The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Guest Starring Steven Pressfield

Episode Date: February 29, 2020

This week's extra-long Saturday episode of Ask Daily Stoic features Ryan talking about, and speaking with, author Steven Pressfield, writer of classic books such as The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The War of Art.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. It's been more than 10 years ago now that somebody gave me a copy of Stephen Presfield's The War of Art. And honestly, I don't think I would be sitting here. I don't think I would have been able to write the books that I've written.

I don't think I would have been able to have the career I've had without Stephen's books. And so I am so honored. He was out in Austin. We wanted to talk to me about some marketing stuff. And we got him in here. And we're doing our first ever guest version of Ask Daily Stoic. So I think Stephen is one of the great sort of writer philosophers of our time.

He's got all these fascinating beliefs about the muses, about routine. But really, it's his concept of resistance, this sort of force. He says that sort of between us and where we want to get creatively, artistically, in our personal lives, and then it's the sort of battle with this resistance that makes us who we are. Obviously, the Stokes don't talk about resistance, but I think they would have immediately and intuitively understood the concept. So, I thought I'd talk through, you know, quickly three or so of Stephen's books and how they influence me and what concepts I think you can take from them.

So, the first, as I said, is the War of Art. This is where this concept, the resistance comes in and comes from. You believe that, as he says in the interview, a little bit, he says this, you're, am amateur habits and professional habits and about how you set up routines. It's just such a clever title too, right? It's like the War of Art, the Art of War, is saying that basically creating something

is this kind of daily battle with yourself, with your fears, with your doubts. And then it's about the commitment that you put in and the habits that you build and the place that you go to that this work is able to come from. So, you know, for me to read this book at 19 or 20 years old was just so influential because I was probably, I certainly now you thought that writing was fun, that it would come easy

that, you know, if you wanted to make a movie, you could make a movie. If you, you know, to hear that Stephen, like basically spent 20 years putting in his hours paying his dues before he had his first breakthrough, you know, sort of incredibly inspiring and also humbling. His other book, which I really love, which is kind of a sequel to The War of Art, is Turning Pro. There's this idea that you turn pro as a writer or as an athlete or whatever sort of career or path you're on.

It's this transition, and that's what he means. There's sort of amateur habits and professional habits. So it's not whether you're getting paid, it's not the sort of NCAA distinction. It's the, are you acting like a pro or you acting like an amateur? And I think this is a concept that the still is sort of very much agreed with.

Like, are you acting philosophically? Are you doing the work? Have you put yourself in the position to be successful? Or you're just expecting life to be easy to give you what you want? And so this idea of turning pro, I think, is a critical turning point in everyone's career that we should all think about.

And I asked him a little bit about that. And there's other book gates of fire about the 300 Spartans that Thermopoli is just sort of beautiful. If you've seen the movie 300, I actually think his book is a better version of that same story. It's super popular with the military. I was telling you guys last week that I was at Aviano, the NATO base, and I was speaking to the general there, and he's a huge fan of Gates of Fire.

It's on their assigned reading list for their airmen. It's just a classic story about what it means to be a warrior, what it means to sacrifice, what it means to be part of a group, what it means to put it all in the line. So I strongly recommend that book. I recommend everything Stephen's done. He's just fantastic. The other novel, maybe you've seen the movie, but he also wrote the book, The Legend of Bagger Advance, which is turned into a movie with Will Smith.

So a lot of the ideas in Stephen's books is fiction, Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Virtues of War, are about themes the Stoke sort of been until Millie familiar with, whether it's the Spartans or Alexander the Great or the Athenian Navy. You read these books and you're just transported back in time. So I'm so excited that I got to talk to them. I feel like it was, I've met them a few times, but every time I talk to them, it's like meeting one of my heroes

and come away wiser for it. So I'm really excited for you guys to hear from him. If you haven't read Steven's books, you absolutely should. His writing Wednesdays posts on his site are really great. You should sign up for his email list, follow him on social media. He's got this fascinating career. He's a great dude. He's one of my absolute favorite people.

He's someone I'm trying to model my career after. And so I can't speak highly enough of this guy. And a little known fact, it was actually Steven and his editor who gave me the idea to do the three-part structure that is the obstacle as the way that obviously I recreated. And he goes, the enemy, and then in stillness is the key. And you might have noticed that it's a quote

from Steven Pressfield that's on the cover of those first two books. So I feel very indebted to Steven. He's an awesome guy. I'm so happy we got to bring this to you. And I can't wait to hear whatever one thinks. For today's reading, I'm going to do the February 29th entry from the Daily Stoke.

