The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan Holiday & Tim Ferriss Discuss "Alive Time vs Dead Time"

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

Ryan speaks with Tim Ferriss, the author, podcaster, and investor. Tim has written five New York Times best selling books, including The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. His podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, has over 400 million downloads on iTunes. He has been an early investor in over 50 companies, including Uber, Facebook, Shopify, and Alibaba. Tim writes a hugely popular blog and has spoken in front of millions of people, whether on TV or to organizations like Google, MIT, Microsoft, and Palantir.(4:57) - How Stoicism has helped them deal with COVID-19(21:30) - How do you process anger about the response?(32:08) - Fear - how do you defend against it? what do you tell someone who is overwhelmed by it?(41:23) - “Turning alive time into dead time”(51:16) - What can people do to help?This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic and receive 20 free travel packs with your first purchase.This episode is also brought to you by Leesa, the online mattress company. Each of their mattresses is made to order and shipped for free right to your door. All mattresses come with a 100-night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can feel confident in your investment in a good night’s sleep. And Leesa's hybrid mattress has been rated the best overall mattress by sites like Business Insider, Wirecutter, and Mattress Advisor.Daily Stoic listeners get 15% off their entire order with the code STOIC. Just visit Leesa.com and get your mattress today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy

in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. So Tim Ferris is someone I've known now for going on 13 years, I actually met him here in Austin before the four hour work week, came out. I was just a kid basically, I hadn't done anything and he was nice enough to sort of connect with me and talk to me. And one of the things we shared,

one of the things we sort of connected over was Seneca and Stoke Philosophy. And we've become friends since. He's actually published the audiobook of the obstacles way and he goes the enemy. And one of the things that I've always respected about Tim is that Tim is a doer, right? Tim makes things in the real world. So yes, he's into philosophy. Yes, he thinks about these things, about Stic philosophy, but what he really does is apply the philosophy

in the things that he does. And I think his response to COVID-19 has been a great example of that. That's why we're going to have him on the show today. Why had a bunch of questions about applying stoicism to these uncertain times. But we've talked recently about, we're living through history, but this is a time to embody philosophies, a time to be heroic. Tim was, and we talked about this in our interview,

Tim was one of the first people to push for South by Southwest to close, to not happen in Austin, in March of 2020. A lot of people were making fun of them at the time. They thought he was overreacting. But if you look at the number of cases in Austin versus the cases in New Orleans, which went ahead with Marty Grah, you know, there's a real argument to be made that Tim saved many thousands of lives and potentially, you know, reduced hundreds of thousands of people from being exposed. He contributed to preventing an event with 400,000 people swooping in on this town and having what kind of impact.

But even just more personally, Tim reached out to me. He pushed me to pull my kids out of school. He pushed me to stock up on stuff. Tim and I happened to share the same assistant and I could hear from her what Tim was doing. And so Tim had a big impact on me taking this seriously, on keeping the people that I love safe. He had a real impact.

And to me, that's what philosophy is about. It's Epicurus that vain is the word of the philosopher, which does not heal the suffering of man. Well, Tim, in some of the things we're talking about in applying them actually really did have an impact on alleviating the suffering for me and for other people, which is really great. And so we're going to talk about that. Okay.

If anyone better to talk about philosophy with, then Tim Ferris, you can read his awesome books, Tools of Titans, Tribes of Mentors for our work week for our body. I've been lucky enough to contribute and work on the marketing for some of those books. And it was one of the early guests on Tim Ferriss' podcast, which is also amazing and warmest force in the world. So check it out, really hope you like this interview, and stay safe out there and listen to Tim, he knows what he's talking about.

All right, so I was thinking, so we last talked podcast related in January and Man, life comes at you fast. I don't think like that. Yeah, the three great correctors of human population war pestilence and famine and we certainly have number two in abundance and Scaling rapidly so things have changed quite a lot since January. Yeah, and so I was curious as someone who is a long time fan of the Stoics like yourself,

how have you been thinking about these sort of ancient ideas or ancient strategies for dealing with what is a very timeless ancient problem? Well, first thing I did was I looked into my stored belongings because I moved from California to Austin, Texas three years ago, four years ago, but the vast majority of my stuff is still in storage. And I had been sent as a gift, a bust of Seneca that was still wrapped in bubble wrap. So I tracked that down, opened it up and put it in an upstairs room where we

tend to spend my girlfriend and I mornings so that I would at least see it. And so I think that there are a whole lot of different ways to attempt to answer this and I will begin with putting someone like Senek all though. He's a very crafty funny character so we could spend a whole lot of time on him specifically. Sure. Marcus are really us and so on as ideals that I on some level strive to emulate and I think the word ideal is important

because it is very easy to beat yourself up for not being stoic or resilient or calm enough, which in and of itself is very un-stoic. So it can turn into this spiral of self-suffering low-thang-related to not being one could say stoic enough or simply calm enough. And so the first is to really recognize that these are ideals that I'm striving for, but that they're not a pass-fail Sure. In that respect, the second is, I've been doing a lot of rehearsal.

So premeditatio malorum, right, rehearsing of the worst case scenarios and combining that with the fear setting exercise that I tend to do, which is really just a written practice of writing out the worst case scenarios, what you could do to decrease the likelihood of them happening, what you could do to decrease the damage if they do happen, et cetera, et cetera. And a big part of that for me has been deeply envisioning the worst case scenarios and what they would not just look like but feel like to observe an experience. So I'll give a concrete example. Is the case for many people and is the case for me.

