158: Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

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1. 00:00:00 So my last time you mentioned this thing called Raycast.
2. 00:00:04 I did.
3. 00:00:05 And I went and looked into it because I had heard of it, but I hadn't actually done any
4. 00:00:10 research on it.
5. 00:00:13 And for those who don't know, Raycast is an Alfred.
6. 00:00:16 I don't know if I would say competitor.
7. 00:00:19 I don't think I'm going to say competitor.
8. 00:00:22 It's a launcher app.
9. 00:00:23 It's a spotlight competitor if you want to call it that.
10. 00:00:27 I think if you're going to compare Alfred to spotlight, it's fair to compare Raycast
11. 00:00:31 to spotlight.
12. 00:00:32 But if you're looking to compare something to Alfred, maybe it's not fair to compare
13. 00:00:36 Raycast.
14. 00:00:37 Sure.
15. 00:00:38 I can see that.
16. 00:00:39 What I found in my research for Raycast was, I'm going to say sketchy at best.
17. 00:00:46 I was not thrilled with it.
18. 00:00:47 What do you mean by sketchy?
19. 00:00:51 They're like secret lives of the founders?
20. 00:00:54 I don't think I would say secret lives of the founders.
21. 00:00:56 I would say, how would I say that?
22. 00:01:02 Their terms of service are questionable.
23. 00:01:05 Okay.
24. 00:01:06 Because basically it allows them to collect all of your information and use it for whatever
25. 00:01:15 purpose they want.
26. 00:01:17 Which I'm not super thrilled about, to be honest.
27. 00:01:22 Just going to say.
28. 00:01:24 I don't think it's quite as broad as that.
29. 00:01:26 I've heard rumblings of that sort of thing when it first came out.
30. 00:01:34 I think if you look at the terms which I have not, my guess is that I'll be able to see
31. 00:01:41 how you drew that conclusion, but I'm also going to assume that it's not as bad as you.
32. 00:01:47 Yeah.
33. 00:01:48 Maybe do that.
34. 00:01:49 My cursory glance over terms told me I don't want anything to do with this.
35. 00:01:56 Fair enough.
36. 00:01:57 So you're welcome to prove me wrong.
37. 00:01:59 I would be all ears if I am wrong.
38. 00:02:02 I do know one of the things that people tend to say is in Raycast's favor.
39. 00:02:10 Is it's a team working on it instead of a single person?
40. 00:02:14 Which is, I don't know if that's entirely true of Alfred, but it's pretty close.
41. 00:02:19 Like it's not a huge team that's working on that.
42. 00:02:22 But I also know that there's a, what is it, a $15 million funding round that Raycast just
43. 00:02:28 went through as well.
44. 00:02:32 Basically I would just be sitting tight and waiting to figure out what they're actually
45. 00:02:36 going to become when they grow up.
46. 00:02:38 So there's that.
47. 00:02:40 Also the other thing I learned is the process of building extensions or plugins for it,
48. 00:02:44 which I do a lot of, is significantly more complicated in Raycast than it is in Alfred.
49. 00:02:52 That one I learned.
50. 00:02:53 Because like there is no like gooey to build stuff from what I found.
51. 00:02:57 It's all code.
52. 00:02:58 Which is fine.
53. 00:02:59 I can do that.
54. 00:03:00 But it means that, yes, for it to be easy for somebody else to understand, it immediately
55. 00:03:05 pigeonholes you into being a developer.
56. 00:03:08 Which currently the Alfred stuff I do doesn't.
57. 00:03:11 If you're going to build your own yes, if you're me and you're just wanting to install
58. 00:03:15 cool stuff, there's lots more options.
59. 00:03:18 Correct.
60. 00:03:19 Yep.
61. 00:03:20 Absolutely.
62. 00:03:21 It will give you that because the extensions that are out there are quite broad.
63. 00:03:23 So if somebody knows that this is not required to write code, I would be all ears.
64. 00:03:29 But from what I've seen, that's what it requires.
65. 00:03:33 I don't know.
66. 00:03:34 It makes me skeptical.
67. 00:03:36 All the things.
68. 00:03:37 Now maybe that's just me being an Alfred diehard fan.
69. 00:03:39 That's very possible.
70. 00:03:41 I will definitely say Joe is biased in this territory.
71. 00:03:45 But again, I don't know.
72. 00:03:48 So don't expect me to tout raycasts.
73. 00:03:52 Wonderfulness.
74. 00:03:53 Yeah, that's fine.
75. 00:03:55 That's fine.
76. 00:03:56 I'm still using it though.
77. 00:03:57 Yeah, go for it.
78. 00:03:59 I actually have an article that I'm writing for the screencast online newsletter about
79. 00:04:05 my use of raycast and the obsidian extension.
80. 00:04:09 You can do some cool stuff.
81. 00:04:11 Yeah.
82. 00:04:12 I'm not saying it's--
83. 00:04:13 It's the thing that got me in there as an experiment.
84. 00:04:15 And I guess the results of the experiment are in at this point.
85. 00:04:18 Yeah.
86. 00:04:19 I'm in with raycast.
87. 00:04:20 Yeah.
88. 00:04:21 I don't know.
89. 00:04:22 It's an interesting tool.
90. 00:04:23 There are ways of coming at some of the launcher world are quite fascinating.
91. 00:04:31 Just my initial usage of it seems slower by quite a bit.
92. 00:04:38 I don't know if that's just the indexing process it's going through.
93. 00:04:40 I don't know.
94. 00:04:41 I never did figure that out.
95. 00:04:42 But again, just my initial thoughts on it.
96. 00:04:47 I don't spend hours in my launcher every day, so it doesn't make a difference to me.
97. 00:04:52 Really?
98. 00:04:53 I use it.
99. 00:04:54 I think-- where was it?
100. 00:04:56 There was somewhere I saw stats.
101. 00:04:58 And I end up using something in Alfred close to 900 to 1,000 times a day.
102. 00:05:05 There's something that I'm using that's tied to Alfred that many times in a day, which
103. 00:05:09 is ridiculous to me.
104. 00:05:11 But--
105. 00:05:12 But when you say slower, let's just say half a second slower, right?
106. 00:05:17 450 seconds you've saved.
107. 00:05:21 This is not an enormous amount of time.
108. 00:05:26 Yes, correct.
109. 00:05:27 I do know that there were a couple times when I went to launch it that I felt like I was
110. 00:05:32 waiting for it to come up.
111. 00:05:36 And although that doesn't technically add up to a whole lot, it was frustrating when
112. 00:05:41 I'm used to it just immediately coming up as I wanted it.
113. 00:05:45 So there's that.
114. 00:05:47 Gotcha.
115. 00:05:48 Anyway, that all said, we should do follow up.
116. 00:05:53 Because--
117. 00:05:54 Let's do it.
118. 00:05:55 I can get on a high horse when it comes to launchers.
119. 00:05:57 This is the way it goes.
120. 00:05:59 [LAUGHTER]
121. 00:06:00 I have my opinions.
122. 00:06:03 Strongly held.
123. 00:06:04 Probably shouldn't do that.
124. 00:06:05 But that's the way I do it.
125. 00:06:08 All right.
126. 00:06:10 Let's see.
127. 00:06:11 What do we got here?
128. 00:06:12 We've got five total.
129. 00:06:14 I've got three.
130. 00:06:16 I suppose this is my book.
131. 00:06:17 I can go first.
132. 00:06:18 So the three that I have here, one-- well, two of these three are questions I was asking
133. 00:06:23 of myself.
134. 00:06:25 And the first of those two questions was what makes me weird.
135. 00:06:32 And basically, that's a way of leaning into who am I without needing to-- how do I say
136. 00:06:39 that-- without being ashamed of my past, I guess is what that turns into.
137. 00:06:45 And it gets even confusing for me a little bit because I found that-- in my notes, I
138. 00:06:52 was writing down that I'm a farm kid.
139. 00:06:56 And yet, I really like all the tech stuff.
140. 00:07:00 So even I'm not so sure how that all fits together.
141. 00:07:03 So I was like, I'm not sure how this actually plays out.
142. 00:07:06 But it is kind of weird.
143. 00:07:08 So I'll use it for now.
144. 00:07:11 So there's a handful of things along those lines.
145. 00:07:13 But not really anything that's worth talking about.
146. 00:07:17 It's just a lot of nuance stuff.
147. 00:07:20 It's an interesting process to go through.
148. 00:07:22 I would encourage people to go through and ask what makes me weird because it is a fascinating
149. 00:07:27 journey.
150. 00:07:28 Well, I didn't know that about me, just the thought experiment.
151. 00:07:32 So anyway, that was one.
152. 00:07:33 Two, I was asking the question, what am I afraid of?
153. 00:07:38 And this plays out in a whole bunch of scenarios, whether it's if I'm in a meeting and I feel
154. 00:07:43 like I need to speak up, but I'm not.
155. 00:07:46 Why is that?
156. 00:07:48 I haven't done this daily.
157. 00:07:50 But two or three times a week, I was asking this question of the things that I hesitated
158. 00:07:55 on or the things that I didn't move forward on.
159. 00:07:57 Why was that?
160. 00:07:59 What was I afraid of in that scenario?
161. 00:08:02 And although there wasn't anything like Joe's terrified of public speaking, like I don't
162. 00:08:08 really have anything like that.
163. 00:08:09 But there was a lot of lack of confidence I found.
164. 00:08:14 Like that's a big thing that seems to come up quite a bit whenever I write these things
165. 00:08:18 down.
166. 00:08:20 So being timid, I guess.
167. 00:08:23 Okay.
168. 00:08:24 So that's something I know that I tend to do quite a bit.
169. 00:08:27 So anyway, those are the two questions.
170. 00:08:29 What makes me weird?
171. 00:08:30 What am I afraid of?
172. 00:08:32 And then the more fun one was playing around with reminders on the Apple Watch.
173. 00:08:36 This is actually gold, I found.
174. 00:08:39 Awesome.
175. 00:08:40 Which was not expected.
176. 00:08:44 So we've belabored this whole joke can't time block thing in the past, right?
177. 00:08:51 And I started putting together reminders, like using the reminders app on my phone to
178. 00:08:57 create reminders.
179. 00:09:00 And then on my Mac, I would take those and place them on the calendar in Fantastic-Cal,
180. 00:09:03 which I'm not still, I'm still not completely sold on Fantastic-Cal.
181. 00:09:07 I've had issues with it in the past and I'm still having some weird issues with it.
182. 00:09:11 It's the only one that I've really found that does a good job of here are my calendar
183. 00:09:16 events and then here are the reminders on the calendar at the same time.
184. 00:09:19 So you can see the two of them in the same line.
185. 00:09:21 I know BusyCal does this.
186. 00:09:24 So I may try that out because BusyCal is a part of set app, if I recall correctly.
187. 00:09:30 So anyway, doing that meant that whenever I have those reminders, I can have it set off
188. 00:09:36 the watch, which is significantly less.
189. 00:09:39 Well, it's more intrusive than having it on my phone, but it's less of a distraction
190. 00:09:44 at the same time.
191. 00:09:45 It's so weird.
192. 00:09:47 So weird, which is what I want, but it seems to be extremely helpful.
193. 00:09:53 Regardless of all the nuances and subtleties that I don't understand quite yet, it does
194. 00:09:58 seem to be quite helpful in the terms of me actually getting some things done that I've
195. 00:10:02 been struggling to get done.
196. 00:10:05 So do you turn on this 15, 30 minute little tap on your wrist at all?
197. 00:10:13 Do you know what I'm talking about?
198. 00:10:14 It's similar to the hourly chimes, but I found out that you can through the accessibility
199. 00:10:19 settings have it tap your wrist every 15 minutes.
200. 00:10:22 That would drive me nuts actually.
201. 00:10:25 I know that this would drive many, many people nuts.
202. 00:10:28 To me, this as an ADHD person, this is absolutely amazing because I can accidentally lose three
203. 00:10:35 hours and not realize it.
204. 00:10:37 It's like an internal cuckoo clock.
205. 00:10:39 It totally is.
206. 00:10:41 It totally is.
207. 00:10:42 So it's an interesting process, but I know that that just making me aware of whenever
208. 00:10:47 15 minutes has passed has been absolutely gold.
209. 00:10:52 And again, they're saying in the chat, this would drive people nuts.
210. 00:10:55 And I know that this would drive a lot of people absolutely bonkers.
211. 00:11:00 It works for me.
212. 00:11:01 I'll take it.
213. 00:11:02 Right, so Blake had mentioned that if you're sitting for a while, it'll tap you every 50
214. 00:11:07 minutes to stand up.
215. 00:11:09 Sometimes you can't stand up, like maybe if you're in an airplane.
216. 00:11:13 So if you just pump your wrist a lot like this, you can actually get credit for it.
217. 00:11:19 It looks a little weird if there's other people around, but you want to close those rings.
218. 00:11:27 I mean, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
219. 00:11:31 So instead of standing like at once you two, you play a game and don't do it.
220. 00:11:36 Well, normally I do that when I have stood previously and I didn't get credit for it.
221. 00:11:41 Oh, come on.
222. 00:11:43 Oh, sure.
