One of the 18 things every man should do in the summer is spend time in a hammock. On a warm, breezy, blue-sky day, hammocks are an incomparably relaxing place to read, nap, or just daydream. 

Initiating these idylls by hanging up a hammock is a fairly simple task. But it does require a little know-how. The right setup improves comfort, protects your equipment, and makes getting in and out much easier.

The guide above covers the fundamentals of an ideal hammock hang, including tree selection, strap placement, suspension angle, and height. Master these basics, and you’ll be ready to enjoy everything from spending a lazy afternoon at the park to sleeping out under the stars.

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

We all want two things that can seem at odds with each other: to be our own person and to belong. We want to stand apart from the crowd, but we also want to be connected to it. When that balance gets out of whack, we either lose ourselves in tribalism or drift into isolation.

My guest today says many of the problems in modern life stem from our inability to hold these two impulses in tension. His name is Luke Burgis, and he’s the author of The One and the 99: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. Today on the show, Luke explains how becoming a true individual can give you the strength to be a part of a community. We discuss the difference between a solid self and a pseudo self — and what role families and rites of passage can play in moving us toward one or the other — why modern politics feels like a dysfunctional family, the dangers of performative religion, and much more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Luke’s previous appearances on the AoM podcast:
  • Episode #714: Why Do We Want What We Want?
  • Episode #910: Thick Desires, Political Atheism, and Living an Anti-Mimetic Life
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
• Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour
• AoM Podcast #1,025: The Life and Legacy of Louis L’Amour
• AoM article with L’Amour’s weekly to-do lists
• AoM article and podcast about C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man and the idea of objective value
• The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
• The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet
• AoM Podcast #847: Overdoing Democracy
• AoM Podcast #1,010: How to Resist Group Anxiety and Become a Differentiated Self
• AoM Article: Becoming a Well-Differentiated Leader
• Dying Breed article: A New Kind of Monasticism — The Power of Community to Shape the Soul
• The Rule of St. Benedict

Connect With Luke Burgis

• Luke’s website

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Transcript Coming Soon

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Ask any marriage counselor what couples fight about most, and money will be at or near the top of the list. Research backs up clinical experience: disagreements over finances are one of the strongest predictors of marital conflict, chronic stress, and divorce.

Now take that already-volatile subject and add this to the mix: it pains one spouse to open their wallet, while the other spends with reckless abandon. One’s a tightwad; the other’s a spendthrift.

How do you handle a marriage where one of you hates spending money, while the other loves to splurge?

Scott Rick, a behavioral scientist, has spent his career studying this dynamic, and in his book Tightwads and Spendthrifts, he shares research-backed advice on how to navigate this relational rift.

The Spendthrift-Tightwad Scale

Rick’s developed something he calls the Spendthrift-Tightwad scale. It’s a spectrum, and where you land on it depends on how much spending money pains you.

Based on his studies, Rick estimates that about half of people reside in what he calls the “unconflicted middle.” Spending pains them enough to keep them from buying random stuff they see on Instagram, but not so much that their toes are poking through worn-out shoes. These folks don’t have much problem being too tight or too loose with the purse strings. If that describes both you and your spouse, count your blessings, stop reading, and go enjoy your reasonably priced lives.

But as to the other half of the population, about 25% land on the tightwad side of the scale, and 25% on the spendthrift side. Let’s take a look at what’s going on with these folks.

Tightwads: Spending Money Hurts

For tightwads, shelling out money for an optional purchase hurts. Literally. In fMRI studies, when shoppers saw a price their brain judged as too high, their insula lit up — the same patch of cortex that fires when you stub your toe. Buying plane tickets and stepping on a Lego run on some of the same neural circuitry for tightwads, which is why they’re so tightfisted. Spending feels bad. They don’t want to feel bad. So they don’t spend.

Sometimes tightwads gussy up their tightwadness by saying they’re just frugal. But Rick’s research shows there’s a difference between frugality and tightwadness. Frugal people get a kick out of saving — a little glow of satisfaction when they make their resources stretch and find new uses for old paper towel tubes. Tightwads don’t enjoy saving money. They just hate spending.

“Well,” they’ll say, “I’ve just got a lot of self-control.” Rick actually classifies extreme tightwaddery as a failure of self-control: the tightwad can’t override an irrational feeling of distress in order to make a purchase that would objectively improve their life.

So what turns someone into a tightwad?

It’s not about how much money is in their bank account. Rick has found plenty of incredibly rich people who can’t bring themselves to spend because it pains them so much.

Some tightwads are born — they just have a natural disposition to find spending unpleasant. Thank your ancestors for that. But many are made. Rick finds the disposition is common among people who grew up poor or in financially unstable circumstances. Because of their upbringing, they got keyed in early to the dangers of spending. They eventually get to a better place financially, but their brains don’t get the memo. They keep living as if they were poor, convinced their stable finances could collapse next Tuesday. Rick calls this “post-broke-ness stress disorder.”

On paper, tightwads look great. High savings, no consumer debt, good credit. But Rick’s research finds they’re measurably less happy than people in the middle of the spectrum, because all that security gets purchased with deprivation. The tightwad skips the family vacation because airfare hurts too much, never goes out to eat or to the movies, and takes cold showers because it’s too expensive to get the boiler fixed. 

Spendthrifts: Spending Money Doesn’t Hurt

Spendthrifts have the opposite problem: they don’t feel enough pain when they spend. Their psychological alarm over spending too much either goes off too quietly or too late. While the tightwad’s spending brake is stuck on, somebody cut the spendthrift’s brake lines entirely.

