An Ideal Day (or Weekend) in San Francisco – 16 Fun and Weird Activities

San Francisco is my favorite city in the world, bar none.

I love NYC, I love Bali, and I love Buenos Aires, but SF is the place for me. And since I’ve been here for 10+ years, I get asked a lot: what should I do when I visit?

This post will highlight some of my favorite things.

Recently, I joined forces with InsideHook – the “essential lifestyle guide for adventurous and discerning men.” I’ll be their SF curator (and advisor), helping them find and share hidden gems in gadgets, food, outdoor adventure, and more. Subscribers get one hand-picked item per day via email. That’s it.

I encourage you to check it out here. At the very least, you’ll get an education in headlines, as their copywriters are amazing.

Now — onward!

Below is one of my ideal days in SF, planned out so everything is within close walking distance.

Wellness FX Blood Analysis
Activity: Blood-drawing and high-end diagnostics
Description: Visit one of Wellness FX’s labs for a blood drawing to produce an in-depth analysis of your state of health. Results offer a wide range of information, from cholesterol and hormone levels the to an analysis of your body’s electrolytes and vitamins.
Pricing: $29-$529+

SideWalk Juice
Activity: Smoothies, juice blends and more at 21st/Valencia.
Description: SideWalk provides made-to-order juices, smoothies & kombucha juice blends that are as delicious as they are beneficial to your physical and mental health.  My favorites?  The “Green Machine” and the “Jake Shields,” named after the local UFC fighter (“The strongest kale drink in existence!”).
Pricing: $4.25-$7.00

Street Art Tour
Activity: Walking tour of two alleyways with notable graffiti artwork with Dan Pan. We focused on the Mission district.
Description: Guided walking tour with Dan Pan, founder of 1AM Gallery’s new street-art app.  The app allows you to find nearby street art, as well as take pics and have users tell you the artist (very cool).  Try Clarion Alley as a starting point, which is run by an artists’ collective.
Pricing: The 1AM app is free.

Mission Cliffs Climbing
Activity: Indoor rock climbing
Description: Indoor rock climbing at Mission Cliffs, a sprawling gym located at 2295 Harrison St.
Pricing: $20-$160

Lunch at Salumeria
Activity: Lunch at Salumeria
Description: Salumeria is a 20th St. deli and larder that marries the culinary traditions of Old World Italy with the trend-hopping foodie culture of contemporary San Francisco.
Pricing: $6-$17

Drinking!
Activity: Adult beverages with friends
Description: Enjoying social lubrication with new or old friends. A fine tradition as old as time. Some of my favorite spots include:
St. Vincent (Mission)
Hotel Biron (Downtown-ish, Hayes Valley)
Trick Dog (Mission; Disclosure: I’m an investor)
Bourbon and Branch (Tenderloin)
Pricing: Varies.

Hawk Hill: where you can take a bike ride into our Cold War past.
Once upon a time, Fortress America dotted San Francisco’s hilltops with Nike missiles and radar outposts. Of course, those missiles were never fired — but you can still visit the rusted remnants of their vigilance if you bike up to the SF-87C radar outpost, the best-kept secret of the Marin Headlands coastline.

The Lands End Trail, where you’ll find the best maze in the Bay.
Truck up the Great Highway to stretch legs and strut your knowledge of the Sutro Baths. Hike up the Land’s End Trail from the ruins to the labyrinth at Eagle’s Point. It’s only a couple miles round trip, and damn fine panoramic views’ll be in serious supply.

California Cheese Trail: pairs well with Mission Cheese (below) or your vineyard of choice.
As an adult, your knowledge on cheese should surpass the realms of Lunchables and Easy Mac. Showing you the whey: the California Cheese Trail app from the folks at the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, available now for iPhone and Android. If you’re up for spending a few bucks on cheesy delights, visit Mission Cheese on Valencia.

The Bay Bridge’s long-awaited East Span.
The opening of the Bay Bridge’s new East Span has been years in the making, and now it’s officially open, welcoming pedestrians and cyclists of all stripes and offering exclusive access to Yerba Buena Island.