223. 00:11:44 I stood up, I promise.
224. 00:11:47 I did notice so the whole stand for the hour thing.
225. 00:11:51 I was in a meeting on Tuesday.
226. 00:11:53 I sat down before the time was the meeting, one o'clock and I didn't get up until almost
227. 00:12:01 three.
228. 00:12:02 So I know that the hour of two PM or one PM through two o'clock, I didn't stand, but
229. 00:12:08 I at one point, I just kind of hung my wrist down and like put my feet straight out and
230. 00:12:13 it gave me credit for that.
231. 00:12:14 Huh, that should not count.
232. 00:12:16 I mean, I'll take it, but that shouldn't count at all.
233. 00:12:20 Just saying.
234. 00:12:21 The next is when you haven't done any exercise for the day and it tells you that you've closed
235. 00:12:27 your exercise ring.
236. 00:12:29 I have the opposite.
237. 00:12:32 I have been a little too sedentary for a little too long.
238. 00:12:37 My heart rate is escalating just by going up the stairs or something.
239. 00:12:42 I had to, so I got the Apple Watch on Wednesday.
240. 00:12:48 I didn't actually start using it until Thursday and the very first workout I ever logged on
241. 00:12:53 it was when I went to play basketball on Friday morning.
242. 00:12:56 And after doing some reading, I learned that I actually calibrated it to read exercise
243. 00:13:01 at like 140 BPM on a heart rate, heart rate of 140, 150, 160 somewhere in that territory.
244. 00:13:09 So it calibrated it as this is what exercise is.
245. 00:13:13 And then for the next two days, it didn't matter.
246. 00:13:16 At one point, I literally went and ran the stairs at our house for five minutes straight
247. 00:13:20 and it didn't count it at all.
248. 00:13:23 Huh.
249. 00:13:24 So I did the whole reset and then like did some outdoor walks and stuff like this.
250. 00:13:29 Yeah, and only for me, the only time it logs it is when I'm actually triggering a workout.
251. 00:13:36 But sure.
252. 00:13:37 Glad you like it though.
253. 00:13:38 I like mine a lot.
254. 00:13:39 It's been a fun experiment so far.
255. 00:13:42 Anyway, that all to say reminders and Apple Watch have been an interesting experiment.
256. 00:13:47 Learning lots.
257. 00:13:48 Right.
258. 00:13:49 Cool.
259. 00:13:50 Cool.
260. 00:13:51 So I have two action items which are in progress but not finished yet.
261. 00:13:55 The personal mantra, I actually came across a version of this.
262. 00:14:01 So Baron Fig has a manifesto poster, which I'll share in the chat.
263. 00:14:07 This is kind of exactly what I want to do with mine.
264. 00:14:11 And I've been collecting these little phrases that I want to appear on here.
265. 00:14:16 So like create not consume is one keep going, keep growing, stuff like that.
266. 00:14:22 But I am not sold yet on what I want all my phrases to be.
267. 00:14:29 So it's in progress and I don't know that I'll have it done in the next couple of weeks
268. 00:14:32 or whatever.
269. 00:14:33 But I think this is a really cool exercise.
270. 00:14:35 And now I have a visual which is making me very excited to actually finish this thing.
271. 00:14:40 So I'm going to do that.
272. 00:14:41 And then the personal mantra, I feel like this needs to come from the manifesto.
273. 00:14:45 But I have been actually implementing a version of this.
274. 00:14:51 So I say a version because I've basically borrowed this.
275. 00:14:54 Someone I heard say this and I've adopted it as my own for the current season that I'm
276. 00:14:59 in with the day job.
277. 00:15:01 And that is I can do hard things.
278. 00:15:05 So and it's not just a day job.
279. 00:15:07 It's anytime that I'm certainly frustrated by something.
280. 00:15:10 It's harder than I feel it should be.
281. 00:15:13 Take a breath.
282. 00:15:14 I can do hard things.
283. 00:15:15 So the personal mantra is actually paying off even though it's not my personal mantra
284. 00:15:19 yet.
285. 00:15:20 It's sort of an adopted mantra.
286. 00:15:24 But it's what I what I've needed the last couple of weeks.
287. 00:15:28 So I like this.
288. 00:15:29 Sure.
289. 00:15:30 When I actually finish these in the totality, I'll be happy to share these.
290. 00:15:37 But this is a really cool exercise.
291. 00:15:39 Yeah, as long as they're I suppose as long as they're in some shareable form.
292. 00:15:43 Sometimes I feel like I write those in notes that it's like sure.
293. 00:15:46 I don't know how to share this.
294. 00:15:48 It's like in a weird sketch on a piece of paper somewhere.
295. 00:15:52 That's me.
296. 00:15:53 Yep.
297. 00:15:54 Well, I will tell you one place if you really want to to see it the moment that it gets
298. 00:16:00 finished.
299. 00:16:01 I've been doing this experiment with the faith-based productivity community inside a circle.
300. 00:16:06 And I love this thing.
301. 00:16:07 This circle is awesome.
302. 00:16:09 There's like 150 folks in there now and people are like sharing their personal mission statements.
303. 00:16:18 And this is awesome.
304. 00:16:20 So if you're like a lot of people and really freaked out about the future of Twitter, come
305. 00:16:26 join the nice side of the internet, which by the way, as an aside, I don't I don't think
306. 00:16:32 Twitter the way I use it anyways, it's going to change all that much.
307. 00:16:36 It's always been a business thing for me.
308. 00:16:38 And all these people who are lamenting the cost of the blue check mark and they want
309. 00:16:43 to be able to just hang out with their friends, Twitter has never been that for me.
310. 00:16:47 I've never been that famous.
311. 00:16:51 And anytime you get everybody around, everybody involved, that you're going to have jerks,
312. 00:16:57 every village has idiots.
313. 00:17:00 Yes.
314. 00:17:01 Yes.
315. 00:17:02 So I don't know.
316. 00:17:03 We'll see how it shakes out.
317. 00:17:04 I mean, I'm not a huge Elon Musk fan anyways, but I don't think the world is ending just
318. 00:17:09 because he took it over.
319. 00:17:10 No, I mean, it is.
320. 00:17:12 I think there are definitely mistakes made, but yes, like I I post to my own website and
321. 00:17:20 it goes to Twitter and micro.blog and Tumblr and Reddit and it goes a bunch of places.
322. 00:17:26 So if you don't like Twitter, you can still get all of the stuff I do like for other places.
323. 00:17:32 So that's the thing.
324. 00:17:33 That's the thing.
325. 00:17:34 You're going to be able to find the stuff other places if it really were to disappear.
326. 00:17:37 And then the other thing is if you're looking for any sort of community, Twitter has never
327. 00:17:42 been it.
328. 00:17:43 What's going to happen if Twitter were to just disappear tomorrow is that there's going
329. 00:17:47 to be all these little micro communities that spring up.
330. 00:17:49 Twitter is not going to be replaced with something like Twitter.
331. 00:17:52 Right.
332. 00:17:53 If it really goes away, it's going to be these gated communities, which are actually better
333. 00:17:56 in a lot of ways because if someone's being a jerk in the faith-based activity community,
334. 00:18:00 it's free.
335. 00:18:01 Yep.
336. 00:18:02 If you're being a jerk, I'm going to kick you out.
337. 00:18:04 Correct.
338. 00:18:05 Yes.
339. 00:18:06 And if you don't mind, I like to plug one other thing.
340. 00:18:09 Okay.
341. 00:18:10 We've got a New Year calendar that we do for the Focus Podcast and we got the 2023 version
342. 00:18:16 done.
343. 00:18:17 So I'll share a link in the show notes for people, but it is live now and it's basically
344. 00:18:22 the same as the 2022 version.
345. 00:18:25 There is an additional PDF download though for like planning your day that I put together.
346. 00:18:29 There's a video on the product page, which kind of walks you through how to use it.
347. 00:18:34 So the New Year calendar, I don't know if you ever used the New Year calendar, Joe.
348. 00:18:36 I think I probably gave you one at one point, but it's like the whole year at a glance and
349. 00:18:41 like the quarters are shaded so you can quickly see, you know, crazy busy month coming up.
350. 00:18:46 I'm not going to commit to anything else in that because I know like even if I have technically
351. 00:18:50 the space for it, it's just too much.
352. 00:18:51 I can't handle it.
353. 00:18:52 Try to space things out, you know.
354. 00:18:54 But the other side of that has been like the planning your day side.
355. 00:18:57 So put together a PDF, which I've been playing with on the remarkable.
356. 00:19:00 You could say it's been designed for the remarkable because I first saw it, Jesse shared
357. 00:19:04 it and I was like, Hey, that might be cool on the remarkable.
358. 00:19:06 Could I try it?
359. 00:19:07 And then we tried it and we made some changes and I changed the format and things like that.
360. 00:19:11 But yeah, I went back and forth with him using the remarkable as the test case.
361. 00:19:19 Nice.
362. 00:19:20 Yeah.
363. 00:19:21 Cool.
364. 00:19:22 Yeah, I've never used the New Year calendar.
365. 00:19:25 I've always used some form of a digital thing.
366. 00:19:29 My wife always has a calendar on the wall that's like their homeschool, like field trips
367. 00:19:36 and such, but it doesn't really get to be too much other than that.
368. 00:19:39 So that's the way it is.
369. 00:19:41 Sure.
370. 00:19:42 All right.
371. 00:19:43 So let's that all set.
372. 00:19:44 Let's jump into today's book because I feel like there's a lot we could cover.
373. 00:19:48 I have a lot of things in the outline, but we'll see how much of it we actually spend
374. 00:19:54 a decent amount of time on.
375. 00:19:55 But that said, let's jump in.
376. 00:19:58 Today's book is the latest release from Ryan Holiday in and it's the second of a four book
377. 00:20:06 series that he's in the middle of.
378. 00:20:09 This is discipline is destiny.
379. 00:20:11 The first of this series is Courage is Calling, which we've covered here on Bookworm.
380. 00:20:16 So if you want to listen to that first, you're welcome to do that.
381. 00:20:20 But the four virtues piece just to, and he starts the book off with this just so you
382. 00:20:27 can kind of like, where is this coming from?
383. 00:20:31 It's told through the story of Hercules coming to the fork and the road where he has to choose
384. 00:20:36 vice versus virtue.
385. 00:20:39 And then he chooses virtue, but then that leads him into the process of, well, what
386. 00:20:43 is virtue?
387. 00:20:44 And in the, I guess, ancient world, they tended to refer to virtue as these four elements,
388. 00:20:52 courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
389. 00:20:55 So obviously courage leads to courage is calling.
390. 00:20:58 Discipline is destiny is the temperance side of that, which it's an interesting choice
391. 00:21:04 of words that he's using there.
392. 00:21:06 So it's like, okay, here are the four elements for virtues, I guess, the four components of
393. 00:21:12 virtue, but we're going to call temperance discipline.
394. 00:21:15 Interesting.
395. 00:21:16 And I think that makes a little more sense when you get through the book.
396. 00:21:19 So definitely an interesting read, excited to get into this one.
397. 00:21:23 But what were your initial thoughts on this, Mike?
398. 00:21:26 Well, first of all, the temperance thing, I can understand where he gets the word discipline.
399. 00:21:32 The definition, just a quick Google search, is moderation and self restraint.
400. 00:21:38 It made sense to me, I guess, discipline and then temperance.
401. 00:21:41 However, I am on to Ryan Holiday's formula now.
402. 00:21:49 And you mentioned the, forget how you phrased it, the virtues, but essentially where they
403. 00:21:55 come from is stoic philosophy.
404. 00:21:57 Ryan Holiday is the stoic guy.
405. 00:21:58 And this is not a surprise.
406. 00:22:00 I mean, he's been going down this road for a while.
407. 00:22:05 However, I feel like at this point, having read the second book in this series, and there
408. 00:22:13 is a little bit of overlap with the courage one, not exactly.
409. 00:22:18 It is largely new material, but I also feel like at this point, I'm good on the stoic stuff.
410. 00:22:25 It's almost like, I like this book a lot.
411. 00:22:31 We're going to get into the meat of it and obviously the style and rating at the end.
412. 00:22:36 And so this is a completely disconnected thought from all of that.
413. 00:22:40 But right now, I'm not super excited to read the next one.
414. 00:22:46 Again, that has nothing to do with my view of this book in particular.
415. 00:22:50 I also read a, a gap book recently called Snow Leopard by the category Pirates Guys, the
416. 00:22:59 ship 30 for 30 people.
417. 00:23:02 And they talk about, because they're all about content creating and finding your, your niche
418. 00:23:07 and stuff like that.
419. 00:23:09 So they use people as examples.
420. 00:23:11 I think we even talked about this a little bit last episode, like the Mark Manson stuff.
421. 00:23:15 Like, I understand where he's coming from with that, but I don't want to be that guy,
422. 00:23:20 right?
423. 00:23:21 And so they basically outlined and you can totally see it once you know what you're looking
424. 00:23:25 for.
425. 00:23:26 Ryan Holiday is the stoic guy.
426. 00:23:28 That's his niche.
427. 00:23:29 But also he's not this, I don't want this to be.
428. 00:23:34 I'm a big Ryan Holiday fan.
