Daily Routine of an Alpha Male

It’s safe to say that the absolute majority of alpha men have clear routines during their day. I will discuss them in this article, but a word of caution for you, dear reader: If you came here to get plain instructions of what you must do every day, at what time and with whom (like a disciplined beta) – you’ll be disappointed. I will, however, touch on what kind of things most alpha males make time for and are sure to do every day – in order to go higher financially, socially, in their love life, etc. But before that, we have to talk about the most important feature a person needs to master if he wants to implement some alpha routines regularly.

Complete Control Over Your Discipline

We can’t start talking about a routine, in any sense, until we have the sublime ability to control our whims and desires.

To say I’m not a big fan of school will be an understatement. But in retrospective, there’s some gain in the fact that from a small age they forced us to sit in one place in a closed room and listen to a teacher instead of going out, running and having fun with friends like we naturally want as children. I don’t know if it, as itself, did any good, but it has certainly built our discipline to a certain level. We all have a pretty solid ability to delay gratification and do the things we “really want.”

Notice What You Want

It is important to distinguish between types of desires that humans have. Most of us want to be muscular and healthy, but most of us also want to sit on the couch and binge-watch on Netflix.

Seemingly, it’s completely contradictory, but the distinction is quite simple, to be honest: The first is long-term desires, and the other is short-term desires. Whims, put simply. Cravings are almost always the kinds of desires that will give our body and mind what it wants, as opposed to what it needs.

We want to watch a series and lie comfortably on the couch. We need to move our bodies and be healthy.

I do not claim, of course, that there’s never overlap between the two, certainly there are such situations. For example, a person who works very hard and is highly stressed over a long period of time. I suppose his craving will be to take a vacation and relax. Therefore, from a physical and mental health standpoint, desire definitely serves the body’s need.

We only have to be honest with ourselves – and it almost always isn’t the case, and our desire is simply a way to crawl into a more comfortable state.

Why Is It so Important?

It doesn’t take much persuasion to agree that strong discipline leads to great success. It’s observed around us in thousands of different ways every day: Breakthroughs in science, sports, and business often adorn newspaper headlines and news sites.

I also have no doubt that you can testify about yourself, in numerous milestones in your life, that thanks to perseverance, diligence and adherence to the goal, you’ve achieved something amazing and it would never have succeeded without recruiting these abilities.

Nevertheless, I will try to be more objective with my answer: I believe you’ve heard of the famous marshmallow study of Stanford University in the late 1960s. In short, they put 3 to 5-year-olds in front of marshmallows and were told that the researcher would leave them for a quarter of an hour (quite a while for children of this age), and when he returns they’ll get another marshmallow. This, provided that they wouldn’t eat the marshmallow before the researcher’s return. Years passed and the researchers followed these children and found significant differences in quality of life between those who held-back and those who didn’t resist. Those who were able to resist were happier, with a healthier BMI, higher incomes, higher academic achievements and many other benefits. This research has been repeated many times in different variations and results remain similar (video). Thus, there’s certainly a strong connection between postponement of gratification and achievement, health and happiness.

Choosing Long-Term Desires

If you want to strengthen your self-discipline and lead a life that serves your real interests – it’s crucial that you remember two principles:

1. Discipline can be acquired and strengthened.
2. Discipline is a limited daily resource. It gets lower throughout the day.

The first principle will shatter the belief that you were born or raised with a certain level of discipline and there is nothing to be done about it. The second principle will help you strategically arrange your day so that you stay more disciplined for the more challenging tasks.