And the modern retail environment couldn’t be better designed to take advantage of someone without brakes. Spending used to take effort — you had to drive to the store, stand in a checkout line, and hand a cashier actual bills. Now Shopify keeps your card on file so buying a kayak takes about as much effort as liking a TikTok video, and if the kayak feels a little pricey, a Buy Now, Pay Later service will helpfully chop it into four installments so small you barely register them. Spendthrifts can do their damage from the couch, the carpool line, or even the toilet.

How do people become spendthrifts? Women are statistically a little more likely to be spendthrifts, but it’s a disposition that can be found in either sex. And like with tightwads, income isn’t the determining factor — plenty of broke people spend money they don’t have via credit cards and Buy Now, Pay Later services.

It seems some people are just wired this way; it’s a personality thing. But upbringing plays a role too. Rick finds spendthrifts often grew up in households where the parents spent freely and never set limits. Nobody ever told them “we can’t afford that,” so they never developed the sense that money runs out.

Being a spendthrift has its perks. Spendthrifts say yes to the last-minute lake trip, pick up the check at dinner, and buy the good seats instead of the nosebleeds. While the tightwad sits at home in their hole-ridden sweater, the spendthrift is out making memories. Yet Rick’s research finds they aren’t any happier. They carry a lot of credit card debt, save next to nothing for retirement, and feel plenty of pain about their spending — it just shows up after the purchase instead of before it. The spendthrift knows they have a problem and hates that they can’t get a handle on it. That makes them feel bad, so they buy something to cheer themselves up. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Why Tightwads and Spendthrifts Usually End Up Together

You’d think tightwads would marry tightwads and spendthrifts would marry spendthrifts. They don’t. Rick found that tightwads and spendthrifts are actually more likely to marry their opposites.

The reason is that neither type likes their own tendency.

Tightwads are wound tight by their inability to enjoy themselves, so when, say, a guy meets a lady who orders the appetizer and the dessert without a second thought, he finds it exciting. This gal knows how to live! The spendthrift, meanwhile, is stressed by her own spending chaos, so the tightwad’s stability is appealing. During courtship, each one is the other’s comforting counterbalance.

But then they get married, buy a house, and have to decide whether the Fast Pass at Disneyland is worth it. The traits that drew them together start to grate. His “stability” becomes controlling and joyless. Her “spontaneity” becomes reckless and irresponsible. And because every major life decision — housing, kids, retirement — runs through money, they end up having the same fight over and over.

But there is hope! Tightwads and spendthrifts can have a more harmonious marital money life if they do a few research-backed things. Here’s what Rick recommends.

Set Up “Translucent” Finances

Most financial advice for married couples recommends complete transparency. Both spouses should see exactly what the other spends. Anything less is “financial infidelity.”

Rick says that for a tightwad-spendthrift couple, this is terrible advice. The tightwad gets a line-by-line readout of every latte, every throw pillow, every scented candle his wife buys, and he’s going to have a discussion about it. She starts to feel like she’s living with an auditor. Pretty soon you’re having your fourth argument of the month over a $7 purchase, and the marriage feels less like a romance and more like the relationship you have with Bill in accounting going over your expenses.

Rick recommends something he calls, only half-jokingly, a “money-laundering device.” All income goes into a joint account. Everything that keeps the household afloat comes out of it: the mortgage, the utilities, the insurance, the kids’ braces, the food. Then every month, a fixed, equal chunk of fun money gets automatically dropped into each spouse’s own account, theirs to spend however they want. No questions asked, no receipts required. One spouse can blow their whole allowance on a new wardrobe; the other can let theirs pile up to be swum around in like Scrooge McDuck.

Rick calls this “translucency”: transparency where it matters, privacy where it doesn’t. The spendthrift gets to splurge without the fights; the tightwad has fewer accounting audits eating up their bandwidth.

What About Big Financial Decisions?

The allowance handles the day-to-day piddly stuff, but marriage still serves up big-ticket decisions you have to make together. New car or keep nursing the ’07 Honda Element along? Staycation or take the family to Yosemite?

Rick says the answer to these kinds of questions should be determined by what kind of purchase is being decided on.

With material stuff — a new car, a kitchen remodel — he recommends having the tightwad’s vote carry more weight. Happiness research shows that material upgrades don’t always deliver lasting satisfaction, thanks to a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation. The remodeled kitchen thrills you for about six months, and then the new granite countertops are just . . . the countertops. The tightwad’s reluctance, irrational as it can be, happens to point in the right direction here, so let his foot stay on the brake.

With experiences — vacations, concerts, and the like — let the spendthrift take the wheel. The joy of these doesn’t wear off the way material purchases do, because they turn into memories and stories the family draws on for decades. The spendthrift will book the trip the tightwad would’ve talked himself out of. Twenty years from now, nobody will remember what it cost. They’ll just remember the time Dad laughed like a little kid going down a snow-covered mountain on an inner tube.

If you’re the tightwad, here’s a trick for actually enjoying the trips your spouse springs for: pre-pay everything you can. Book the all-inclusive. When the whole thing is paid off in one lump sum before you leave, you take your hit once, instead of wincing through every menu and excursion price for a week.

Nudge Yourself Toward the Middle

You can also work to move toward the middle of the scale.

If you’re a spendthrift, add friction back into your spending. Rick suggests deleting your saved card info from Amazon and other retail sites. Having to get up and find the physical card every time you want to buy something can squelch the impulse-buy itch. Creating a “short budget” helps too; instead of a monthly budget, create a weekly one. Having a cap on your spending in the short term can make economic trade-offs feel more concrete.

If you’re a tightwad, take friction out. Reframing expenditures as investments seems to blunt the pain of spending. A vacation becomes an investment in your family, a good mattress an investment in your health, an upgraded wardrobe an investment in your career.

