Ever wonder how I keep my life effortless and chill? I live by systems, and they’re easy to implement. I’ll show ya.

The Lil’ Pantry

The Lil Pantry is my system for food storage and meals. It consists of a small pantry for storing dry goods like flour, canned foods and coffee, and a deep freezer for storing meat, freezer meals, and vegetables.

To create your own lil pantry, you will need space to store dry goods, and a deep freezer.

Here’s how it works: The pantry is stocked with things like chicken and beef broth, pinto beans, quinoa, flour, coffee, cans of sardines and oysters, spam, sauces (pasta, hot sauce, bbq, teriyaki) etc

The deep freezer serves two purposes. It stores raw meet (ground beef, chicken breast, tri-tip) and frozen vegetables as well as prepared freezer meals (chicken nuggets, frozen burgers, tamales), but it’s also a meal prep tool used for flash freezing food.

It doesn’t matter how big your freezer is it just needs to be able to fit at least one cookie sheet.

Here’s how the system works:

Whenever meat is on sale or you’re buying a deal in bulk, stock up to take advantage of savings. Make sure you always have some quick meals available such as chicken pot pies, dinner sausages, frozen burgers, or tamales, or other prepared foods – this will prevent you from ordering out and will make sure you can at least have some healthy veg if you do need a processed meal.

With both the freezer and pantry, you should always have ingredients to whip up a quick meal, like pasta, chili beans and rice, or quinoa, etc.

Buying in bulk when things are in season and making sure you never need to eat out, will save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars every year but it also will make sure you’re not eating a lot of heavily processed foods full of seed oils and preservatives.

Lil’ Pantry Extended: Meal Prepping

I hate cooking, so I do it in bulk about every two weeks. I’ve always got the ingredients for a meal in the freezer.

The upside to this is that I never have to wonder what to eat. The downside is that I eat a mix of the same things essentially every day.

I got inspired by a company out of LA that makes a packaged meal called “Dawg Food”. It’s an unflavored mix of cooked meat and veggies that is heated up and seasoned however you’d like. They sell it in 7lb bags. If you’re super lazy I’d recommend just buying 21 to 28lbs of dawg food to see if you like it.

I’m not lazy, so I just make it myself.

Here’s how it works:

Ingredients:

• 5lbs of 96% lean ground beef
• 7-8lbs of chicken breast
• 5lbs of 99% lean ground turkey
• 3-5lbs of sweet potato
• 1-2 butternut squash
• Frozen broccoli
• Frozen corn and/or peas

I use three different proteins and cook them up separately. For the breasts I do season them with garlic and onion powder but nothing else. I grill them up over a propane grill.

For the ground beef, I prefer Mexican seasoning and so I use a packet of Carne Asada seasoning – I use 1 packet per pound.

The Turkey is made into a simple meatball with some egg and bread crumbs.

Once the meat is cooked, I cut the breasts into chunks, for the meatballs and ground beef, no additional cutting is necessary. I spread these onto cookie sheets once they’ve cooled and place the cookie sheets in the deep freeze overnight.

The following day I bag up the meat and place it into the deep freezer.

Now for the veg I prefer to keep them separate. If I use broccoli, corn or peas, I just keep these in their normal packaging.

For potatoes, beets, or squash, I roast them in the oven, cut them into chunks, and lay them onto a freezer sheet and flash freeze over night.

When it’s time to make a meal. I select a style, my two styles are Mexican or Asian, but sometimes I’ll do Italian or even Indian.

Next, I pick a sauce. I primarily use hot sauce, but if it’s Asian, I’ll use an Asian bbq sauce, if Indian, a curry, or if Italian, a pasta sauce.

Many times I pick a grain or legume to go with it. My grain of choice is quinoa as it keeps fine in the fridge for 3 or 4 days, and can also be frozen. I also use pinto beans, which can be made in an instant pot and kept the same way. Alternatively large silicon molds can be used to create bricks of beans, chili, curry, soups, or anything else you’d like to meal prep.

I’ll add meat and veg to the bowl and pop it into microwave for 3-4 minutes. I usually top it with cottage cheese and hot sauce if doing a Mexican style bowl. I’ll use potato or squash, corn, or peas too. If doing an Asian bowl, I’ll usually rely on frozen broccoli, stir fry veggie blends, and Kim chi with an Asian sauce.

Meatballs can be used for Italian style bowls, I’ll sometimes use lentils and pasta sauce. Alternatively a pre-made low fat curry sauce could also be used to have an Indian style bowl.

Alternatively a bbq sauce can be used on chicken breast or meatballs and veg can be eaten on the side.