I have written some excellent tips that have helped me, and will also help you build self-discipline that’s made of iron:

1. Remove obstacles. You don’t want to be in an environment that wastes all of your discipline. If, for example, it is important for you to stop eating unhealthy sweets – the first thing you do is get them out of the house, or at least from your sight (if they normally were on the kitchen table, now they’ll be in the cabinet). Another example from my personal life: I wanted to significantly reduce my time on social media. I tried, but after a long period of on-off, I just realized it’s stronger than I am. So I deleted the apps from my phone. It didn’t really do anything because most of the time I’m on the computer. After another period of wasting time, I simply deleted my username and password from the browser, and also removed the sites from the favorites list. Not only did I have to type in the address to log in, I also had to enter a username and password. Who has patience for this? Especially when there is no real reason to spend time on those sites. I made it “too difficult” and removed (or added?) an obstacle – the ease of logging in. Mission accomplished.
2. Do not wait to “feel like it”. Expecting the urge to do something important is downright fooling yourself. If you don’t feel like it right now, there’s probably a reason, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. In other words, you’ll most likely never going to feel like doing it. So you better just get up and do it. It sounds hard and unpleasant, but there is good news: Apparently, after a few moments you’ll already be “in the middle of it”, and it’ll be easy since you are in the moment. It’s the incredible power of inertia, which works on our feelings just like in physics. We have the natural tendency to prefer the current, comfortable situation. As soon as you put in some willpower, you’ll be in motion, and it will get much easier. Always remember: What requires more energy (fuel) – to get a vehicle from 0 to 10 km / h, or from 30 to 40 km / h? Obviously the first one. Our mind works in a very similar way.
3. Divide and reward. Since discipline is a limited resource during the day, you do not want to empty it with intimidating tasks that require large doses of discipline. A great way is to divide the big and stressful task you face to many small tasks. Even better if at the end of every mini-task, reward yourself with some kind of treat, like rest, browsing or candy. This method has many advantages:
   A. You do not flinch from taking on this little task, because you know you’ll be done quickly.
   B. You will feel totally satisfied to mark these little tasks as finished, which will give you motivation to attack the next task immediately.
   C. The treat is encouraging to finish the current task quickly. A great example of people using this technique are students preparing for an exam. If they are tested on, say, 200 pages in a book, they simply divide it into 10 parts of only 20 pages, and prepare a (usually sweet) treat for the moment when they earn it.

What Does an Alpha Male Do Every Day?

As I wrote above, do not expect me to tell you what to do, with whom and at what time. In fact, do not expect it from anyone. Do not be a beta. You have nothing to look for in other people’s answers regarding your own life.

Commonality in Alpha Males’ Everyday

No one is identical to his friend, and alpha men have no secret club where they decide what to do every day and what not. It’s part of the beauty of the alpha principles – you do only what YOU see fit. No dependence on the environment or its opinion.

And yet, one can notice a daily pattern of the majority of these men: growth. They invest tremendous amounts of time in their day to grow and improve. You might call it ambition.

I’m sure that now you scratch your head and say, “Oria, it’s too general and you know it”. And you’re absolutely right. I will explain what growth means and how it’s expressed.

The Desire to Be More

We all have ambitions. Some are large and some are modest. The problem is that most people do not lift a finger to make them a reality.

An alpha male does. In fact, he spends a lot of time on this area daily. That’s why I devoted such a large portion of this article to self-discipline. Because without it – no matter how willing you are to start and chase your dreams, you are condemned to failure. You don’t have the mental capability to deal with long hours of delayed gratification and to make effort while not reaping its fruits. Discipline is a true necessity.

Alpha Routines – Popular Examples

To better understand how the huge appetite (and the effort to satisfy it) of the alpha male is reflected in reality, I will show you some examples that are well-identified with the everyday alpha lives.

Intense Sports

I think sports is one of the most wonderful things we have in life, as humans and as alpha men. But I dislike the fact that this is always the picture that comes to mind when people hear the term “alpha male” – a huge, aggressive, stupid guy who trains 5 hours a day in the gym. If you are a veteran reader in this blog, you already know better, of course. And yet there is a glimmer of truth in this thought.

Dominant men, with willpower and ambition, will almost always be active members in a gym. And if not, you’ll find them doing some kind of extreme sports outdoors. This is not surprising. An alpha is, by nature, a person who doesn’t give himself discounts and compromises. When he looks at himself in the mirror without a shirt, and something doesn’t appeal to him – be sure he’ll do something about it. He’ll never leave it like that.