It's actually funny. You'd think it'd be 365 meditations, but you have to do 366 because it is a leap year this year, but for three out of the four years, this book has been around. This entry has not been there to be read, but I guess that ties in well with the title, which is, you can't always be getting what you want. When children stick their hand down a narrow, goodie jar, they can't get their fist full out and start crying.

Drop a few treats and you will get it out. Curve your desire. Don't set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need. That's Epic Titus from the Discourses book three. We can have it all is the mantra of our modern lives. Work, family, purpose, success, leisure time. We want all of this at the same time right now to boot. In Greece, the lecture hall was a leisure center where students contemplated the higher

things, the good, the true, the beautiful, for the purpose of living a better life. It was about prioritization, about questioning the priorities of the outside world, but today we're too busy getting things just like kids jamming their hand down a jar of goodies to do much of this question. And don't set your heart on so many things says epictitas focus. Prioritize, train your mind to ask, do I need this thing? What will happen if I do not get it? Can I make do without it? The answers to these questions will help you relax, help you cut out the things that make you too busy to be balanced or happy. One of the best pieces of advice I got was from Austin Cleano. I was just moving to Austin. My sort of career as a writer was just taking off and he said

something to me. He said, think about it this way. He's like, there's work, family, and scene, like the sort of social scene. And he's like, pick two, meaning that as a writer or as whatever you're doing, you can sort of be, you can go at all the right parties, you can have fun, you can do all the cool stuff and you can do great work, but that comes at the expense of your family. Or you can have a family you love and party and hang out and do fun stuff all the time, but your work will suffer. Or you can do great work and you can have a great family, but you will be conspicuously absent and all the things. And so this is a core stoic idea, the idea of saying no. One of my favorite stories from the stoics is a story from Agrippinus

who refuses to go to one of Nero's parties. And he, not only did he refuse to go, he never even considered going because Nero was corrupt because he didn't want to do these things. And Agrippinus didn't mind standing out, he didn't mind being different. He didn't mind being conspicuously absent. In fact, the whole point was to be conspicuously absent, to be conspicuously conspicuously because he wanted to do what he thought was right and he wanted to do what he thought was important. So I think that's something to meditate about today, something to think about. If you can't get everything you want, you can't have it all, no one can have it all. Everything we say yes to comes at the expense of something else we say no to. And everything we say no to means hopefully that we are saying yes to something that really matters.

Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up page six or do-waw or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App.

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoke. We're doing it with a guest this week. This is Stephen Pressfield, one of my favorite authors of all time. We're going to talk philosophy, ancient history, and answer some of your questions. So the first question, Stephen, is from someone named Emily. Emily is talking about, this is a stoke exercise of pre-meditashu malorum. So her question is, how do you think someone can plan for adversity and think about it, but not become nervous and anxious?

Wow, that's a hell of a question. I know the answer to that. I know if my girlfriend, Diana, were here, she would say, don't think about those negative things because you put it out into the universe and you bring the negative stuff in. But I am a believer in kind of pre-thinking, you know, things that could go wrong. So when they do go wrong, you know, actually I wrote a book called The Lionsgate a few years ago about the Sixth Day War, and I spent a lot of time with fighter pilots over there. And their mentality has kind of soaked into me a little bit. They very definitely on a mission. They will, like in the sixth day of war, Israeli fighter planes flew like a hundred feet off the water

to attack Egyptian airfields. And these guys rehearsed second by second everything that could possibly go wrong. So that when it did go wrong, they weren't freaked out by it. You know, they were, you know, they were ready for it. They'd rehearsed it. So I'm not sure if that's the answer. No, it is. I think it is. Seneca quotes Fabius and he says the only inexcusable thing for a military commander to say is I didn't think it would happen.

Yes, yes, yes. And so you don't just wake up in the morning and you're like, today could be horrible. You're not just like brooding on all the stuff that can go wrong. I don't think that's the way to do it. You want to think specifically as you, it's like when you're giving a talk, you don't want to get on stage and then the projector doesn't work

and then you've never conceived of that scenario happening and you don't know what to do. It's about, I think, creating contingencies. So actually you're not anxious because you've prepared for it to happen. Yes. I would definitely agree. This was one fighter pilot in Israel, where they, on this day when they were going to attack

the Egyptian airfields, they had planned to go into their dive at 2,500 feet and pull out at 1,000 feet. They're bombing around the fields. So, this pilot made a couple of runs on the Egyptian fields and then they got called off to Syria. And he suddenly, so he went into his bombing and run and suddenly he looked to the windshield and he saw the ground was getting very big, very close and he realized, oh my god, we're on the Syrian plateau that's 1500 feet higher. And he pulled out at about one foot, you know, so that was a case of, if you had done that pre-meditadi or whatever it is, you would have thought, okay.