Accepting Who You Are and Working With What You’ve Got

It helps to remember that your wife isn’t splurging out of malice, and you aren’t pinching pennies out of selfishness. You’re just two people with differently wired brains bumping up against each other. Rick’s research suggests that while you can nudge yourself closer to the middle, you probably can’t turn your spouse into a different kind of spender, and you can’t fully rewire yourself either. So work with what you’ve got. Set up your accounts and your decision-making so your differences stop colliding every day.

And when her spending does drive you crazy, remember that her spontaneity, her free and easy way with money, was part of what attracted you to her in the first place; it’s just one side of the same coin of character, and the other side still delights you.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

At AoM, we’re champions of the lost art of letter writing. Emails, texting, and the wide variety of other digital mediums available to us in the modern age are convenient and efficient, but they can’t hold a candle to the warm, tangible, classy nature of handwritten correspondence. Letters are the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door.

Of course, snail mail doesn’t need to replace our digital messaging — it’s just a satisfying activity to take part in from time to time. 

It’s hard to get letters of correspondence going these days — you can write to people, but they may not write back (this makes postcards a nice option, as the one-way intention is built-in). 

But there are 7 other types of letters we suggest every man write at least once before he turns 70. Each kind of letter described below covers a different part of the human experience, and provides a benefit to both the writer and the recipient (though you don’t have to send them all). The former gets to participate in the exercise of putting words to feelings, a process that can hone gratitude, humility, and perspective on life. The latter gets to open an envelope filled with comfort and encouragement. It’s win-win.

With most of these types of letters, doing it once is definitely just the minimum goal. Making their writing a regular habit will keep the benefits flowing to you and the lucky recipients of your notes — until you’re 70 and beyond.

7 Letters to Write Before You Turn 70

1. A Letter of Congratulations

The personal pride one feels from reaching a goal is certainly satisfying. But having others recognize the accomplishment definitely makes it all the sweeter. We want others to see in us, what we see in ourselves.

Acknowledging the milestones of others with a letter of congratulations warms the heart of the recipient, and helps keep us humble as well. Watching for and describing the achievements of those around us not only serves as an antidote to narcissism, but inspires us to keep striving for our own goals.

Congratulatory notes can strengthen both personal and professional relationships, and regularly sending them to loved ones and colleagues is a great idea. But you should also consider occasionally writing a longer letter of congratulations when someone close to you reaches an important milestone, makes a particularly positive decision, or achieves a goal that leaves you especially impressed. Such a letter provides both the writer and the recipient the opportunity to reflect on how far they’ve come, the setbacks they’ve surmounted, and the positive attributes that helped them reach their goal and will continue to serve them well in the future. Maybe your brother just joined the Marines. Maybe your friend set a new record in the 400-meter dash. Maybe your daughter is about to become the first person in your family to graduate college. Let them know that you’re proud of them — that you see them.

For tips on how to write a letter of congratulations, check out this guide.

2. A Letter to Your Father

No figure looms larger in a man’s psyche than his father. For better and for worse, our dads are our first models for manhood.

Every boy hopes for the “perfect dad.” Our fathers sometimes fall so short of this model that we ache in disappointment for what might have been. Or they may be so close to the ideal that we worry we’ll never live up to the example they set. Either way, our relationship with our father shaped us as no other, and our feelings about that relationship run deep, whether we can even acknowledge them or not.

Most of us have never taken the time to really thank our dads for everything they’ve done for us, or on the flip side, fully faced the painful realization of how much they’ve hurt us. Yet if we don’t understand how we feel about our dads, we can’t understand how they shaped us, and we can’t understand ourselves and why we turned out the way we did.

Writing a letter to your father is an excellent way to reflect on these questions. You don’t have to send this letter if you don’t want to — it can be an exercise you do just for yourself. The purpose is simply to articulate, and thus better understand, your feelings about your dad.

For some ideas on what to write about and how to structure your letter to your father, see this article.

3. A Letter of Condolence/Sympathy

Of all the letters you will write during your life, the sympathy note is arguably the hardest to pen. It can be very difficult to find the right words, or any words really, to say. We worry about saying the wrong thing, or we feel awkward talking about such a serious matter. It’s thus often tempting not to dabble in this correspondence category at all. We tell ourselves that the grieving person knows we love and support them anyway.

And they probably do. But everyone would rather hear it from you themselves. They want a tangible reminder that you are thinking about them during their hard time. Your words can bring a brief, but very real moment of comfort. I can tell you that it really does mean a lot when someone takes the time to say, “I know you’re in pain and I hurt that you’re hurting.”

The sympathy letter is not only one of the hardest on this list to write, it’s one you should work the hardest to make a recurring habit rather than a one-time event. Whenever a friend or loved one loses someone close to them, take the time to pen them a note. Whether you live close to the person or far away, whether you knew the person they lost well or not at all, make it a priority.

For a full guide on how to word a sympathy note, see this article.

4. A Letter to Your Future Self

At a certain point in your life — if you’re like me, it will happen in your late twenties — the person you were as a young man will begin to seem like another individual, someone separate from your grown-up self. It’s a strange thing to experience. It’s not that you lose memories of your past, or change so radically from your younger self you don’t recognize him (though that might be the case), but simply that your boyhood self and your current self come to seem like two distinct individuals. Almost like the younger is an ancestor of the older; the child is truly the father of the man.

Because of this cleaving between our past and present, we are able to fairly objectively reflect on and examine who we were as a young man. But what would that young man say if the tables were turned and he was sizing up your current self?

Writing a letter to your future self gives you a chance to find out. Pen a letter that you don’t intend to open for a period of years or decades. Express your hopes for the man you will be when that envelope is finally ripped open. What do you hope your future self is doing for work? Does he have a wife and kids? Is he still active in his faith? What ideals do you hope your future self hasn’t given up on? You may find when you eventually read the letter many years hence that your goals and ideals have changed a great deal, but that you actually don’t mind, because you traded them in for better ones. The naiveté and earnestness of your youthful voice may cause you to smile and chuckle. Alternatively, the passion of the younger you may create a great sinking feeling, as you realize how far you have strayed from how you once hoped to turn out. Perhaps you have become a man that your younger self would be ashamed of. His time-traveling entreaties may bring you to your senses, revive your old dreams, and inspire you to change the course you’re then taking.

