The Daily Stoic - Cal Newport, Jocko Willink, Tim Ferriss, and Robert Greene on Life During a Pandemic

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Today’s episode features clips from some of the best interviews in 2020. Ryan talks to Cal Newport, Jocko Willink, Tim Ferriss, and Robert Greene about time management, daily routines, how to deal with fear, and facing the truth. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Music. one of the things that makes this time of year truly wonderful is the music—and my family’s getting its holiday music fix thanks to Amazon Music. Whether it’s the Charlie Brown Christmas album or Mariah Carey, Amazon Music has something for any holiday occasion. You’ll get access to more than 70 million songs other songs too, on-demand and ad-free. And not only do you get access to all that music, you also get access to MILLIONS of podcast episodes at no charge, plus thousands of music stations and top playlists. For a limited time, new subscribers can get three months of Amazon Music Unlimited, absolutely free, by visiting Amazon.com/Ryan. Starts at $7.99/month after. New subscribers only. Terms apply. Offer expires 1/11/2021.This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to get fifty dollars off your first job post.Today’s episode is also brought to you by Molekule. Molekule makes air purifiers that don’t just trap pollutants and impurities, but destroys them. Molekule’s air purifiers work in all sizes of rooms and are beautifully designed to match with any living space. For 10% off your first order, use promo code STOIC at Molekule.com.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 journal philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. 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, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stug. Here we are at the end of 2020. What a year, man. Feels like what's the joke?

2020 has been the longest decade of my life. I saw another meme this morning that was like, March is three months away. I still haven't recovered from last March. But here we are. And the end of the year, look, a lot has happened. We have created a lot here at Daily Stoke. So I wanted to do kind of a best of interview.

One of the upsides of the pandemic for me was like we really got serious about the podcast since I wasn't doing events is the way to kind of have an ongoing conversation and and a way to connect with people. Everyone else was home. So it was easy to to record stuff. So here are chunks of three of the best interviews. I think I did this year. certainly three of the most popular. Talking to Cal Newport, one of my favorite writers, his book Deep Work, Super Influential to me, one of my favorite people. He's a great friend.

He and I talked about that it's not huge amounts of hours that necessarily get great work done, but great systems, great practices in real focus. Funny enough, I've been obviously working during the pandemic, but it's really sort of totally reoriented my schedule. And I think in some ways I'm putting in less hours, but getting more output because I am so focused. Jaco Willink, one of the most inspiring

intimidating people on the planet. His book Discipline Equals Freedom is very good. My son loves his book, The Way of the Warrior Kid, the dichotomy of leadership, stream ownership, Jocco and Navy Seal, and all around badass. He and I talked about like what the perfect day is. That was something I was curious to talk to him about. What is the ideal day look like for Jocco? I've written about this before. I've described my morning routine and daily still a million times. So I won't bother you, but I am curious about Jaco's daily routine.

So that's in there. And then Tim Ferris and I talked at the very beginning of the pandemic. Tim was very serious about COVID very early. And we talked about the difference between being scared and being afraid. How do you talk to someone who feels fear is sort of worried, anxious, paralyzed.

And that may be a conversation each of us need to have with ourselves. And then a little bonus section, Robert, Green and I, my mentor, one of my heroes, just one of the, I think, smartest living humans in the world talk about sort of epidemics of snowflakes among this. How to not be offended, how to deal with uncomfortable unpleasant ideas, things you disagree with, and how to face truth. And 2020 has certainly been a year where you've had to get serious face truth and have our eyes open.

The things that maybe we'd rather not see. So here is my best of interview with clips from Count Newport, Jacocco Willing, Tim Ferris, and Robert Green. Let's get at it. I don't know about you, but like, maybe it only takes me two hours of writing a day for several months to produce a book. I think people also think, because you hear, you'll hear like a rapper talk about,

you know, it's up in the studio. So, you know, like four in the morning. And it's like having actually worked with some rappers, it's like, yes, but you rolled into the studio at 2 a.m., right? Like I find very few people who actually do a lot of deep work, do it for the kinds of hours that you think they do it for. It's almost impossible to do it for, kinds of hours that you think they do it for. It's almost impossible to do it for eight consecutive hours. It's much more intense, but it tends to be more like sprinting

than marathons, or do you disagree? I agree with that. I would say the acute application of skilled activity is relatively limited. Usually, you see two to four hours, and that holds over athletic and cognitive pursuits for various reasons. So that's true. But then, there's also the recovery in white space requirements, right? Like, probably ideally, if all you wanted to do was write, you could look to like the Dave Eger's model is probably optimal. So, you know, Dave Eger's setup is he does eight hours a day in a house

where he has no Wi-Fi. He works on a computer that has no internet. And so all he does during like the normal work hours is, I mean, some of it's writing, some of it's thinking. He's just sort of thinking about things, he's writing things, he's reading, but it's just a whole space is just for novel creation. And then at the end of the day, checks in with a team, like, okay, what do I need to know?