429. 00:23:36 But what he's taking and packaging here is essentially not a whole bunch of original
430. 00:23:42 thought.
431. 00:23:43 He's a really good researcher and he pulls together all these stories and he packages
432. 00:23:47 them really well.
433. 00:23:49 But my view on picking up a Ryan Holiday book is a little bit different now.
434. 00:23:53 When I read The Obstacles the Way, way back in the day, I was like, wow, Ryan Holiday
435. 00:23:59 came up with this stuff.
436. 00:24:00 That is amazing.
437. 00:24:01 Like, he is speaking my language.
438. 00:24:03 And now it's kind of like, oh, he's just drawing from this stoic pool.
439. 00:24:08 He's repurposing Marcus Aurelius.
440. 00:24:11 And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
441. 00:24:14 But at this point, I'm like, okay, I get it.
442. 00:24:15 I'm ready to move on to something else.
443. 00:24:17 Does that make sense?
444. 00:24:19 I think I get the point you're making, but at the end of the day, I think that's what
445. 00:24:24 every author does.
446. 00:24:26 To some degree or another, they're taking information that they've learned elsewhere,
447. 00:24:31 synthesizing it and then presenting it in their own way.
448. 00:24:34 Which...
449. 00:24:35 Yes, but I think there are different ways that you can do that.
450. 00:24:40 And I'm finding myself more attracted to books that we, in the past, have not rated super
451. 00:24:47 well, but the anti-fragile stuff and the thinking fast and slow.
452. 00:24:53 Like, those are the people that I want to be around more and more.
453. 00:24:57 And that makes me feel a little uncomfortable because I've always been like, Ryan Holiday's
454. 00:25:01 biggest fan.
455. 00:25:02 I want to be Ryan Holiday.
456. 00:25:04 I want to own the bookstore and write books.
457. 00:25:08 Like, he's been my hero for a long time.
458. 00:25:14 So just because he figured out his formula.
459. 00:25:18 Well it's not that I figured out his formula, but now that I have figured out the formula,
460. 00:25:23 I guess, I kind of know, I feel like what to expect.
461. 00:25:28 And I'm not sure I need more of this.
462. 00:25:33 There's a lot of books to read.
463. 00:25:35 I mean, we read a lot of books, but even so, there's no way I'm going to come close to
464. 00:25:39 reading all of the potential books that if I knew about them, I would want to read.
465. 00:25:45 And that's not me thinking like, "Oh, my life is almost over and I got to conserve my
466. 00:25:49 book reading time."
467. 00:25:50 I feel like if so many books left in me.
468. 00:25:53 Yeah.
469. 00:25:54 I was a little bit surprised though when I picked this one up and I was like, "I guess,
470. 00:26:00 you know, when I picked up Courage's Calling, I'm like, "Yeah, let's do this."
471. 00:26:03 Like, another Ryan Holiday book.
472. 00:26:05 Awesome.
473. 00:26:06 Especially once I started going through the introduction here and then even the first
474. 00:26:11 section though, it's kind of like, "Yeah, you're seeing a lot of the same stuff you said
475. 00:26:15 before, a little bit different ways."
476. 00:26:17 And that's cool, but I don't know.
477. 00:26:20 At this point in my reading journey, I'm not super excited to read the other two books.
478. 00:26:26 And that was a little bit shocking to me.
479. 00:26:29 Yeah.
480. 00:26:30 Interesting.
481. 00:26:31 I was not expecting that reaction from you at all.
482. 00:26:35 I feel like this is very different than Courage's Calling.
483. 00:26:39 One of the things I wrote down in my notes about this one that I went back, I pulled
484. 00:26:45 out Courage's Calling to confirm that this was the truth because I didn't know because
485. 00:26:49 I wrote this down after like two chapters in.
486. 00:26:51 But the question I asked myself was, "Did Ryan Holiday do something different this time?"
487. 00:26:57 He normally would tell a story and then tell us some of the detail around it.
488. 00:27:02 This time he did a couple things different in that each of the chapters, he's kind of
489. 00:27:08 telling you a story and that's it.
490. 00:27:11 He adds to it as you go through it, but the story is the chapter.
491. 00:27:17 And he didn't do that in Courage's Calling.
492. 00:27:18 He definitely had like a segmented, "Here's my point," and then the latter third or half
493. 00:27:23 of that chapter was him explaining it or talking about the stoic philosophy behind it.
494. 00:27:29 This one, he took a different approach and kind of interspersed the stoic conjecture
495. 00:27:35 if you will in the middle of the story, which then meant the story took the entire chapter.
496. 00:27:40 But because of him doing it that way, it meant that he could introduce a character in chapter
497. 00:27:45 1 and then continue to expand on that and add bits of that story through the entire book,
498. 00:27:51 which he did with about five or six of these characters that he uses throughout the entire
499. 00:27:56 book.
500. 00:27:57 He didn't do that in Courage's Calling.
501. 00:27:58 I'm certain he didn't do it in the obstacle as the way.
502. 00:28:01 So from a writer's stance, regardless of where he's getting his ideas, that's hard to do
503. 00:28:08 and amazing that he managed to pull it off.
504. 00:28:10 So that's jumping head to the end of this segment, but that's kind of something I noticed
505. 00:28:16 was very different this time around.
506. 00:28:18 But that's also part of why I love Ryan Holiday.
507. 00:28:22 I still love Ryan Holiday.
508. 00:28:24 And if I know what he's doing, I still love the way he's coming at this.
509. 00:28:29 And that is completely fair.
510. 00:28:31 I guess as I finished up this book, I could see the pattern from the early books that
511. 00:28:43 he had written.
512. 00:28:44 I feel like the early books, he's taking a theme in stoic philosophy.
513. 00:28:51 It's not just mapping it to one of the virtues and developing it fully.
514. 00:28:58 So I feel what you're going to end up with, the four books in this series, is a book and
515. 00:29:05 a half to two books worth of really original material.
516. 00:29:12 He's stretching it out is how I feel a little bit.
517. 00:29:14 And I don't blame him for doing that.
518. 00:29:15 If I was Ryan Holiday and I had a book publisher who was, "Hey, what's the next one going to
519. 00:29:20 be?"
520. 00:29:21 This is totally the approach that I would take.
521. 00:29:25 But it means that I don't like these books specifically discipline is destiny.
522. 00:29:29 I like courage is calling a little bit better than this one.
523. 00:29:32 But both of them, I feel pale in comparison to things like the obstacle is the way and
524. 00:29:37 even stillness is the key.
525. 00:29:39 I think I would disagree with that.
526. 00:29:40 But that's my take.
527. 00:29:43 Partially because I feel like, and we can jump into this, this will make more sense.
528. 00:29:47 But I feel like some of the topics, it's similar to, I would say it's similar to some of what
529. 00:29:55 we talk about in Christianity in that you may have a specific point in theology, but
530. 00:30:02 there's a lot of subtlety around it.
531. 00:30:05 And the subtlety is what matters to a lot of those points.
532. 00:30:09 Obviously not all, not probably not even a majority.
533. 00:30:12 But in the world of stoicism, I would venture to say it's the same, that the subtleties matter.
534. 00:30:20 Because there's even, if you look, there's points in this book where you could say they
535. 00:30:24 contradict each other.
536. 00:30:26 And yet they coincide and live in the same space together.
537. 00:30:30 So because of that, it means you have to pay attention to the subtlety, pick and choose
538. 00:30:35 your own adventure, if you will, depending on the situation.
539. 00:30:37 It's subjective, depending on what's happening and what's going on, that tells you which
540. 00:30:42 of these to use and apply.
541. 00:30:45 So that's important as well.
542. 00:30:48 But I think the details matter when it comes to, in this case, comparing courage is calling
543. 00:30:55 to discipline as destiny.
544. 00:30:58 Just having glanced over the other book before coming into this today, I feel like they're
545. 00:31:03 very different.
546. 00:31:05 I feel like it's just, it's not the same realm, but.
547. 00:31:08 Well, you're right.
548. 00:31:10 It's not a direct comparison to courage.
549. 00:31:12 It's calling probably the closer comparison is discipline is destiny to stillness is the
550. 00:31:16 key.
551. 00:31:18 Because if you look at the three sections here, we've got part one, the exterior, which is
552. 00:31:23 the body.
553. 00:31:24 We've got part two, the, oh man, I messed up the temperament, the temperament, essentially.
554. 00:31:31 Yeah.
555. 00:31:32 But there's, what's the actual name for part two?
556. 00:31:34 The inner domain.
557. 00:31:36 The inner domain.
558. 00:31:37 Okay.
559. 00:31:38 My mind, no gut messed up.
560. 00:31:39 So I fix that the inner domain, the temperament, and then part three is the magisterial, which
561. 00:31:42 is the soul.
562. 00:31:43 If you go back to stillness is the key.
563. 00:31:46 You've got three parts, which line up perfectly with these.
564. 00:31:51 Part one is mind.
565. 00:31:53 Part two is spirit.
566. 00:31:55 Part three is body.
567. 00:31:57 So they're kind of an inverse order, but we've talked about this stuff before.
568. 00:32:03 Yes.
569. 00:32:04 Yeah.
570. 00:32:05 And, and I think that this is, and you're not wrong, that was when I didn't go back and
571. 00:32:11 compare this to, but I think there's maybe something to be said for, there's the four
572. 00:32:16 pieces and like, I really want to write about each of these four, but before I even realized
573. 00:32:22 that this concept of the four existed, he had put together this stillness is the key and
574. 00:32:29 the obstacle is the way like he was kind of writing around it.
575. 00:32:32 And he's like, okay.
576. 00:32:33 I've got all that out there, but I need to put together the format of these four and
577. 00:32:38 I want them all in their own piece because I feel like there's a lot to say about each
578. 00:32:41 one, even though there's probably a lot of elements of each four in both of those books.
579. 00:32:48 But I prefer this format over that.
580. 00:32:51 If it had existed first, maybe I would do.
581. 00:32:54 Yeah.
582. 00:32:55 The thing is I got to know this book and talk to Toby and Rachel.
583. 00:33:01 Like, how is it?
584. 00:33:02 It is good.
585. 00:33:03 Typical Ryan Holiday book.
586. 00:33:04 Yep.
587. 00:33:05 And then I got thinking like, if I was going to recommend a Ryan Holiday book to someone,
588. 00:33:10 I'm not recommending the Stoic series.
589. 00:33:12 I'm probably recommending stillness is the key.
590. 00:33:14 I may be am recommending the obstacle is the way, but I have a hard time just finding
591. 00:33:21 a direct application for you should really read this one.
592. 00:33:26 Even courage is calling like Blake mentioned in the chat.
593. 00:33:28 You get done with that one and you want to run through a wall.
594. 00:33:30 So if somebody's like really just struggling, I don't know what to do with my life, but
595. 00:33:36 you know that they just got to do something.
596. 00:33:39 You can't steer a parked car, right?
597. 00:33:40 Go ahead and recommend that one.
598. 00:33:42 But discipline is destiny is different because it's all about self-control, essentially.
599. 00:33:47 You're not going to give somebody a book and be like, here, read this.
600. 00:33:52 You need some self-control.
601. 00:33:54 I feel like we can keep going on this for a while.
602. 00:34:00 So let's jump into this so we can act so that what we're talking about actually makes sense
603. 00:34:04 for those who are listening to this and haven't read it.
604. 00:34:07 We start with this four virtues before the introduction here.
605. 00:34:11 Basically he's laying out the groundwork for why he's got the four books set up.
606. 00:34:15 Then he gets into the introduction piece, which I feel like is the set up for why self-discipline
607. 00:34:22 is important.
608. 00:34:24 He's essentially talking about the comparison between freedom with plenty.
609. 00:34:29 When you have plenty, it gives you the freedom to do a whole bunch of stuff because your
610. 00:34:33 life isn't dependent on going out hunting, gathering, protecting yourself and such.
611. 00:34:38 Because of that, it means that if you have the freedom and plenty, you're able to change
612. 00:34:41 your circumstances when they get hard.
613. 00:34:45 That does not mean that you should always change things when they get hard because then
614. 00:34:49 you're constantly escaping hard things.
615. 00:34:56 Eisenhower said as he calls out in here, "opportunity for self-discipline is what freedom gives
616. 00:35:02 you."
617. 00:35:03 If you have the freedom to do anything and everything you want, that gives you the opportunity
618. 00:35:07 to practice self-discipline.
619. 00:35:09 Or the way that Ryan put it, discipline then is both predictive and deterministic of your
620. 00:35:15 outcomes.
621. 00:35:17 When you're given the freedoms to do whatever and choose whatever, that's the most important
622. 00:35:22 time to implement self-discipline.
623. 00:35:25 Yes, I like the introduction.
624. 00:35:28 I took zero notes on it though.
625. 00:35:32 Because it felt like stuff that we had heard before, I do think it sets the stage very
626. 00:35:40 well for the rest of the book, however.
627. 00:35:44 Yeah, I don't think I would argue that this isn't repetitive, but you have to keep in
628. 00:35:49 mind this is it has to be a standalone book at the same time.