I have seen my stock portfolio drop. I don't know. Let's call it 70% in value in certain cases. And I had a good line of sight into coronavirus and its growth quite early on and began writing about it publicly in, I want to say, second week of February, but I've been tracking it prior to that. So I was able to sell a portion of my stock, let's just call it February 2021, whichever was the closest weekday, trading day. And then I decided to hold the rest. Now that could prove to be a terrible, terrible, terrible decision, right? This could be the

worst financial decision of my life. Could be. But after lots and lots and lots of discussion and lots of number crunching, lots of thinking about it, I decided to hold on with the belief that, and in this case, I'm referring to Uber that I was an early advisor to. So it represents a disproportionate, the high percentage of my net worth.

Now this video will be trapped in the amber. So people will go back and say, what a fucking idiot if it turns out poorly, but the decision making process I felt was reasonable. I felt like it was defensible. Now, at the time, the stock was trading around $40 dollars price per share. And I was talking to this much more experienced investor, and he said,

if you're going to hold this, you'd need to commit to yourself to hold for at least five years. And you should expect that the stock will go down to 20 or 15 dollars. Now the time it was about 40. And this seemed not necessarily inconceivable, but probably far off in the distance. Yeah. And he said, when it hits 2015, you are going to want to sell more than you do now. And you need to prepare for that. And that's what I did. So I really mentally committed to holding for an extended period of time.

I prepared myself for $15 a share. Little did I know that something like two weeks later, two and a half weeks later, would actually hit $14 a share or close to it. And that is the, I have had many struggles throughout this coronavirus experience and considering the ramifications, not just for me, but for my family. I have family members in the service industries, for instance, for the economy, for people who are far less fortunate. And I've struggled a lot in certain areas, but the areas where I have not struggled are the places where I have rehearsed to the extent possible

what might happen. So that has been one of the most powerful stoic practices that I've been using in the last certainly two months. Well, I've got a bunch of stuff. This is my Marcus Aurelia statue. I bought this when I was writing the obstacles the way. So this is from what I read about it, this statue is from 1840. So I like looking at it and then thinking like, okay, this literal piece of stone survived through cholera epidemics, smallpox epidemics, polio, the Spanish flu, the flu of the 1950s. So I like

thinking about not just like, okay, who are your ideals? But then also, how have humans gotten through, like, what sort of totems or reminders can you have that like, oh, life goes on. Like I'm talking to you from my office and my office was built in 1880, I think. So like this office got through, you know, the Spanish flu, the first world war, the second world war, you know, the Cold War. And you know what I mean, I think, like part of one of the things I think the Stoics would ask us to do is like zoom way out and sort of be reminded that like, hey, as bad as it is, like history does go on. There's no guarantee you and I will be a part of that history. But like, you know what I mean? Like, will you do it? I do. I do. I do. We won't. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious about the stock market thing because that's something I was going to ask you because one of the things

I'm dealing with, I think the loss of version is a big part of it and it's hard for people to manage. What I'm struggling with is kicking myself, so I wasn't as early as you, but you and I had some conversations, and so I took it seriously, I went and sucked up on food, I cut back on my travel. I basically said, like, hey, I'm sort of a buy and hold kind of a guy and don't have the exposure that you do to some of those stocks. But the thing I said is, hey, this is going to be bad, but it's not going to be literally, it's not going to be the worst decline in market history. I didn't think that.

So I didn't do anything. And so one of the things I'm struggling with is like regret, you know what I mean? And I'm wondering sort of how you deal with some of that. Like are you mad that you didn't sell more? Like how are you dealing with decisions you made that you can't undo, but now you have a lot of time to sit and think about them.

Yeah, well, that's the nature of all decisions, right? I mean, as I understand the etymology of the word, to decide a decision is like an incision, it is a cutting away. So once you have cut away, now that could be some fake attributed to Mark Twain and Abe Lincoln, maybe ask a wilder for on the internet. But nonetheless, that's what I've been told before. So all of our decisions are irreversible. And at least temporarily speaking, this is something that I didn't grapple with until reasonably far after the COVID-19

and coronavirus came onto the main stage, so to speak. So when I was campaigning in part for the cancellation of South by Southwest, which brings 400,000 plus people to Austin. And it was, I was just attacked by almost all sides and viewed as an alarmist as fill in the blank. I did not have trouble with that because I felt like the data were on my side. But I was so focused and I think rightly so on my household, on my family, on my girlfriend and her family, and ensuring that everyone were prepared that I did not, I really wasn't looking at, say, investment as an example.

So part of the reason I'm not beating myself up is that I, at the time, at least in retrospect, I was beating myself for a while, then I realized, well, do I even have the toolkit to have taken advantage of that effectively? And by taking advantage of that, one might be talking about shorting the market in some fashion. Well, it turns out it's very easy to get your face ripped off, trying to short the market. And it's very, very easy to lose that game or at least those bets. And so I have, I do have friends who are career investors, who have the toolkit to take advantage of something like this. I gave them a heads up that, I gave them a preview of what was coming early.

So let's call it late January or early February. And they missed those opportunities and they are beating themselves up because they do have the toolkit and the experience and yet they didn't take the actions. Whereas you have, say, some people who did like Bill Ackman at Pershing who, I don't know, made $2.6 billion from billion dollars from short positions or something like that. Yeah. Not bad. And I feel as though my perspective on that specifically has been honed, if I could use such a dignified word, through a lot of the startup investing I've done in the sense that it doesn't matter how many opportunities you miss. It matters how many opportunities you take advantage of.