Benefits

I spend virtually no time cooking during the week, nearly all of it is done on one weekend and once I do it, I’m set for 2-3 weeks. I don’t have to decide what to eat, I decided weeks ago when I prepared my meals, and since I prepared them weeks ago and eat them all the time, I know what’s in them. I know that they’re protein rich, have lots of nutrition from my selection of veggies. I know that I’m getting meals that are high in fiber as well.

This system takes the stress off of constantly cooking new meals each night, dealing with leftovers, so it also really cuts down on food waste since you only serve what you plan to eat and usually eat all of it.

I log everything I eat and I weight it beforehand – and this makes that possible because all of my commonly eaten foods show up in my app right at the top.

A Note About Breakfast

I’ve eaten the same breakfast nearly every day for a year. Here’s how it works:

• 140g of blueberries
• 35g of chia seeds
• 3oz skim milk
• 200g of Greek yogurt
• 15g maple syrup

I microwave the blueberries for 4 minutes. I sprinkle in the chia seeds and add the milk. I let this concoction cool in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours. I top it with maple syrup, b12, biotin, and k2 drops.

This meal is packed with antioxidants from the chia and blueberries, fiber, protein, and flavor. The chia and milk also contains ample amounts of calcium. The chia provides healthy ALA fats (plant based omega 3). It’s also full of prebiotic and probiotic substances. You can boost the protein content by sprinkling some vanilla protein powder on top, and you can boost the antioxidants by adding 1 square of dark chocolate to the blueberries after removing from the microwave. You can also add vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract to enhance or chance the flavor of the bowl. Personally I never get sick of eating it.

The Home Gym:

The home gym is essential and with one at your disposal you can complete your workouts before someone else can get to the gym. Think about it – going to the gym requires 1) getting changed from work or leisure clothing 2) fighting traffic + driving to the gym 3) finding parking 4) waiting for your machine etc etc 5) coming home and taking a 2nd shower for the day

If you have a few pieces of equipment at home you don’t need a gym membership. Here’s what you need:

• A Kettlebell – probably 30lbs to start for most men, but depending on activity level and previous training, 15-50lbs.
• An ez curl bar – can be used like a short barbell but easier on the wrists, doesn’t take up 8 feet of space.
• A trap bar: perfect for squats and dead lifts
• A few hundred pounds of Olympic plates
• Ideally a set of adjustable dumbells to save space but at least a pair of 15, 25, and 35lb dumbbells.
• A jump rope
• A mat if you are squeamish about rolling around on the ground
• Squat rack and a bench – nice to have but not mandatory

Next you will just use YouTube to design your kettlebell routine, and then decide when to add trap bar, dumb bell, and curl bar exercises to your routine. You can get completely peeled at home when nutrition and exercise are dialed in.

The AI Enabled Second Brain

A second brain is the place that you store all of the information about your life that has been acquired. This can be lessons you’ve learned, blogs you’ve read, recipes, standard operating procedures for your own life, documentation for tools you own, etc.

The point of the second brain is that no human mind can hold all of the details forever. The second brain makes it very easy to look up or locate any tidbit of info you need.

I use Obsidian as my database because it stores all of my files in .md. A file format that is open source and easy to export.

Other good options is Notion, the most important part is to connect it to an AI.

For Obsidian, the easiest way to do this is using plugins and the basic fact of the matter is it isn’t easy. Obsidian also doesn’t capture non-text based information easily.

For this reason I use Omi, which is an app that records conversation and audio and transcribes it to text, then creates summaries.

Recording people without their consent is against the law, so what I do, is use the pin as a fast way to tell Omi about meetings or conversations I’ve had, things I’ve learned, or daily events.

Omi will remember the conversations and generate summaries as well as save the audio, but what I do next is export it to Obsidian where I can always dig it out of Omi has died or failed.

I cannot tell you how much this has helped me in the last few weeks. Not only am I able to ask Omi about detailed work procedures – I am able to remember them more often without assistance because I explained them to Omi after learning them. However unlike my own brain which may remember information for a few days or weeks, Omi has exceptional recall when a question is asked.

Using Omi allows me to capture an entire plane of data that was missing from my life and notes. That is on the fly verbal information. For example any meeting with professionals these days they will be recording for AI transcription, so they should not object to your own recordings being made.

Business meetings usually have ai summaries now that are sent to participants, so after the meeting you can either review them while you record yourself talking, or import them directly into omi’s memories.

SPICE: An Investment and Financing System

Most people save and then spend when they want something nice. Actually most people don’t do that, they swipe a credit card.

SPICE is my system for building a credit line and investment portfolio at the same time, and its purpose is primarily to prevent exposure to expensive forms of credit.

SPICE stands for: S&P Indexed Cash Engine – here’s how it works. 1) Buy Voo. 2) Borrow against Voo (no more than 45% of the portfolio balance) to buy inventory, precious metals, or real estate.