629. 00:35:54 It can't be something that's dependent on you having read another one, so he's got to
630. 00:35:59 do a little bit of repeating here.
631. 00:36:02 I agree.
632. 00:36:03 A lot of people do that.
633. 00:36:04 The best definition I can come up with for how I feel coming away from this is I feel
634. 00:36:11 like with the structure of discipline is destiny, he is moving more towards the Seth Godin
635. 00:36:18 style, very short chapters, just a couple of pages.
636. 00:36:23 Except that, yeah, but the difference is that Seth Godin, for whatever reason, the way that
637. 00:36:29 he packages those micro essays into a book, I feel like I absolutely have to read whatever
638. 00:36:39 Seth Godin comes out with next because it's going to be completely new.
639. 00:36:43 But this I feel like I know the roadmap and I can probably predict some of the things
640. 00:36:49 that are going to be in the next book.
641. 00:36:51 That's not a bad thing and I don't blame Ryan Holiday for doing that, but it means that
642. 00:36:57 I am less excited about the third book in this series.
643. 00:37:01 Yeah, I might be the opposite.
644. 00:37:04 I feel like so the four courage, temperance, justice and wisdom, I feel like courage and
645. 00:37:10 temperance, like this discipline and go run through a wall concept that you're saying,
646. 00:37:15 I feel like that's a lot of what we've talked about whenever it comes to stoicism.
647. 00:37:20 The concept of enacting justice and developing wisdom, I feel like those have been skipped
648. 00:37:26 over so far.
649. 00:37:27 So I'm a little more interested in seeing what those are because I don't feel like we've
650. 00:37:31 covered that.
651. 00:37:32 Maybe I'm wrong.
652. 00:37:33 Could be.
653. 00:37:34 And it's just a different perspective I've not considered, but I don't know.
654. 00:37:39 Could be?
655. 00:37:40 It's not a stoic.
656. 00:37:41 So I couldn't tell you.
657. 00:37:42 Time will tell because I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point.
658. 00:37:45 I'm sure we will.
659. 00:37:46 All right, so let's step into part one, which is the exterior, the body.
660. 00:37:52 As he says here, if we don't dominate ourselves physically, who and what does dominate outside
661. 00:37:57 forces, laziness, adversity, entropy, atrophy, like all bad things.
662. 00:38:02 So we're starting this book off by dominating the physical realm in our own body.
663. 00:38:09 And the first chapter in this section is called ruling over the body in which we get
664. 00:38:14 a pretty lengthy, detailed borderline gruesome explanation of Lou Gehrig and his 2,130 game
665. 00:38:24 playing streak through his development of illness and disease.
666. 00:38:31 And the one thing, obviously, there's a whole bunch of physical feet that comes with playing
667. 00:38:37 over 2,000 baseball games in a row because it's not all roses and wheat fields.
668. 00:38:44 But the thing that one of the pieces of this that really struck me was at one point they
669. 00:38:49 ended up x-raying his hand and he had 17 healed fractures in his hand.
670. 00:38:57 And the coaching staff had no idea he had ever broken a finger.
671. 00:39:02 He's played with how many broken fingers and nobody knew it because he just kept going.
672. 00:39:08 It didn't matter how he felt, he had a job to do.
673. 00:39:11 And although I don't say I would encourage that extent of a mindset, it does make the
674. 00:39:20 point that if you're going to dedicate yourself to a goal and a mission, ruling over your
675. 00:39:28 physical realm is very important.
676. 00:39:30 Yes.
677. 00:39:32 I feel the purpose of leading with this story is a little bit of shock value because the
678. 00:39:41 typical person who is interested in self-help books picks this one up and is probably comparing
679. 00:39:49 themselves to a lot of other people who aren't even disciplined enough to read a book.
680. 00:39:55 I mean, most Americans are not.
681. 00:39:57 So they're thinking, "I'm pretty good."
682. 00:40:01 And he's basically got in this first chapter, "Locate you and say, 'No, you suck.'
683. 00:40:06 Without actually saying that."
684. 00:40:08 Yes.
685. 00:40:09 It's like, "Oh, you think you're really good?
686. 00:40:11 Well, check out Lou Gehrig because he had 17 broken fingers and no one even knew."
687. 00:40:16 Yes.
688. 00:40:17 And at that point you're like, "Yeah, I complained the last time I had a sniffly nose and didn't
689. 00:40:22 want to go to work."
690. 00:40:24 Yes.
691. 00:40:25 Yep.
692. 00:40:27 I feel like this is important though because if you, so again, if you look at the whole
693. 00:40:30 structure of this, to me it feels like he set this up.
694. 00:40:35 Like he spent a lot of time developing the structure as we find out much later in the
695. 00:40:39 book.
696. 00:40:40 But he has to set this up such that he can find someone so ridiculous in their pursuit
697. 00:40:49 of physical fitness and towards a mission that he can pretty much knock down anybody
698. 00:40:56 who thinks that they're doing really well and they can fight through pain and they can
699. 00:41:01 do all these things and they dominate themselves very well.
700. 00:41:04 He's trying to find somebody that can bring you down a notch to set you up to be receptive
701. 00:41:10 to the rest of it.
702. 00:41:11 So I feel like it's important that he does that.
703. 00:41:13 It definitely worked for me.
704. 00:41:15 It's cold outside.
705. 00:41:17 I really don't want to go walk the dog.
706. 00:41:20 And this is where Ryan Holiday shines because he basically says, "You are a pathetic little
707. 00:41:29 wimp without saying that."
708. 00:41:32 Whereas Jaco Willink would just say it to your face.
709. 00:41:35 Correct.
710. 00:41:36 Ryan Holiday does it a lot more nicely and he actually inspires you with these stories.
711. 00:41:41 You walk out of every single one of these chapters being like, "Man, I want to do better.
712. 00:41:45 I want to be like that person that I just read about.
713. 00:41:47 I want to be the subject of those stories in 100 years."
714. 00:41:52 And so it's perfect, the perfect beginning to this book.
715. 00:41:57 Yes.
716. 00:41:58 So he starts us there.
717. 00:41:59 The next chapter is Attack the Dawn.
718. 00:42:01 He talks about Toni Morrison getting up and writing.
719. 00:42:04 But then he dives into the strenuous life is the best life.
720. 00:42:09 And when I read the title, I immediately thought, "Oh, here comes Teddy Roosevelt."
721. 00:42:13 But then he started with King George IV instead.
722. 00:42:16 It's like that.
723. 00:42:19 That was not what I was expecting, where we were going to go.
724. 00:42:22 And he tells the story of King George being a glutton and realizing too late that he's
725. 00:42:28 ruined his life by eating too much, essentially.
726. 00:42:31 And then he tells us about Teddy Roosevelt.
727. 00:42:33 It's like, "Okay, all right.
728. 00:42:34 We're now all right with the world because Teddy Roosevelt's been brought up when we're
729. 00:42:37 talking about a strenuous life."
730. 00:42:39 So I don't think we need to repeat the story there, but basically he was born weak and
731. 00:42:43 he overcomes it.
732. 00:42:45 The moral of the story of this section here, this chapter is do some exercise.
733. 00:42:50 Really, that's kind of what I got from that.
734. 00:42:54 Not just some exercise.
735. 00:42:55 Yeah.
736. 00:42:56 But multiple hours of exercise per day.
737. 00:43:00 So I'm pretty consistent with my workout routines.
738. 00:43:06 I work out usually six days a week between lifting, running, biking.
739. 00:43:14 And even I, after reading that chapter, was like, "I gotta do better."
740. 00:43:23 Part of it is I have this rowing machine that Blake made me buy that I don't use.
741. 00:43:30 So...
742. 00:43:31 That Blake made you buy.
743. 00:43:32 Interesting.
744. 00:43:33 Okay.
745. 00:43:34 Well, he is definitely the enabler there.
746. 00:43:36 And the instigator by saying, "This is the good one."
747. 00:43:40 Yeah, thanks a lot, Blake.
748. 00:43:43 It is good.
749. 00:43:44 It's a concept to Roar and it was essential during COVID when I wasn't going to the gym.
750. 00:43:48 But it's just sitting in our basement.
751. 00:43:49 And I have been thinking for a while, "I should really beginning of my day, I should be spending
752. 00:43:55 just 10 minutes on the rowing machine."
753. 00:43:58 Not changing any of my other workout routines.
754. 00:44:00 I can squeeze in 10 more minutes.
755. 00:44:03 And just elevating the heart rate right at the beginning of the day, I feel like that
756. 00:44:06 could help out a lot.
757. 00:44:07 And in the past, I just excuse it because I work out six days a week.
758. 00:44:11 I'm good.
759. 00:44:13 But no, you can do better.
760. 00:44:15 That's the whole point of this entire book.
761. 00:44:17 And the thing with this, for me, you mentioned Attack the Dawn.
762. 00:44:21 That's actually where one of my action items comes from.
763. 00:44:23 I only wrote down two action items from this book, but they are both related.
764. 00:44:29 They both have to do with different chapters we are going to cover.
765. 00:44:32 So I'll just share the first one here, which is get up earlier.
766. 00:44:36 He mentions in the Attack the Dawn part that nobody is a morning person, but it is still
767. 00:44:40 for almost everybody.
768. 00:44:44 And that really got me thinking that description because we look for those excuses.
769. 00:44:52 We look for the reasons why we can't.
770. 00:44:55 And Ryan Holiday is really good at saying, "No, you're not the special person that you
771. 00:45:02 think you are."
772. 00:45:04 And I shouldn't say that that way.
773. 00:45:06 But you get my point.
774. 00:45:07 Because a lot of people feel like, "Oh, well, 98% of people need eight hours to sleep,
775. 00:45:12 but I'm one of the two percent."
776. 00:45:15 They excuse it.
777. 00:45:17 Because yeah.
778. 00:45:18 So I think we do the same sort of thing with, "Well, I can't get up earlier.
779. 00:45:23 I'm not a morning person."
780. 00:45:24 The same logic applies.
781. 00:45:25 Well, not everybody is a morning person, so I must fall into that other category because
782. 00:45:29 this is hard for me.
783. 00:45:30 No, it's hard, but you should still do it anyways.
784. 00:45:33 I'm going to get up earlier.
785. 00:45:36 All right.
786. 00:45:37 That's fair.
787. 00:45:38 Yeah.
788. 00:45:39 I'm not from Attack the Dawn, but this strenuous life is the best life.
789. 00:45:43 I'm not one that has exercised.
790. 00:45:46 I have long said, "I move so much during the day that I'm not sure exercise is really
791. 00:45:52 required of me."
792. 00:45:55 I've said that for a long time.
793. 00:45:57 And when I got the Apple Watch, I realized just how true that is because the move goals
794. 00:46:03 with it that it comes with, I just completely obliterated those the first week.
795. 00:46:08 I want you to burn 300 calories.
796. 00:46:10 How about 950?
797. 00:46:12 That's why I eat a horse sometimes because I'm just making up for burn calories.
798. 00:46:19 So anyway, that's been an interesting learning.
799. 00:46:22 But at the same time, I don't do any form of technical exercise, setting aside time to
800. 00:46:29 exercise.
801. 00:46:30 I've been doing that the last few days just to, you know, early in the morning, I'm up
802. 00:46:35 at 5, 5, 30 anyway most days.
803. 00:46:38 So the whole like get up earlier, like, no, that's when there's a four at the beginning
804. 00:46:42 with the Edra line.
805. 00:46:44 So I'm not going to do that.
806. 00:46:46 But trying to do some formal exercise in the mornings have done that the last few days.
807. 00:46:51 And that seems to make a pretty big difference actually.
808. 00:46:53 So hoping to continue that one and hopefully not die in the process.
809. 00:47:01 So I don't think that would happen.
810. 00:47:03 But anyway, that's a big one that I'm working in.
811. 00:47:07 There's a few other chapters in here.
812. 00:47:09 I'm going to skip ahead a little bit to one called hustle hustle hustle.
813. 00:47:14 And there's a reason I want to bring this up.
814. 00:47:15 But this is where we talk about General George McClellan and Abraham Lincoln.
815. 00:47:23 And saying that he has a case of the slows basically McClellan.
816. 00:47:28 Nobody could get him to actually move into attacking in the middle of battle.
817. 00:47:33 And yet in the world of military, I know it's very common for people to talk about a sense
818. 00:47:39 of urgency and just, you know, move quickly.
819. 00:47:41 This is why we do all the training so that we can move fast when we're ready to go.
820. 00:47:46 And there's, all right, let me just read some of this.
821. 00:47:50 So basically hustle is referring to as like a sense of urgency, like let's move.
822. 00:47:55 And what he says is here is that the sense of urgency, the other more practical word
823. 00:47:59 for this is hustle, whether in business or in sports or combat, all the greats have it.
824. 00:48:04 Those who don't, we lament what could have been.
825. 00:48:06 Now I bring this up because you wrote a book called hustle.
826. 00:48:12 And that hustle hustle, yes.
827. 00:48:14 Yes, yes, that's how hustle.
828. 00:48:16 I wanted to get your take on this.
829. 00:48:19 He's talking about just keep running and don't sit on your laurels.
830. 00:48:25 Don't sit on the back bench, I guess.