You know? So it's great to do that. I think that's right. All right, so our next question comes from Karissa. How would Marcus really, or the Stoics approach in posture syndrome? Certainly Marcus was in 100% qualified to be the emperor. And she says, in my own job, I go through the motions and have been promoted, but I feel I'm

in too deep. Maybe she'll say something someday that reveals how little she knows. I know you talk about this in your books, this idea of like, am I a writer or not? Can I call myself a writer? There's that imposter syndrome that people feel I'm just curious, but what do you think about it? That's another great question. I don't think there really is such a thing as being an imposter.

Okay. You know, I think if you're just on the spectrum of getting better and getting better, but I do think that we're sort of led to a calling or to something that we do. The trick to me is just self-belief. It's just believing that you're not an impostor. I mean, who says you're an impostor? That's the voice of resistance in your head, trying to sabotage you. And I think a lot of times, once you get into the moment of it, you'll be amazed at what comes out of your mouth.

Yeah, I think that there's almost some ego in impostor syndrome because you think people are thinking about you. Yeah, Right. When really nobody cares. Like, nobody is trying to catch you as an imposter. Is what I like to say. They're not thinking about you at all. They're thinking about themselves. But the question about Marcus really is interesting because so Marcus really says not, it's not like he's born knowing he's going to be emperor.

His father, there's five Roman emperors in a row who don't have the male heir. So he's selected to be emperorors in a row who don't have a male heir. So he's selected to be emperor as a little kid, basically, as a teenager. So you can imagine a teenager's gonna have two reactions, either you're gonna be like, of course I'm meant to be king, or you're gonna be like, what?

This is about, and so Marcus has the second reaction, and he doesn't think that he's suited for it at all. Supposedly he breaks down into yours. As he thinks about it, he thinks about the emperors that come before him, how bad a job many of them have done. And he ends up having this dream that night. He has this dream that his shoulders are made of ivory. And this is a symbol that like he could bear the weight of responsibility. So I think the truth is we all struggle with that doubt, but then it's the question of like,

are you going to identify with that doubt, or are you gonna sort of push past it? So in a way, Imposter Syndrome is identifying with the wrong thing. It's identifying with the doubts to me, rather than identifying with the confidence. Like when I set out to write my first book, I don't know about you, but it's not like,

by definition, your first book, you've never done this before. Right. So how do you know that you can do it? If you're like, of course I can write a book because I'm me and I'm a genius, I don't think that's the right way to think about it. I think that's ego to me. It's, okay, well what do I know about myself

that gives me the impression or is evidence that I can write this book? Right? And so for me, it was, oh, like, I'm a hard worker. I don't quit. I ask questions. I've written other things before. So I think you focus, choosing on what you're going to focus on.

I think you focus on the traits that you know that should qualify you to do whatever you're doing. The other thing I think is that if you have the idea to write a book, where does that idea come from? You're being called in some sort of way, like a dream is calling, you're unconscious of the muse or whatever. And you wouldn't be given that idea, you wouldn't have the idea, unless you were capable of somehow enacting it.

No, that's very beautiful. I love that. Annelyl says, how does this dough go about dealing with people who are different than them in terms of lifestyle or work ethic? There are people in my life that are constantly complaining, have little work ethic, and sometimes be simply the opposite of how I choose to live my life. I know I can't control them, so I roll it off and remind myself that their actions don't determine what I do and feel, but sometimes I struggle with this.

I don't want to be arrogant, but I feel that. So she's asking for a basic, how do you deal with people who are not as talented as skilled as driven, any advice? Actually, I just had kind of an instance of this, where I got into this real negative spiral in my head of thinking about someone and thinking, you know, they're lazy, they're bummed,

they were letting me down, that, that, that, that, and I just thought to myself, you know, they're lazy, they're bummed, they're letting me down, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, probably doesn't work all the time. Most people I think are trying their best. And I think I sort of thought, you know, this person that I'm having a problem with,

I bet if I heard his side of it, he'd probably say, tell you know, things I'm doing, it's screwing him up. I just tried to make it a positive. And I think that's probably a pretty good way. Obviously some people can't work with, like to go back to another Israeli story, Moshe Dian, the famous Israeli general, he broke people down into two categories.

