The Mad Scientist Lifestyle: 15 Ways to De-Borify Yourself

By Kendra Holliday | January 26, 2016

Live like a Mad Scientist & get laid!

I asked my friend RainMan to share some of his alternative lifestyle habits with The Beautiful Kind community; clearly he’s a man who thinks outside the cage. And it works – it gets him laid! Here is a peek into his weird world, in his own words:

“How many times have you been approached by, gone on a date with, or even married someone who is best described as Generic Humanoid #17?

The woman whose entire life is work, Facebook and fruity drinks with her girlfriends every Saturday night.

The man whose entire life is work, video games, and NFL Sunday Ticket.

The married couple whose twice-a-month sex life consists of the same two positions every time, carefully scheduled between episodes of Desperate Housewives and the ballgame.

Is it any wonder people trade in their spouses as often as their cars?

Kendra has had glimpses into the insanity that is my world, and she jokingly called it the “Mad Scientist” approach to living: doing things just to see if you can, changing your life around just because you can.

The crux of this is constantly challenging yourself. Rather than spending life coasting along, why not mix things up? Do something that forces your to consider life from a different perspective. Each time you do this you grow, even when you fail.

I’ve tried all of the following examples at one time or another. Some won’t be feasible depending on your specific circumstances (wife/husband, kids, disabilities, etc), but your options are only limited by your imagination.

Lifestyle Challenges

A lot of challenges have begun as “What if…” or “Why can’t I…” questions posed by friends. They usually involve adjusting some fundamental aspect of your daily routine and can radically redefine your idea of what your limits are.

•  When was the last time you changed how you eat? Have you ever tried going vegetarian? Vegan? Raw? Paleo? Pick something new and try it for a month. How about different cuisines? What about unusual foods? Gator, shark, offal. Hearts make a great substitute for stew meat and are packed with nutrients.

• What if you tried biphasic sleep (sleeping in two shorter sets)? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, it was common. I’ve been loving it. Try training yourself to wake up without an alarm clock? It is surprisingly easy.

•  Ever tried sleeping on something other than your bed? Overly soft beds can put your spine in positions that lead to chronic back pain. Sleeping on a harder surface isn’t bad once you find a good position.

•  Could you live without air conditioning? I turned mine off on June 23rd, and it has been off ever since. I live in Florida, and it routinely breaks 95 inside the house this time of year. The first week is rough, but you might be surprised by how well you adapt. Right now 90 is as comfortable as 80 was. If it is 110 where you live, completely off could be dangerous, but you could try turning your thermostat up/down more than usual. Want a practical benefit? My electric bill last month was $75 less than the year before.

•  Even more extreme, could you live without electricity? Here in hurricane country, this is a very real concern. I made it three weeks, but this was one of the toughest.

• How about giving up TV? This happened by accident: I told my cable company to fuck off after the 100th screwup and never got around to switching. I have Netflix and that has been enough. Practical benefits? Does $1,100 a year in your pocket and close to 1,000 hours of additional time sound appealing?

• Have you ever *really* listened to your body? Eating when you are hungry and stopping when you no longer are (note the distinction between not hungry and full, the difference is important) rather than force-feeding yourself at set times? Gone to bed when your body wanted sleep instead of at a preset time? Let your body wake itself up naturally, instead of being ripped out of a dream involving the Swedish bikini team and a bottle of honey by your blaring alarm clock? Barring a condition that screws with your body’s ability to self-regulate, your body knows what it needs, so why fight it?

• Is your garage a nightmare, so full of crap that you can’t even park your car inside? 3/4 of the garages on my block are. You’d never know from the minimalist look of my home now, but I used to be a pretty serious packrat. In getting ready for a move, I challenged myself to get rid of one item every day for a month. Years later, my entire outlook on what I keep and even what I buy has changed. The challenge was deceptively simple, but it has had a significant impact on my quality of life.