831. 00:48:28 I know I'm saying this knowing the next chapter is called slow down to go faster.
832. 00:48:34 So he does talk about slowing down, but what's your take on this one, Mike?
833. 00:48:38 Yeah, so I think Gary Vaynerchuk has done the word hustle a disservice.
834. 00:48:47 I agree with everything Ryan Holiday says in this chapter.
835. 00:48:53 I also think just the title of it is going to put some people off and maybe knowing Ryan
836. 00:48:59 Holiday a little bit that is intentional.
837. 00:49:02 Maybe he chose that word specifically because he knows there's this stigma attached to it.
838. 00:49:09 Now this is not in the book.
839. 00:49:12 This is in the update to the book which we'll get done at some point, but the definition
840. 00:49:18 of hustle is to force to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.
841. 00:49:26 That is very different than what most people think of hustle, the Gary V style, like just
842. 00:49:34 find something to do and do it with a crazy amount of energy, never sleep.
843. 00:49:40 So I have issues with that picture.
844. 00:49:44 I do think you're right.
845. 00:49:45 It has to be coupled with the next chapter, the slow down to go faster.
846. 00:49:50 There's a phrase in there by the way, "Fastina Lente" which means to make haste slowly.
847. 00:49:55 That's hustle in my opinion.
848. 00:49:57 It's not doing a Herculean amount of effort every single day, but it's doing something
849. 00:50:01 every day because you realize that you don't have days to waste.
850. 00:50:05 You show up and you do something and that consistency produces the results that you're looking at.
851. 00:50:10 In fact, there's a quote that I jotted down to my mind-note file from that next chapter
852. 00:50:14 that says, "Hustling isn't always about hurrying.
853. 00:50:18 It is about getting things done properly."
854. 00:50:21 And there's a phrase from the military, slow, smooth and smooth as fast.
855. 00:50:26 I agree with that 100%.
856. 00:50:28 So all that to say, yes, I agree that hustle is a good thing.
857. 00:50:33 However, you have to look at the totality of what that actually is in order to really
858. 00:50:39 understand it.
859. 00:50:40 And most people are just going to settle for the surface level of revelation and immediately
860. 00:50:44 get the picture of Gary Vee in their head and be like, "I want nothing to do with that."
861. 00:50:47 I understand that too.
862. 00:50:49 Yeah.
863. 00:50:50 Yeah.
864. 00:50:51 I do know that, quick side note, Gary Vee doesn't expect that of his own employees.
865. 00:50:57 It's true.
866. 00:50:58 You would not necessarily realize, but he knows he's the one that's passionate about his business
867. 00:51:02 and he's the one that will run 4000 miles an hour because 100 is way too slow.
868. 00:51:09 But he will not expect his employees to do that.
869. 00:51:12 It's like, "I'm paying you to do a job that does not mean you have to have the passion
870. 00:51:15 and drive that I do because I own and love the business."
871. 00:51:18 It's like, "I'm not expecting my people to have that."
872. 00:51:20 So he'll tell you that.
873. 00:51:22 But it's kind of weird when you hear him say it because he kind of seems to expect that
874. 00:51:29 of everybody the way he talks.
875. 00:51:31 So it's kind of, "Huh, how does this work together?"
876. 00:51:36 This is why you got to be conscious of what's the totality of the message that you're putting
877. 00:51:42 out into the world.
878. 00:51:43 And Gary Vaynerchuk is another one that they kind of do case studies of and that's no leopard
879. 00:51:48 book.
880. 00:51:49 And again, after reading that and diving into how some of these really famous creators
881. 00:51:58 have built their platform, their audience, their niche, it becomes obvious to me like
882. 00:52:04 there's certain things I just don't want to do it that way.
883. 00:52:07 And I think Gary Vaynerchuk has leveraged what his audience wants, which this maybe sounds
884. 00:52:15 bad, but essentially he's going for the shallow stuff, the easy life hack type stuff, the
885. 00:52:21 quick sound bites, the tiktoks, the short videos, just give people a jolt in the arm.
886. 00:52:28 You're not going to get the whole message about hustle from those things.
887. 00:52:33 So you got to recognize that just by embracing that, you're saying something even when you're
888. 00:52:40 not saying it and it has ripple effects.
889. 00:52:42 So I don't know if Gary Vaynerchuk and Elon Musk know each other personally, but everyone
890. 00:52:48 who follows both of those people could totally make the connection even though Gary Vee doesn't
891. 00:52:52 run his company that way.
892. 00:52:54 They associate that mindset that Gary Vee has with what they see Elon Musk doing work
893. 00:53:00 basically as we record this, you know, he said, get ready to work really long hours or
894. 00:53:04 get out of here.
895. 00:53:07 And so that's not, that's not good.
896. 00:53:10 That's not a net win for the world.
897. 00:53:12 Yeah, I don't know, obviously he finds people who do this, but I am not one of them.
898. 00:53:20 Like, I'll hustle all day long, but not at the day job.
899. 00:53:24 Like, I'll hustle and get a lot done at the day job and then go home and do it again,
900. 00:53:29 but it's on a completely different realm.
901. 00:53:31 It's my own world.
902. 00:53:34 So it's just different.
903. 00:53:36 So doing that all day long for someone else's company, I would, I feel like I would struggle
904. 00:53:42 with that.
905. 00:53:43 I feel like that's a good place to, let's jump into the last piece I have in this part.
906. 00:53:48 Sleep is an active character.
907. 00:53:50 Talk about not wanting to hustle and bust your tail all day long.
908. 00:53:53 Let's talk about Archie Moore, which I thought this was absolutely, I don't want to say hilarious,
909. 00:54:00 but it was kind of funny to me.
910. 00:54:02 Archie Moore, heavyweight boxer, was going into a fight for the title.
911. 00:54:10 I didn't write down the year, so I don't know when this was.
912. 00:54:12 He slept 11 and a half hours the night before this fight.
913. 00:54:16 And as if that wasn't enough, he took a three hour nap before the fight.
914. 00:54:22 I think sometime late morning, maybe, took another short nap before stepping into the
915. 00:54:27 ring and then proceeded to win in the fifth round because his opponent was exhausted.
916. 00:54:34 And it's like, huh, number one, I don't think I could sleep that long if I wanted to.
917. 00:54:40 You're not training to be a boxer either.
918. 00:54:43 No, I'm not.
919. 00:54:45 That's valid.
920. 00:54:47 That said, I slept really well last night because I am not used to doing a 20, 30 minute workout
921. 00:54:53 early in the morning and then doing my day.
922. 00:54:55 So I was very tired last night.
923. 00:54:58 So I get that.
924. 00:55:00 But the point was, if you're going to do a lot of high value, high energy work, sleep
925. 00:55:07 has to become important.
926. 00:55:08 I know you talk about sleep regularly.
927. 00:55:11 This is not something I think I've really jumped onto the bandwagon with sleep.
928. 00:55:17 Part of that is the farming background.
929. 00:55:19 It's like, you don't get a choice.
930. 00:55:20 You're going to bust your tail to 11 at night, get up at 4am and off to the races you go.
931. 00:55:24 There is no option.
932. 00:55:27 But I have that option now.
933. 00:55:29 And I feel like this is something I need to prioritize more.
934. 00:55:33 So I've got an action item off of this because what I've been doing over the last week, this
935. 00:55:38 is actually going to lead me into having gap books in the future more too, I think, is
936. 00:55:44 I've been opting to not pick up my phone after 8pm at all.
937. 00:55:51 I don't want to say I've spent a lot of time on computer and phone after that time.
938. 00:55:56 It's just like the quick checks and stuff can lead to like five minutes here or there.
939. 00:56:00 And it's not huge, but at the same time it does make a difference.
940. 00:56:06 So I've stopped doing that and instead I've grabbed a shower before bed, make a cup of
941. 00:56:13 tea, grab a book, sit and read for 45 minutes, and that's become kind of my wind down and
942. 00:56:19 get ready for bed routine.
943. 00:56:21 I sleep a lot better now, which I think that's pretty obvious, but at the same time, there's
944. 00:56:28 a little bit of, it takes some discipline to keep that habit, to build that habit when
945. 00:56:37 it's easy to just grab and scroll through Instagram or TikTok or whatever.
946. 00:56:41 That's easy, but that's as Ryan Holiday is telling us this whole time, that's not the
947. 00:56:47 route to the higher life, I guess.
948. 00:56:50 Exactly.
949. 00:56:51 Yeah, I am a big proponent of sleep.
950. 00:56:55 I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 18 years old, had a seizure standing in line
951. 00:57:01 at a McDonald's.
952. 00:57:02 The person I fainted into was a nurse, put me on my side, till the ambulance got there.
953. 00:57:08 Had one other seizure, my freshman year of college, have not had any issues since then.
954. 00:57:15 Because I have, I believe, I have modified my habits and prioritized not just getting
955. 00:57:23 enough sleep, but getting, doing what I can to get good sleep.
956. 00:57:27 The blackout curtains, the weighted blanket, all that kind of stuff.
957. 00:57:32 So I didn't really have a choice, I guess, that would have disqualified me from being
958. 00:57:37 a farmer.
959. 00:57:39 However, I feel that there are a lot of people who feel like they don't have a choice that
960. 00:57:45 they really do.
961. 00:57:46 If you are going to look at your habits and the things that you do, you'll, you can recognize
962. 00:57:51 after reading something like this, like, yeah, I could go to bed a little bit earlier and
963. 00:57:55 that would, instead of stop, stop using my phone at night, stuff like that.
964. 00:58:00 A lot of people say, "Oh, blue light doesn't make a difference to me."
965. 00:58:04 Really?
966. 00:58:05 Probably because you're sitting there staring at your phone until midnight and then you
967. 00:58:08 just fall asleep because you're exhausted and then you get up at six because your alarm
968. 00:58:12 goes off and you got to get ready for work.
969. 00:58:14 But that's not the ideal.
970. 00:58:16 And the fact that you've done it for a while doesn't mean that you're not paying a price
971. 00:58:20 for that lifestyle.
972. 00:58:21 Again, a lot of people feel like, "Oh, I'm the minority.
973. 00:58:24 I don't need that much sleep."
974. 00:58:25 Yes, you do.
975. 00:58:27 You do.
976. 00:58:28 Yep.
977. 00:58:29 I'll say that about everybody, even though it's not everybody.
978. 00:58:31 Just to be safe.
979. 00:58:32 Let's round up here.
980. 00:58:33 You do.
981. 00:58:34 Yep.
982. 00:58:35 Get your sleep.
983. 00:58:36 If I say you'll feel better.
984. 00:58:38 Yes, you do.
985. 00:58:39 I'm right more often than I'm wrong.
986. 00:58:41 Like, so it goes.
987. 00:58:44 Sleep is important, but let's move on to part two here because we've been talking about
988. 00:58:48 everything in the physical realm, right?
989. 00:58:49 The exterior of the body.
990. 00:58:51 Part two is about the inner domain, the temperament.
991. 00:58:53 So this is your mind and the mental discipline that we're going to step into next.
992. 00:59:02 And this all starts off with a chapter called "Ruling Over Yourself."
993. 00:59:07 And this is where we're introduced to Queen Elizabeth II.
994. 00:59:13 And this is like, obviously I'm not British.
995. 00:59:18 So the whole King Queen monarchy, I don't understand the detail around all of that.
996. 00:59:24 Regardless, it sounds like just the character sketch that we're given here.
997. 00:59:31 She has a lot that she managed and that she had been in control of and the way that she
998. 00:59:37 came at it.
999. 00:59:39 But one of the things I wrote about it is like she had developed rigorous disciplines
1000. 00:59:43 of the mind so that she could endure some people, persuade some people, and basically
1001. 00:59:51 navigate a lot of difficult situations as Queen.
1002. 00:59:54 Yeah, as we're saying, the chat, watch the crown.
1003. 00:59:56 Yeah, I've watched some of the crown.
1004. 00:59:58 Like, I don't know how much of that's a trust though.
1005. 01:00:00 There's that.
1006. 01:00:01 Anyway, we get this sketch of Queen Elizabeth II.
1007. 01:00:05 And she comes up in a number of other chapters.
1008. 01:00:08 I don't know that we'll end up talking about those specifically with her, but just knowing
1009. 01:00:13 that she has to go through a lot of things but doesn't actually have power over the government
1010. 01:00:20 and doesn't really make decisions for anything of true influence and yet has a ton of influence.
1011. 01:00:28 Like that's tough to get your mind around.
1012. 01:00:31 And yet that's the point, right?
1013. 01:00:34 If you can rule over yourself, you can have this type of an impact without having to be
1014. 01:00:39 explicit about it.
1015. 01:00:40 Yeah, I'm trying to come up with different words for this, but I can't.
1016. 01:00:47 Essentially what you're saying though is like they don't have direct, they don't have
1017. 01:00:51 a direct impact over everything.
1018. 01:00:54 They don't sign the laws, et cetera.
1019. 01:00:57 But they do have influence because people are always watching them as a parent.
1020. 01:01:01 You understand.
1021. 01:01:02 Correct.
1022. 01:01:03 This is like because more is caught than taught and it doesn't matter what you say, what matters
1023. 01:01:09 is what you do.