Those were possible, and those who were impossible. And the possible ones, in other words, people he worked with, he would give them all the leeway they could possibly have. And the impossible, once you just said, you know, I'm not working with them at all, they're impossible. I remember in Gates of Fire, because I wrote the quote down you just said, you know, I'm not working with them at all, they're impossible. I remember in Gates of Fire, because I wrote the quote down, I think you were quoting him,

he was talking about, too though, he would rather have a horse you have to rain in the one you have to prod. And so, yes, if you're choosing who you're gonna work with, you want someone to vote. If you can choose it, yeah. But the reality is we don't get to choose it the most of the time.

And that's one of the things the ancient historians sort of credit Marcus Relius with is like a lot of times the really smart, brilliant, talented, dedicated leaders have trouble, like this was a problem Obama had, where it's that trouble, it's like people were not as good as him. Right, or Kobe Bryant, trying to get his teammates, yeah.

Right, yeah, Kobe Bryant could not wrap his head around the fact that not everyone was says Kobe, was Kobe Bryant. And so one of the things that Credit Marcus really is with is he had this philosophy is like, you don't choose who is in the empire. He's like, everyone can be of service to the empire in some way. How do I get that out of those people?

The empire is not going to be staffed with philosophers, basically, you know. And so realizing that like, these are your standards that you hold yourself to and that that's what matters, but that you are not only going to be miserable, but you're probably not going to get the best out of other people expecting others to live up to standards. They never agreed to live up to in the first place. So I think the really great leader is like Lincoln is a great example to where he's like, how can I get the best out of all different kinds of people, especially flawed people,

even people that don't like me. This is an opportunity to grow as a leader, which is like the leader's job is to get the most out of the people around them, not to bully or intimidate or judge people for not being something other than they are. What I'm about to say is not gonna answer anybody's question, but I think maybe this applies to you a little too.

Even one of the reasons I'm glad I'm a writer is the only person I really have to worry about is myself. Totally, totally. Can crack the whip over myself. And that's actually a great point too, though. I think it does answer your question. Maybe you're someone who can't work with other people. And you, like, there are a number of writers

that we probably both know that it's like, because they have had success as a writer, you can assume, oh, I would be great running a company. And actually, you're right. So you need for that at all. And so really knowing your strengths are you an introvert, are you an extrovert? Can you work with other people?

Do you like working with other people? Yeah. Do you have a lot of patients? Do you not have a lot of patients? Yeah. There's a great book, Quiet. Yes. That might be a central street. Yes. Yes. About introverts and the strengths of being an introvert. Yes. I think your point is a good one is that like some of us are more self-driven, solitary figures, and the great news about how the world has worked out is that now you can, that's a viable career path, maybe it wasn't before, and so maybe that's for you. And this is almost perfectly suited for you, Stephen. He says, how do I stop procrastinating?

He says he wants to write a book, and he's been thinking about it for almost four years, but he's not started. He's even bought a no card box and index cards. He spends hours researching how to improve his writing, but in the end, he doesn't write anything. What do the stoics say or what do you say about overcoming procrastination? I mean, there are some problems,

and I'm sure you'll agree with me, right? That can only be solved by the will, by just making up your mind to do it and do it. I mean, there's many sort of hacks I hate that word and tricks. I mean, you could certainly set a schedule and just say that every morning at 7, I'm going to write for an hour. I'm going to do something. But then if you're a procrastinator, you'll go back to bed or whatever it is.

But I think there's no, it's like the Nike slogan just to do it. There's no substitute for strengthening the willpower. However, you have to do that. Habit is a great thing. You know, Twilath Arps book, The Creative Habits. I wouldn't know what to do if it wasn't for habits. In fact, a lot of what I do in the day is a writer is just to try to strengthen the habits that I have. Remember, there are professional habits and there are amateur habits. And procrastination is an amateur habit, par excellence, you know. So like for me, when I first started, the real bugaboo for me was finishing something. I could go for two and a half years, you know, get this far from the end and then, and I just, I just said to myself, I'm either going to kill myself or I'm going to solve this

thing and just will power. The one thing I will say for that thing, and maybe this will apply to Aidan's question of procrastinating is once you beat it, you'll always beat it from then on. Yes. I think one of the things that I see people because they read books, they love books, the books are books and writing are synonymous to them. And they're not the same thing.