Sure. Does that make sense? Just like if you're putting together a book or a podcast or a film, the blank, it doesn't matter how many people don't get it. It matters how many people get it. And by that, I mean, if you are really waiting for the fat pitches, as Warren Buffett would say, not necessarily with his style of investing, but if you understand where your core competencies are and can focus on the most appealing opportunities, you can miss a lot of opportunities and net, still do very very well. So I try to keep that in mind and as you said a little bit earlier to zoom out and not look at this as a an anomaly of a few weeks.

So it could be it could be that a year from now we look back and the lowest low was in fact whenever it was. I can't remember when the lowest low was in fact, whenever it was, I can't remember when the lowest low was March 12th or whatever it was. That might be off. But some early march, something like that, 2020. At the same time, this could be, and I suspect it will be on some level, a marathon and not a sprint. So there will be more opportunities. And then the reframing of the question for me relieves a lot of stress. So instead of asking, why didn't I take advantage of X? What could I have done that I didn't do. Those are fruitless questions that just create a lot of stress. If you were to ask, how might I look for opportunities that do not have the time sensitivity of trying

to time the stock market? And one could say the futility of trying to time the stock market, because even in a bear market, and look, I'm not a professional public equities investor. So no one should take investment advice from me and I'm not giving investment advice. But even in a bear market, there are these rallies that can really hurt you, not necessarily financially, although they can, but psychologically, right? Where you buy and then they spike. financially, although they can, but psychologically, right, where you buy and then they spike. And right now, the volatility, meaning the, you know, simplistically, the, the, the sort of amount of up and down is just unbelievable. So you're going to get whipsod, no matter what. And that can

be super stressful. So, so I'm asking myself, well, rather than look at my God awful computer screen all day, like everybody else in the world, look at all the same information and develop the like hubris and ridiculous delusion that I can somehow parse out a unique conclusion from that when millions of people are doing the same thing. What do I have access to? Where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? What can I do that if this is a marathon or if this is going to last at least six months? There are opportunities that I might be able to take advantage of. Where do I have unique domain expertise or an informational advantage? So maybe that's, I'm making this up, right? But maybe that is a real, a distressed real estate in Austin.

Let's say since I'm here, right? Maybe that is any number of other things, but it's probably not going to be figuring out whether Google or Berkshire Hathaway is going to move one direction or another and how much they're going to move. That is being the sucker at the poker table, I think. So that's maybe a very, you know, a winded way of saying it, but my belief is there are times when I make very fast, good decisions, but I almost never make good, rushed decisions. So if I feel rushed to make a decision because, oh my God, it might go up, it might go this,

it might go this, it might do that. The likelihood of me making a bad decision is very high. And the cost of undoing that bad decision can also be quite high. And if you have a dry powder meaning cash, I think I don't think it's a terrible place to be right now. But again, I'm not a registered investment advisor nor am I giving investment advice, but that's how I'm thinking about it personally.

No, and I think for me, it's less like opportunities I didn't take advantage of and steps that I should have taken to protect myself. Sure. And so that connects to another emotion. I think a lot of people are feeling that I'd be curious. You're sort of stoic take on. Give it like the South by Southwest examples are great ones. So you and a handful of other people campaign, they shut down South by Southwest early.

Who knows how much impact that had probably a significant amount because it was so early. And then government officials in Texas and all over the country basically, and this goes back to when it was first coming out of China, sort of sat on that time. It's not like we use that time and built a bunch of ventilators and you know, shit. So how are you processing or maybe you don't have any, but for someone who has a lot of anger about how this went or is feeling anger,

how do you suggest sort of, what do you think the stokes say about processing that anger? Because I do know that the stokes did not tend to see anger as a productive or healthy emotion. I'd be curious to hear your take on this. Maybe I'll turn it around. I, so my default gear for decades was anger. But right now, my focus is related to my locus of control

in the sense that my sort of sphere of control has been constrained down to the family effectively. And my closest friends and ensuring to the extent possible those people are safe and prepared and financially capable to cover their chances and so on. I am more active as you know on the national level as well, but I suppose, I mean, this is maybe cliched, but it's, I would think of this serenity prayer, and you probably have the full text somewhere, but in essence, the sort of strength to act on the things that you can act upon and the wisdom to know that which you cannot act upon or influence. And I don't think that the time bought by Kancelynx South by Southwest was

used optimally, but just in having that time and delay, there was a huge benefit, right? So it wasn't used optimally, but I'm satisfied with that outcome because it has allowed us to see case studies like New York City that then spur local and state governments to do more so that they do not become the next case study. more so that they do not become the next case study. And also in retrospect looking at, for instance, Marty Grah in New Orleans spring break in spring break in Miami and Florida, I don't think those are uncorrelated to those two locations among a handful of others becoming the next hotspot. So I'm very confident in the benefits of South by being delayed. Anger, let me think about anger for a second,

because I am a connoisseur. You know, I'm like a... Well, what I was thinking about anger is like, okay, in war, you could see how anger is a somewhat productive emotion. It's sort of a fury that you can direct at the enemy. So you might at least be able to make the argument that it has some productive benefits.

Obviously, a pandemic doesn't care how much you hate it. Cancer doesn't care what names you call it, right? So when you're fighting something like this, I think you always want to think about, is anger productive, yes or no? And then when my favorite mark is really as quotes, it's a quote we know from Europeedies, the playwright, but he says, why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice? And so that's the other, like, Trump doesn't care that you're angry. Adam, the governor of Texas

doesn't care that you're angry, you know, like, so, so, and in fact, if you are active in politics or at the national level, you have to work with these people. So I think you're also seeing some of the governors, Democrat and Republican having to figure out, oh, hey, if I, if I yell at this person on television, that might feel cathartic. But then the next day, I have to call them and ask preventulators or ask for the national guard. So I think what the Stoics talk about is like, is anger making things better or worse? And 90% of the time, it makes it worse. That doesn't mean that there wasn't something wrong, and you can't be upset about it.