What's going on? Do you need to sign something? What are the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Whatever, that's all consolidated to the end of the day. So he works about eight hours in the absence of internet. You're right that he's not novel writing for eight hours. That's impossible. I mean, you're, you know, nothing, whenever I hear like a first-time writer talking about how, and I almost died getting up to that deadline because I had to do 10,000 words a day or something like that. That's like, you're, that's not writing, you know,

that's cool or if I blog post. You can't, you know, that tells me not to read your book, basically. Yeah, it's glorified blog post. You can't, you know, that tells me not to read your book, basically, but the professionals don't write. They don't talk about, you know, I had the right 10 hours a day for the six weeks before a book, you know, that's not how you write a book. But what he's doing is probably optimal. It's like, he's completely in that space

without context shifting. He has very little other things pulling from his attention. All he's doing is immersed in thinking about the novel and the book and writing and thinking and editing and reading is probably the optimal thing. If all you want to optimize was production of the best possible novel in this case. But almost none of us get to do that. And I have to say, he actually even took a lot of heat for some reason for explaining that that was his method, but that's a whole other way.

Yes, sure. This is very privileged or, you know, how could a single mom do this? Plop of the car. Yeah, but which, you can say the same, like, of course, a brewery, Michael Reuer, or something like, you know, you're just going to practice golf all day. Like, I don't get to do that. And it's like, yeah. No, it's, it's, the irony is, and this was sort of my point. It's that, it's that, but let's say it's two to four hours.

And so let's say you're, you you're all you can afford is the minimum. Most people could find two hours a day. Like if you really want it, you could find two hours a day. That's getting up earlier, that's cutting out television or phone. You can make the time. It's probably not sustainable for 10 years, but Brian Coppeman talks about how he and his writing partner would meet every morning for two hours for a year, and that's how they wrote rounders. Like you can do that.

And then the irony is, or the feedback loop is, the more successful you are, the more time it allows you, the more indulgent and privileged your sort of process becomes. And that like, you know, this year I made the decision, we moved all, like I used to work from home and that was like a perk and then we actually decided, hey, actually no, like we have now none of my books and I don't even have a desk at my house anymore. And I have like a whole, like it's a building dedicated to my stuff, you know, and that's a perk of the success I've been able to have.

I don't need it, but it does make it easier and better. And I can sort of go into the, you know, it's like heading into the, you know, into the clubhouse, the locker room or whatever. This is like, now it's game time or whatever. And so, yeah, that's Dave Eccles set up, is it what you get when you sold several million bucks? Well, it's also a sustainability issue. So I used to collect stories of famous, like, not commercial, but like genre nonfiction writers, how they got started.

All of the big names got started in similar, what I call, yellow notepad style. So Clive Custler, how did Clive Custler get started? His wife had to took a night shift job. So after he put the kids to bed, he was bored. So he was at night, at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, he would write at night. Michael Critan was crazy about this. He was an intern and then a resident,

medical resident at the time, writing under a pseudonym because he thought it would get him in the trouble. And he would work on the shuttle. And at Harvard Medical School, the shuttle bus, he would take back and forth. And in the room where the residents would sleep, when he had a little bit of time between your shifts, he would write, Robin Cook was in the Navy and part of an experimental dive program. And when they were first figuring out, he's an old guy, when they're figuring out scuba and decompression

tables. And so he got a typewriter put into decompression chamber. So you'd be stuck in there for four days or a week or whatever, decompressing. All the, all the typewriter in their, uh, John Grisham 5 a.m. You know, he was a, both a lawyer and a state legislature, which he would legislator, which he hated in Mississippi. And he would just, he would write from 5 a.m. the 8 a.m. or 7 a.m. depending on the day, every morning, it was just, you know, but that's, he's like, this is what I'm gonna do. But that's not sustainable. So now John Grisham has, you know, it's on his beautiful farm. He writes in like seasons, right?

He like starts it by a certain day and he finishes it by a certain day and he just does it year in and year out. And now, now Lee Child is the master of that. So like I read him, there's an interesting book about Lee Child, just about Lee Child, how he writes, the Jack Reacher guy. He's incredibly seasoned.

Like it starts at this point and ends at this point. Grisham is roughly seasonal once a year and doesn't do much by the way. He's great. You know, his assistant, he had one assistant, like a secretary who left and he ended up not replacing her because he had done such a good job of not being available. No one knows how to reach them, except for his friends and family. So you didn't even mean them.

Anyways, the point being, I take what's happening, I think, in your stories, like same with, I don't know, I read all my original books concurrently with my dissertation and other stuff and really tight circumstances and very small apartments, that works. I think anyone could find that time. It doesn't work for 30 year career though,

because you'll be able to turn out. So yeah, I think that's a good way of thinking about it is you do the sprint at first, and you do it under whatever conditions. And you can ride under just about any conditions. And then if it goes well and you wanna make a go at it, it's also smart to do like what you're doing or what I did when we did our lead last move and is trying to find out how to make this thing sustainable in the long term. Yeah, it's like look, LeBron James wasn't spending

a million dollars a year on his body when he was 17 because he didn't need to, but now he does, now he has a trainer and a chef and probably a whole bunch of gadgets that normal civilians can't get their hands on. And so yeah, I think that's another sort of key question is, you go, how long do you want to do this thing you're doing? And once you've sort of arrived, are you making decisions that actually make this sustainable? And I think that's a good question to ask about your marriage, about being a parent or whatever it is. Like, is the way you're doing it likely to hold up over time? Because if it's not, then you're

careening towards an inevitable crash of some kind and the outcome of that's probably not going to be pretty. And an idea along those lines I've been writing about recently in Toine with is that once you identify the key areas in your life, there's pretty big benefit to taking at least one big, almost radical swing in each of those areas. To have some sort of set up habit, investment, whatever, that is a little bit over the top. So like what you did, right?

