Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously

I would add:

-Stop over-analyzing things. Stop thinking things through and just jump into it. -Focus on making a habit out of exercising/coding/whatever. Once the habit is done, you will do it without much trouble. -Don't tell people what you are going to do, and just do it. Talking about your plans is the worst thing you can do. -Do the smaller things first. Small goals are easy and allow you to gain a bit of momentum. Think of big goals like ladders, and each small goal is one of the steps. -Get some momentum going. The snowball effect just works. Every time you might want to quit you will look behind you and see this huge snowball of acocmplishements following you. This helps a lot.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is really interesting. Started a training course two weeks ago. It's quite the full-body workout - sore muscles after every session. Core muscles, arms, legs, back. Sparring really makes primal instincts kick in, so there's never a motivation problem. Everyone's exhausted after an hour session, and it's the good kind of exhaustion. Very intense and varied experience. BJJ was explicitly designed to minimize the advantage of larger and heavier opponents, so it revolves around technique to a significant degree. Therefore, sparring with someone way bigger than you is completely different from sparring with someone much lighter; Both are incredibly entertaining. Best session I had was against a female partner, probably 15cm and 15kg lighter. She had a very keen sparring instinct and easily outmanouvered me. Felt the quick intellect behind every move. Amazing experience. Something in it that's missing from the average modern life ...

Climbing is the One True Sport for me though. Do try it! The climber's physique is quite attractive and confidence-inspiring. There is a minimum of technique that I hope people will be aware of. I don't want to make it seem complicated though, it isn't.

In the climbing process itself, the minimum technique is this: Become efficient. Get a feel for your balance on the wall, make stable triangles on the holds to free the fourth limb to go to the next handhold/foothold, and use larger joints/muscle groups rather than smaller; Most people's instinct tells them to to pull the body up with upper-arm strength, but generally one can keep the arms straight and use legs, waist, torso, or shoulder muscles to gain elevation.

And climbing is not a trivial load on the body. One can climb injury-free, but this does require a minimum technique or form. Always warm up, always perform the proper stretches (about 8 main forms of stretches, takes 10 mins or so after practice and really kickstarts the post-exercise well-being). Listen to pain: Usually, pain comes from imbalance in the muscles, or tendons or cartilage not being ready yet. Back slightly off and learn the quite simple exercise designed to put that joint and that muscle group back into balance. Climbing stresses tendons and cartilage, which by nature strengthen and heal slower than muscle.

i agree that you dont want to jump in and do too much from the start and get burned out, but by not planning and hoping to just naturally develop the drive to want to work out more, you arent taking yourself seriously enough. it comes down to discipline and motivation; if working out is something you want to do, then do the research, develop a plan and follow it. spending a few weeks getting acclimated to the gym and routine is ok, but you arent accomplishing much during that time and you are essentially telling yourself that you arent able to commit to anything without mental tricks.

figure out what your goals are, what you truly want. if you want it enough, you will do what it takes to get there. if you have to trick yourself to develop the motivation, then your priorities arent in the right place and you should re-evaluate your goals.

Starting out in a new field (gym in this case) with unrealistic expectations (unrealistic training plan) and trying to meet these unrealistic expectations can quickly deject ones efforts. The issue is with setting unrealistic goals, and NOT asking for advice / direction from experts (gym trainers in this case) early on. It's the same problem faced the world round for anyone starting out in a new field with unrealistic expectations and lacking patients.

Yes, going to the gym with no set plan and allowing this plan to evolve will encourage you to go more often if you are the type of person who sets unrealistic goals and gets dejected by not meeting them. But this, I think is NOT the best way to go about achieving your goals, it's a slower path, asking advice from experts will shorten your path.

And taking Arnold Schwarzenegger as a role model is not a fair motivator for ones efforts. Trying to emulate the efforts of someone who's already long into their career without knowing all the "tricks of the trade" namely anabolic steroids is unfair to you. For me a better role model would be someone who's just a bit ahead of me who's already taken on advice from experts!

Agreed 1000x. There are some completely questionable pieces of advice in the book and Tim Ferris is kinda sketchy, but the major message is not "here's a diet you should do" it's "you should experiment, here are a few of the vectors and here's what I did - try it, and then try some other things." The strategies are suspect, but he does a great job laying out the moving parts.