Vantigo: Tour beer breweries in a cherry-red VW Bus.
Indulge your nostalgia for simpler days with Vantigo, now offering tours of some of the Bay Area’s best microbreweries via a pristine ’71 VW Vanagon.
Pricing: $85 per person

Trumaker and Co.: Shirtmakers who come to you.
Restock your shirt library with Trumaker and Co., a custom shirtmaker with a highly mobile fleet of outfitters. It’s simple: you make an appointment, they send a tailor your way.
Pricing: from $98, free outfitter appointment

Boatbound. Because every man should own a boat…if only for a day.
Herein: your guide to using BoatBound, a new AirBnB-style boat rental service. SF Bay or Half Moon Bay?
Pricing: from $250 per day

Big Sur Roadhouse. The Big Sur getaway you’ve been looking for.
There’s a sprawling new Cajun restaurant in Big Sur. There are also some skinny-dip-friendly hot springs down the road. That gives you at least two good excuses to visit.
Pricing: from $50 per person

Mikkeller. It’s like a beer tour of Europe in a single bar.
The legend of Danish brewery Mikkeller has been growing across the pond for some time; they just opened their first North American alehouse in San Francisco.
Pricing: varies

Shelter Co.: Romantic private camping service with tent butlers.
Shelter Co. offers completely customized luxury camping experiences. You want tent butlers? They got tent butlers. You want a private island? They will rent you a private island.
Pricing: from $2000

Want more activities, rare finds, and goodies? Sign up for InsideHook and let me know what you think. I’ll also choose one person who signs up for a 30-minute phone call with me.

Then what? How about you try my Pacific Northwest roadtrip from SF to Whistler? Damn, I love the Bay Area.

What’s your favorite city in the world, and what are your favorite 2-4 activities?

###

View the original article here

The Highest Leverage Activities That Are Best for Ensuring That You Have a Good Life

There must be a way to optimize what activities we perform that have the highes impact on our lives in a positive way. This answer in Quora by Visakan Veerasamy points out 5 main activities that provide the most highest value to ensure that that you have a good life.

The highest leverage activities in my life have been:

I believe that any advantage I might appear to have in computational ability, imagination, perceptiveness and expressiveness- ALL OF IT is a consequence of the vast amounts of reading I did as a child. Reading expands your mind. It gives you new and interesting perspectives to work with. Reading exercises the mind, it gives you new possibilities, it allows you to learn from the minds of others.

I believe that the benefits of reading have compounded effects- when you have had your mind expanded, you approach the rest of life with a more open mind, you’re more perceptive to little details, you pay more attention, you get more out of every subsequent experience. This compounding never truly goes away.

Read a chapter a day (any book!) for a great life.

Physical fitness is vastly underrated by anybody who isn’t physically fit. There are very strong links between the body and the mind. Sometimes you can get upset, lethargic and frustrated simply because you’ve been too much of a slob too long.

The long term health benefits of exercise cannot be ignored. I know some old people who are haggard, frail and struggle to walk. I know others who are springy, fit and independent, with sparkles in their eyes. The difference? Usually exercise.

This point is meant to focus on the physical, but there are all sorts of other exercises to consider. Reading is a mental exercise. Compassion is an emotional exercise. Whatever it is that you care about, use it or lose it. Play chess, play guitar, play. Exercise.

Exercise for 20 minutes every day for a great life.

We can’t make it on our own. We are inherently incapable of fully understanding ourselves without the valuable perspectives and insights of others. We can try to be as independent as we possibly can, but we will still always need shoulders to lean and cry on, people to nourish and motivate us, to teach us.

My new favourite soul-enriching thing to do is to Provate Message(PM) people on Facebook. We can post on their walls, sure, but there’s something very public about that in a way that forces superficial interactions. PM them, ask them how they’re doing, ask them how they’ve been feeling. Sometimes me and my wife send each other lengthy emails even though we see each other all the time, because quiet moments of introspection and thoughtfulness yield different (and, in my opinion, superior) interactions.

Of course, there is no substitute for human contact. I try to have coffee with my mates at least once a week, and it is enriching beyond measure.

By the way, don’t neglect yourself. You are the one person you can neither leave nor escape, so invest in your relationship with yourself. Take yourself out for coffee, sit yourself down and get to know yourself. What do you care about, what are your dreams, what sort of novel would you write? How are you doing, how have you been feeling? These are important questions.

Spend a few minutes a day with your friends and loved ones (including yourself) for a great life.

Whenever I sleep well, life is awesome. I’m  bright and clear. I make good calls, and sometimes I even come up with interesting and creative solutions to everyday problems, in startlingly quick time! I get my reading done, I get my exercise done, I enjoy my conversations more. I pay better attention and I speak more lucidly, with clearer thoughts.

Whenever I neglect my sleep, I notice myself making worse decisions, being more lazy, lethargic, passive, irritable and less cognizant, less in-control. I complain more. I am more susceptible to spending too much money on unnecessary things, more susceptible to losing my temper and generally behaving in ways in which I do not deem fit.