This is one of the traits that makes the huge difference between an alpha and the rest of the population – the willingness to make a decision, commit to it, and stick to it. This creates a situation where almost every alpha engages in intense physical activity.

Emphasis on intensive: If only weight loss was their goal, they would settle for walking in the park and dieting. But no – they take their bodies a step further and create a challenging environment in which it must adapt. Remember the last sentence well, since it’s relevant to any kind of growth.

Growth in Business

A beta male tends to stay in a safe, secure place. We all have this temptation, and it’s relevant in every aspect of our lives.

I’ve never met an alpha who said to me, “I work from 8 ’till 5, earn an okay salary and hope things continue this way”. Do you know when you’ll hear from an alpha guy that he hopes things will continue as they are? When he’s growing. Never when he is in a plateau and certainly not when in decline.

In a Stoic observation, which I like and find a lot of truth in, this lifestyle may not be perceived as good or healthy. After all, you never settle for what you have. But this is the situation – an alpha is uncompromising and always wants more. If he’s an employee who works X hours and earns Y dollars, his brain will work overtime and he will do almost everything to reach a situation where he works less than X hours and earns more than Y dollars.

This is a big difference from the beta male, especially in what this implies: An alpha man doesn’t agree to offer his time as a beta man agrees. In other words, the alpha’s time is more expensive. He himself is more expensive.

If you agree to work by giving service for $ 15 per hour, for years – you actually agree with the statement “I am worth $ 15 an hour”. An alpha may do the same job for the same amount of money, but he will probably refuse to stay this way for long. In his mind it goes like this: “I’m worth 15? You’re wrong, sir – I’m worth 20” and demand a raise. Or say to himself “I’m worth 15, so I’ll learn, I’ll work my ass off and I’ll get better at what I do until I’m worth 20”. And of-course, this process will repeat itself from 20 to 25 and so on.

This is the main reason why a dominant man will also gain more. Whether he’ll do anything to be worth more, or that being an attractive, impressive man will affect his boss to give him higher wages (like how taller men earn more money).

So don’t be surprised to discover that a typical alpha spends a lot of time a day developing his career by learning or even building his own business.

Constant Communication with People

This sounds obvious at first. If you are a regular reader of the blog you know how much I emphasize the image of an alpha as a sociable, fun person. But if we take a second look at our daily reality, it seems that most of us don’t have the free time to be in company of other people (which isn’t Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp) on a regular basis.

However, an alpha always maintains good relationships with his surroundings. He makes time to see the people he cares about. This serves 2 purposes: The improvement of relationships and affection his acquaintances have for him, and also the constant work on his interpersonal communication. These two become more important as time goes on and technology progresses and comes to be an integral part of our daily lives.

These men understand / feel that social media has no ability to meet the deeper needs of people in conversation. There is tremendous power in face-to-face interaction, in touch, in intonation, in body language, etc.

In recent years, there have been quite a few studies that indicate a correlation (and possibly causation) between the use of social media and feelings of loneliness, depression and anxiety. I am convinced that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are not a problem in themselves. But it’s important to remember that each person needs his or her social “dose” every once in a while.

If we’ll believe that the digital is able to replace the real one, we’ll not understand why we have symptoms that indicate loneliness. A typical alpha does not abstain from this technology, but does call a spade a spade: This is not sufficient human communication. Which is why he spends his time being in constant present interaction with his loved ones.

It’s clear to me that it’s difficult to maintain a social gathering every day for a reasonable period of time. If you think this is be a problem for you, I have a temporary solution for you: Take every opportunity you have to talk face-to-face with people who aren’t friends or family. I mostly mean colleagues at work or school. Take advantage of recesses to create connections and chat with real people in real time. This is not a perfect solution, but at least it will maintain some level of interpersonal communication.

And hey, in the end, you’re the boss of your schedule, consider again how much you “can’t” regularly see your dear ones, because only a handful of people truly do not have time. We already know that the number 1 regret of people on their deathbed is that they did not spend enough time with friends and family.

A final note on the subject: Sometimes the extremity between texting and face-to-face interactions makes us forget the possibility of a simple phone call, which in my opinion is a tool that’s not as powerful as a meeting, but definitely preferable to texting. Take advantage of this.