Like, well, I take my writing seriously, if not really necessary for me to have a separate outbuilding, but it's like a big swing. Like, okay, I'm really, this is something that I take really seriously, or if in other, you know, in fitness, like a lot of, you know, okay, I'm not just going to exercise, I'm going to have, you know, some sort of, you know, huge ambition that I'm just like, unusually. We're going to have a full-time trainer.

Yeah, and then you get unusually healthy. And I'm going to do the Navy CLPST every year, throughout my 30s type of thing, something like this. And that there's dual benefits to these more radical swings at the areas that are most important to you. The one is just that, yeah, it makes it more sustainable. It also allows you to maximize it. You get more value if you feel like you've really invested in it.

But it's also the psychological signal back to yourself. This is really important to me. And so I think we underestimate these big swing moves that you look at on paper and say, I don't know, is it really necessary? Probably not. That you have the cabin or that you look at on paper and say, you know, I don't know, is it really necessary? Probably not that you have the like the cabin or that you're you have this trainer or that you're you know, you and you're doing the Navy SEAL whatever that maybe in like your spiritual life, like you're really intensely committed to the rituals of your religion or whatever it is.

But there's value in just the signal to yourself of I take this really seriously. And so I'm increasingly liking that model, where you have a smaller number of things that you really go deep on and take big swings and are willing to do things that are a little bit exotic or radical, the both support those things and signal to yourself that like this is really important. I think it actually makes life much more resilient

and satisfying than sort of standing back. We want to just keep things moderate. You know, yeah, spread out my bets a little bit here. I don't want to be unreasonable about it. I think being unreasonable is an reasonably good way to make your life more interesting. Well, I think to me, that's probably, and I talked to Stephen Pressfield, not that long ago, but he says there's sort of amateur habits and there's professional habits. And one of the things, one of the distinctions I think I'd make is that professional habits

are often very serious and seem totally unreasonable to amateur people. If you, when you hear like LeBron James spends a million dollars a year on his body, if you're not an athlete, that sounds totally insane. You know, when you, when you hear like, oh, so and so, you know, has a personal coach, you know, a CEO who has a coach that they pay $50,000 a month, that sounds totally insane. Or if you hear, yeah, that Bill Gates has a cabin that he goes to twice a year, and it doesn't have the internet, and it just sits and thinks. All these things sound crazy, and a lot of the habits of professional sound crazy, but that's because it's a professional habit, and you're probably stuck in the amateur habit, which is often much more reasonable, often much more sort of similar to what everyone else is doing.

It's not super disruptive. I would say it typically doesn't involve a big commitment of some kind. And I think being professional requires big commitments. Yeah, I think that is... That's something that's absolutely right. One of the places you see it on a slightly lesser scale is it's easy to dismiss, let's say, really healthy people that maybe have a like a crazy kind of supplement type game going on. Like, you know, it's it's it's it's a layered screamer and there've been greenfield style xyz with this or that.

And it's easy to be like, well, look, I know that like, probably a lot of that stuff is not completely validated and it's probably not making, but it misses the point. It's a signal among other things, right? When you have this like, really crafted your, like rich roll or some on or greenfield, where you're like, I'm very, you're layered, like I'm very careful about my food and I do these supplements, I care about these minerals

and I get this thing done or this or that. Even if it's the case that like, okay, maybe this is tumour because not as efficacious as you really think. And this thing you're doing with the magnesium or whatever is like, yeah, maybe if we bring in the scientists, they'll say, well, it's maybe that's not good evidence for that. It's a self-signal. A self-signal that they need to basically establish themselves as being incredibly fit. And guess what they are?

They're there much more fit in the people. to basically establish themselves as being incredibly fit. And guess what they are? They're much more fit than people. But I think about that example a lot, because us writers have similar things that seem like financial indulgences, whereas someone at URI, when we're getting an advance for a book, there's a certain percentage of that that we're just automatically earmarking of like,

well, that's not salary. That's actually part of the overhead. That's paying for the overhead of this, you know, lifestyle, I have to build around to make this weird thing sustainable, which is, you know, high stakes writing. This is just a different way of seeing things. Yeah, and, and, you know, obviously in stoses, I'm one of the sort of the key virtues is this virtue of temperance or

moderation. And so that's actually the, I think where maybe there I mean, there's a good place to sort of wind down, is that, so often though, what it requires being a professional requires being sort of deliberately out of balance with one thing. And then so that's why it's important that you're really balanced elsewhere. So it's like, what you can't be is

have these sort of extreme commitments to 30 things at the same time or you can't be doing that and your personal life is also a mess. You know, and you know, your information habits are a mess and your eating habits are a mess. In a way, it's like you're saying, hey, I'm going to be highly specialized and targeted in this one thing. And in a way that requires disciplined habits and balance and maybe moderation. In other ways, when people go, oh, Warren Buffett lives in this $60,000 house or whatever. I think a huge part of this is just public relations. He flies around in a private jet and stuff So clearly doesn't care about spending money