Sleep well every night for a great life.

I define conversation as the meaningful clashing of ideas and perspectives. You don’t need to be talking to someone else- you could explore your own mind, or the natural world, and that would be a form of conversation- anything that leads to insight and understanding. Mindfulness.

Exercise can be a kind of conversation you have with your body- if you’re not listening, you could get injured.

Reading is, ideally, a conversation with other human minds, past and present.

Your relationships grow the most in moments where you are paying the most attention to one another.

Passive, thoughtless routines will not do in this pursuit. Pay attention. Give a damn. Care. Listen. You can differentiate all great experiences and mediocre ones by assessing the mindfulness/thoughtfulness present in a process. Steve Jobs was a mindful, thoughtful guy with regards to his work. Buddha was a mindful, thoughtful guy. So was Jesus. All good artists, all great anything- be mindful, pay attention, have a great conversation- with yourself, with each other, with the world. Devote yourself to learning and understanding new points of view, so that you better understand your own.

Pay attention and be engaged for a great life.

View the original article here

Top 20 Time Wasters and the Top 5 Worthwhile Activities

As we all shift gears back into September routines, this is a great time to take a look at how you spend — and waste — your time. Check your activities against this list:

Facebook — I don’t think I really need to explain this to any of you. If you’re reading Lifehack, you’re savvy enough to know that Facebook (and other social media) can be a huge black hole for time.Photo taking, organizing, uploading, and posting — While we all love to share our best moments with our friends, if you start doing this a lot, it can be a huge time waster. Every photo needs to be uploaded, captioned, and share. Unless you are a professional photographer, limit the time you spend on photos.Momento-gathering — This is an extension of the last item. You can waste a lot of time collecting and organizing momentos. Extra-special pieces are great, but just trash the boring stuff. Momentos can be electronic too, and if they need organizing, they take up your time.Personal Grooming — Personal hygiene is essential but if you spend more than 5 minutes on your hair, you might think about how to reduce that time.Exercise — Exercise itself is very important, but you don’t need to spend a lot of time on it. Go for an intense workout in 20-30 minutes, rather than a 2-hour affair. Which brings me to…Affairs — If you want to keep more than one relationship on the go, well, all I can say is good luck with that! It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to take a lot of time.Playing Games — It was Plants vs. Zombies for a while. Then Angry Birds… What games do you like to play? While a little bit of gaming is great recreation, just be aware of the time you spend. You might even want to literally log the time and see how much it adds up over a week. Decide how many hours you are willing to waste on your game(s) of choice and then limit yourself. Willpower required.TV — This is, in my opinion, the worst culprit of all. 99% of the time, it’s not useful, helpful or recreational in the true meaning of the word. Lots of shows try to sell themselves as being informative or educational, but they aren’t. For example, how much do you really need to know about ancient battles? TV is an horrendous time waster. Don’t be one of those people who lose 20+ hours a week in front of the flatscreen!Watching movies — This is a small step up from TV — at least you aren’t being bombarded with commercials. But one 90-minute movie a day adds up to 10.5 hours per week, and that’s a lot of time lost. Why not make watching a movie a special treat?YouTube (or other online streaming video) — Need I say more? Either limit your raw time spent or limit the number of “related videos” you let yourself watch. Or go cold-turkey. YouTube is a cruel master!Going for a Coffee — While you may love that espresso every day, how much time does it take to drive to the coffee shop, stand in line or wait in the drive thru, pay and then drive to wherever you were really going? You could save some time by getting really great beans and making your own at home or the office.Being Sick — It is a better investment in your time to eat healthy and keep your immune system strong than lose time being sick. If you are sick, focus on getting well than just “biding the time” watching TV or complaining to anyone and everyone on Facebook!Reading junky books — I hesitate to say this, but reading can be a time-waster. Think about what you’re reading and why. But please, still encourage young people to read anything and everything, just to improve their reading skills.Commuting — Add up the time spent going to/from work every day and see if there is a way to reduce it. Carpool if you can — you can use the time spent riding to do things on the way. Or, see if your employer would agree to let you work one day a week from home, or work 35 hours in 4 days instead of 5. There are many options if your commute is a killer.Shopping — We all need groceries, but do you need to drive across town to that bulk store and spend four hours on a Saturday filling a gigantic cart? Have you done the math to see how much money you are actually saving? Might your time be worth something? How about unnecessary clothes, gadget or phone shopping? Can you save some time going to a closer store rather than driving across town? This is especially important if you get into a habit of driving extra — time lost multiplies when you do something daily or weekly.Online Shopping — This is a variation of the above point, but it bears mentioning separately. So you need to order this-or-that specific product online. Time yourself. Give it 5 minutes — get it done. Don’t be distracted by other products, or “other customers also bought” items. Don’t do any extreme product comparison or research (unless it’s something you’ve never bought before and you really need to). Shopping for apps can be a time-eater, too.Accounting — Depending on your situation, your system and your accounting skill, it might be a major time saver to just pay someone to do it for you. Or, you might be able to streamline your system to do a little at a time rather than losing huge chunks of time in tax season.Organizing/Moving files on your computer — Try to put things where they belong the first time, so that you don’t have to go searching for them later or spend time organizing them. On the other hand, maybe you lose time just “fiddling” with things on your computer — looking through your downloads folder or mucking around with folder hierarchies.Cleaning House — Depending on your situation, it might be a good use of time to hire a maid to come in and keep your place clean. Think about time spent, check on the costs of a maid, and do the math. Before you buy a big house, consider the time it will take to clean it!Obsessions — Whether it’s reading conspiracy theory websites or tracking down your 16th generation genealogy, our hobbies can become obsessions if we do them uncontrollably. Make sure that anything you spend a lot of time on hasn’t become an unbalanced fascination and if it has, try and cut the strings. Get help if you need to.

