The Daily Stoic - You Are Not Too Busy To Read

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

“We get it. You’re busy. You have kids. You have a job—maybe two. You have these things you are trying to accomplish. You have to get to the gym. You have a long commute. You have all these projects around the house.”Discover the vitality of reading and how historical leaders carved out time to make it a priority, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic: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 Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stood Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowup.com. You are not too busy to read. We get it. You're busy. You have kids, you have a job, maybe two. You have things you're trying to accomplish. You have to get to the gym.

You have a long commute. You have all these projects around the house. With all this, you say, I don't have time to read. Which of course is ridiculous. It's not true. It's not even remotely true. Marcus Realis had all those same kinds of goals and responsibility. Seneca did too. You know what you don't see in their writings? Complaints about not having time to read. In fact, if anything, they tried themselves for spending too much time with their books. The fact is, people much busieried themselves for spending too much time with their books. The fact is, people much busier than you have been prioritizing reading for centuries.

They've been making wisdom a part of their daily lives, no matter what's going on in the world or in their jobs. As Andrew Roberts, who is a great podcast guest for us a few months back, writes in his epic biography of Napoleon. For his Egypt campaign, Napoleon took 125 books of history, geography, philosophy, and Greek mythology, and a specially constructed library, including Captain Cook's three volume voyages, Montesque's The Spirit of the Laws, Gertes, Sarros of Young Worther, and books by Livy Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus, and of course, Julius Caesar. He also brought biographies of Condi, Sax, Marbero, Eugene of Savoy, Charles XII of Sweden, and a notable French commander in the Hundred Years War, Poetry and Drama had their place too, including the works of Homer,

Virgil, and others. If Napoleon commanding an army of some 40,000 men could find time to read on a march of some 1600 miles from home, you can find it too. If Marcus could read while he was ruling the world, if Seneca could do it while studying the law, suffering from tuberculosis while an exile in the Senate as consul while he dealt with Nero's insanity, you can too. Leaders must be readers. There is no good life without study and practice and wisdom. Don't find the time, make the time, you're not too busy, nobody is. And we've talked about that great line from Harry Truman.

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. You just have to be. And I would urge you to try to make not just the time you spend reading greater, but what you get out of the time you spend reading to be better as well. And that's why we built the Read to Lead Challenge which you can check out.

Something like two weeks of really great stoic inspired reading practices, exercises from the lives and marks, really synepictetus, but also thoughts from folks like Napoleon and Harry Truman and others. It's really great. People have loved it. We've had thousands of people go through it

over the last few years. It's really awesome. Check it out, dailystoke.com slash reading. And of course, if you sign up for daily stoke life, you get this course and all the others for free, along with a bunch of other stuff. Check that out at dailystokelife.com. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondery that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia and Kurt Brown-Oller, 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 Wondering app. Thank you.