And so, if you wanted to start running, you wouldn't commit to doing a marathon tomorrow. If you did, you'd just be put, if you're like, I'm gonna run a marathon, you just be putting it off over and over and over again, because it's so hard. Like I wrote almost every day for six years before my first book was done, you know?

And thanks a lot. Just journaling or were you, no, no, I mean, I wrote online. Like I wrote articles and I wrote on a blog. Like there's no way my first book would have been my first book if I started from there. Right, So you don't set out to run a marathon, you run a mile, and then you run two miles, and then you run 20 miles in a week, and you have to build up muscles. So I think this goes to your point about habit. The idea of starting with the largest end of the obstacle is not

the way to do it. I didn't even want to start smaller. So, you know, he's saying, in the end, I don't write anything. Well, commit to writing a tweet or an Instagram caption or an article or answer questions on Quora or write emails to your friends. You know, like, just start writing. Senika has this point. He's like, the path of wisdom is like, just pick one thing every day.

Like, find one thing every day that is like, fortifies you against poverty or helps you fear death less. Just look for like one quote, one insight, one story a day, and that this adds up. And so I think to do a book, it's the accumulation of days with your ass in the chair.

But to be a writer, you just have to start publishing. You know, so you start writing. If you'd written a page a day for four years, you'd have four or five books at this point. So I think I'd start smaller. Another book recommendation, James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. He talks about what's the smallest habit you can start with.

And Twyla talks about that in her book. She's like, for me, it's like getting up, getting downstairs, getting in the cab. That's putting me on the path to the habit. You know, James clears like, if you wanna go running, lay out your running clothes in front of your bedroom door the night before, and then you have to step over them

to not, you know what I mean? Like you're putting obstacles between you and the procrastination. So, you know, if you decide to write one article a week, that's going to be easier to do than writing a book, which you've never done before. And so, of course, it's intimidating. The other thing, I would say, is a couple other things. I have a saying that says, put your ass where your heart wants to be.

Oh, that's beautiful. And which would mean, in AIDS case, sit in the chair. Yeah. Don't assign yourself any more than that. Just have the typewriter or whatever it is, and sit in the chair. And then just, you know, that's where you want to be. If you're a painter, you're getting in front of an easel. The other thing I would say is, if it's been going on for four years, don't feel too

bad about it. For me, it was like seven years before I could finally kind of break through that thing. And also, the monumental scale of Aiden's resistance tells me that there's something really great in there, because there wouldn't be that big resistance if there wasn't something, a dream of a vision, a book, a number of books, so I would say it's not to be discouraged. Okay, so John has a question here about saying no. For the Stokes, you know, the idea of like, you know, Marx really says like, only say yes to what is essential, ask yourself as

it's necessary. So the art of saying no, separating what you should be doing from what you shouldn't be doing, given your, which I, the no one wants to read your shit, is so great. You must have millions of requests coming your way, but you seem even more than me, very disciplined in what you say yes or no to. I wonder, do you have good strategies for saying no to things? Wow, I wish it's been a real problem for me, my whole life, because I have this idea

that I want to be thought of as a nice guy. Yeah. And so, you know, when requests come in that are from obviously well-meaning, good-hearted people, are they really sure. You know, but you absolutely can't do that. I have, I once got a chance to visit a security company, like the kind that protects celebrities from harassment and stuff like that. And one of the things that they do is they will, every piece of mail or email it comes to the celebrity,

goes to them first. They absolutely screen it. And so we are not celebrities, maybe. We sort of have to do that ourselves. You don't just say if I were the security firm, would I throw this in there? And remember there was a display they had at the place. And it was a plexiglass case that went up of at 10 feet high, had four compartments, and it was all full of letters that one person had written to a celebrity.

Thousands of them. Sometimes they were 18 a day. Yeah. And the security firm, the celebrity never saw any of them. Does this day, they wouldn't tell me the name. Yeah. He doesn't need you or she doesn't even know. They intercepted them and put them away.

So there's a great quote by Dickens. It's a note from those days you would write a note to your friend, about a friend that asked him to lunch. And he said, you know, it may seem like nothing to you. It's only an hour. But my thinking about it through the day, it's gonna screw me up in the morning before I go. Then when I come back, I'm gonna have to try to get back.