But I I have to wonder if part of that is just a counterbalance to the extreme sort of stakes and commitment and habits Required to compete at that level. It's almost centering to come down to a small house or to drive an old car or whatever it happens to be. I think it's like you can be deliberately immoderate, but then you have to balance that out with real moderation elsewhere. Yeah, I think that's about right. You're out of balance the thing that matters. And like the ideal setup, in the writer's setup,

right, the ideal setup is you go out to that writer's shed and you're there for three or four hours. And then you come back and you're fixing defense with your son, like going for a walk with your wife, eating a good meal, getting in like a long run, maybe having like a drink with a friend on the porch before a good book at night. And the thing is that, like what I'm saying right now is just resonating with me very strongly.

It probably resonates with a lot of people very strongly, too. And I think that's important because we should trust our instincts. In general, we're wired in such a way that when you see that type of story, or you see the craftsman who runs his forge out of the scenic door county once constantly. Like this guy Rick Furrow, I write about sometimes. The reason that resonates tells us there's probably something deeper down saying that that's probably a good configuration. And it's a topic I'm really interested in. I don't know a lot of the, let's say like the anthropological details here, but I think when we dig down deep, humans are wired to want to do things,

to see their manifestations made concrete, their intentions made manifest are concrete in the world. We're wired for that. That's what allowed our species to thrive, but to actually tap into that drive properly. It increasingly seems like the right configuration of a life to do so is that there's sort of a craft that you do at a high level, of balance in ways that are kind of almost radical, the things you invest in to do that craft, and then when you're done with the craft,

you're back at the fire side by the cave. And just doing the fundamental human things and doing it in a way that's slow and present. And that's probably, I know it's almost impossible, and most people don't have the option right now, but just to look forward at what are we wired for, I increasingly think that's kind of the recipe that's in our in our paleolithic DNA. Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back

to the show. Stay tuned. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown all are, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong, what would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night,

you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Here's me talking to Jocco Willink. What does a perfect day for Jocco look like? If you're totally in control of your schedule and as as an entrepreneur in a sense, you are, what does that day look like to you? Wake up, work out, surf, do some work,

either write or get ready for a podcast, talk to some clients, and go do Jiu Jitsu, and eat a steak. And eat a steak, does that order matter for you? Like, do you like to do those things in the same order or can you shuffle the deck? All right, I kind, does that order matter for you? Like do you like to do those things in the same order or can you shuffle the deck? I kind of like that order. Yeah, I kind of like that order.

Yeah, for me, it's like I got to do the writing, creative, exercise stuff ideally before, as much I like working with clients, I want to have done my stuff first. Is that how it is for you? I don't know. I, it's weird, you know, I don't know if I, I don't have like some creative mode that I go into.

I don't, I just, for me, it's really mechanical of I already know what I'm gonna write and it's just finding the hour to sit down and write a thousand words. That's what it is for me when it comes to writing. So it's not like I have to sit in a space or get into a mode to come up with ideas. I just have too many ideas that I want to write about. So I'm just picking them and going with them and that's the way it is for me. So I don't really have like a creative thing that I go into.

So I can, it doesn't matter when I'm writing it. And probably the same as you. I mean, I've written most of my books on planes, trains, and automobiles, sitting in hotel rooms, sitting in airport lounges. That's where I wrote them. It is what it is. No, I do think people who have not written

or intimidated by the creative profession. And then a lot of people are sort of obsessed with the, maybe the glamour or the myth of it. Forget that it's a job and you show up every day and you do it. And that's really the most important thing. Everything else is kind of details. Yeah. My literary agent is a super smart woman. You know, obviously she, I think she,, but obviously she went to an Ivy League school

and I was just talking to her one day, this was after she'd been my literary agent for a couple years. And we were having dinner and she says, well, you know, I went to Yale. I went to Yale. So she went to Yale and I would study literature and history.

I said, why don't you write books? And she said, when I look at the page, I have, like, I don't know what to put there. Interesting. And I realized, you know, when I look at the page, I've got like a million things I want to put on there and I had just have to narrow it down. So I think I'm pretty lucky in that respect

that there's a bunch of ideas running around and they're wanting to get out. No, I think the rare thing for a writer is not the training, it's like having something to say. And I've got to imagine your life experiences and all that you've seen and done is primarily what drives that, not your love of putting the words in a certain order.

Yeah, and then you're right, though, to get back to your point, it's a, I mean, it's a job. I kind of have a hard time, I guess, even with that word, because it doesn't seem like it's a real hard job, you know, you, but the weird thing is, is it might not be that hard, but a lot of people, they have a vision of something that they want to write, but they never get in front

of the word processor and write. So, yeah, it is a job. You gotta get the mechanical, for me, what I say. It's almost like manual labor. It's manual labor for me. I'm not really thinking about when I'm writing. I'm just, I'm getting those words out onto the page and obviously go back and edit

because you know, the things don't come out perfect the first time usually. So. So I was curious. So obviously the sort of Spartan lifestyle it lends itself well to the warrior lifestyle and that you know you're posted at some far-flung posting, you're traveling, you're moving around. As you've gone and become more successful now that you are, you know, you have autonomy over your life, you know, financially, you know, and as far as what you work on, what you don't work on,

how has that been challenged? How, I love the Eisenhower quote, which I think you were subconsciously or independently discovering, he says, freedom is better defined as the opportunity for self discipline. How is your success, how have you wrestled with that? It's not really a big deal. I really am doing the same things right now that I've always done.