So that’s a fairly comprehensive list of time wasters (add any I’ve forgotten in the comments). Remember, we aren’t just saving time so we can work more. With more time available, you can make time for the…

Connecting with Friends and/or Family. Having a network of close friends you can let your guard down around is extremely important. Don’t turn down your friends to work on your hobby alone. Don’t stay home from your weekly meetup group because you feel grumpy — going out will cheer you up. Doing social things is important for your mental and physical health and should be balanced carefully with work and family. Do the things that make life worth living.Eating good food, slowly. With all that time you saved by eliminating time wasters above, you have an extra 15 minutes to eat slowly and taste your food. Ideally, it would be great to buy groceries and cook food at home — there are less preservatives and chemicals this way — but if you can’t do that, at least eat the healthiest foods you can find and take your time. Eat more raw veggies, and for pete’s sake, stop for a minute after you swallow that last bite!Being reliable for your kids’ sake. If you said you’d take them to practice or go see their recital, get them there on time and make them feel like it’s your priority. Let them know they can count on you by your actions and they will feel loved! Isn’t that what every parent wants — for their kids to feel supported and loved? If you don’t have kids, the same principle applies to your spouse, or others close to you. It is always worthwhile to plan a little buffer time around those sorts of important events to make sure that you aren’t rushed or stressed going into them.Being in Nature. I am a huge fan of spending true recreation time — re-creating yourself — in nature. Go for a walk, or run an errand on your bicycle or on foot. True recreation should get your mind off your daily stresses and let your mind relax, and nothing does that like being in nature. I have heard that the colour blue is a calming colour, and what is more calming that lying on your back under a blue sky? Green is invigorating, and sunlight filtering through green leaves is the ultimate “green experience.” Watching sunsets (or sunrises), cloud gazing, bird watching, or watching boats in the harbour are all great outdoorsy recreation. Time in nature can be combined with exercise, but doesn’t have to be. In fact, time in nature can be combined with any one of the other 4 Worthwhile Things.Laugh more. Play more. Worry less! Donald Cooper says in his Accelerate Your Business workshops, “trust the process.” All your hard work will pay off. Do the steps you feel are best, and don’t worry. Give yourself time to play. Stay lighthearted — your brain works better this way, and your stress levels will decrease. Forgive the world for not being perfect. Forgive yourself. Stay in the present and see how much you can enjoy this very moment, now.

(Photo credit: Wasting time concept via Shutterstock)

Teresa Griffith is a renaissance woman and author of Love Your Skeletons -- overcoming the skeletons in your closet. She enjoys blogging, knitting, canoeing, kayaking, inventing stuff in her head and serving on the fire department in her home town. You can follow her on Twitter as @LoveYoSkeletons.

View the original article here

6 Ways to Make Your Daily Social Media Activities More Productive with Buffer

There were some stunning facts released recently from both Twitter and Facebook:

Twitter is on track to hit 500 million accounts by February. At the same time, Facebook is looking at hitting 1 billion users in August.

On top of this, it seems as if every day there are plenty of success stories of how people found a job through Twitter, how they found new clients or speaking gigs via Facebook, or connected to new people to expand their network. So the benefits from using social networks professionally are extremely powerful. Yet building up your personal brand through Twitter and Facebook is often a hard and time consuming task.