5. A Love Letter

It’s not always easy to express our feelings to our significant others. We’d rather show our love through our actions. While women definitely appreciate these concrete manifestations of our commitment, their brains are often more language oriented than ours. They want to hear the words behind the actions. They want to know exactly what’s in our hearts.

Yet it’s hard to not only find the right words to express how we feel about someone, but to also make it flow and sound real purty. It’s especially difficult when you’re sitting down with someone and trying to remember exactly what you wanted to say. Enter the love letter.

We often associate love letters with days gone by — the eras past when men went off to war and left on journeys that took them away from their loved ones for months or even years at a time. In reading biographies of great men, I’ve been continually impressed with the passionate love letters they penned to their wives; while we often think of men of the past as being more stoic than us, some of them definitely had us moderns beat in the romance department.

Yet your sweetheart doesn’t have to be far away for you to write a love letter to her. A love letter is appropriate even when you’re sleeping alongside her every night. It’s a chance to express your feelings in a more ardent way than you do on a day-to-day basis.

A fervently romantic letter (or a whole year of them) becomes a testament in the history of your love. Such a letter constitutes a record of your relationship that she’ll hold onto for the rest of her life, and that your grandchildren will read and “awwww” over.

For tips on how to write a love letter that’ll make her swoon, check out this guide.

6. A Letter of Encouragement

We’ve all had times where we’ve struggled mightily with setbacks and doubt, times when we were tempted to abandon our path and beat a retreat. If we were lucky, someone we trusted stepped in at the right moment to offer us some words of encouragement — a shot in the arm that helped us gain perspective on our challenges, see a vision of the light at the end of the tunnel, and gain the strength to keep journeying on.

Receiving such reassurance face-to-face is always quite effective and desirable. Nothing like a literal arm around the shoulder. But in many ways, it’s even better to have such encouragement delivered via letter. Not simply because being physically present with someone is not always possible, but because a letter offers the struggler a permanent record to which they can return again and again for succor. In the midst of a pep talk from a friend or parent, our spirits soar, but when we’re back alone their words become fuzzy and our hearts sink. A letter can be read and re-read during times when the sojourner once again falters; it serves as a prick to his memory — something to which he can hold fast and renew his confidence.

A letter of encouragement tells someone in the midst of a hard time that you’ve got their back and have faith in their ability to continue on or find a way out. Perhaps your niece has gone away to college but is feeling depressed and thinking of dropping out — you had a similar experience and can share some advice on how to cope. Perhaps your son has broken up with his first love and thinks it’s the end of the world, and you can offer your assurance that it’s decidedly not and there are plenty of fish in the sea. Or maybe your friend has been hit with a wave of homesickness while at boot camp; you were part of the process he used to make the decision to join the military, and you can remind him of how he arrived at that choice.

7. A Letter of Gratitude

Gratitude is one of the hallmarks of a life well lived. It is a virtue that we intuitively know profoundly impacts our personal happiness and the quality of our relationships. And research has repeatedly proven the validity of this viscerally understood truth.

Nothing else can buoy up both our personal and professional relationships quite like gratitude. A warm word of appreciation can instantly thaw the ice between people, and strengthen an already solid bond.

Taking the time to articulate our gratitude humbles us with the realization of how dependent we are on the kindness and help of others, and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. Expressing our gratitude also helps us put the not-so-good things in our lives in proper perspective by showing us that even in tough times, we still have a lot to be thankful for.

Write thank you notes early and often, for things both big and small. While it’s often tempting to send a message of gratitude via email (and it’s certainly better than nothing), it’s incredibly heartwarming to receive such a message inscribed with pen and paper. If something happens during the day that brings a smile to your face or warms your heart, jot off a quick note to the person responsible. If someone goes above and beyond at work, leave them a short note to let them know how much you appreciate and recognize their efforts.

In addition to these quick notes, at least once, hopefully several times, take the time to write a longer letter of gratitude to someone who’s had an especial influence in your life — your wife, your favorite teacher growing up, a best friend. Reflect on all they’ve done for you, and the difference it’s made in your life. Get as specific as you can as you recall these things — people’s hearts are truly warmed when they see that you noticed their attributes and efforts, and remember them well.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2014.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Your dad bod could raise your kids’ risk for obesity and disease. You’ve probably heard of the “dad bod.” It’s the body shape of a guy who’s not super fat, but not in particularly good shape, either. It’s gotten a friendly rebrand over the past decade with articles saying that some women prefer the soft dad bod over a super shredded physique. But a new review out of UC Irvine, published in Current Obesity Reports, complicates the dad bod’s innocuous reputation. We usually talk about a mom’s health before and during pregnancy shaping outcomes for her future kid, but researchers found that dad’s health plays a role too, and earlier than you’d think. A father’s weight and habits before conception can change his sperm quality and the epigenetic markers that switch on early in a child’s development and influence their metabolism, appetite, and disease risk down the road. Obesity, it turns out, is estimated to be 40 to 70 percent heritable. The encouraging part is that a lot of it looks reversible. Drop the weight, clean up your habits, and the markers you pass on improve. If you’re planning on becoming a dad soon, take this as a nudge to start eating better and hitting the gym. 