I've always done the same things. In fact, kind of where are the same clothes that I've always worn. I'm just sort of, I'm pretty boring. I'm pretty boring and I just do what I do. So of, you know, I don't really, I'm pretty boring. I'm pretty boring and I just do what I do. So there's been no, you know, major challenges in that arena as far as, you know, succumbing to some sort of, you know, there's no, I'm not going any clubs and getting bottle service with a bunch of, you know, 20-year-olds. It's not happening. I'm a grown man. And I'm not doing that kind of stuff. No, I back us what I mean is that there are more temptations, and I don't necessarily mean

temptations of the flesh. It's just, you know, there's the temptation, for instance, to be complacent after one has accomplished, you know, things that other people would, you just in your career as a writer, you've accomplished what people have been working for 30 or 40 years have yet to even sniff. So, I guess what I'm saying is how do you stay disciplined on top of it? I get being boring, but how do you stay tight

when you don't have to? I guess I feel that I do have to. I don't feel like I've really done anything that's all that great. So, and even more than that, I don't even think about that. Like I said earlier, when it comes to, you mentioned writing, when it comes to writing,

I've got a lot of other things in my head that want to come out. So I'm going to get them out. When it comes to the podcasts, I've got podcasts that I want to do books I want to do on there, people I want to view. So I'm going to do them. When it comes to consulting companies,

I mean, it's, it's incredible gratification when you work with a company and they're able to align their leadership, get everyone on board and move forward and improve their profitability and grow their business that that's very gratifying. So I just kind of do what I'm doing. I don't really even, I guess maybe I'm having a hard time with a question because I don't even really, it's just not, I'm not really there. I don't feel like I'm having a hard time with a question because I don't even really, it's just not,

I'm not really there, I don't feel like I'm there. I don't feel like I'm in some situation where I don't have anything else to do, I guess. No, I think I get it. It's like the next mountain is too attractive to you to celebrate being on top of the mountain that you just cland. Like you're always looking at that.

Like one of the things, for instance, I think about with my books, I always have the next book that I'm working on before the one comes out. So that way, I'm indifferent either way. If it sells like crazy, cool, I'm busy. If people are upset about it or it's slow-finding its audience, like, who cares? I'm busy. I got a contract. I'm always thinking about, in a way, routine does the same thing. thinking about like, you know, in a way routine does the same thing It's like you wake up each day. These are the things you have to do. You're not regretting yesterday and you're not worried about tomorrow Yeah, yeah, when when I wrote desk plan equals freedom I asked my I

As we were going down the road I asked my pop my publisher I said hey, is this the biggest risk you've taken with a book? And he's like, oh my God, this is far away. I've never done anything, no one's ever done anything like this. It was totally crazy. And I was just kind of, I was like, oh, that's interesting. Maybe no one will buy it. And I don't know.

I didn't really, I thought it was just going to be a cool book. And I thought I was going to get out certain part of what I think about two people if they wanted it and I wasn't too concerned about it. But yeah, I mean, even before that one came out, I was right in the next one. So. Well, imagine what you've been through turns down the stakes on putting out a book a little bit. Yeah. And also, I guess, as you kind of mentioned, there's people that write books

and they went to college to write books and they've gotten critique from people and they go to workshops and all this stuff. And I mean, I didn't, I look, I was an English major in college. I will say that and I wrote a bunch and I read a bunch in college. But I didn't make these incredible, you know, sacrifices of trying to write and being frustrated and trying to sell my manuscript and like all those things that a normal writer

has to go through. I didn't have to go through any of it, which is, which I guess also takes it to, like, I'm kind of just okay. Some people bought my books. Cool. I'm stoked on that. And the fact that they've done pretty well, I'm kind of just okay. Some people bought my books, cool. I'm stoked on that. And the fact that they've done pretty well, I'm super stoked. So if I wrote a bomb tomorrow,

then I'll smile and be like, hey, luck ran out. And I'll still write more. I mean, it doesn't matter. I'm not writing just so people buy books, you know? And an example, that is the discipline I'm not writing just so people buy books, you know. And an example, that is the Displenikos Freedom Field Manual. You wouldn't write that book thinking, okay, this is what people are looking for. You wouldn't do that.

That doesn't make it. You bring that book to any whatever marketing expert and they would be like, okay, no, let's take this in another direction. And one, in fact, one of the covers that they proposed to me was this metallic diamond plate cover. You know, it looked like it was a piece of metal. And they're like, this is so awesome.

