There are a few useful “how-tos” on this substack, e.g. “how to concentrate” and “how to solve problems”. Today, we’ll talk about something much more important—how to be miserable.
Luckily for you, I used to be kind of a grandmaster at this. I’ve since slipped, but I still think that if you take my advice you can't possibly fail (at misery).
First, you need to nail the basics. Exercising is for dumb people. You’re too smart for that. You see, your superior intelligence endows you with a body that works differently from the body of a dumb person (somehow). It doesn’t matter that a lack of exercise destroys your brain and your body. Lifting weights and running is mildly hard. Doing hard things is bad (because they're hard, duh). Easy = good, hard = bad and damn the long-term consequences.
Same goes for eating and sleeping. Have a wildly oscillating sleep cycle and only eat garbage food. Your body and your mind will thank you later.
Also, never ever rest. Just keep working until you collapse. I promise, this is how the really productive people get things done.
Second, other humans are bad. All of them. Misanthropy is really cool (for a while). It’s certainly not a sign of emotional immaturity or anything, no, sirree. Being misanthrophic is very mysterious and will never get tedious for the people around you.
Remember, you’re the only sane person. Not just in your social circle, no, in the entire world. There is you and then there is everyone else. You = good, everyone else = bad. Can’t get any easier than that. And, remember, easy is good.
One particularly important subcategory of this is that you should avoid romantic relationships at all costs. If your relationship is high-quality, a single date can delete weeks of misery. And we can't have that.
Repeat after me: You’re enough (lol). You’re a unique snowflake that doesn’t need anyone (lol again). And you also know that all men only want sex and all women only want money. You’ve read it on some douchebag’s blog, so it must be true!
Also, good relationships are really hard (true, they are). And, remember, you should never do hard things. Therefore, you should not pursue good relationships. See how easy that was?
Third, constantly marinate in your feelings. All your feelings are good and valid. If you ever feel bad, it’s 100% the fault of someone else. Take your feelings out on people. It will make you feel good for a second (before it makes you feel terrible for the rest of the year). Now that I think about it, trading off minor short-term gains against staggering long-term losses is a useful meta-strategy for maximizing misery in general.
Actually, the opposite is also great. Suppress all your feelings and never talk about your emotions ever. Don’t consider communicating that someone has crossed a line. That would be admitting that you have red lines and that's weakness or something, probably. I mean, you could look at the people that you admire and notice that most of them have quite the well-defined red lines, but, nah.
Basically, just have a dysfunctional relationship with your emotional self and you’ll do great (at misery).
Fourth, never take responsibility for anyone or anything. Especially not for other people. Taking responsibility means less freedom and freedom is good! Always! There are no exceptions to this! We've spend years hammering into young people that freedom is all that matters and they're all doing great, wohoooooo!
For example, it's a well known fact that kids are usually really bad for your long-term misery prospects. Luckily for you, you know that kids restrict your freedom and this is bad. Always.
Fifth, have a strong negativity bias. If everything is going great, then that's just the "normal" state of the world. But if there is a single tiny thing going wrong, then everything is now horrible forever.
Of course, sometimes things or people are genuinely bad and a strong negative reaction is appropriate. But you need to take this to such a ridiculous extreme that positive feelings will never be permitted. Remember, gratitude is for total losers.
Please note that I’m never guilty of any of these things and generally am a 100% perfect person with no flaws at all.