In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen. We had Rowan Jacobsen on the podcast two years ago to talk about the health benefits of sunlight, and his new book dives even deeper into the research-backed evidence of just how good it is for us. His argument is that we’ve spent decades living under what he calls a “zero-sun” policy: slather on sunscreen, dodge the sun whenever you can, and take a vitamin D pill to cover the difference. And he makes a strong case that we’ve got it mostly backwards. Yes, too much sun causes skin cancer, but skin cancer kills relatively few people, and the cost of avoiding the sun shows up everywhere else, like high blood pressure, depression, poor sleep, autoimmune disease, and even all-cause mortality. Ever since I went down this rabbit hole myself several summers ago, I’ve tried to get a little sun daily. It feels good, man. Jacobsen boils his advice down to seven words: Get sun. Not too much. Go outside. The book releases to the public next week.

Douk-Douk Folding Knife. I’ve had one of these in my pocket knife arsenal for years. It’s a simple folding knife with a single blade that tucks into a housing of stamped steel. The simplicity is exactly what I like about it. Douk-Douk has an interesting history. It’s been made by the Cognet family in Thiers, France, since 1929. Gaston Cognet designed it for France’s Pacific colonies. It didn’t take off there, but became the unofficial national pocketknife of Algeria instead. It’s a good beater knife to have around for everyday knife needs. 

The Endless Summer. My dad surfed in Corpus Christi as a teenager. The surfing isn’t great in the Gulf of Mexico, but it was a big part of his young life. He’d watch The Endless Summer from time to time when I was a kid to re-live his glory days. This 1966 Bruce Brown documentary is about two guys chasing summer around the world so they never run out of waves. It’s an incredibly relaxing movie to watch. I’ve never surfed, but I come back to this movie every few summers because it gives me a peek into a subculture — and a part of my dad’s life — that I don’t know much about.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published The Four Faces of Envy and Sunday Firesides: Exercise, Man’s Most Faithful Companion.

Quote of the Week

What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the necessity for exertion; a bugbear to children and fools; only a stimulus to men.

—Samuel Warren

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Every man needs a multitool or three stashed around the house or garage, or as a permanent part of his EDC. But how do you choose one in a multitool landscape that has hundreds of options, including for niche users like backcountry campers and first responders?

If you’re like many consumers, you start to do some research. But discussions and reviews of multitools can quickly become overwhelming and overly detailed. Most guys I know, myself included, are less interested in the sheer number of tools or the technical specs and more interested in one main thing: usefulness. How practical is this tool and how will it make my life easier? 

On your behalf, reader, I recently sought to cut through the noise to offer some clear advice on what multitools are worth picking up. I did a bunch of research, made some choices, and tested six of the most popular multitools on the market today. The options (and most recommended tools) remain dominated by three primary players: Leatherman, Gerber, and Victorinox (Swiss Army) — all of which you’ll see tested below. 

For size comparison. Starting on top and moving clockwise: Amazon Basics, Gerber Truss, Gerber Dime, Leatherman Skeletool, Victorinox, and Leatherman Free P2. 

It should be noted at the outset that these tools, with one glaring exception, did a pretty good job with the basics and would be perfectly serviceable for personal use or given as a present (a multitool is a classic gift). Most of my quibbles are fairly minor: I didn’t like the action of folding a tool out or putting it back into place, opening the pliers was a bit more awkward than it had to be, or it just didn’t feel right in the hand. When you’re spending good money on a tool, though, you want it to do exactly what it’s meant to do — and in a comfortable, easy-to-use manner, to boot. 

I’m not crowning a single winner here. Instead, here is a honest look at six popular options — and how to choose the right one for your specific needs.

Amazon Basics Multitool ($19)  

For the simple fact that this tool is sold under the Amazon Basics banner and is dirt cheap, it’s going to show up high on search results and sell a ton of units. Which is a real bummer, because this multitool blows. 

Verdict

From the start, this tool just did not feel very solid. Its two main pieces move laterally, giving it a cheap and clunky vibe. The implements do not open or close very easily, and accessing the pliers is a less-than-smooth experience. This review is short and sweet: do not buy the Amazon Basics multitool for yourself or your loved ones. 

Victorinox Swiss Tool X ($155) 

The maker of the original Swiss Army knife has been around for nearly 150 years. They’re best known for their red, pocket-sized tools that are centered around the knife and screwdriver bits, as opposed to today’s tools that are generally built around a hefty set of pliers. While I didn’t test one of the red classics, I did buy one of their modern options that is more like the standard modern multitool.

Verdict

The Victorinox was the longest tool I reviewed and among the top two heaviest. Bulky can be okay, if the benefits outweigh that downside, but that’s not quite the case here. A big part of the problem with this one is that it features a very polished mirror finish, making it slick to hold and use. When it comes to any tool, a good solid grip is critically important, and this multitool is lacking that in a big way.

And while opening and closing the integrated implements is generally smooth, the inner functions are not the easiest to access and required some fingernail fiddling that wasn’t very fun. Those downsides, along with the hefty price tag, mean that the Swiss Tool X is not one of my top choices. 

Leatherman Free P2 ($130)  

No multitool review would be complete without testing an American-made Leatherman or two. Since the 1980s, Leatherman has been the go-to brand for multitools — and for good reason. They’re generally reliable, durable, and can be passed down from grandfather to father to son. The only real problem is that there are so many Leathermans available. There are a few dozen options to choose from, which is rather paralyzing as a consumer trying to figure out what to buy — from the $250 ARC to $40 pocket-sized options and everything in between. 

Ultimately, I went with Leatherman’s “Free” system, which was appealing to try out because it touts one-handed opening and locking of tools, for those times where you just don’t have a second hand available. 

Verdict

The reality, for me at least, was that I could never quite figure out how the one-handed operation was supposed to work. It felt forced and awkward, even if technically doable. (Plus, I actually found one-handed use to be easier with the Gerber Truss and the Leatherman Skeletool.) 