And I said, hey, I will say it looks cool and everything, but no, like, it's not cool. And here's me talking to Tim Ferris. 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, you know, 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, I'd 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 I was like, you know, black Monday, there was obviously 9-11, there's the tech bubble bursting, there's 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 it, there are 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 add restaurant jobs and so on, and they're in very tough positions. And I don't, 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 there's very little I can do and I can do a lot and I 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. 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 is intact.

And there's a lot of value to that. Right. And so I would say that you're not alone. You're not flawed. Millions of people, tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions, So I would 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 do, you always have options. You always have options. That's the 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. 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 brain stored in their 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. They'd say, you know, Epic Titus, he 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 an Evelyn army for handling, like not just weathering, but benefiting from the crisis. I think that if they were just computers, like Westworld hosts that I could program, they're 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 should 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 has 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 way, he wrote in difficult times, 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 Molly who's gonna, Molly's my dog is in the habit of going ape shit these days. Molly feeling stressed because of coronavirus. I know. 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 Seneca's letters where he's composing

this letter, and it's somewhat patchalently written, which I find hilarious as are many of his letters. But 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 where you can hear this. This is the 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 going to 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. And 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? And it was kind of like, and look, I'm not, but I'll use it, but I heard an 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 a sense is sort of like extreme frugality. I've had my cup of coffee so I'm off to the races, but it's kind of like extreme

frugality in the sense that if you're trying to find financial freedom through one tool and 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 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. Right? This is a ignoring taxes and everything. 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, how can I survive? 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 bother people? But if you were to ask, how could I most profit and benefit from the next three to six months? What is this opportunity to do that I would never otherwise do? So I've been, for instance, 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 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 economy that I use at 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 still up virtues, which is like, and there's another quote I love from Faulkner, he 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? Like, 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 before 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 custom auto 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 him 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. And if they are, if they can't get a immunity bracelet for fear, it's unreasonable to expect yourself to.

Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Here is me talking to the one and only Robert Green. It's always funny to me, because I know there's like friends, and it's like, I'm not a Trump supporter, so everyone's well, I'll talk about like,

you know, either an interesting trend with Trump, or I'll talk about how, as we were talking about, how sort of historically, if you look at the leadership we've seen in this pandemic, I don't think it's been good. And I know there's a number of, you know, about how, sort of historically, if you look at the leadership we've seen in this pandemic, I don't think it's been good. And I know there's a number of, you know, sitting Republican senators, some of whom you know,

get the daily stoke email every week, or, you know, I know there's people in the administration who read it, they never send me angry emails about it. They tell me how much, you know, we have no problem, but then I'll get all these emails from a random person who can't bear the fact that I managed to insult someone they've never met. And one of the things I think about, there's a great quote from Epic Titus that I think they should teach in schools these days.

He says, whenever you're offended, understand that you're complicit in the offense, meaning that no one can make you angry, you choose to be offended. And we have this left and right culture where people, like, we've given all our agency over our sense of self to what other people say and do. And then we wonder why we're miserable all the time. Right. I completely agree. I mean, the other thing is, is that we're seeming to lack the ability to think for ourselves just on an elemental level, a thinking process, where you're able to evaluate ideas on your own, reflected through your own experience ideas on your own, reflected through your own experience,

through your own processes, through your own ideas that you've developed, is something sorely, sorely lacking. So people have, and you see a lot of this on social media, people have these reflexive reactions that they've gotten from other people from other sources, and they're reflecting ideas that are not their own, they're not thinking, they're not reflecting,

they're only following like a party line. And so, if I look at the Democrats, I could say, yeah, I generally agree with them, because that's more where my politics are, but there's a lot of things I disagree with. Maybe 60, 65% I agree with, but there's a good percentage at least a third that I don't like, and maybe some of things I disagree with. You know, maybe 60, 65% I agree with, but there's a good percentage at least a third that I don't like.

And maybe some of that I like even on the conservative side. But I evaluate each idea in its own light and I reflect it through my own thinking process. I make it my own. I go through the process where I, this is where we go back to paracles and his emphasis of news and rationality and of Athena. What I want to do is I want to think about it. I want to reflect before I get emotional and angry and maybe some of my own ideas are wrong

and maybe I should listen more to other people. And I know that I'm often guilty of exactly what I'm saying right now. And as what I say in laws of of human nature, in the chapter on rationality, the only way to be rational, I believe in this world, is to recognize that you are irrational, that you are mostly following your emotions, that your ideas are generally emotional-based. And with that knowledge, you can then begin to challenge yourself, to question yourself, to question why you believe this. Why do I believe that Trump is better? Why do I believe this policy is particularly pernicious?

Is it just because I've heard it on MSNBC, or is it because I've reflected about it and there's something deeply disturbing? To go through that process and understand that you are a human being who is irrational, who is reacting emotionally, is the only way to be truly irrational. And I think that that's something that seems

almost impossible today. It's a lot of it comes back to our education system and how people are trained not to think for themselves, but to just sort of swallow whole hog certain ideas that are trendy in universities or in high school or whatever in the culture. So that's another aspect of the problem that I think. No, I think you're right.

And that's another idea from the Stoics, Epictetus specifically, he's like, when he says, when the weight of an impression hits you, you have to stop and you have to say, hang on, he's just wait a minute. Let me put you to the test. And I think that idea of like, when you feel something strongly, that should be assigned to you that you need to question it. That doesn't mean that you're not right to feel strongly, but a lot of the times when you feel strongly, it's going to be because you, some primal or biological or deeply human, irrational streak has been touched, and that's not a good place to be coming from.