Can you get better returns trading than you can from buying voo? Yeah you might, but can you do it consistently for 30 years without losing your shirt on a dumb options trade? I don’t think you can and it’s nothing personal, I don’t think I can either.

What is VOO? It’s a vehicle that lets you buy all 500 companies in the S&P 500 at the same time. The S&P is the best performing index between the Dow and the Nasdaq when you factor in longevity, draw downs, and average returns. Buying VOO or another S&P index is vanilla investing. There is nothing complicated about it, nothing to manage, no research or chart analysis you need to do. It’s a savings account with a turbo strapped to it. There are risks of loss, but if S&P 500 disappears tomorrow you are going to have much bigger problems on your hands than where your money went, you will be looking for food and guns. That’s how important this index is to the world. If the market collapsed something real bad has just happened.

Ok, so that’s it, buy VOO, then use margin sparingly when you want to 1) buy inventory 2) buy precious metals, 3) buy cash flowing assets like a business or rental property.

This strategy is called Buy, Borrow, Die. Notice the word that is missing – Repay. That’s right, when you borrow against your portfolio, you don’t have to repay the debt. Instead you take the cash flow generated by your assets and just buy more VOO. This makes your debt a smaller percentage of your portfolio balance, when you need more cash, you pull out more and buy another asset. Eventually you create a system where much more cash is flowing in than flowing out.

The Focus Engine: RICH

Reduced inputs, controlled habits – we live in an attention economy. Absolutely everyone is bombarding is with ads, spam calls, junk mail, and email, sponsored videos etc

Here’s how I stay focused in a nutshell:

Screen Time Is Not The Battle:

It’s not the time on screen that is as important, it’s what you do with it. If you are writing, selling, creating or building, screen time is acceptable. If you’re goofing around wasting time and shopping, then it’s not acceptable.

Everything we do that is important these days takes place on a screen, and the devices that hold those screens are designed to distract us and part is from our money.

Reduce Inputs:

Remove distracting apps from your phone, use AI to search rather than google. I use perplexity. There are no ads, and everything I pull up happens in the app.

If you are going to watch YouTube or surf the wild and naked internet – use a pop up blocker and aggressive tracker blocking. I don’t even allow my browser to load third party fonts. Ideally use a secure browser like Libre Wolf or Brave and a good VPN. I recommend mullvad.

Once you lock down the amount of data leaking to marketers and block the ads you can see, the less candy that’s dangled before your eyes. Targeted ads become less relevant.

Take all of your distracting apps and put them on a separate device, a tablet, a spare phone, and put that device in a drawer – and make yourself fish it out when you want to use it.

Essentially you want to limit the amount of advertising and tracking you’re exposed to.

Controlled Habits

When you identify a good habit, make that habit frictionless. For example, if you want to workout every day after work, put a kettlebell within reach of your desk. If you want to drink more water, consciously refill your water glass and keep it on your desk. If you know you need to meal prep but don’t have time that day to do it, set the cutting board out at night and do it as soon as you can the next day. Take 1 little step to make starting as easy as possible.

When you identify a habit that’s a bad habit, make it as hard as possible to engage in it. For example, if you like to aimlessly scroll instagram, delete it from your device, and put it on the second profile of another device you have to take out of a drawer, turn on, log in to, switch profiles, etc. There’s nothing wrong with scrolling Instagram but make sure you want to scroll and do it when you have allowed yourself time, it when you were looking for something else or just got bored and opened it up.

Some easy things you can do today: Commit to ordering from shopping sites once a week, and only stuff you either really need or have decided are must haves. Only shop on your actual pc or laptop, so it’s a hassle to go sit down and complete it. Use a physical notepad and calendar to plan and document your day, to do list and shopping list. Then use an AI voice to text like Omi to make notes you can copy/paste into obsidian or apple notes.

Creating Simple Rules To Live By:

This makes decision making easy. Here are some of mine.

I only buy cotton clothing and only in solid colors. This makes buying decisions and wardrobe situations pretty easy 90% of the time. The exception is for athletic, business, or formal events in which case I will have more leeway and have planned ahead.

If I’m going out to eat, I will choose chipotle 90% of the time and will get a double chicken burrito bowl without cheese or sour cream. I know how many calories are in it, and the macro split, so it’s easy to log and track.

If I’m offered a soft drink I go Diet Pepsi or Coke every time.

For dessert? I have 70-100g of vanilla ice cream every day.

I don’t drink alcohol, so that eliminates any need to decide how much to drink, who drives home, etc.

In general, I will choose the least flashy, bare bones option of everything every time and only pay for upgrades that truly matter.

The more you know about yourself the easier it is to lock into a way of life and make decisions – this involves using meta cognition to think about the way you are thinking, to observe your own reaction to the stimulus and determine if you are enjoying it, and if so what it is that is being enjoyed.