything they say. It is when a group of guys comes in and starts having competitive fun. Not only do they put on a loud display that everyone else in the room takes notice, but also the winners of the competition are seen as very attractive. This is an example of how social circles can help men be consistently seen as attractive.

to be continued…

Many people say life is short. Compared to what? A dog lives, on average, a life that’s 7 times shorter. A fruit fly lives for a day.

Rather, life is limited. I’m writing because I realized something about that. Life is like a limited canvas in which you have the opportunity to create a masterpiece. What is your life about? It will be about whatever you choose to do during your life.

All those times we are complaining about how things are not the way we want them to be, how life is too short, etc. are times almost totally wasted. I used to say that worrying doesn’t ever help. But now I am going to say something deeper. You have a limited life, and there is a sublime beauty in that. You have limited resources, and it’s up to you to make something of it all. How do you go about it is up to you - it is your life.

Also a note about stress and multitasking. People say the years start flying by faster as you get older. I wouldn’t know for sure, of course, but I suspect that the rate at which time flies by has to do with memory and awareness. If you are constantly stressed out, multitasking, and feeling like you aren’t accomplishing very much, then life starts go by much more quickly. I know, because the last 4-5 years have gone by and I haven’t really traveled anywhere much, haven’t really “lived” all that much, while people around me, younger than me, have experienced so many adventures. If we focus on our health, our memory, our awareness of life, we may be better equipped to savor it. If we can accomplish things, and take our time to take it all in as we’re living our life, we may find much more fulfillment and satisfaction.

One more note about strengths and weaknesses. This post grew out of talking to my mother. She has accomplished quite a lot, and is ahead of others in many ways — for example, she finished a Ph. D in music in Russia, she has over 10 years of experience as a music teacher in public schools, she studied biology and physical therapy, and holds advanced degrees in education. But she took a couple real estate courses and is now filling up all her free time getting involved with properties she bought in Saratoga county. Meanwhile, she is not devoting a lot of time to utilizing her strengths. I look back on how I spent my own time, and I see a lot of time-wasting too, although to a lesser extent. So I want to make the following observation:

In those things that can really use our strengths, we can accomplish many things comfortably and effectively. Those are our resources — our education, our experience, our skills, the people we know, and so on. And they say the rich get richer . . . you have so much power in these areas, you can generate momentum much more easily, and later channel it to spill over into other areas.

Instead, we sometimes begin spending our time trying to start from scratch in an area we don’t have experience in, which we are still weak in. It could be fun if it’s just a hobby. But trying to make it in this area, without using any of your resources from the areas you are strong in, is almost always a waste of time in this limited life. It is frustrating. You wind up multitasking and stressed out. Your life begins to pass by more quickly and you don’t take it all in.

However, if you could build yourself up to success in the areas you’re good at, and then use your new resources to generate momentum in other areas, you will accomplish more and on the whole, you will be respected more too.

The big reason for this is that you have very few resources when you start out in a new area. Mark Twain said, “We are all stupid, just on different subjects.” If we learn effective ways of converting our resources (time, money, personality, skills, strengths, connections, etc.) into what we want, we’ll accomplish much more. When you are strong on something, and you play to your considerable strengths, you don’t have to worry about fixing all your weaknesses. But when you start out in a new field, you have to work on eliminating a huge number of weaknesses and naivete before you can get consistently good results. Because you have no overriding strengths to help you get away with your mistakes. For example, Paris Hilton recorded a CD. One thing is clear: use the resources you’ve got, and the ones you can convert more easily. Use your aces to get more aces. With these, you can later obtain 5’s or 6’s of another suit. Or something like that.

So sit down, write down a list of all your major resources, the ones that you have impressive amounts of. Then make a list of all the things you can accomplish with them. Some things you have never thought about accomplishing, and some you’ve been putting of. Perhaps it’s worth it to build a name for yourself. Maybe you can accomplish several of these, and then sit down and write your list anew. Have something to show others. Then you’ll have something to bring to the table when you’re venturing out into areas you need a lot of work in.

Good luck.

Recently when Apple started selling it’s thinnest laptops, I joked that it had joined Adobe in selling the Air.

A while back I read about pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing. The first one is not legal in the US, but the second one is, in many states. The main difference is, in a multi-level scheme, you have to have an actual merchantable product to sell, the sale of which generates the money. The scalable money does not come from “membership fees”, as it does in pyramid schemes.

The interesting part comes when the product is electronic. These days, it costs almost nothing to replicate an electronic product and sell it, whether it is an e-book or a computer program. Imagine making an MLM scheme based on selling an electronic product. Anyone can have rights to redistribute copies of the product, but only if they pay commissions to the person who introduced them to the program. With physical products, the manufacture and supply chain would enforce this. But with electronic products, it is enforced by copyright law. I should look into mixing MLM with copyrighted electronic materials. It costs very little to carry out, and could really take off.

You don’t need to go very far, however, to make money in interesting ways. For example, there are lots of new species being discovered all over the world, theorems being proved, etc. And often they are named after the scientists that discovered them. Well, how about I make a company that lets millionaires give a unique gift… having a dinosaur named after you. Give us $500,000 and we’ll find you a scientist willing to take $250,000 to name the next dinosaur after your wife, and it’ll get its own wikipedia article, too. And we’ll send all the journals to you. We might even throw in a cuople other things, after all, we’re getting $250 G’s.