Like one of the things I've been thinking about is like the analogy I like, I'd be curious what you would think about as a basketball fan. Sometimes a coach has to get upset to invigorate the team. So the great basketball coaches will sometimes get technicals on purpose, you know, and like Greg Popovic of this a lot, that's fundamentally different than a Bobby Knight who can't control his temper and is doing things that are, you know, damaging to the team or his reputation. And so it might be that getting angry is the proper response, but just because you feel angry in the moment, does it mean that that's the proper response? Well, it all comes down to a level of self-control and self-awareness.

So I'm talking about, particularly in that first chapter in rationality, the ability to analyze your own emotions. So you feel angry, okay, you take a step back and you analyze that emotion you go, why am I angry? What is the root of my anger? I'm sure the stoics advocate something very similar and you go Is my anger based on something real? Is it based on something I'm immediately facing? Is it a reality? Is it an injustice that I's actually out there or is it something that I'm projecting on the world perhaps from my out there, or is it something that I'm projecting on the world perhaps from my childhood, or from an argument I had this morning with my spouse, or for something I heard on the news? Where does my anger come from? And then when you can step back and look at it, you might come to the conclusion,

no, I am justified. There is an injustice. That boss, he's screwing me out of money that I legitimately deserve. But by the fact that you've stepped back and you've analyzed yourself, you have already won the game. Because now, in responding to whatever injustice there is, you can be strategic. You can say, okay, I'm going to get angry, but I'm going to use that in a way that's based on trying to get results. And you have a degree of self-control.

And yeah, Phil Jackson was also a master at that. And believe me, nobody was seemingly less emotional than Phil Jackson. And you knew that, well, just like as you talk about, get a technical to kind of inspire the team. You'd look at the man and he looked, he didn't look angry, he didn't look upset, but he was playing it, he was playing it, it was a game, it was the drama, it was the Peter's theater. But you can only get to that point when you're already someone who has the ability to be strategic

and to understand and to not identify so closely with your own emotions. That's the problem. Your anger is so personal, it's so much wrapped up with your ego that you can't step back and analyze it and therefore be strategic. So you know, there's a lot of injustice in this world and particularly nowadays in so many areas, and it is good to be angry, but it is good to be able to channel your anger productively and get results. And the only way to do that is to be able to have some degree of self distance

and self analysis. No, I think that's right. So to wrap up, I thought maybe where we close is something that you told me, I can't believe now, it was almost 10 years ago, but I think about it almost every single day and pretty much couldn't have been more timely with this pandemic, but it's something I've written about, but all the credit goes to you and was the perfect thing

for me to hear all those years ago, but you make this distinction between a live time and dead time in life. I'm just curious what that means to you and maybe how you're thinking about a live time, what that means to you and maybe how you're thinking about a live time, you know, being in California, subject to a shelter in place, you know, not being able to travel and having, you know, because of your stroke, just generally been a lot less mobile over the last, you know, year and a half or so. How do you think about a live time versus dead time day to day? Well, it comes from a basic idea.

I read it somewhere, I can't even remember where. But the idea was that time, your time, the time that you are alive is the only real possession that you have. Everything else that you have can be taken away from you. And you know, your family, your possessions, your house, your cars, etc. But that time that you have to live, that you're alive, is your only true possession. And you can give it away, and you can give it away by working for other people.

They own your time, and you can be miserable. You can give it away by reaching for external pleasures and distractions. That means that the time that you have is really you're a slave to these different passions and these different obsessions that you have or you can make it your own. You can actually come and possess it and take ownership of this time and make the each moment count. And when you do that, that means that that time is yours. It's alive within you.

It's green. It's growing. You own it, and you're making it happen. Now, for me, it's a very painful process because I mean, believe me, people are suffering much worse than I am right now. So I'm very aware of that. But prior to the pandemic, I'm very aware of that. But prior

to the pandemic, I was kind of a prisoner in that I'm extremely dependent. I had a very active life. My whole life was taking heights and swimming and mountain biking and getting out of my office. It was my only way of getting out of my mind and all of my thought thinking and that was completely taken away from me. So like somebody in prison, I had to sort of learn to deal with that and create my own time. And so you know, there are moments where I have problems itself. It's a constant struggle. So those moments where I have to do therapy every day, this morning I did two hours and 15 minutes of therapy and it's very boring. I can't explain you how boring it is. The most excruciatingly boring exercises, trying to retrain your left

thigh and your left hip bone to move a certain way. And then these kind of weight exercises that are also very boring. That kind of feels like dead time to me. But how do I make that alive? Well, I turn off all the TV and the music and all the usual distractions. And I use that time to focus very deeply on my body. So I'm learning to use certain muscles. And I'm focusing on those muscles so intensely so that I can begin to feel them.