But you've got to control that anger because there's a problem solved. Yeah, I agree. And what I've also been trying to do, and this actually came out of an interview I did, some time ago with Bozma St. John, who is an incredible woman. And she did hurt one sort of philosophical tentative hers that she underscored was applauding what you want more of, she did hurt one sort of philosophical tentative hers as she underscored was applauding what you want more of, not just burrating what you want less of. And I think the internet has enabled a lot of things,

including the dominance of the noise that is just bitching and moaning without any clear proposal for solutions. So I've been spending the majority of my time reinforcing, particularly politicians who are in the game. Everyone's playing a game. You and I are playing games and we all play games. There are rules,

there are stakes, there are rewards, sometimes there are punishments. And Stepner Wan is figuring out what game or games you are playing. And one of the games politicians play is re-election. And so you have to think about if you want to persuade someone who is playing that game. That's just persuade, but to collaborate in some way or enable someone who is playing that game, you have to think about the incentives that play. And to that end, I've been trying to support people who are making good decisions, even if they are late, if they are better late than never decisions. And that's coming from someone who, I mean, has had a lifetime of anger. So I do

think the certainly the stoic philosophies and philosophers and writing has had a tremendous impact on my intellectual understanding of why anger can be counterproductive. But it's really been getting on the playing field and trying to get shit done that is reinforced how imperative it is from a practical perspective. It's one thing to understand logically why anger is counterproductive. And it's quite another to not just keep your anger and check, but to sort of sublimate it into a different area that you can strengthen. And I'm not the paragon of this. I still get pissed off. But hargon of this, I still get pissed off. But there's a difference between being angry and doing things out of anger. Yeah, totally. Yeah, you're allowed to feel angry. Look, I get pissed off. And it's not so much a question of suppressing anger. It's more a question of, I think, taking notice of what anger is you, so that over time fewer things hopefully anger you.

And one thing that's been very helpful to me also and this is, while I do remember one quote from Christa Tippett, who has a podcast called On Being, which I believe I'm gonna paraphrase it, but that anger is fear shown publicly. I try to at least as an exercise, if I'm really angry to journal or sit and just think about for a moment, if this were traceable to a fear, what would the fear be? It says free supposing that it's accurate

for the sake of a thought exercise. Sure. And because anger, at least for me, right, anger is, it's harder to wrestle in the sense that like head on treating anger as an object, it's harder for me to grapple with and to disarm, if that makes sense. Because I get where the story I tell myself that perpetuates anger as well, it's the

principle, yeah, justice must be served. This is that that that done. I get on my high horse. What was that? That phrase, how dare they? You know, I get on my high horse. What was that that phrase how dare they? You know, I get I could do this. Yeah, I get on my high my high horse of righteousness and you can justify a lot of stupid behavior that way. But I don't quite know how to defuse it whereas if I can take the anger and turn it into fear, or not necessarily turn it into fear, but find a source that is really to fear, then I can use fear setting or other

exercises, premeditarium, alarm, etc. to turn down the volume. So that's a step that I've found Sure. So that's a step that I've found very helpful also. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up.

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You can listen early, and add free, on the Amazon, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery. I'm curious about fear, because obviously you have your fear setting stuff, which you talk about in your TED talk, which is probably very timely for people right now. But having sort of two young kids, you get this sort of hit in your stomach.

And I'd be curious, what's the two things? One would be curious what you say to someone who is afraid, And then the other thing, maybe you want to riff on, I was trying to think of, so I was born in 87. So I was like, what scary things did my parents go through with kids, which is actually really helpful. So it was like, you know, Black Monday, there was obviously 9-11, there's the the tech bubble bursting. There's the financial crisis. There's the end of the Cold War. I tried to go through and think of the two wars

in the Gulf, right? So that was something I did, but I'm just curious, how are you thinking about fear? And what would you say to someone who is being overwhelmed by fear? It's a very good question. It's a very good question. It's a very timely question. I don't have confidence in a single answer for that.

In the sense that I do think it's very highly dependent on what you're afraid of. And I have relatives who had restaurant jobs and so on and they're in very tough positions. And I don't, I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to make this purely an academic exercise and lose sight of the fact that fear is a gift in many cases. It tells you what is wrong. So I don't want in any way to seem like I'm detached from reality by making it

sort of mental gymnastics exercise. So let's start there. I would say that, and I've been telling myself this, so I can, which is just because you're feeling afraid, I have, for instance, I have older parents in poor health, who are in New York. Yeah. That causes, has caused me quite a bit of fear and anxiety. and poor health who are in New York. Yeah.