So here are 6 tips on helping you build a stronger personal brand on Twitter and Facebook by saving time on posting and growing your network.

The key app I am using to make my day to day social media activities more painless is Buffer. It is a new way to tweet and post to Facebook at better times. You simply add tweets to your queue and they are “automagically” scheduled to be posted spaced out over the course of the day.

You can add updates from any website with the handy browser extensions (Chrome, Safari or Firefox). All you do is click the Buffer icon whenever you want to share an article, and click “add to Buffer”. In a recent study, Buffer has shown to improve clicks on your Tweets by 200% and get you (on average) double the number of retweets. All simply by filling up your Buffer and letting it do its work.

Another app that has facilitated my life greatly is called ifttt (“if this then that”). It allows you to connect any two web services together and combine their powers. Here are a few examples on what ifttt allows you to do:

You star something in Google Reader –> It is added as a Tweet to your BufferYou take a picture with Instagram –> it is added to your DropboxSave a bookmark to Delicious –> Add as a Facebook post to Buffer

Overall I found that ifttt just streamlines the process of using Twitter and social media in an incredible way. The best part? There are absolutely no boundaries of which types of “recipes” you can create. Be sure to check it out.

Another powerful way to make keeping in touch with your followers is to use Buffer’s functionality to schedule retweets right from Twitter.com. By installing the browser extension for Chrome, Firefox or Chrome, you will get a new little Buffer icon right inside Twitter.com

What I like to do then is browse my Twitter stream and whenever a Tweet is worthy of a retweet, I can hit the Buffer icon. That way I can spend a few minutes on Twitter and add 5 or so retweets to my Buffer, without ever flooding my stream.

This next tip involves the use of an awesome app I started to use a few weeks back called SocialBro. Amongst lots of great analytics insights, the app looks at your followers and finds out the best time to tweet for you.

Once you receive your report for best tweeting times, you can click the “configure in Buffer” button. It will set your top tweeting times as a schedule inside Buffer. From now on, all you have to do is add tweets to your Buffer and they are posted for you at these optimal times.

The one feature I couldn’t live without when reading on Flipboard or Zite is the ability to email in Tweets and Facebook posts right from the articles you are reading. On your iPad, just tap the “email link” as shown below. You can then type in your secret Buffer email and send it off.

Once you find your secret Buffer email you just hit the email link whenever you find an interesting post. Buffer will automatically recognize which email address your updates are coming from. It will put the subject line as the title of the tweet. At the same time, it also grabs the link from the body of the email and shortens it for you.

So all you have to do is hit “send” and a new tweet lands in your Buffer. Handy right?

There are also mobile apps available for your Buffer account. It means you can add Facebook updates or tweet to your Buffer while on the go easily.

Both the Android app and iPhone app have the functionality of adding articles right from the browser to your Buffer. Whenever you are reading a post, just click the “share” menu in Android and you can add the tweet to your Buffer.

I have a 15 minute train ride every morning. That’s a fantastic chance to browse the latest articles and add everything I like to my Buffer. It keeps my stream steady and my followers posted with the latest stuff I have found helpful. And best of all — it never overwhelms them with too much content in too little time.

One saying that I always bear in my mind is a quote I first heard from Tim Ferriss:

“You can’t improve what you can’t measure.”

So tracking how well you are performing on Twitter and Facebook is the only way to also get better with your tactics. Buffer comes with a handy analytics feature. Every tweet you send with the sharing platform will be tracked for you.

You will know how many clicks, retweets and reach you have received and — most importantly — who has retweeted, “favorited” and replied to your tweets. You can follow new folks that have retweeted you right from there or thank them for it.

With just one glance at your tweets you can see which ones are getting the most clicks. I have found this to be a great way to focus on improving your tweet copywriting, as you are constantly reminded what your followers are most interested in.

Having a solid following on both Twitter and Facebook has proven to be extremely helpful for me. Whenever there is an issue that arises or help I might need, I can just send out a quick tweet or post to Facebook and there will be a ton of replies. Over the past 10 months, I have grown my audience on Twitter to around 5000 people, purely by providing interesting content through Buffer.

Do you think some of the above tips can help to make you more productive using Twitter and Facebook? What other methods are you using to grow your audience?

Leo Widrich is the co-founder of Buffer, a new way to Tweet and share Facebook posts more intelligently. He also blogs Twitter tips at http://blog.bufferapp.com/. You can follow Leo on Twitter at @LeoWid.

View the original article here