The lever for closing tools was not very intuitive or easy to operate.

Opening and closing the pliers was slick — probably the best and smoothest of the bunch — but the inner tools were fairly hard to access without first opening the outer tools. The notches on the end are supposed to make it easier, but I didn’t find that to be the case in practice. 

I also didn’t like the mechanism for unlocking the tools for closing them. The lever was the hardest to use of all the tools I tested. Overall, it’s a fine multitool, it just doesn’t have the smoothest or easiest operation of the bunch.  

Leatherman Skeletool CX ($100) 

Leatherman’s pared down Skeletool has become very popular in recent years. Whereas many multitools have suffered from feature bloat (do I really need multiple blades? or a can opener?), the Skeletool offers users the few tools they use most: pliers, one quality blade, a couple of screwdriver bits, and a bottle opener. The stripped down tool therefore weighs less and carries a slimmer profile than its dozen-tool (or more) cousins. 

Verdict 

Somewhat surprisingly, the Skeletool has been the full-size multitool that I’ve reached for the most. I wasn’t sure if it actually had the features I would need, but turns out it’s popular for a reason — about 80% of what I need a multitool for is covered with a blade, pliers, and a screwdriver. Plus, I found one-handed operation of the knife to be the easiest of anything I tested. 

Given its weight and profile, I’ve come to think of the Skeletool almost as more of a pocketknife with a couple extra features. It carries a lot easier than the heavier tools listed here, and the clip lets you easily snap it onto a pocket, backpack, keychain, or tent. 

Gerber Truss ($55) 

For most of the 2000s, Gerber has been right behind Leatherman as a leading maker of multitools (as well as other heavier-duty outdoor blades, like survival knives and hatchets). Rather than being sleek and shiny, their style is decidedly rugged and tactical. Like Leatherman, Gerber offers plenty of options, but its smaller lineup makes choosing one a little easier. I went with the Truss, which is their middle-of-the-road, standard multitool. 

Verdict 

Overall, I really like this tool. It just feels sturdy in your hand. The implements are thick and solid, so you know they won’t bust if you put pressure or leverage on them. Opening every tool, including the inner ones, is a breeze — probably the easiest of what I tested. The pliers are spring-loaded once they’re fully in position, which is handy. And the mechanism for closing each locked tool is a simple, easy-to-operate pull-back slide. 

An easy sliding mechanism to close locked-in-place tools.

My only gripe is that it feels a bit bulky in your hand when using the fold-out tools. I wish the profile was a little sleeker, and I’m not entirely sure why one end is wider (which is indeed noticeable while in use). This isn’t a multitool that fits nicely in a pocket. That said, this is a great tool overall — at a great price — for your garage, toolbox, tacklebox, camping kit, etc. 

Gerber Dime ($35) 

A true mini-multitool option can come in surprisingly handy. But finding one that doesn’t feel flimsy or disposable is not easy. Enter the Gerber Dime. It’s just two inches long and is literally a quarter of the overall size of the Victorinox. Cool. 

Verdict 

I’m a bit shocked by how solid this tool feels for how small it is. With a pliers, scissors, knife blade, “retail package” blade (literally just for boxes and hard-to-open packaging), a couple screwdriver bits, and even tweezers, it really has everything you’d need in a multitool — just in a smaller size.

Smaller than my car key and incredibly rugged. Impressive!

Overall, this thing is cute as a button (sorry, I meant rugged as hell), easily fits on any key ring, and has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions in my couple months of testing. It shouldn’t be your only multitool, but I might say it’s the single option on this list that’s a must-have. Of all the multitools I’ve tested, the Dime is what I’ve actually used the most because it’s been easier to have on my person at all times. And that counts for a heck of a lot when it comes to judging the practicality and convenience of a multitool. 

Conclusion  

To be honest, I’m not the handiest guy. I don’t get super excited about tools in general and my DIY chops are pretty average. Given that context, it’s my opinion that there’s a place in your home and pocket for a few of these multitools. A keychain tool is underratedly clutch, and at just $35, you can’t go wrong with the Gerber Dime. A knife that can fit in your pocket and has a couple extra features, like the Skeletool, is nice to have along on day trips, picnics, and other less intense outings — or as something that lives in your junk drawer for easy tasks around the house. And a more intense multitool, like the Gerber Truss, is absolutely valuable in your toolbox for small jobs or to have along on tool-heavy outings like fishing or camping. 

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: The following is an excerpt from The Technique of Getting Things Done (1947) by Donald Laird. 

The right reading — often accidental — wakes up slumberers and gives needed goals to those who still have none. The right book or article has started many on the main road and off the detours. 

Enrich Weiss wanted to act in a circus, so this nine-year-old practiced in a shed behind his home in Appleton, Wisconsin until he could hang by his knees from a trapeze and pick needles from the floor with his eyelids. At twelve he ran away from home. 

In a secondhand book store, when he was sixteen, he picked up a book on magic by Robert Houdin that was to change his life. He paid a dime for the book, started to read it after supper. He could not leave it. He thought about magic tricks while cutting neckties, while running in amateur races. He got more secondhand books on magic, worked up a few tricks of his own, and changed his name to Houdini. 

He was a lifelong habitué of secondhand book stores, gathered more than 5,000 volumes on magic and spiritualism which are now in the Library of Congress.

In Abilene, Kansas, a tallish high-school boy from across the tracks wondered what to do when he graduated. He was tired of working in the creamery. He visited the weekly-newspaper office; famed editor J. W. Howe loaned him a book that had just come in. The book told the story of that amazing military leader, Hannibal. Young Dwight Eisenhower was fascinated. It was the turning point in his life. Reading the right book started “Ike” Eisenhower on the way to West Point Military Academy to become Allied Supreme Commander in history’s greatest war. 