That causes, has caused me quite a bit of fear and anxiety. And there's very little I can do, and I can do a lot, and I have very good contacts, and I have very good contacts in New York itself. And to an almost complete extent, there's next to nothing I can do if they get sick. Yeah. And that has produced a sense of feeling helpless or hopeless or unable to help that I'm

very unaccustomed to. And what I've been telling myself and might be helpful to others is number one, it's okay to feel afraid. Like that doesn't make you flawed. That means that your sort of evolutionary machinery isn't tacked, and there's a lot of value to that. Right? And so I would say that you're not alone, you're not flawed. say that you're not alone, you're not flawed. Millions of people, tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions are feeling the same thing right now. And there are reasons to be afraid. It doesn't mean there's not, it does not mean there's nothing you can do. You always have options, right? You always have options. Let's say other thing I would say, and this is what I'm saying to myself, it's like you always have options. right? You always have options, let's say other thing I would say,

and this is what I'm saying to myself, it's like you always have options, you may just not like those options. Right, right? Sure. Right? So for instance, if you look at the plight of some workers right now who have gone

from kind of getting laid off from one job to say delivering groceries for fill in the blank app or company and want more personal protective equipment in order to do that job. It's a very, very difficult situation to be in because number one, no matter how much those companies would love to give you personal protective equipment, right now, healthcare workers don't even have enough

PPE personal protective equipment right now, healthcare workers don't even have enough PPE personal protective equipment. So you have then you might be inclined in such a position to say, I have no choice. You do have choices. They just may be very unattractive, right? So you could stop working for a period of time. You could move in with your parents. You could ask a friend for a loan, you could sell some of the belongings you have that you have great sentimental attachment to or maybe your only car, whatever it might be. I'm not saying these are all viable. I'm just brainstorming.

Or that they're fair. Or that they're fair. Yeah, you have to, I mean, for me, I just take fair out of the equation. I think I don't think fair, except perhaps under the law as equal treatment of citizens. I don't think fair is a very, I don't think it's an enabling concept. Right. Right. I think the Stokes would agree. It's a, you know, epictetus, who goes, it's not things that upset us. It's our judgment about things.

And so fair is an opinion we have about an objective reality that we're in. Right. So if I were trying to train a group of a thousand people to be a really effective like autonomous army, like benevolent army for handling,, like not just weathering, but benefiting from the crisis. I think that in, if they were just computers, like Westworld hosts that I could program, that are operating systems. There's certain concepts and questions I would remove.

I think that unfair is as true as it may be, subjectively or even objectively, it is a disabling word that even if you are a victim puts you into the passenger seat of life where you feel like you do not have options, nor do you take actions. And that is paralyzing, and it's just going to compound your fear. So I would remove that. And then there are questions, right? And I alluded to this second ago, and I were probably straying from the Stokes, but I feel like I've been so infused. I don't know if you've heard of any of these large trees in the Pacific Northwest that have like 30% salmon DNA from salmon being dropped off bears and so on. They become these hybrids. I'd feel that's maybe too

long a story to explain now, but I believe the radio lab has a good episode on this, but the wood wide web, if you want to look it up, W-O-O-D, but the point of that extremely confusing sidebar is that I feel like stoicism from having read it and ingested it and ruminated on it and re-read it and so on over the years is kind of infused my thinking to a very large extent. So then there are questions of, and this definitely harkens back to certainly some of the moral letters to Lucilius if we want to cite some of the sources. Which by the, he wrote in difficult times, you know, and you know, at the end of his career, he was threatened by a tyrant like he wasn't writing this in a fun, joyful vacation. No, no, he wasn't. And that's that's Molly who's gonna

Molly's my dog is in the habit of going ape shit these days. Molly, you feel stressed because of coronavirus? I know. She's actually, she's actually pretty stoked to have her human's home. But I digress. This is audio video verite quarantine edition. So I was going to say that if you look at, say, one of Senaq's letters where he's composing this letter. And it's it's somewhat patchalently written, which I find hilarious. Sure. As are many of his letters, but what one of them he's writing as he's discussing the, I suppose you would call it like a spa slash gym underneath him. I don't know if you remember this right where you can hear this. This is a slapping of flesh and

the grunting of lifting weights and all this and it's. I open stillness with that letter. I love that one. Yeah, it's a great letter. It's a really, really great letter. So this may not be the perfect citation, but the point I was going to make is that the question I was asking myself early on for me and my family. And it's the question you should be asking initially was how do we ensure we don't die? And physically, financially, how do I ensure that my clan doesn't die? And that sounds dramatic. I don't think it's gonna seem that dramatic.

I mean, those are the stakes. Those are the stakes, right? I mean, they're 85 refrigerated, double-wide trailers that were just brought into New York yesterday as temporary mortuaries, right? I mean, this is real. And I have relatives in number of hotspots. So these are stakes. Now what I'm trying to ask since I have checked off at least for the time being the lower rungs of mass loss hierarchy of needs and not everyone is in a position to do that. Nonetheless, I do think this question is really worth asking. I owe my girlfriend credit also for reinforcing this because she's very good at this. And that is how can you make the next three to six months some of the most enjoyable or

productive of your life or or if that's too much pressure, right? You can phrase it different ways. You know, how can you make the next three to six months something you look back upon as a sacred time that you really treasure, not just survive, right? It was kind of like, and look, I'm not, but I'll use it, but I heard a Nelson Mandela story once from Tony Robbins actually, who asked, he asked Nelson Mandela during his time in prison, how did you survive something along those lines? And he said, he said, Oh, I wasn't surviving. I was preparing. And I think that that type of question, not how I can survive, how you can survive in a sense

is sort of like extreme frugality. And I'm, I've had my cup of coffee, so I'm off to the races, but it's kind of like extreme frugality in sense that if you're trying to find financial freedom through one tool that is extreme frugality, you have a finite ceiling to that, right? Like you make, let's just call it for simplicity, a thousand dollars, I'm making this up, a thousand dollars a week, and you can cut from that.

You may make some Faustian bargains and cut things that materially detract from your quality of life, but nonetheless, the most that you could possibly subtract is $52,000 a year. Yeah. Right? This is a ignoring taxes, isn't it, really? Whereas if you're building a business, you have, or you have income generation, and you're also focused on that, you have a much broader scope of options.