So it's turning into a live time in that. I'm using this very boring routine to know my own muscles on a very deep level. And I haven't succeeded completely, I'm getting better at it. But so that when now when I'm walking, because I've had to completely relearn how to walk and I still can't really walk that well,

I'm trying to go, can I really feel those glutes as I'm trying to move my left leg? Is there a way for me to feel my left knee bending more? So I'm using that to get in touch with my body and it feels like a constant challenge and it's exciting. So a lifetime there is making it something that's like a skill and a thought that's my own that I can use afterwards and it's kind of an in-live

anything. But dead time in that sense would be putting on a movie or listening to the news or listening to some music in my headphones or whatever or just zoning out. That would be dead time. So I'm transferring that. And then when it comes time for my four or five hours of working on the book, that is pure

a lifetime for me, because that's the most joy that I get out of it. I completely immerse my brain in the experiences and the thoughts of the books that I'm reading in the note cards I'm taking. I've been building that muscle up now for 23, 24 years now. So I've got it down to a bit of an art, but those four or five hours are just pure bliss for me because I'm out of my own problems and I'm trying to think about my readers and my book. And it's very alive.

And I know a lot of people don't have that privilege because they're not working for themselves. They're not able to build something that's just their own. So I'm very privileged in that sense. But I struggle as well, and I struggle as I told you with the boredom that I'm experiencing when I'm doing my therapy. So that's sort of how it's been for me these past few months. But I have a lot of empathy

for people who've never had to deal with this before, who suddenly are at home, who suddenly have their children and wife at home, and they're not able to go out and do their daily routines. And it's all a matter of thinking of, how can I make this my own? How can I turn this to quote another very amazing writer? How can I turn this obstacle into the way?

How can I turn this hindrance, this problem into something that becomes my own? So this time, instead of reaching for distractions, your live time now is reading books. You know, the best, this was some thought process that I go through. I'm trapped in my office. But when I read a book on ancient history, when I read a book about the ancient Greek poet, Safo, I'm transported to ancient Greece to the seventh century PC to the century before just after Homer, which is an incredible thought that someone lived only a hundred years after Homer.

You know, and it's like I'm traveling all of the time and it's exciting. I'm not in my office anymore. I'm out there in the world. I mean, other people's brains, other people's ideas. Use this time to get outside of yourself and get immerse yourself in great philosophy, in great history, in great biographies. That's creating a lifetime. There are other ideas as well. You know, I could go on for hours, but that's basically sort of the concept as I see it right now. No, I don't know if you remember, but I had come to you.

I was then the director of marketing in American Apparel, and I wasn't happy. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do next. I was thinking about writing a book. I could see that there was somewhat of a ceiling on my advancement there. There was craziness in chaos. I just started to make a good amount of money there and I was unhappy

in thinking about what I would do. And that's actually when you came to me with that advice. You said, you know, you said, look, maybe this is going to go on for another year. Maybe it's going to go on for six months. And you said, look, this can go one of two ways for you. You said, this could be a live time for you or it could be dead time. You could wait it out. You could just sit there. You could collect your paychecks or you could decide to seize this moment and make it a new beginning of some kind. Make it the first steps towards wherever you end up going next. You could look back on this period as one of the most sort of fond and fruitful periods of your life. He said, this could be what sets the table for the book

that you're going to write or the new chapter in your career. It just comes down to that choice of a lifetime or dead time. And I even, I remember I wrote it down in a note card and I framed it and I put it on my wall. And it sort of shapes. I try to think about it every time I'm, you know, at a crossroads every time I go through something, every time I'm stuck, I I try to think about it every time I'm, you know, at a crossroads every time I go through something every time I'm stuck, I just try to think of that sort

of dichotomy that you lay down. And I think a lifetime versus dead time is that's the fork in the road between a sort of a life worth living and a life filled with regret and disappointment. Well, I never really knew the full brunt of the story. I'm glad I'm hearing it now. The gist of it, another way of looking at it, which I've always think of, is making things your own. It was sort of an idea that I tried to communicate a lot in the book that I did with 50 cent, the 50th law. But the idea is, it's the kind of magic or alchemy when you

take something from the outside and you make it your own, you own it, you possess it. And so it's not just time, which is the most important commodity of all, where you make it your own, where you're the owner of it. As opposed to working for other people and collecting a paycheck, using that time to read and develop skills and to plan for the future and to use this seemingly negative experience for the material, for a book, which is what you did, which was so brilliant.

But it's also ideas. Make them your own. So your brain is like a soil that needs to be as enriched as possible. There's many different things in it. So you want to absorb ideas from Montenna, from the Stoics, from the Presacratics, from philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, from contemporary writers, from Victor Franco, etc. And that's so how it gets enriched. And their ideas become your own. You don't just parrot what what Senika says or Marcus Aurelius says, because that would be to contradict them.

You make it alive and alive thought. It reflects your own experience, your own world, and you say, what is this idea of Marcus Aurelius and how does it relate to my life and how can I make this idea come to life from within. So it's not just a dead piece of stone that I've or food that I've swallowed. It's like something that I possess and I've built upon and created on my own. So I want you to think of everything that you do in life as a process of making it your own, your time, your ideas, your mental life, on and on and on.

That's sort of the wider philosophy behind this. That's really beautiful, I don't think I could say it better. And everyone, be sure to check out the Daily Stoke New Year, New You Challenge, dailystoke.com slash challenge. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.