Activities

This is about saying yes when you could just as easily say no. Most of my life, I’ve been as close to a misanthropic hermit as one can get without a creepy cabin in the woods, and this was a tough habit to start. Every day you are bombarded with opportunities to do something new, something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. My approach now is to say yes whenever possible. A few examples:

• Years ago, I was permitted to witness a Samhain festival being practiced by a neopagan group a friend belonged to. I’m a devout atheist, but this was too unusual to pass up. A couple years later the resulting story helped lead to one of my longest-running FWB (Friend with Benefits).

• Take a class on something you’ve never done before, for no other reason than because you’ve never done it. No matter how obscure or seemingly useless, you’ll never go wrong learning.

• Start small. Tiny steps can become big opportunities. I landed my largest consulting gig by going to a golf tournament alone after my team had to back out instead of skipping it. I was paired with another team and one of the guys happened to have a business that needed my services. Who knows where I’d be now if I hadn’t gone to that tournament.

• When was the last time you took a trip? Most can’t afford long-distance travel, but what about the area around you? I don’t care what city you live in, there are 100 interesting trips you can take that most people in your town don’t even know about. It just means forgoing the touristy areas and stepping off the well-defined path for a while. Get out at least once or twice a month and do something, ANYTHING.

• The above applies equally to dating. Show of hands: How many women here are tired of the standard dinner date? How many guys are tired of dropping $50-$100 for two hours of awkward conversation and trying not to chew too loudly? Be the guy who can show her the unseen parts of her town and she’ll love you for it. It can be unusual or even totally bizarre. I’ve done everything from a private show at the local planetarium to a day trip collecting fossils from phosphate mine overburden.

Okay, so how does all of this apply to your sex life? I get questions from time to time about how someone like me has what I have: a growing harem of FWB (Friends with Benefits) to choose from, virgins asking me to be their first, former lovers giving my number out to other women.

I don’t excel at the common attributes: I’m not rich, not great looking, not especially funny or charming (not completely lacking, but none of these are my key strengths). What I do offer is a lifestyle that is in demand. I constantly meet women who are sick of dating Generic Humanoids. What they really want are ideas to challenge their minds and experiences they’ll not get elsewhere.

So many women are desperate for something, anything beyond the boring guys they keep ending up with. I offer the adventure she craves and the fireworks fly. Take the Mad Scientist mentality, apply it directly to your sexual escapades, and she might just tie herself to your bed.

This is a journey. You don’t win or lose, you just experience. It adds spice to life. I don’t claim this is the “right” way to live your life, but I don’t believe we were meant to sit on our asses watching others live theirs. Why waste your one opportunity to live? Break out of your comfort zone, do something weird, challenge yourself with an uncommon idea, do everything you can before it is too late. You might be amazed at what you discover you are capable of.

Comments

Kendra 2011-08-22 02:11:05

I love this article! Thanks for sharing, RainMan. Great starting point to get people thinking about ways they can mix it up.

I visited a friend yesterday and her 30 yr old super-mainstream brother was there – he is rich and successful and just had a huge fight with his new wife. It was clear he was miserable. Wish I could show him this.

My friend Ziztur and her husband are a great example of living an alternative lifestyle – they are atheists and like visiting a new church every weekend. They throw weird theme parties. In fact, I just went to her blog to see what she’s been up to, and she tried suspending herself with hooks stabbed in her flesh! http://ziztur.com/2011/08/suspension-relaxing-into-the-hooks.html

That is so much edgier than not having cable.

Reply

    RainMan 2011-08-24 00:04:34

    I have way too many miserable married friends. Though they usually fall off the face of the earth for a few years (jealous spouses and single friends don’t mix too well in these marriages), eventually coming back from the dead. Never a good sign when they’re not even out of the honeymoon phase and are already having huge fights.

    Wow, hook suspension. I like her already. That’s one I’d be hard pressed to try.

    Reply

    mb2011 2011-08-27 07:14:53

    My first article on here (found the site by following you on Twitter). This is really great stuff–thought-provoking article, and well-written. Thanks very much. Love your tweets and enjoying digging into the site.