1024. 01:01:10 Your kids are watching you 24/7 and if you roll your eyes or do something that's not in line
1025. 01:01:19 with the character you want to portray, they're going to remember that.
1026. 01:01:22 You really got to be on your A game.
1027. 01:01:25 And so that's essentially what he's saying is that Queen Elizabeth has had to be on her
1028. 01:01:28 A game ever since she was like 17 years old and became the queen or whatever.
1029. 01:01:32 Really, really long time.
1030. 01:01:34 And that is a Herculean task going all the way back to the story and the introduction.
1031. 01:01:39 That is a big deal and that feels like a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility.
1032. 01:01:45 But I think the takeaway here again, he's going into a new section and again he's trying
1033. 01:01:50 to inspire you and the way that he does that is by using a story that you don't measure
1034. 01:01:57 up to.
1035. 01:01:58 Correct.
1036. 01:01:59 Yep.
1037. 01:02:00 That's active because these are people and so you can look at that and be like, well, yes,
1038. 01:02:05 she was the queen, but she is a human.
1039. 01:02:09 I'm a human.
1040. 01:02:11 If someone else can do this, then maybe I have the same capacity or ability inside of
1041. 01:02:17 me or maybe I don't have it right now, but I at least have the potential and it can be
1042. 01:02:22 developed.
1043. 01:02:23 Like you see somebody else who has physically done something and then it seems like that's
1044. 01:02:29 at least a possibility for you.
1045. 01:02:32 Right.
1046. 01:02:33 You still have a choice of whether you're going to apply the self discipline and get to that
1047. 01:02:36 point, but it's at least the possibility at that point.
1048. 01:02:42 Yes.
1049. 01:02:43 And again, this is like you were saying, like this is a setup.
1050. 01:02:47 Let me show you how insignificant you are and how somebody else can do better than you,
1051. 01:02:55 which means you have a lot of work to do.
1052. 01:02:57 So he does set that up quite well.
1053. 01:03:01 There's another section that I'm going to skip over here that has to do with like a pause,
1054. 01:03:05 like making a pause before you act on something, but the one after that, keep the main thing,
1055. 01:03:10 the main thing.
1056. 01:03:12 We get a story about Booker T. Washington being so dedicated to his mission that he said no
1057. 01:03:18 to many, many, many things.
1058. 01:03:21 And I just think it's interesting, you know, this is the concept.
1059. 01:03:25 I feel like we talk about this in a lot of different arenas, but like the Stoics say,
1060. 01:03:29 if you don't know where you're sailing, no wind is favorable.
1061. 01:03:32 And it has this era of you got to know what your mission is and what your goal is.
1062. 01:03:38 Annual goals is what Mike tells us we should always set up, right?
1063. 01:03:41 Right, Mike, annual goals.
1064. 01:03:42 That's the goal, right?
1065. 01:03:44 He's staring at me.
1066. 01:03:46 I think it's uncomfortable.
1067. 01:03:48 No, Mike would not say that.
1068. 01:03:52 I'm actually being nicer to goals, but yes, I think habits are still better than goals.
1069. 01:03:57 So I would advise you maybe don't set the annual goals, maybe set some themes and try
1070. 01:04:05 to live those out every day.
1071. 01:04:08 And the score will take care of itself.
1072. 01:04:11 Interesting side note, you don't really hear like George Washington didn't set up annual
1073. 01:04:16 goals.
1074. 01:04:17 Beethoven didn't set up annual goals.
1075. 01:04:20 And these are people like they had missions that they were driving towards, but they didn't
1076. 01:04:23 say they had specific goals.
1077. 01:04:27 I mean, if you look at the creators in that book, the Daily Rituals by Mason Curry, I
1078. 01:04:34 would wager, a lot of them did not have goals, the really prolific ones.
1079. 01:04:39 They just showed up and wrote every day.
1080. 01:04:42 They showed up and created every day.
1081. 01:04:45 And it's those rituals that produced the prolific output.
1082. 01:04:49 And I can see a situation where you would have a goal, you sign a book deal, whatever,
1083. 01:04:54 and the publisher says, "Okay, you got to have it done by this state and you've got
1084. 01:04:58 an advance, so you have to publish it before you run out of money."
1085. 01:05:03 So there's very much that whole process could be anchored in you could argue goals.
1086. 01:05:10 But I feel like the ones who really just do it, and the ones that become famous for it,
1087. 01:05:15 the ones who their stuff lives on, the money is almost secondary.
1088. 01:05:23 It's like the Walt Disney thing.
1089. 01:05:24 We don't make movies to make more money.
1090. 01:05:27 We make money so we can make more movies.
1091. 01:05:30 That's the vibe I get from the people who are really prolific with this stuff.
1092. 01:05:34 They would do it anyways, even if they never got paid, if they could.
1093. 01:05:39 This is one part of the reason I brought this up.
1094. 01:05:41 This is an area that doesn't talk about.
1095. 01:05:43 I also don't know that this is the book for it either, about what is your mission?
1096. 01:05:49 What are you driving towards?
1097. 01:05:50 He tends to refer to always work towards your mission and that's something that you hold
1098. 01:05:56 on tight to.
1099. 01:05:58 He never says anything about how to determine what that is if you don't have it.
1100. 01:06:03 Now, I kind of know where I land on that.
1101. 01:06:05 You obviously know where you land on this, but this isn't really something he ever touches
1102. 01:06:10 on.
1103. 01:06:11 He should have in this particular book, but it is something that he kind of glosses over.
1104. 01:06:17 That is a great example of being boxed in by the stoic virtues.
1105. 01:06:21 Yes, I would love to hear that train of thought extended.
1106. 01:06:28 There are places where it was natural to do so after some of these short essays, but
1107. 01:06:33 you're right.
1108. 01:06:34 Didn't fit.
1109. 01:06:35 No.
1110. 01:06:36 It is a 300-page book though too.
1111. 01:06:38 It would have just gotten longer.
1112. 01:06:40 I don't know.
1113. 01:06:41 Maybe that's in the wisdom book.
1114. 01:06:43 I would love to see his take on that, but I've listened to a few of his podcasts, but
1115. 01:06:47 I don't feel like I've ever heard him talking about that topic.
1116. 01:06:51 Anyway, just an interesting side note.
1117. 01:06:55 Keep the main thing, the main thing, basically say no to things that take you away from whatever
1118. 01:06:58 this mission is that you are working towards.
1119. 01:07:03 We skip forward a few chapters here and then we get to one called "Do the Hard Thing"
1120. 01:07:08 first.
1121. 01:07:09 I'm bringing this up because we've talked about this topic in the last few episodes of "Eat
1122. 01:07:13 the Ice Cream First versus Eat the Frog First."
1123. 01:07:18 Although I get that concept for people with ADHD, I don't know.
1124. 01:07:25 I feel like I get sucked into the ice cream world if I don't start with frogs.
1125. 01:07:33 That's just me.
1126. 01:07:34 I've been trying to make sure I'm doing the things I don't want to do first in the morning.
1127. 01:07:39 That seems to work okay, but that's a motivation thing.
1128. 01:07:44 That's a whole big can of worms that I've been working on knowing that this is a disconnect
1129. 01:07:51 in my own wiring.
1130. 01:07:54 There's that.
1131. 01:07:56 Yeah, this is an example of Ryan Holiday basically saying, "Just do it."
1132. 01:08:05 I'm telling you you suck if you don't because one of the things I wrote down from this one
1133. 01:08:09 is that fools wait for the right time.
1134. 01:08:11 Oh, so if I wait for the right time, I'm a fool, essentially.
1135. 01:08:15 Yeah, what are you going to do with that?
1136. 01:08:17 Are you going to just write off everything else that he says?
1137. 01:08:20 Or you're going to look at the mirror and be like, "Maybe I am a fool."
1138. 01:08:25 The older I get, the more I realize I am more often than not the fool.
1139. 01:08:31 That actually is very freeing.
1140. 01:08:32 That opens up a lot of possibilities when you say, "I am the problem."
1141. 01:08:35 That also means you are a solution.
1142. 01:08:37 You have the power to change your world.
1143. 01:08:39 I believe in that a lot.
1144. 01:08:41 But yeah, I thought of that too with the eat the frog section here because you, if eating
1145. 01:08:46 the frog isn't working, what are your options?
1146. 01:08:49 You can look for something else, find another reason.
1147. 01:08:52 I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong either, but I feel like that's a dangerous
1148. 01:08:57 mindset to apply just generally.
1149. 01:09:00 I would prefer to think, "I'm going to give this person who is writing these books and
1150. 01:09:05 is obviously very smart and done all this research."
1151. 01:09:08 A lot of, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that if I'm having
1152. 01:09:12 trouble applying something here, I should take an honest look at where can I get better
1153. 01:09:21 and not just excuse it.
1154. 01:09:22 Again, I'm not saying that that is necessarily what Jesse was saying with the ice cream thing.
1155. 01:09:29 But just don't take the bait.
1156. 01:09:33 There's always going to be an opportunity there to be like, "Oh, well, it's no big deal."
1157. 01:09:37 And maybe it really is a big deal.
1158. 01:09:38 I've not been diagnosed with ADHD, so I can't speak to this.
1159. 01:09:43 I don't know what people who have to take medication for this, what they really are going
1160. 01:09:48 through the way their brain is wired.
1161. 01:09:51 So I'm not going to speak to this.
1162. 01:09:52 All I know is that applying it personally to myself.
1163. 01:09:55 Someone says, "This has worked for a lot of other people and it's not working for you
1164. 01:10:00 and you got to change."
1165. 01:10:01 I'm going to ask myself, "Are they right?
1166. 01:10:05 Do I need to change?"
1167. 01:10:07 And I'm going to at least try it.
1168. 01:10:09 Maybe it'll stick, maybe it won't.
1169. 01:10:10 I'm sure I'm going to fail.
1170. 01:10:12 It kind of ends this whole book that way, by the way.
1171. 01:10:14 This whole discipline is destiny by saying, "This is the path.
1172. 01:10:19 This is the journey.
1173. 01:10:20 We're all on this and we all fail at it all the time.
1174. 01:10:22 We're just trying to get a little bit better."
1175. 01:10:24 Yeah.
1176. 01:10:25 And when you said to wait is to be a fool, know that this chapter where he says that is two
1177. 01:10:30 chapters after he's talking about patience and waiting to do the thing intentionally.
1178. 01:10:35 That's why I say it.
1179. 01:10:36 This has to do with subtleties.
1180. 01:10:37 It's important to know the circumstances and what's going on around it.
1181. 01:10:41 So two more here out of this particular part.
1182. 01:10:44 One of them is a ways down on this list.
1183. 01:10:48 It talks about respect time.
1184. 01:10:50 Obviously, this is something I've been focusing on a lot.
1185. 01:10:53 I know with my whole ADHD thing, I'm very prone to time blindness and just not...
1186. 01:11:00 I'm not even aware of how much time has passed.
1187. 01:11:02 Sometimes it feels like it's two minutes and it's been an hour.
1188. 01:11:04 Sometimes it feels like within five minutes and it's been like four hours.
1189. 01:11:07 It totally just throws me off sometimes, thus the every 15 minute tap on the wrist that'll
1190. 01:11:13 drive out.
1191. 01:11:14 People are absolutely crazy.
1192. 01:11:15 But he just has a quote here that I thought was interesting.
1193. 01:11:17 Now is the time because now is the only time you have.
1194. 01:11:21 I feel like that's something a lot of people need to remember because it's very easy to
1195. 01:11:24 think about, "I don't want to do this today.
1196. 01:11:27 I'm going to have time tomorrow.
1197. 01:11:28 I'll do it then."
1198. 01:11:29 Well, now you've procrastinated how many times?
1199. 01:11:34 If it's that important now, if it's that mission critical to you, now is your time.
1200. 01:11:43 Waiting till tomorrow is not going to get you very far.
1201. 01:11:46 Yeah, and there's a whole other message in there with like actually do the work, don't
1202. 01:11:50 just talk about it, but just confining it to this respect time chapter.
1203. 01:11:55 I also really liked this one.
1204. 01:11:58 Mentioned that no one is able to make more time, which is very true.
1205. 01:12:03 And that routine is an essential tool in managing time.
1206. 01:12:09 But the big thing that punched me in the face from this chapter was this idea that when
1207. 01:12:14 we waste time, it also wastes us.
1208. 01:12:17 I immediately thought of that wait-but-why calendar where you have the moment that you're
1209. 01:12:22 born and then the average lifespan of 80 years.
1210. 01:12:25 And the idea is that you color in the shade, the boxes, and you can see your life disappearing
1211. 01:12:32 in front of you.
1212. 01:12:34 And that is a sobering thought.
1213. 01:12:36 Harkens back to the 4,000 weeks by Oliver Berkman, actually.
1214. 01:12:42 But really, it's just an encouragement.
1215. 01:12:44 It depends on how you view this, right?
1216. 01:12:46 You can view this as a lot.
1217. 01:12:47 It's depressing.
1218. 01:12:48 I don't want to think about dying.
1219. 01:12:49 But again, Ryan Holiday is the stoic guy.
