Perhaps the only thing I really gleaned from this article is how brands apparently play such a key role in this man's habits.
Macbook air, textmate, Octopus card, Fitness First, Red Bull, Volvic, iPhone, Gmail, Caffe Habitu. All of these were jarring to me as a reader, as the article would read more naturally with generics--laptop, text editor, charge card, gym, energy drink, water, phone, email, coffee shop--with no loss of meaning. Many of these brands are mentioned 4 times or more during half a dozen paragraphs.
Whether intentional, it demonstrated the power of good branding; get inside someone's head, make them associate good habits with your brand, and you will become part of their daily ritual. They no longer 'go to coffee shop', they go to Caffe Habitu. It's not buying a bottle of water and hitting the gym, its "purchasing a Volvic in the 7/11 then doing the 3 minute walk to Fitness First". They don't check email, they check gmail.
A related takeaway from this blog post is the inherent "bragging rights" people feel when they stick to a habit. This guy doesn't just get up in the morning, it gets up at 5.50am people. Now that's early! Now it's time for 12 reps at 30kg at Fitness First as I knock down my redbull after crushing some sick bugs on my macbook air at the crack of dawn working in the cloud at my webapp startup.
Premium brands do the same, and it's part of the reason for the consistent brand-dropping here. People don't have phones they have iPhones, not because they are ubiquitous (like hoover became the vacuum) but because people must differentiate normal phones from their phones, due to the premium pricing they paid. And by using the new product as part of a habit (like your iphone is an integral part of a morning workout), it becomes more justification for the purchase.
The Red Bull and Volvic seemed particularly out of place to me, especially in that he made buying them one at a time a part of his daily ritual. Maybe he wakes up in the morning with a compulsion to throw his money away at a 7/11 instead of getting a 12-pack from the grocery store? Instead of filling his own bottle from the tap and drinking coffee for his caffeine like normal people who don't attach brands to all of their routines?
I don't know the exact price of Red Bull or Volvic, but at $5 a day and 260 weekdays in a year he'd be spending $1,300/year.
Red Bull is $40 for 24 cans on Amazon, probably twice that at 7-11. Call it $3.20/can.
Volvic is $28.81/12 on Amazon. At the same 100% mark-up, it's $4.80/bottle at 7-11.
That's $8/day, plus local sales taxes, or nearly $2100/year.
Getting a good water bottle and filling it at home is likely too cheap to meter. Making good coffee at home and using that for the caffeine boost is a lot less than $3.20/serving, and then there is this:
The results of a study showed that the ingestion of one, 250mL can of sugar-free Red Bull, in a sample of 30 healthy young adults, had an immediate detrimental effect on both endothelial function, and normal blood coagulation. This temporarily raised the cardiovascular risk in these individuals to a level comparable to that of an individual with established coronary artery disease.
Finally, he jumps straight into 12 reps dumbbell press @ 30kg (66lb per hand). Riiiight!
I looked into energy drink costs compared to amazon and 7-11 and the difference is minor. Sometimes 7-11 is cheaper than amazon. Energy drinks are surprisingly price controlled.
I can't read the article you linked, but what would be the difference between drinking a 8.4oz red bull (~70mg caffeine) and drinking 1 espresso shot of coffee (~65mg caffeine) with a B-complex and taurine pills?
That really isn't that much weight- imagine bench pressing 60 kilos.
A more general rule is Bench Press = 3 x 1 dumbbell weight. Pressing dumbbells is harder because it involves more balancing, so it is harder to press 30kg dumbbells than one 60 kg bar.
You really don't need to warm up by actively doing something. Just like salivating your breathing and hart rate can increase in preparation for strenuous activity's.
On the one hand: yes, I hate brand manipulation too.
On the other: you have to triage. If you want to establish a morning routines like this, then you can't worry about every optimization or you will never get anywhere. I'm impressed as hell at his consistency.
When the price differential between 7-11 and Costco becomes the biggest problem in his life, and when he has plenty of time and space to screw around with inventory management, he can surely come up with a plan to fix that. Until then, 7-11 is solving the stocking problem for him.
Thanks so much for this, it's definitely something I need to improve on.
My aim with the post was to be extremely detailed, in order to try and emphasise how many different aspects have become habitual. Clearly, the way I ended up being detailed was to use brand names. Now you mention it, it makes sense. I remember writing "bottle of water" and thinking it will have a better effect if I make it more specific, hence "Volvic". Now it makes a lot of sense that I could actually be more detailed in many other ways and still achieve the same effect.
This is great learning, and something I'll try and improve next time!
I really don't think that the brand name dropping is much about status or cost, it's about products he recommends for those tasks because they are the best. Most of the products he mention cost pretty much the same as the competitors anyway.
I think it has to do with how you see creating your own products too. Are you trying to make a product that would be indistinguishable from the competitors, or one that's so good that people mention it by name?
I disagree. You think he's recommending the Volvic brand of bottle water? Or suggesting a specific coffee shop? Keeping up with your fitness regime can be done with paper and pen; it desn't need a smartphone and a special app. He's not even suggesting his Macbook Pro and Textmate (both definitely premium choices) aid him really, he's just brand-name dropping.
I'm not criticizing the author, but just highlighting that he either implicitly or explicitly uses brands to form habits, and how he reinforces them with this very blog post (there is little reason to mention Octopus Card 3 times in the article, nor red bull five times).
And for those looking to build brands, it hammers home just how valuable they can be if they form a part of someones habits. This guy every day spends $5 to go and buy a small bottle of water and energy drink on his way to the gym instead of bulk-buying at home or drinking free tap-water because it's now part of his daily ritual. Then he will happily tell others both on his blog and in real life and advertise these products, likely without even knowing he's doing it.
Macbook air, textmate, Octopus card, Fitness First, Red Bull, Volvic, iPhone, Gmail, Caffe Habitu. All of these were jarring to me as a reader, as the article would read more naturally with generics--laptop, text editor, charge card, gym, energy drink, water, phone, email, coffee shop--with no loss of meaning. Many of these brands are mentioned 4 times or more during half a dozen paragraphs.
Whether intentional, it demonstrated the power of good branding; get inside someone's head, make them associate good habits with your brand, and you will become part of their daily ritual. They no longer 'go to coffee shop', they go to Caffe Habitu. It's not buying a bottle of water and hitting the gym, its "purchasing a Volvic in the 7/11 then doing the 3 minute walk to Fitness First". They don't check email, they check gmail.
A related takeaway from this blog post is the inherent "bragging rights" people feel when they stick to a habit. This guy doesn't just get up in the morning, it gets up at 5.50am people. Now that's early! Now it's time for 12 reps at 30kg at Fitness First as I knock down my redbull after crushing some sick bugs on my macbook air at the crack of dawn working in the cloud at my webapp startup.
Premium brands do the same, and it's part of the reason for the consistent brand-dropping here. People don't have phones they have iPhones, not because they are ubiquitous (like hoover became the vacuum) but because people must differentiate normal phones from their phones, due to the premium pricing they paid. And by using the new product as part of a habit (like your iphone is an integral part of a morning workout), it becomes more justification for the purchase.