What Not to Do

From a quick glance at Google’s results on the everyday routine of the alpha male, you get a lot of lists detailing what you need to do in a very specific manner. It’s critical for me to emphasize: Do not rush to do anything they say. If you’ve read a bit about it before you got to this blog, you’ve probably noticed a huge shopping list for “man” regarding what he should do every day (sometimes they even dare point-out that the list is for alphas).

Let me say it plain and simple: If you need to be told what to do to be alpha – you won’t be alpha. No action or occupation will turn you into another person, into a better, more dominant and attractive man. It just doesn’t work that way.

If you notice the examples from throughout this article, they are all things that alpha males HAPPEN to do. And to emphasize this principle, I explained what in their nature makes them do it – not the other way around!

The fact that you are already an alpha will push you to do things that promote your growth and improvement. Going by a prepared list (with tasks like exercising, starting a business and meeting people) every day will probably make you better in these fields. But you will remain more or less the same kind of man you were before. It’s simple logic.

Beware of Trends

Being in fashion is not a problem, as long as it comes from your desire and not from any external pressure. I am sure you have noticed some of the male trends that have come and gone in recent decades, like it always has been in every culture.

In the 1990s men did a mushroom haircut, perhaps because Leonardo DiCaprio’s hairstyle in “Titanic”, which to this day is one of the biggest box office movies. Around ​​2000 spikes adorned men’s hair, and so on.

My point is that you have to take fashion with a grain of salt, especially when it deals with your masculinity. Let me give you an example: If in a few years a new trend will begin to emerge – the admiration of an extremely thin male body. Muscle mass reduced to the minimum. I want to believe that you’ll have the wisdom to stay away from this trend and work-out regularly. Of course, I assume that your health is more important than matching current fashion, and I hope you’re with me on this matter. Sure, now it’s easy for you to say “yes”, but try to remember times when you gave-in to some social directive because it’s considered “masculine” or simply “expected”. Environmental pressure is a force you should not underestimate.

Watching Videos – the Illusion of Doing

I really like YouTube and learn a lot of videos there. But there is a known problem of people who want to become more than they are, and watch videos that will presumably show them how to. The illusion of doing.

When you watch a video about something you should actually do, your brain does not really make the distinction between “I actually did it” and “I watched someone else do it.” Although the feeling is not exactly the same, we did get an experience of dealing with this subject. This might signal to us subconsciously, “I’ve made enough progress today”.

Yes, it sounds a little woo-woo, but many people experience it and find themselves watching, say, motivational videos a few hours a week. This in itself should raise awareness.

Need further proof that your brain doesn’t distinguish well between observation and activity? Just remember what approximately 100% of web users watch in order to be satisfied like it’s the real thing. Yes, exactly that.

Therefore, during your learning, progress and growth; make sure you don’t stagnate and “revise information” by watching another video, or even by reading another self-development blog, including this one. Get up and do something, in spite of how convenient and nice it is to sit back and watch a video – enlightening as it may be.

Summary

The alpha male’s routine consists of a sequence of actions that will get him closer to his goals. During the time a man does this routine day by day, he becomes more than he was. Smarter, richer and more social. His most important tool by-far to do it, is called discipline.

Discipline strengthens via training and using techniques to increase discipline capacity. “Stamina of Discipline”, if you will.

The alpha male avoids wasting his time or evaluate it at a low price, which is why he spends less time on theory and more on action. Remember this the next time you’re about to sink into a binge of motivational videos.

In conclusion, as you can see, there is no real definition of “what an alpha man does every day”. Neither in the morning nor in the evening. I’ve suggested that you examine the specific examples I presented, and instead of imitating them (as most of the articles on the web suggest), try to really understand what causes all those strong, dominant men to do those thing in the first place.

I’ve given you enough information to use, and after you understand the mindset of an alpha male, you’ll realize exactly how to become one. On your terms. Then, your daily routine will be built automatically – according to your specific aspirations, beliefs and character.