1220. 01:12:52 So actually, maybe that's why he didn't talk about personal mission because it really doesn't
1221. 01:12:55 matter.
1222. 01:12:56 You're here just for a moment and you're not going to do anything worthwhile anyways,
1223. 01:13:01 so why don't you talk about it?
1224. 01:13:03 Just go about farm cattle on your ranch and be done.
1225. 01:13:07 I don't know.
1226. 01:13:09 But anyways, yeah.
1227. 01:13:11 So the big takeaway, when I read that, immediately you can think of, like, I don't, that's a
1228. 01:13:16 depressing thought, the fact that when I am spending an hour on social media at the end
1229. 01:13:21 of the day, I am throwing away an hour of my life and what is that actually worth?
1230. 01:13:26 But I don't know.
1231. 01:13:28 I don't have trouble reframing that.
1232. 01:13:30 So that's my initial thought when I hear that statement and then it's like, okay, well,
1233. 01:13:34 let's just get busy.
1234. 01:13:35 Ephesians 5, 16, one of the verses I really love about redeeming the time.
1235. 01:13:39 Rescue back.
1236. 01:13:40 Ransom from loss, right?
1237. 01:13:42 It doesn't mean that you're going to be productive and hashtag hustle every moment of every day,
1238. 01:13:47 but you're going to value the time that you have and you're going to do the very best
1239. 01:13:52 you can with it.
1240. 01:13:54 And you're going to care enough to measure it so that you can improve it next time.
1241. 01:13:58 It boggles my mind why people do not track their time.
1242. 01:14:02 I'm fighting with some of the stuff in the day job.
1243. 01:14:05 It's like, people just track your time.
1244. 01:14:07 Do you not care about getting better?
1245. 01:14:10 You keep complaining that you don't have time for all this stuff.
1246. 01:14:12 And when I ask why you don't, you don't even know because you won't track it.
1247. 01:14:17 So I was like, just do this basic stuff.
1248. 01:14:21 And then we can talk about how we can make this better for you.
1249. 01:14:25 I don't track my time, but I can pretty much tell you the exact amount of time I'm spending
1250. 01:14:30 on things though, if you were to ask, because at this point it's all in the calendar.
1251. 01:14:34 It's not technical tracking, but I have a list of it.
1252. 01:14:37 That's fine.
1253. 01:14:38 That's fine.
1254. 01:14:39 That's the people who want to do better, but they don't understand how they could do better
1255. 01:14:43 until you, whatever you don't manage.
1256. 01:14:48 What's that saying?
1257. 01:14:49 You can't improve what you don't manage, basically.
1258. 01:14:51 Whether it's your time, your money, if you don't have a budget, you're going to run out
1259. 01:14:56 of money before you run out of month.
1260. 01:14:59 Yeah, I can't improve what you don't measure.
1261. 01:15:02 So it is something that's the gist of it anyways.
1262. 01:15:06 So that, I think, applies to all your resources, not just time, but time is the one that we
1263. 01:15:11 always feel like, "Oh, I got plenty of that."
1264. 01:15:13 No, you don't.
1265. 01:15:14 And it keeps ticking, so you shouldn't get a handle on it as soon as you can.
1266. 01:15:20 All right, let's step into part three here, looking at the clock, but the magisterial,
1267. 01:15:25 or the soul, and this starts with a quote here from Theodore Roosevelt.
1268. 01:15:31 "When we rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects, which is
1269. 01:15:36 which took me a little bit to get my mind around.
1270. 01:15:39 But basically, if I understand this correctly, if you work through the process of developing
1271. 01:15:44 self-discipline, you've followed developing restraints and control over the body, you're
1272. 01:15:51 working on your temperament and your mental game, once you've done all that, it kind of
1273. 01:15:55 elevates you to a different level without you even really intending it to.
1274. 01:16:01 And as such, you've gained a lot of responsibility in how you interact with other people.
1275. 01:16:05 You're not the subjects working in and around other people.
1276. 01:16:09 You're kind of above them inadvertently.
1277. 01:16:12 That's the way I took that.
1278. 01:16:13 I'm not sure that's true 100%, but that was just my perception of it.
1279. 01:16:17 And it's kind of enforced by, I guess, the syntopical piece around all of the chapters
1280. 01:16:24 that follow this, because they all have to do with your interactions with other people
1281. 01:16:28 in some form.
1282. 01:16:30 For some of it's very explicit, some of it's kind of implicit.
1283. 01:16:33 But in all of them, they have to do with how you're interacting with other people in some
1284. 01:16:37 form.
1285. 01:16:38 So you've worked on yourself both externally and internally, and now you're kind of working
1286. 01:16:42 with other people.
1287. 01:16:44 That's the way I interpreted this.
1288. 01:16:46 And then this is started off with a section called "Elevating Yourself," which is just
1289. 01:16:51 a story kind of explaining this again, like somebody who was given what's his name, Antoninus
1290. 01:16:57 Pius.
1291. 01:16:58 I don't know if that's anything.
1292. 01:17:00 I had no idea how to pronounce these names.
1293. 01:17:01 Yeah, but he basically was preparing the throne for Marcus Aurelius.
1294. 01:17:07 That's what you need to know.
1295. 01:17:08 He could have killed Marcus and just taken it.
1296. 01:17:11 He had that opportunity many times, and yet he spent basically his entire reign preparing
1297. 01:17:18 Marcus to take his spot, which is a tutor.
1298. 01:17:23 Great restraints in itself.
1299. 01:17:25 But the chapter that I want to talk about more is the next one after that, which is
1300. 01:17:29 "Tolerant with others, strict with yourself," and there's a quote in here from Benjamin
1301. 01:17:32 Franklin, "Search others for their virtues thyself for thy vices."
1302. 01:17:38 I really didn't like reading this.
1303. 01:17:42 This is one of my least favorite chapters in the book, not because I disagreed with it,
1304. 01:17:47 because I really don't want to do this at all.
1305. 01:17:51 I would rather reverse this.
1306. 01:17:53 I'm a good person.
1307. 01:17:55 You have all these problems.
1308. 01:17:56 I would rather go down that path.
1309. 01:17:59 I'm not such a high and mighty person that I'm not doing that.
1310. 01:18:04 Why?
1311. 01:18:05 Because I'm human at the moment.
1312. 01:18:07 That's why it works, at least for me.
1313. 01:18:11 Yeah.
1314. 01:18:12 Well, I think if you dig a little deeper with the why, it can be boiled down to it makes
1315. 01:18:22 you feel better about yourself.
1316. 01:18:24 Right?
1317. 01:18:25 Sure.
1318. 01:18:26 Yeah, that would make out too sense.
1319. 01:18:28 Picking on you, but applying this to myself as well.
1320. 01:18:32 You can pick on me.
1321. 01:18:33 I think it's fine.
1322. 01:18:34 This is why we take that approach.
1323. 01:18:37 It is not my fault.
1324. 01:18:39 It is unfair.
1325. 01:18:40 These other people are being jerks and they should stop.
1326. 01:18:45 That is maybe true, but it also is sometimes outside of your control.
1327. 01:18:51 What are you going to do?
1328. 01:18:52 Just complain about that or take back control and do something about it.
1329. 01:18:58 The thing that you can do is not impose power or impose your will over other people, but
1330. 01:19:05 discipline yourself.
1331. 01:19:07 This applies to something that Ed Cole says in the men's ministry stuff that we go through
1332. 01:19:13 at my church that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions.
1333. 01:19:24 If Joe is late, hypothetically speaking to a bookworm episode, I naturally, I'm telling
1334. 01:19:35 not myself, but you can put your own situation.
1335. 01:19:40 Even if you are able to fight against this belief, this is what your brain naturally
1336. 01:19:43 says.
1337. 01:19:45 Doesn't he know how busy I am?
1338. 01:19:48 Doesn't he know that I've only got this short period of time to record this thing?
1339. 01:19:52 Doesn't he know that there are people waiting how selfish that he would mis-manage his
1340. 01:19:58 time and be late to a recording?
1341. 01:20:02 Go ahead and use an example of me on the other hand.
1342. 01:20:04 This is a really minor, stupid thing.
1343. 01:20:07 That's why I use this example.
1344. 01:20:09 It makes no difference.
1345. 01:20:12 Nobody cares except me at that moment if I let my emotions run away and build up this
1346. 01:20:18 big scenario of what you're doing in the background over there in Minnesota so far away.
1347. 01:20:27 And we're talking about just to be completely transparent about what we're talking about.
1348. 01:20:32 This was four minutes of time.
1349. 01:20:34 Yes.
1350. 01:20:35 Just to be completely clear about what we're like.
1351. 01:20:36 That's all it is.
1352. 01:20:37 It's four minutes.
1353. 01:20:38 That's what we're talking about.
1354. 01:20:40 Even if it was an hour, who cares?
1355. 01:20:43 But it's those little things that your brain makes into big things.
1356. 01:20:48 And that's really why this part, this whole soul section and why this is so important.
1357. 01:20:54 Because you can't see this part, correct?
1358. 01:20:57 Yeah.
1359. 01:20:58 And this is super important.
1360. 01:20:59 I'm bad at this.
1361. 01:21:00 This is why I brought it up.
1362. 01:21:02 I regularly, in my mind, judge people all the time.
1363. 01:21:07 And sometimes I'm not great about maintaining that in my own thoughts.
1364. 01:21:13 And what this is convicting me of is that even though I'm having those thoughts, I should
1365. 01:21:19 be trying to stop those in my own mind and not entertaining those.
1366. 01:21:24 Because the more I entertain them, the more they repeat themselves and thus it becomes
1367. 01:21:28 a problem later on.
1368. 01:21:29 So that's ultimately why I'm like, okay, I've got to stop on this.
1369. 01:21:35 So search others for their virtues, they sell for their devices.
1370. 01:21:38 If I'm looking more for the problems in myself, as opposed to looking for those in other people,
1371. 01:21:43 and better off because I can work on those.
1372. 01:21:46 That's my point.
1373. 01:21:47 Yes.
1374. 01:21:48 And that is tempered perfectly with the second point you have highlighted in the outline.
1375. 01:21:52 I'll let you introduce this one.
1376. 01:21:54 Yes, which is be kind to yourself.
1377. 01:21:56 And again, I wanted this one in here because if you think about all the things we've talked
1378. 01:22:00 about, the strenuous life, ruling over your body, the hustle piece, trying to make sure
1379. 01:22:05 you're sleeping and we didn't even talk about all the focus stuff and managing your mental
1380. 01:22:11 game, putting boundaries up like all of this, like it gets to where not managing your time
1381. 01:22:15 currently like all this stuff.
1382. 01:22:17 It's very easy to have failings somewhere in the midst.
1383. 01:22:21 And we're always trying to be better.
1384. 01:22:23 And if we're always striving to be better, there's going to be points when you fail.
1385. 01:22:27 Likely a lot of them.
1386. 01:22:30 So the last thing we need to do is to keep more coals on the fire that you've already
1387. 01:22:34 created in the failing and punish yourself even more.
1388. 01:22:39 It's okay to have that failing.
1389. 01:22:41 Learn from it.
1390. 01:22:42 Get better next time.
1391. 01:22:44 It's okay.
1392. 01:22:45 Be kind to yourself.
1393. 01:22:47 This is one that I struggle with.
1394. 01:22:49 I have a real hard time forgiving myself of stuff that I do wrong.
1395. 01:22:56 So this is a really good reminder for me.
1396. 01:23:01 Essentially what you want to do is recognize the times that you messed up and try to learn
1397. 01:23:07 from them and move forward.
1398. 01:23:09 But then you have to be willing to turn the page and let it go.
1399. 01:23:13 I have a tendency to hold onto that stuff.
1400. 01:23:15 No one needs to bring up the things that I did 10 years ago because I still remember
1401. 01:23:20 them.
1402. 01:23:21 Sure.
1403. 01:23:22 Yeah.
1404. 01:23:23 So again, bring that up because I feel like it's necessary given how many things we're
1405. 01:23:27 talking about that require change and improving and why you're not as good as Lou Gehrig or
1406. 01:23:33 the Queen.
1407. 01:23:35 And then there's a bunch of other stuff in the middle here.
1408. 01:23:38 But I want to jump to the last chapter in the book, which is Self Discipline is Virtue.
1409. 01:23:44 Virtue is Self Discipline.
1410. 01:23:47 And there's a quote he has here that I feel like sums up this entire chapter.
1411. 01:23:50 Words don't matter.
1412. 01:23:51 Words do.
1413. 01:23:53 And this is slowly becoming something I've been working towards and using as a mantra
1414. 01:23:59 of sorts.
1415. 01:24:00 This is worded significantly better than what I've worked on.
1416. 01:24:03 But I can think about things all day long, but until something is externalized that I
1417. 01:24:10 could show somebody else for them to see what I've done, it doesn't matter.
1418. 01:24:18 I haven't shown anything.
1419. 01:24:20 There's nothing to prove that this is something I'm working towards.
1420. 01:24:25 So until I act on my thoughts, it doesn't matter, which is a little bit hard to hear,
1421. 01:24:31 but also a great motivator.
1422. 01:24:33 Words don't matter.
