How to be unproductive, unhappy, and make your life a living hell

1. Be as lazy as possible

Being lazy is easy, so take the easy route. Stay inside and don't do anything productive. If you start exercising, for example, you might build momentum and become more energetic, so make sure not to do that.

2. Become a vampire

Don't ever go outside or let sunlight touch you. Stay up late at night to mess up your circadian rhythm so that you have less energy throughout the day. This will help you feel like garbage.

3. Avoid water, prioritise snacks & sugary drinks

Eat junk food and fast food as often as possible, at least once per day. Make sure to have milkshakes, sodas, and energy drinks to top it off. Getting those spikes of insulin and caffeine will help you have massive crashes throughout the day, ensuring you become more unproductive throughout the day.

4. Habits are natural. Either develop bad ones or don't think about them at all

Some people deliberately analyse what habits they have to fix them. Don't be like that. Ignorance is bliss, so convince yourself that all your habits are perfect the way they are. If you notice you have "bad" habits, don't try to fix them. Let them be.

5. Confuse your brain

While you should already be staying inside at all times, make sure to confuse your brain by combining all your activities in one place. Work where you sleep, sleep where you eat, and eat where you relax. That way, if you need to accomplish a specific task, your brain will mix up what it should be doing, so you might eat instead of work, and you'll never get it done.

6. Create vague and unachievable goals

Make sure your goals are impossible to achieve. If you're earning $5k per month, make sure your goal is $1 million next month. Or better yet, don't even set a time frame. Have the dream of becoming a millionaire without creating a specific plan on how to approach that goal. Just have it in the back of your mind forever, and tell yourself you won't be happy until you achieve that goal.

If, for some reason, you decide to create a specific goal (gross), focus on the future steps first. Want to build a company? Focus on scaling and marketing before you actually make sure your product provide value. Question if your current workflow will be efficient when you get to 100k users before you even reach 10.

7. Be antisocial

Avoid interactions at all costs. Go weeks at a time without talking to your friends or family. Embrace isolation. You'll feel completely alone. This will enhance that feeling of depression.

8. Focus on dopamine traps

Video games, gambling, drinking, smoking, or porn. Do them all. Focus on the unfulfilling and time-wasting activities that help make the days go by a little faster. They feel great temporarily, and hedonism is what you should focus all of your time on. Sometimes people do these in moderation. Avoid self-control and go all out. Don't set limits for yourself.

9. Make excuses and avoid responsibility

If you justify actions you know are bad, great! Keep doing that. Make sure you aren't responsible for anything in your life and blame the world for what's happening to you. If you give up control of your life, you'll feel dis-empowered which directly leads to unhappiness.

Along with this, consume as much news as possible. That will help with this. You'll feel like the world is spiralling downward and you can't do anything about it. You will feel as though you have no control over anything, which is exactly what you need.

10. Talk down on yourself

Make sure your internal monologue is always negative. Criticise yourself on every action and mistake you make. Always highlight the flaws, and never, under any circumstances, compliment yourself for anything. Practice pessimism at all times. Optimism gives hope, and hope breeds action. So you must avoid optimism entirely.

11. Doubt yourself

Any time you're about to try something new, whether starting a business or asking someone out, instil fear. Tell yourself it won't work before even starting. Hold yourself back.

12. Argue with everyone. Fight about everything. Especially on the internet.

Twitter is great for this. Find all the people who have strong opinions, and make sure to argue and insult them. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong, just make sure you really show that hatred. It doesn't matter how minuscule the topic is, fight about anything you disagree with. Share your opinions about everything. Don't acknowledge the fact that they have the same goal as you: maximising misery. That leads to empathy which you should not have. Make sure you're always angry about something.

13. Be theatrical. Play those status games.

Focus on acting woke and put yourself on a pedestal. Satisfy that ego and chase after likes. Show how smart and perfect you are by criticising and belittling others, and make sure to never forgive people for their mistakes.

Don't do anything that actually makes an impact, otherwise you'll start to feel fulfilled.

14. Maximise screen time

Don't read or walk outside. Make sure you're constantly on social media, watching videos and movies, and never taking your eyes off of it. Multitask different websites simultaneously. Watch YouTube on your laptop while scrolling through Reddit on your phone.

15. Be complacent and don't take risks

Make sure you're never striving to improve. Successful people find a healthy balance between improvement and gratitude. Make sure you focus on one or the other completely. Focus solely on improvement, and it'll never be enough. Focus solely on gratitude, and you'll become complacent.

Avoid risks and change at all costs. Stick with the familiar and never move outside of your comfort zone. You'll limit your experiences in life, and maybe you'll get to see them through other people's lives on social media. You'll know exactly what you're missing out on, but you'll be too afraid to go after it. It will spiral down into self-hatred, which is what you need.

16. Compare yourself with others

You see someone living an amazing life? Make sure to question why they have that life. Sure, you may be 20 and he's 25. That doesn't matter. Ask yourself why you don't have that now. You see someone who's the same age as you yet he's doing so much better? Make sure to doubt yourself. Don't track your own improvements each day, focus only on what other people are doing. Your progress will slow down while comparing yourself against others which will only make this feel drastically worse.

17. Expect permanence

Expect that everything will last forever for you. That nice house and all that money you have? You'll have it forever. Don't worry about losing it. If you understand that everything is impermanent, you'll start being grateful which you must avoid!

Always upgrade your quality. You just got a $100k car? Focus on buying a $500k car next. That way, the $100k will never feel as great as on the first day you got it.

18. Search for the zero-sum games

Don't look for ways to benefit both parties. Find ways to profit more, especially at the expense of others. If it comes a negative-sum game where you're dealing with a war of attrition, so be it. At least the other party isn't doing better than you.

19. Focus on the short term

We all know long term is better. But that's harder and we must avoid difficulty at all costs. Embolden the impatient personality of yours and chase after the quick fixes instead. It satisfies that impatience and feels better in the moment.

20. Judge others

We all have an ego we need to satisfy. Make sure to boost yourself up, especially at the expense of others. Embrace negativity and judge others for how they look or what they do. Don't try to think positively about others, that's harder and more fulfilling. Make sure to chase after that superficial superiority complex.

I wrote this for myself as a reminder that many of the things I do are not helping me improve. They hold me back, and reframing it as a "How To" guide on becoming miserable actually motivates me more to avoid these directives. If you catch yourself doing any of these, you now have the awareness which is always the first step. Fixing these takes work, which as I said before, is hard. But everyone has the ability to overcome these, you just have to strategize your approach.

Inspired by CGP Grey.