So I hope you understand, Dickens, said, I just can't do it. That's it for me. It's like, so it might seem like it's like an hour, but now my whole day is pivoted around that thing. Like for me, the sign of success is an empty calendar, not a full calendar. That means I'm living my life how I live.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stoics are talking about like how we're just a slave to these responsibilities and obligations and then there's no time left for ourselves. And we're exchanging this time for money but we can't get the time back you know and so yeah it causes me a lot of stress and anxiety. I heard Steve Cam who runs Nerd Fitness which is a great website. I know he's a fan of yours. He was telling me recently if you phrase it as you have a rule. People are much more understanding

because they understand that it's not personally a rejection of them. So like for book blurbs, he's like, you don't say, no, I won't blurb your book. You say, I have a rule against blurbing books. Someone just two days ago asked me to write a forward to one of their books. And this is true.

I don't write forwards for books because like I only want to write books. I only want my name on Amazon to be on my own books. I feel like a forward is a very big endorsement. Like it's just and so I said, look, the request was very nice. I'm, you know, blah blah blah. It was as well done as the request could possibly be. And I said, look, this is a great request. Thank you so much. I'm flattered. But I have a rule. I don't write book forwards. Welcome to send me the book. I'm happy to look at it. You know, and I'll maybe I'll tell people about it when it comes out. But I have a rule against doing this. And he was like, done. You know, but if I, if I was like, I don't know if I like your book, you know, that whole thing. So, so the idea of rules, that's something I'm applying now. And it's

a good one. And, and the black and whiteness of it is really good. I guess I want to ask you to write it before we're going to. The other thing that I heard once, it's also a really good way to think about this, is when you say yes to some request that comes in, you're simultaneously saying no to something else, like your kid as a soccer game.

OK, I'm not going to be able to go to see Janie soccer game. Yeah. And which is more important. Or I think sometimes for me, this is a tough one, I'm sure you do the same thing, right? Sometimes for me, it's just what I want to do, it's just daydream. Yeah. Or I want to sleep. Or I want to watch some dumb thing on TV.

And that's that valuable. Yeah. You know, that counts. Yeah. I also don't write forwards because it's just an incredible request. I mean, unless you're brother, you know, forget about it. You know, they show the shop that LeBron James does

with the Barber Shop, you know, and they were talking about since you got famous, has your family started wanting you to buy the houses? And everybody was just laughing one after another about how, yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody comes out of the woodwork. Right. And how they just kind of learned to laugh it off and say no. Yeah, actually, and I know there's sort of different schools of thought with writers about like, you know, is having kids make it harder to be a writer easier. I've actually found that having kids is very clarifying for me as far as saying no goes

because apparently I have an unlimited tendency to steal time from myself. And my wife is pretty patient, so she'll let me steal time from her. She's not like, hey, you're doing this, we were supposed to have dinner, she doesn't care. But realizing that saying yes to writing this forward or saying yes to some dinner or things like that, that I'm stealing that time from a three year old is it embodies it in

a visceral heart breaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes you it forces you to be much stricter, which is ironic. Sonica would say because like, yeah, sure, you obviously don't want to make a child sad, but it should be enough that you're giving away life that you can never do that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. And so we end up just, you know, say, yes, yes, yes, it's the only way to bad guy.

And then we sit on our deathbed and wonder where all the time is actually to, we have a daily stoke, you know, coming out about this, but I was reading, touching the obituary of Kobe Bryant, who recently just died in this tragic helicopter accident. And the reporter was talking about her whole career covering Kobe, and that about a month before he died, she emailed him, she was doing a story on Phil Jackson and the Triangle Offense, and she wanted to interview Kobe for the story.

And so, especially if you become a public person, like that's so flattering. That's like you want to be interviewed. Like you want to talk about your things, you want to manage your legacy. There's it's all your financially motivated to do it. All these things. And so she texts him and he texts back and he says, Hey, sorry, my girls are keeping me busy. Hit me up some other time. When he said that, he had no idea that he had one month left

the last story. Yeah. But, you that, he had no idea that he would have one month left to live story. But maybe in that moment, as he's, like it touches me very deep in the think, like maybe he recognized as his life was flashing before his eyes, that that hour or 10 minutes or five minutes on the phone. He gave that to the people that mattered, rather than to some other thing that no one, no, we wouldn't be sitting here

and going, I'm really glad Kobe was quoted in that. Right, it's the answer. You know what I mean? But that five minutes that he spent with his daughter instead, she's going to remember forever. You know, the stonings is you do not have an unlimited amount of time to do your work, to be with your family. And so you're saying no feels selfish, but also what you do is important in the relationships that you have are important. It's actually more selfish to say yes. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

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