Robert E. Peary, a dreamy boy from Cresson, Pennsylvania, was inspired by Elisha Kane’s book Arctic Explorations (a dreary tome, if you ask me). Robert’s dreamy eyes narrowed; he could already see visions of the frozen Northlands. “I will help the world understand the mysteries of those places,” he decided. 

That book gave him a goal. At thirty he made his first voyage of exploration to Greenland. At forty-seven he tried to reach the North Pole and failed. But he still had his goal, born of boyhood reading. 

Heroically, he tried again and six years later did reach the Pole, the first person to capture this goal which men had been trying to reach for four hundred years. Scientific societies and governments the world over honored the boy who had gotten his start from reading, reading that gave him a wrought-iron determination.

Keep a supply of worthwhile books around where children can see them. Select books that cover a variety of subjects. Expose young people to the stimulation of reading. There is no telling where it may lead.

John Masefield ran away to sea at fourteen, was assistant bartender in New York for a while. At eighteen he read Chaucer’s The Parliament of Fowls. That decided him; he would be a poet. And in fifteen years his poetry had won everlasting fame. He became Poet Laureate. 

A librarian, your boss, a book dealer, a teacher can help you pick the reading that will count.

Often we just stumble across the right reading; that’s why it is wise to read many things. I accidentally stumbled into psychology. I was halfway through college, majoring in chemistry, and an assistant in the physics laboratory. Then one Christmas vacation I started to read a four-volume manual on experimental psychology by E. B. Titchener. At the end of the vacation I knew I was changing my vocation. My chemistry professor was disgusted. But the halfhearted chemistry student became an enthusiastic psychology student. 

Great Lives Remind Us 

Do you have a hero? “Tell me whom you admire,” said Sainte-Beuve, “and I will tell you what you are.” 

The lives of great men have aroused sleeping abilities in thousands of people who were once stumbling along. Reading such lives has given many an irresistible determination to get more things done.

Rudyard Kipling went to Bombay at seventeen wearing real whiskers. In the heat and sickness he toiled on a newspaper, apparently his lifework. Alone in the house one hot evening he picked up a book by Walter Besant, All in a Garden Fair. The book told the story of a young man who wanted to write and who did in spite of great obstacles. 

That selfsame evening Kipling resolved that he, too, would write, whatever the obstacles. He started at last to save money. At twenty-four he returned to England with his savings, settled in a room over a sausage shop, and began the writing that was to make his name world-famous.

F. B. Morse was one of eleven children. He was ten when he read Plutarch’s famous Lives of Illustrious Men [another title for Parallel Lives], those stories of ancient Greek leaders and noble Romans. The book fired the young man; he, too, was going to accomplish something. Within a quarter-century he won recognition as a portrait painter, and a short time later invented the telegraph. 

Plutarch’s Lives started him on the road to the American Hall of Fame. 

Plutarch’s work has given many young men the stimulus to get things done. Napoleon carried a copy of it for twenty years. Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812, read and re-read Plutarch, starting in his youth. So did Robert Brookings, who established the famous Brookings Institute in Washington. 

Benjamin Franklin attributed his zeal for getting things done to reading Essays to Do Good, by Cotton Mather. He was about sixteen, working in his brother’s print shop, when he seriously began to read to improve himself. He says in his autobiography: 

I then proposed to my brother that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. 

But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, dispatching presently my light repast, had the rest of the time till their return for study.

Loyola was thirty and a common Spanish soldier when he was laid low with a leg wound. While convalescing he read The Lives of the Saints, which inspired him to become a religious worker. He founded the Jesuit order, was consecrated a saint by Pope Gregory XV. 

“Study a great man,” said Louis Pasteur. 

Great men who have done things, who are still doing things, can become our inspiring lifetime friends through their biographies and autobiographies. Get a hero — and get better acquainted with him by reading about him. 

Some rich man who wanted to make the world hum could put more books about people who have done things within reach of the minds of the generation which is yet to do things. 

Everyone can find new friends who count by reading books about people who count. Try reading a biography a month for several months.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Life rarely unfolds according to plan. A relationship implodes. A move or job change doesn’t work out. Or you simply fail in a goal you’ve set for yourself.

My guest has spent almost two decades researching and field-testing how to get back on track when smaller slip-ups and larger upheavals knock you off course. His name is Steve Kamb, and he’s the founder of Nerd Fitness and the author of How to Try Again: An Approachable Guide to Navigating Chaos and Making Change THAT STICKS. Today on the show, Steve shares practical principles for dealing with life’s frustrating and demoralizing setbacks. We discuss why sometimes the best move is to pause rather than push harder, how to accept reality without resigning yourself to it, why treating change as an experiment can help you beat paralysis and take action, why you should treat consistency with your goals the way you do showering, and more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Steve’s previous appearances on the AoM podcast:
  • Episode #42: Level Up Your Life With Nerd Fitness & Steve Kamb
  • Episode #170: Level Up Your Life
• Steve’s AoM guest posts:
  • Don’t Be That Guy: The Taxonomy of Lousy Male Friends
  • How Superheroes, Movies, and Video Games Taught Me to Conquer Fear
• Nerd Fitness
• Museum of Failure
• Sunday Firesides: Good Times Are Not Around the Corner (And That’s Great News!)
• Sunday Firesides: Treat Life Like an Experiment
• “Lightning Fields” by the Killers

Connect With Steve Kamb

• Steve’s website
• Steve on IG
• Steve on LinkedIn
• Steve on Substack

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Transcript Coming Soon

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

So when I had Beau L’Amour — son of the great Western novelist Louis L’Amour — on the podcast a couple of years ago to talk about his dad’s life and habits, my ears perked up when he mentioned that his father worked out every single day for an hour or two in the afternoon, right into old age.