Sure. And similarly, if you ask, like, how can I survive? Like, survive is a binary pass fail. And I feel like that places a ceiling on the options that are visible to you, if that makes any sense. So when I ask, how could I most, and I'm going to use a word here that my father people, but if you were to ask like how could I most profit and

benefit From the next three to six months like what is this an opportunity to To do that I would never otherwise do so. I've been for instance like getting rid of Clothing that I've had for years and cleaning up the garage and doing the stuff that seems so mundane But it will it would otherwise not get done. So I'm trying to ask myself, you know, if this were a sacred time and that what can I do or not do that will lead me, say, we're out of this in a year to some extent, to look back and say, wow, I'm so glad we had that time in a sense because it allowed me ABC.

As opposed to shit, I didn't realize that was going to be so valuable in so many ways, and I was blind to it at the time. The dichotomy that I use that Robert Green gave me, and I have this written around somewhere I was going to show it to you, but he says, a live time or dead time, what will it be? And I think that's like, whether your, whether this quarantine goes for two more weeks, obviously, is going to go much longer than that, or whether it goes for two more years. All you know is that you have that block of time. What you do control is how you use that time and what you get out of it. I have one thought on fear.

There's a Hebrew saying that I love from the 1800s, but he goes, the world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is to not be afraid. The point is when you're walking on a narrow balance beam or a narrow bridge, the one thing you can't do is be scared, because it'll mess you up and you'll fall. And I think that's sort of the predicament we're in. It's not fair, nobody chose it, it's not our fault, but you got across this bridge now, and this fear, as you said, there's some evolutionary reasons, but courage is gonna be important, right?

And that's one of those sort of core stoic virtues, which is like, and there's another quote I love from Faulknery says, you can be scared, it's okay to be scared. You can't help that. She says, but don't be afraid. Do you know what I mean? I think you have to keep going. That's just the reality.

So you might as well. Yeah, if if afraid is being paralyzed, right? So for instance, this could be a powerful, but I believe based on the sources I had at the time, I've no idea what they are, that this is true. So Dean Martin, now that name may not mean much to a lot of people, but in his day, Dean Martin was the consummate entertainer sort of top tier, top five most recognizable names in the United States

probably. And he used to vomit. He would get so nervous and one could say afraid that he would vomit for every performance. Mike Tyson, same story. And the trainer who really made Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson, customado, you can find video or at least audio of customado saying this. He would say the hero and the coward feel the same thing. They feel the fear. It's what the hero does that makes them different. And Tyson was also terrified. I mean, terrified may not be the right word, but fearful before he got into the ring, one of the most dominant boxers of all time.

Sure. And if they are, if they can't get a immunity bracelet for fear, it's unreasonable to expect yourself to. And I would also say, if this is helpful to anybody, it's very specific to the United States, but the United States at this point in time, we're recording this April 1st, happy April Fool's Day. And New York City is the who-be of the United States. In fact, it's the global who-be right now, right? New York will have more cases.

This is going to continue. The United States is going to be the largest hotspot. Unless things change dramatically in Russia, it's probably going to be the largest hotspot in the world for some time to come. And prior to Pearl Harbor, what the strategic belief on the part of the Japanese was that by destroying the Pacific fleet, the morale and capabilities of the US would be completely shut down or paralyzed for period of time. What instead happened when the bear got stabbed in the eye with a stick, meaning the US, is that within a very short period of time that would have previously been inconceivable, suddenly we were producing more tanks

than civilians in all of Japan. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but the capacity of the United States, when it is forced into a corner, or feels as though it's been forced into a corner, through extreme states of duress and crisis, it's not something you want to bet again. Are truly staggering, right?

And we've fucked this up so many ways. It's really hard to overstate how badly we've screwed this up in terms of supply change, chain management, and so on. But nonetheless, I think, give it six months, the things you're going to look very, very different. And like it or not, the global economy is dependent on the US in large measure. So not that it's too big to fail. Every empire comes to its close.

But at this point in time, it is in everyone's best interest the United States not collapse, almost everyone's best interest. So Russia has gas to sell, China has products to export and so on and so forth, right? And so I am very confident that crisis will overcome So I am, I'm very confident that crisis will overcome in competence, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Sure.

And I'm very confident that things will get worse. The economy is going to get sort of kicked in the nuts for a while. This is not going to be a one quarter affair at all. And the US is going to have to take very extreme, what might be seen as extreme measures to have any chance of survival, economically speaking. So that gives me a degree of optimism, if that makes sense. Interesting. That gives me a degree of optimism. Maybe it will prove unfounded. I hope that's

not the case. But that also has the example of Pearl Harbor. And it's not the perfect example. It's just a very easily grasped visual example. I think shows, and there are many examples of this, what the US can do in times of crisis. So that gives me some degree of optimism as well. So I'm sure you've got to go. So as far as a sort of a place to close, because I think this ties in well to the fear and I think it ties well into stoicism. What I love about the stoics in particular, like the stoics in the Epicurians were actually

much closer philosophically than people thought. Right. And you love the good life. You have Epicurian tendencies, but what I think, what I suspect draws you to the stoics and ultimately draws me to the Stoics. And I think why there is this threat of Stoicism going not just in the Roman Empire, but to the founding of America, to the US Civil War, to a lot of the great movements in history, is the Stoics felt that we were obligated to participate in public life, to serve the

common good, to help other people. Most of the greatest Stoics were famous not because of what they wrote, but because the actual heroism that they did in their life. And I mean, Marcus really specifically is the emperor for 15 years of the Antonine plague. He doesn't flee Rome. At one point famously is one of my favorite stories in all of history as the Roman economy is collapsing under the weight of this pandemic, he forgives most of the debts owned to the empire, and then he goes through the imperial palace and he marks down the treasures owned by the emperor

for sale on the palace lawn to get the economy going. To me, I think this goes to your point, when stuff breaks down, real leaders stand up. And so maybe as a place to close for people who are afraid, but want to put that energy somewhere productive, what do you advise people as far as how can they help, how can they make a difference, and what good can individuals do?