Kind of like all these companies bottling tap water and selling it . Brilliant. Although it might make sense to buy it if you suspect the pipes in your building are dirty.

I recently came up with a list I want to share with you. I wrote it when I sat down to think through the steps I will need to take in order to succeed at what I want. It assumes you don’t get any help from others (angel investors, rich uncles, get set up with a supermodel), but pull yourself up by your bootstraps until you are at a point where people and success naturally flow your way.

Okay, you must first have a goal, something you really want to bring about in your life. You have to want it badly enough to commit to achieving it. That can be called step 0.

Step 1

Identify what it will take to achieve your goal. Work past your fear, insecurities, shame, and any other psychological reasons that would hold you back. Commit yourself to a rational process: if you conclude you must do something, then work on getting rid of the obstacles and allow yourself to do it. (Maybe even enjoy the process of getting better at it.) Be ready to accept the consequences.

Step 2

Make a plan. Write down concrete milestones and deadlines. Then, double or even triple your deadlines to accomodate overhead (you will have to take care of other things too), and downtime (you might get sick, or sidetracked). The schedule may take longer than your exuberant optimism predicts, but the point is that you should be sure you can finish ahead of this schedule. You can have a good degree of certainty.

Now, fill in the space between the milestones with smaller tasks that you’ll have to complete, taking into account the dependencies some deliverables may have on others. Because you’ve stretched your deadlines out, this should present you with a pretty lenient minimum achievement curve. This is the curve you will have to outperform.

Step 3

You are probably in a relative stable position at the moment (unless you just lost your job in this current economy). Stay there, but start earning more and spending less. Save up enough money to buy yourself financial independence for as long as it takes to get your business running. Get access to resources that you will need to utilize once you start working on your project full-time. This step might take a long time, and you might be itching to start on your project execution. Use that energy to do well in your current work, and later on you will have a great shot at emerging successful with your project.

Yes, you can work on your project in your spare time, but you’ll have to juggle work, your project, your social and personal life, and meeting with other people about your project. Multitasking on this scale can cause a lot of stress and put various aspects of your life at risk, including your income and your commitments to others. I know this from personal experience, having worked late hours after coming home from work. My advice would be to do this only if you really think you can afford it.

Step 4

When you have saved up enough money to live on, you can leave your job. Do it as amicably and as cleanly as you can. If you and your employer part on good terms, you may be able to come back later on if your project doesn’t work out. At any rate, you’ll be able to rely on them to give you a good recommendation should you have to get another job in your industry. If you are a consultant and have clients, then tie up the loose ends as completely as possible. You don’t want your clients to be calling you two months down the line and distract you from working on your project. One thing you could do is put them in touch with a colleague of yours who is in the same business. Give them some of your accounts to maintain. They will appreciate the business. If things don’t work out down the line, they might return the favor and help you get started again by referring a couple clients of their own to you, or you might even get some of your old clients back. Or if you didn’t succeed, you might consider switching gears and getting a long term job.

Minimize your responsibilities as much as you can, but some may remain — for example, visiting your mother. Start meeting these responsibilities even better than before, since now you have more time. That way the people close to you will appreciate what you are doing and be more supportive.

Step 5

Begin executing the plan you’ve created. Pay particular attention to how you set things up in the beginning. This is probably going to be one of the most enjoyable times for you, anyway, since you are taking your first bold steps toward the future you want for yourself. You might be renting your first office, creating your first business cards, or getting the equipment together to build your first prototype. You’ll be setting up your workspace, decorating it, putting your personal touch on something other people will see later.

Keep a calendar and populate it with the minimum achievement schedule you’ve created. If you fall behind this schedule, you have to get on track as quickly as possible. On top of this schedule, mark down any new appointments that come up, such as following up with people you met, or going to new events. Since you are now all by yourself without a job, you will have a lot of overhead. Oh, and try not to get too sick — you probably don’t have health insurance at this point.

Step 6

Produce materials that you can show and tell others wen they get interested in what you’re doing. It is not enough to achieve something silently; there will be points when you will have to share with others what you do — on a dinner date, perhaps. So prepare in advance your shpiel about what you are passionate about, where you’re at today, and even better, have some marketing materials that explain to people (who may be unfamiliar with the technical details) the importance of what you are working on, and what you have already accomplished. Keep updating and refining these materials, and your story. If they are online, they are accessible from anywhere. If need be, hire a professional to help create these materials (e.g. call me for web design, hehe).

Step 7

Find out about opportunities in your area. Network and meet other people. Find out what they are doing and if you could help each other. Be interested in them, and be interesting yourself. If you have a lot going for you, and/or a lot of potential and enthusiasm, you will find people who naturally feel inclined to help you. People must feel good around you in order to help you, so be mindful of that. Make friends, and they may turn into partners.

Step 8

Finally, keep re-assessing where you are and where you need to be going. Life takes us in interesting directions. So often, people start thinking they are going to do something, and find themselves later on enjoying a totally different path. As we achieve, we learn, and we grow, and we change. Wherever we are, we are always headed somewhere so we might as well find our happiness along the way.