    Reply

Colin Sphincter 2011-08-22 16:47:18

Rainman, you got that right. You could be the new pickup artist celeb. Based on science and reason and ethics. Quite excellent.

Reply

    RainMan 2011-08-23 13:09:38

    Hmm…a Dr. Seuss hat, some black nail polish and a cliche nickname. My god…I’d be unstoppable 😉

    Reply

Creideiki 2011-08-24 20:58:04

I had already done a lot of what Rain Man advocates, specifically:

1. Getting rid of TV. Did in March 2011, it’s now August, and I’m sitting in a hotel room with cable TV available, and I haven’t had it on once since arriving here the night before. Can’t say that I miss it!

2. Confronted one fear head-on by taking up social dancing. It’s been very challenging, but the rewards are already being seen, in better confidence and in meeting people, especially women. Who knew that one could hone social skills by being social? Who. Knew? 😉

3. I haven’t been on trips lately–will have to work on that–but some of the ones I’ve done in the past have included swimming with dolphins in the wild in Australia, safari in Africa, riding (literally) nut-to-butt in commuter trains in Japan during rush hour, and watching for orcas from a lighthouse in British Columbia. Yeah, I have a few things to talk about! Travel really does open the mind. Now that I’m on a shoestring budget, the trick is to find the interesting spots in St. Louis and vicinity to take dates to. I’ll have to work on that.

Anyway, I like the whole concept of RM’s thinking! I’m not the best looking nor the most charming, but if I can be the most interesting, that separates me from the pack. So far, for me, it seems to be working.

Reply

    RainMan 2011-08-24 23:18:55

    I feel you on the travel. Been so crazy around here I’ve been lucky to get out once a month for a weekend road trip. Finally found time this weekend, and was all set to head to Nassau for the weekend to hang with some old college friends, and realized yesterday that I forgot to renew my passport last year. No trip for RM, gonna have to find something else to do :frown:

    I like your comment about the dancing fear. I’d wanted to include a blurb about conquering fears, but the post was way too long already. That’s another challenge I strongly advocate. Haven’t gotten over my fear of dancing yet, that’s still on the todo list. I started with the easier ones, like swimming with sharks 😉

    Reply

1Phoenix 2011-08-27 06:44:54

totally agree, if you want people to be interested in you, you have to be interesting money, looks, “things” are all meaningless if you just sit at home and do nothing.

life is meant to be live and experienced, I have friends who are the married miserable and envy me, I love doing things that engage me mentally and physically, I love to learn and am not really interested in formal education I have a curious mind though so I seek book’s or a class on something I am curious about.

this is great way to many people are afraid of this type thing because they are afraid what some one might think of them and that is sad.

go out get a life have fun do things that interest you and will enrich your life.

great article Rainman.

Phoenix

Reply

RedHotGeorgia 2011-08-28 09:16:41

I ADORE this idea! I recently took a big professional leap…leaving the hospital Id worked at since nursing school and took a ‘travel contract assignment’ and spent the summer tripping about the country…It put me in LOADS of different situations to grow in ways I could never have imagined…

Shake it up some!! Your life will be infinitely more interesting a tale to tell your progeny…I want to be the amazing great-grandma the kids ENJOY visiting just for my company and to hear of my escapades. I will want to off myself if my story goes ‘she lived an average life’

Kudos!
xo
G

Reply

    RainMan 2011-08-28 16:13:25

    Wow, that’s a huge step, but so rewarding. One of my gal friends has done those travel contracts a few times, she raves about how memorable they were. I do wish there were more younger women (my dating range is still within the 20’s) who lived that kind of lifestyle.

    My favorite adult growing up wasn’t even family. He was this old guy who lived at the marina where I spent most of my childhood. Spent his whole life traveling the world, taking whatever work he could find just long enough to get him to the next city. He had the most *amazing* stories, especially to a kid.

    Reply

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