You know, we all have different resources and skills, but what would you advise people to think about how can they make a difference? And what good can individuals do? We all have different resources and skills, but what would you advise people to think about as far as making a difference and using this as an opportunity to do that sort of ultimate stoic duty? Yeah, thanks for the question. That's a good question.

I wanna just make it an observation first and that is you basically have the trifecta of books for understanding and handling this entire chapter of our history right behind your head. For those people who aren't watching the video, you have, and I'll read from the bottom up, you've got the black swan, you have, is it the 48 laws? I can't read it. Yeah, 48 laws. 48 laws of power and then mastery. So the black swan by and then and then I have meditations right here and then meditation. So yeah. So you have but the black swan perhaps just as much so fooled by randomness by NN tollab TALB. I think in poor text fragile, anti-fragile, but the black swan or fooled by randomness specifically,

I think, help to explain what we are contending with and why it is so difficult for humans to grasp what is happening and properly prepare for it. So I think that is worth reading. Then if you want to understand how seemingly, confusingly and irrationally different leaders are behaving and how polarity is affecting our response to this in the United States and elsewhere, not just here, you look at Brazil, it's the same story. Then the 48 laws of power do a great job of explaining that. And then if you take mastery and the 48 laws of power do a great job of explaining that. And then if you take mastery and the 48 laws of power combined, those can act as a possible

roadmap for the abilities you want to develop in this sacred pause that is being provided to you, not inflicted upon you necessarily. I understand there are some very serious costs, but that's just a way that you could plausibly or try to frame it if you want to feel enabled, not disabled. Those are three fantastic books for the quiver. I'm just going to say that first. As far as Stoic slash civic duty, and like you said, many of these Stoics per se, if we just put aside the best known names, if we put aside Marcus Relais, we put aside Epic Teed, as we put aside, Senna Gunzon, you still have George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. These

people are not known as Stoics, and yet they were very much informed and directed by much of Stoic philosophy. And to the extent that George Washington, I guess at Valley Forge had the troops perform, I'm blanking on the name of the play, but it was a play about, it was Kato, right? Yeah. It's Kato to boost morale and continue the fight. And I want to make a comment in response to something you said, and then I'll answer super direct super directly. And that is that I do have Epicurean tendencies. I find the Epicureans to be of great interest, but what allows me to tend the garden to drink my wine

and derive great pleasure from simple things is the safety net that is stoicism. For me, I do not think as someone who had some very traumatic experiences in childhood and has always been hyper-vigilant without stoicism and tools that are complementary to stoicism, I don't feel like I have the safety net underneath me with which I can then walk across that narrow bridge. And that is what allows the Epicureanism. So it really is the precursor and necessary antecedent to those things.

As far as helping, how can you help? There are two different levels of answers. The first would be my most common recommendation and that is don't try to save the world to help the people around you. Yeah. And think of if you are fortunate enough to be in a stable financial position, even if

you are suffering financial hardship that you have time, think of how you could reach out to people and offer your support. That support could be a weekly zoom or Skype chat with a handful of friends who are all sharing difficulties. It could be reaching out to your barber, I'm bald, so I don't have a barber, but reaching out to your barber or your local coffee shop owner or film the blank, someone to offer to help in some fashion

because you know they're also suffering from financial hardship. That could be paying them some amount of money. If you have the financial means, if I had to gift card and then cash it like by six months of haircuts in advance. Right, it could be something like that. It could also be simply reaching out to them and asking, how can I help?

And more often than not, because I've done this with say the dog walker who I've used who's just fantastic, and I want them to survive this, the, say, house cleaners who help with my home. I've reached out with these offers and asked, how can I help? Would you like me to pay in advance? Would you like to simply have me continue paying? Most of them have declined.

But the act of asking how can I help? And then possibly offering, if you have the means or the space, is tremendously, I think reassuring in times of uncertainty. And the gift doesn't have to be capital. The support doesn't need to be money. It could just be group cohesion and people feeling that they have a safety net of sorts in your offer. So acting locally in that sense makes, I think, tremendously compelling. If you try, as I have done for the last few weeks to figure out how to save the world or early on, just how to stem the tide for the United States by time, there were certain

things that I could do, say, as it related to South by Southwest and so on. But I am in a very unusual position and I have a large platform. For others to feel compelled to do something like that is, I think think very unproductive because it's going to be like shouting into gale force wins. It's going to be very frustrating and I don't think terribly healthy for people to try. So act locally number one. If you are looking for outfits and ventures that are focused on this crisis and you want to contribute in some fashion,

there is a GoFundMe campaign going on right now, depending on when this is published, which is a collaboration I'm blanking on the exact organizations FlexPort, I know is one of them, flexport.com or flexport.org-forutsush-donate, but they along with a number of organizations have put together a large GoFundMe campaign. If you just search Flexport GoFundMe campaign.