The conversation moved on, so I didn’t circle back to ask exactly what L’Amour did for his workouts, but that question has been rattling around in my head ever since.

So I recently decided to email Beau to see if he remembered what his dad’s daily workout looked like.

To my pleasant surprise, Beau wrote back immediately with something even better than I had expected. Instead of sending me a general description of Louis’ workouts, he sent me scans of his dad’s typed weekly to-do lists with completed items struck through in red pencil. On these weekly agendas, Louis included his workouts for the week.

The ones he sent span from 1968 to 1983, and they cover a lot more than exercise. A single week might include blocking out the first chapter of a novel, answering all his mail, reviewing his Chinese and French, reading to his kids by the fire, and teaching them how to fall and box correctly. It was inspiring to see that the young autodidact in Education of a Wandering Man continued his self-education even into his 80s and intentionally scheduled it with the same rigor he scheduled his workouts. But it’s L’Amour’s training I want to dig into here in this article.

Why Louis L’Amour Trained

Beau gave me the backstory of his father’s exercise habit. Louis was born in 1908, trained as a boxer, and worked physical labor jobs throughout the 1920s. He boxed and trained for the sport, focusing primarily on speed and endurance. By the early ’30s, he was trying to make it as a writer while training young boxers, which kept him in shape.

Then came WWII. His job in the Transportation Corps had him leading convoys of double gasoline tankers through burning towns in Europe, but the food was plentiful, and the trips into nearby cities were frequent, and he came out of it carrying extra weight.

Louis continued to exercise after the war, but he got really serious about it in 1966, when he was 58 years old. Like other writers, he spent a lot of the day sitting, and this exacerbated a niggling back pain he’d had since the war. The pain was getting in the way of his work. It got so bad that he went to a doctor for advice.

In a letter written in 1976, L’Amour recalled what he did next:

When my doctor told me I should not lift anything heavy, not even my own child, that was more than ten years ago. It was only then that I started lifting weights. I never had before, beyond what I had done in working around the country…I started lifting weights carefully, with very light weights, as I’d had a bad back since riding in jeeps during WWII. Now I can lift five to six thousand pounds in a couple of hours, and after my work-outs I feel great…since I began lifting weights I’ve had no more back trouble. I’d simply been sitting too much, and my muscles had softened, and there are some bones that need the strong muscles around them. I’ve never had to go back to that doctor because my back trouble ended with proper exercise.

L’Amour’s doctor told him to lift nothing. Louis responded by lifting thousands of pounds a session and curing the very problem the doctor was worried about. I love that. Sounds like a young Teddy Roosevelt, who, when his doctor told him not to overexert himself, decided to do the opposite and “make his body.”

There was another reason Louis started lifting when he was nearing 60. In 1974, he wrote in his journal:

I’ve not yet done a book that really pleases my taste…One reason I exercise, too. I am just learning to write, just gaining command of my medium, and must work for a long, long while.

Louis kept training because he wasn’t done creating his art yet, and he wanted a body that would hold up long enough to continue honing his craft and putting his work into the world. He trained for what Nietzsche called “Great Health.” Inspiring!

The Louis L’Amour Workout

Beau L’Amour training with his dad, Louie, back in the day. From the Louis L’Amour Facebook Page.

Alright, so what did ol’ Louis do for his fitness routine?

Remember, the man on these sheets is in his sixties and seventies, and the routine stays remarkably consistent across fifteen years of lists. It breaks down into three parts: conditioning, the iron, and discipline at the table.

Conditioning (the Boxer’s Base)

• Jump rope
• Stationary bike
• Heavy bag work 
• Walking
• Boxing rounds with his son, Beau
• Abs and sidebends

The Lifts (BB & DB — Barbell and Dumbbell)

L’Amour performed a circuit 6X a week that worked both his upper and lower body and included these exercises:

• Bench press
• Overhead press
• Flies
• Curls
• Rows
• Triceps
• Grip work
• Shrugs
• Lat pulldowns

Discipline at the Table

• Standing goal to stay under 220 lbs — sometimes he’d try to get down to 210
• Snacking was skipped when he was cutting weight; “No between meals,” as one sheet bluntly puts it

There’s nothing fancy here. L’Amour skipped rope, hit the bag, ran through his lifts, and ate sensibly. He aimed to do a variety of exercises, treated his workouts like a standing appointment, and got in one to two hours of physical activity every afternoon. 

I lift for plenty of reasons, but as a guy moving through middle age, L’Amour’s reason for lifting is the one that increasingly resonates. I want to stay strong enough to keep doing the work I haven’t finished yet.

Thanks to Beau for sharing these snapshots of his dad’s life. He’s got a new novel out — Skyring Water — that he collaborated with his father on, both before and after Louis’ passing.

For more inside details on Louis L’Amour’s life and work, listen to our podcast with Beau:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Summertime is here, and we couldn’t be happier. As author Benjamin Alire Sáenz put it, summertime is a “book of hope,” filled with the promise of freedom, adventure, and dreamy idleness. It’s a time for sloughing off the heaviness of winter and soaking in the hot, rejuvenating sun.

It’s also a time for diving into certain pastimes and rituals. Seasonal traditions provide a natural rhythm and change to life that’s often missing in our modern world of fluorescent-lit, temperature-controlled sameness.

Below we offer 18 suggestions on things to do to make the most out of the season of summer and inject more of its mirth and charm back into your life. Do them all by Labor Day and you’ll have created enough hazy memories to keep you warm the next winter through.

Enjoy!

Here’s how to keep score with pen and paper.

Learn how to wear one with style.

Check out our video tutorials on summer grilling!

Need an idea on what to read? Check out our book lists!

Learn how to make your own rope swing with our illustrated guide!

Here’s why they’re still worth sending.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2014.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.