It's called the frontline responders fund. That's right. That's right. So frontline responders fund, I would say, appears to be well-vetted. I've had conversations with the CEO, Flex port and fuel confident in their integrity at this point. I don't know them that well, but they certainly have checked a lot of good boxes. There's another organization which may be part of the same, maybe not called Operation Masks. Operationmasks.org is co-founded by a number of people I've had some contact with.

is co-founded by a number of people I've had some contact with. And that is, this landscape is very rapidly changing and access to personal protective equipment and other items is in a state of constant flux, particularly since we have states competing against one and other and driving prices up. I mean, the entire thing is quite a fucking spectacle of messiness. But I do think the, you said the front line responder is fun. This is GoFundMe campaign, which includes flexport and operation masks are two

that have kind of checked a few boxes for me. I can't vouch for either 100% but there is a lot of noise and those are two that seem to have cut through the noise. So those would be another two options. Food banks. Yeah, it's gonna say food banks. Anything you can do to prove that people from having to leave their houses

or go to the store is very important. Yeah, so food banks, I think, are another good option for helping, say, locally, or helping where you grew up, or both. So those would be a few that come to mind. And last but not least, I would say one way you can help is commit to be constructive and consider experimenting. And I'm considering doing this myself because I think right now it could be particularly valuable.

Something like the 21-day no-complaint experiment that will bow and B-O-W-E-N wrote about long ago in, I believe it was his first book, but this, if you just search 21-day no-complaint experiment, it'll come right up. I do feel like complaining is easy, it's invoked, it's seductive, it is reinforced socially, and it, for me, at least is utterly counterproductive. I think that complaining and anger are similar in this sense, and I can't recall the attribution for

this, but that the if there's an expression, is it related to anger that, you know, a vessel that holds acid is damaged more than anything it pours acid upon. And if you are the vessel for anger or complaining, I think it does more damage to you than that which you point it at. And for that reason, if you want to improve or maintain or improve your health, your wellbeing, and your ability to function as a contributor in society, I think a no-complaint experiment goes a long way. And by the way, if you address complaining, which is easier to identify and measure sometimes than anger, there is a very significant carryover effect into decreasing anger, very, very large carry over effect. Those would be a few things that come to mind

as possible, actions people could take. Yeah, and I think for daily stoic, we've been doing this sort of a live time, dead time challenge, like how are you going to use this time? I think that's the, so it's locally, you know, what can you do for your family, what can you do for your neighbors? You know, if you have old people that live near you,

what can you get them so they don't have to leave their house? But then I think also, this is now a time for entrepreneurs and business people. If everyone is sitting at home watching Netflix for the next three months, that's gonna be worse economically, that's gonna be worse economic damage from that, then if people are at home being productive, that's, there's me worse economic damage from that, then if people are at home

being productive, thinking about, you know what I mean? Like, I think, like, there is a real economic damage to the world grinding to a halt. It's not just, hey, you can't go to the pizza restaurant anymore, but it's like, if you cease working and you cease thinking and you cease taking care of the people that you're supposed to be taking care of, there's going to be even longer lasting residue from this as well. Yeah, I agree. I think this is a, you know, an unfortunate and special set of circumstances that can really foster a sense of community where community has largely broken down. Yes, right.

I mean, I just wear wear weakest as David Brooks has said. Yeah. And I mean, I remember when I moved from San Francisco to Austin and my first neighbors approached me and like knocked on my door and I felt like in a karate stance because it was so shocking to me since that never happened in San Francisco. And I've had more contact at a distance with my neighborhood in the last few weeks than in the last few years. And I do think there's something really unusual about that that will disappear, it will or at least dissipate. Let me say that, it'll dissipate once business gets back on track.

And we have a very unusual window of time in which, as you put it, and I really like that expression, that you said this from Robert Green, the Alive Time of Dead Time. What could you speak to just for my benefits since I have it? I don't remember reading about this. What characterizes a lifetime versus dead time? Or how does he talk about it? So actually, when I was thinking about leaving my job to become a writer, I had about a year left that I owed American apparel. And so I said, Robert, I'm thinking about leaving to become a writer.

What should I do? And he said, this year I'm thinking about leaving to become a writer, what should I do? And he said, this year for you could be a live time or a dead time. You could show up to work every day, cash your paycheck, sit at your desk, or you could learn as much as possible. You could meet as many people as possible. You could, the day you leave your job,

have all the research and preparation that you need done for your book, right? So, and so I actually ended up writing about this and he goes to the enemy, but I tell the story of Malcolm X. Malcolm X goes to prison at this point, he's known as Malcolm Little, he's sentenced to about 10 years. He spends every day in that prison cell, reading, writing, studying. He basically gives himself a college education in this prison. And so I think Nelson Mandela spent a far worse time in prison than any of us are going to be spending during this quarantine.

Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, they all spent time in quarantine, fleeing the plague, but how they chose to use that time to write some of their greatest works to develop relationships, to come up with theories about the universe, to study, to learn, to get in touch with themselves, that's a lifetime.

Yeah, Isaac Newton had one of the most productive years of his entire life. Of course, yeah. And I think that's what's so beautiful and haunting about history is like, oh, this actually isn't new. I was telling you about the statue. This is another thing I keep on my desk.

This is a pen knife that's from, I think the year 200 AD. So like this knife. Speaking of prison, it looks like for those people who aren't watching the video. It looks like a shib that you would make out of a mattress, coils. But you just think about the amount of times that human beings have spent doing exactly what we're doing, which is I can't go outside, a lot of commerce and business has ground to a halt.

This situation is not new at all. And the question is, some of those people use that time productively, Isaac Newton Shakespeare, and then far more people, other people were in the exact same quarantine as William Shakespeare, and they did not write Macbeth. You know, and so that's the one, you don't control that you're in the situation, the Stokes would say, but you do control how you respond to the situation, what you use it for. And I think that's ultimately what, that's what we should all be focused on. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoke email, go to dailystoke.com

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