1423. 01:24:34 Deeds do.
1424. 01:24:35 Yeah.
1425. 01:24:36 A different version of that, which I liked is that virtues can exist on paper only.
1426. 01:24:41 I like that.
1427. 01:24:42 It's got to be lived out.
1428. 01:24:45 And ultimately that is empowering because we have to be responsible for ourselves, yes,
1429. 01:24:50 but we all have the choice.
1430. 01:24:52 Every single day we have an opportunity to choose to live the virtuous life, whether
1431. 01:24:58 or not you are a stoic.
1432. 01:25:00 Yeah.
1433. 01:25:01 And there's an afterward in this.
1434. 01:25:03 We don't normally talk about the afterward, but there's one piece of this that I wanted
1435. 01:25:06 to bring up.
1436. 01:25:07 That's that he tells his story of how he sat down to write this book and almost quit on
1437. 01:25:15 it.
1438. 01:25:17 And then in using the stuff that he taught in this book, he's able to develop a more balanced
1439. 01:25:25 life over what he's done with his previous books, his two little boys now.
1440. 01:25:31 And his boys even noticed the massive difference.
1441. 01:25:33 They even thought he lost his writing job.
1442. 01:25:36 But it's because he's built up such a more balanced way of writing a book.
1443. 01:25:42 Basically he's doing that as a case study to show you like, I've screwed this up in
1444. 01:25:46 the past too.
1445. 01:25:47 I'm still working on getting better at this.
1446. 01:25:49 I'm still developing my own skills in this realm.
1447. 01:25:54 Don't compare yourself to me.
1448. 01:25:55 Basically is what he's saying.
1449. 01:25:56 He doesn't ever allude to that, but that's the way I took it.
1450. 01:26:00 There's a lot of things that he's done wrong to.
1451. 01:26:03 And I'm very grateful that he was willing to put his own personal case study in here because
1452. 01:26:07 I feel like it puts a lot more weight behind what he's saying in the book.
1453. 01:26:11 Yeah, I really like this section.
1454. 01:26:15 Tells some of the details of the story are interesting to me about how he knew that this
1455. 01:26:21 second book was coming because he signed the deal for the four different virtues.
1456. 01:26:27 And he was freaking out because he wasn't sure how it was going to come together, but
1457. 01:26:31 he just kind of trusted the process.
1458. 01:26:32 And then all of a sudden the way became clear because he was just showing up every day and
1459. 01:26:38 working on it.
1460. 01:26:39 So there's a lot of inspiration to be had there.
1461. 01:26:42 There's also some nuggets I feel in like how they modified their family lifestyle with
1462. 01:26:50 COVID and how they're not just embracing the return to what is normal, but just thinking
1463. 01:26:59 through like, what's the best version of this for us and influencing some control and some
1464. 01:27:05 putting the thumb on the scale, essentially, which I really believe that that is that was
1465. 01:27:10 the lesson I learned from the lockdowns too.
1466. 01:27:12 It was like, we got to find new ways to do things and we don't want to just go back to
1467. 01:27:15 the way things used to be.
1468. 01:27:17 What is best for us?
1469. 01:27:18 And when you think about that way, think about it that way, you realize some different
1470. 01:27:23 options.
1471. 01:27:25 So I think this is really cool.
1472. 01:27:27 Really cool way to end it.
1473. 01:27:28 I think it's very inspiring.
1474. 01:27:29 It also kind of humanizes Ryan Holiday in a lot of ways.
1475. 01:27:33 He's sharing some of his struggles.
1476. 01:27:36 That doesn't devalue anything that he says in my opinion.
1477. 01:27:40 That makes him more relatable, more believable, et cetera.
1478. 01:27:45 I think higher of him having shared that, it's interesting because that's also coupled
1479. 01:27:50 with the other stuff that I read in the other books and just kind of realizing that he's
1480. 01:27:55 optimizing for something that isn't quite the way that I would want to optimize things
1481. 01:28:00 and so that's got me thinking that the next book, meh.
1482. 01:28:06 I don't think that's a result of anything that is in this afterward here specifically.
1483. 01:28:13 I really appreciated the fact that he added this, even though this is page 300 now at
1484. 01:28:18 this point.
1485. 01:28:19 Correct.
1486. 01:28:20 Yeah, it's a long one.
1487. 01:28:21 Probably at that point thinking like, is this book ever going to end?
1488. 01:28:23 This is a very effective way to end it.
1489. 01:28:25 All right, let's step into action items unless there's something else you want to cover here,
1490. 01:28:29 Mike.
1491. 01:28:30 Nah, let's do it.
1492. 01:28:31 Okay, so I had three that I've got written here.
1493. 01:28:35 One is this exercise in the morning.
1494. 01:28:37 These are very practical.
1495. 01:28:39 You could actually judge me on these.
1496. 01:28:40 Doing exercise in the mornings, my goal is to take Sundays off from that.
1497. 01:28:45 I don't know how that's going to work on the Apple Watch.
1498. 01:28:47 I've got to figure that one out.
1499. 01:28:48 Surely people take rest days and don't have to lose their exercise streak, but hey,
1500. 01:28:53 that is what it is.
1501. 01:28:54 The second one is my evening tea in a book to help me with the sleep component.
1502. 01:29:02 And obviously I've started all of these already with some success, but I want to make sure
1503. 01:29:07 that we touch base with them next time and I can continue those so we can have a check
1504. 01:29:10 in point.
1505. 01:29:11 And then the last one is no phone before breakfast.
1506. 01:29:15 Just because it's easy to get into like negative news.
1507. 01:29:20 I just don't, I don't want to do that before breakfast.
1508. 01:29:25 And I know that for me, that means it's roughly a couple hours before I would ever open my
1509. 01:29:32 phone to even check the weather.
1510. 01:29:34 So there's that.
1511. 01:29:36 Anyway, those are the three exercise evening tea in a book, no phone before breakfast.
1512. 01:29:40 How about you?
1513. 01:29:42 All right.
1514. 01:29:43 I like the no phone before breakfast.
1515. 01:29:45 I didn't have an action item from this book specifically related to that, but I've been
1516. 01:29:51 thinking about this because I have a group of guys at my church, discipleship group essentially.
1517. 01:29:58 And we use the U version Bible app because they have these reading plans that you can
1518. 01:30:02 do as a group.
1519. 01:30:03 And I like how you go through the chronol, we're do the chronological reading plan.
1520. 01:30:06 And then the last thing it adds to every single daily reading section is what did you get?
1521. 01:30:12 So you go into it looking for something to share with the group and you find it as opposed
1522. 01:30:19 to just like cranking through it.
1523. 01:30:21 So I've liked doing that.
1524. 01:30:23 However, we've done it the last couple of years in a row.
1525. 01:30:27 And I am really thinking that for this next year, I want to, I want to just read the paper
1526. 01:30:33 version to my Bible that I have on my nightstand because I don't want to grab my phone at the
1527. 01:30:38 beginning of the day.
1528. 01:30:40 Because most of the time I have the discipline not to check the news, not to check the mail,
1529. 01:30:45 not to check the slack, whatever, but it's there.
1530. 01:30:49 So every once in a while, I find myself there and it's like, what the heck am I doing?
1531. 01:30:54 How did I get here again?
1532. 01:30:57 Right.
1533. 01:30:58 So my two action items are getting up early and that means going to bed early.
1534. 01:31:05 In bed by 10 p.m., I feel like that's probably the earliest I could do it with our schedule
1535. 01:31:10 and getting up earlier, that means protecting that eight hours of sleep means that 6 a.m.,
1536. 01:31:16 not as early as Jobulig.
1537. 01:31:19 Also in bed by 9.15.
1538. 01:31:22 So kind of the same before 9.15 some nights.
1539. 01:31:28 If my wife's out of town, it's like 8.15, 8.30.
1540. 01:31:30 So sounds glorious.
1541. 01:31:33 I sleep a little longer.
1542. 01:31:34 Not feasible.
1543. 01:31:36 Yeah.
1544. 01:31:37 So I really want to get into that habit.
1545. 01:31:39 I don't want to modify it for a single day.
1546. 01:31:42 I want this to be every day.
1547. 01:31:43 I think that's the value of the routine.
1548. 01:31:46 So I think that's feasible in bed by 10 up by 6.
1549. 01:31:50 Alright, style and rating.
1550. 01:31:52 It's Ryan Holiday.
1551. 01:31:55 He's a master storyteller.
1552. 01:31:57 I feel like it would be very difficult to argue with that.
1553. 01:32:00 I know that he has done, I feel like he's done quite a bit different this time with
1554. 01:32:05 how he tells those stories in a positive way.
1555. 01:32:09 It's interesting to me how many times Lou Gehrig came up throughout the book, not as like
1556. 01:32:14 here's another Lou Gehrig story.
1557. 01:32:16 It's like here's a two liner that shows how Lou Gehrig's situation played into this topic
1558. 01:32:24 of focus.
1559. 01:32:25 That happened quite a bit.
1560. 01:32:27 The Queen Elizabeth comes up quite a bit from the point she's introduced in the beginning
1561. 01:32:32 of Part 2.
1562. 01:32:33 So I love that he did that.
1563. 01:32:36 It made it very engaging and I could read this very quickly.
1564. 01:32:39 I'm not sure how I feel about the segmented off piece, like the shorter chapter component.
1565. 01:32:45 I feel like it's an interesting way for him to put this together.
1566. 01:32:48 It definitely has an error of like the almost atomic note concept, like you were saying
1567. 01:32:55 the Seth Godin concept.
1568. 01:32:57 It definitely has that error.
1569. 01:32:59 I've always kind of appreciated that take.
1570. 01:33:02 I'm not sure how I feel about it with Ryan Holiday though, because I've always appreciated
1571. 01:33:07 like the depth that he brings to things and I can tell he's got a lot of depth here without
1572. 01:33:12 being I don't feel superfluous on many things.
1573. 01:33:16 So I feel like it's well put together.
1574. 01:33:20 So I'm not sure how I feel about the little tiny pieces component, but at the same time
1575. 01:33:25 I really enjoyed reading this book.
1576. 01:33:27 I don't have like qualms with I've got you pegged here, Ryan.
1577. 01:33:34 This is one that I know that personally self-discipline is something that I've personally
1578. 01:33:39 struggled with for a long time and I know that it's like one of my weak points.
1579. 01:33:45 And having said that, like this has helped me put together like some minor things that
1580. 01:33:50 I've never fully pieced together and has kind of given me some of the reasons to work on
1581. 01:33:57 some things and being okay with doing things the hard way sometimes and seeing the benefit
1582. 01:34:02 of that.
1583. 01:34:03 But at the same time to kind of go back to Benjamin Franklin's quote about searching for
1584. 01:34:09 vices, like it made me kind of realize how many like little bad habits that I have here
1585. 01:34:14 in there.
1586. 01:34:15 It's like, okay, well, I don't know how to work through this, but I need to at least be
1587. 01:34:20 aware of these and be willing to shut those down.
1588. 01:34:23 So to me, I feel like this is a very solid book.
1589. 01:34:27 I've already recommended it a couple of times to folks that I know were kind of in the same
1590. 01:34:30 boat as I am as far as like, how do I develop this idea of self-discipline?
1591. 01:34:37 Like how do I do that?
1592. 01:34:39 So I've already recommended it a couple of times to folks.
1593. 01:34:42 To me, this is an easy 5.0 book.
1594. 01:34:44 Like, I absolutely love this.
1595. 01:34:45 It's a Ryan Holiday book.
1596. 01:34:47 I love the way he tells the stories.
1597. 01:34:48 I love the way he's coming at these topics.
1598. 01:34:51 I'm not a stoic, I have no intentions of being a stoic, but I know that a lot of the stoic
1599. 01:34:56 ideas tend to overlap with my own viewpoints.
1600. 01:35:00 So that's easy for me to jump on board with.
1601. 01:35:04 So 5.0 for me.
1602. 01:35:07 All right.
1603. 01:35:08 So it keeps coming up.
1604. 01:35:10 I feel like I need to defend some of the comments I made at the beginning.
1605. 01:35:15 Let me dive into real briefly something that shared in the Snow Leopard book.
1606. 01:35:19 They talk about the content pyramid.
1607. 01:35:21 And the goal of this is essentially to become known for a niche that you own.
1608. 01:35:27 All right.
1609. 01:35:28 So they have what they call the content pyramid, five different levels.
1610. 01:35:31 And there's this 1% rule, which kind of underlays all this.
1611. 01:35:35 90% of users consume the content, 9% of users curate, organize and update the content.
1612. 01:35:40 1% of users actually create the content.
1613. 01:35:42 So the content pyramid, there are these different levels.
1614. 01:35:45 Level 1 is consumption.
1615. 01:35:47 You can passively consume or you could actively consume where you're choosing what to consume.
1616. 01:35:51 I think everybody who listens to bookworm is involved in the active consumption phase
1617. 01:35:55 because you get something out of listening to the conversations.
1618. 01:35:59 Level 2 is curation.
1619. 01:36:00 This is where you're either sharing, you're adding your own opinion or you're curating
1620. 01:36:04 and adding some insight.
1621. 01:36:06 This is where Ryan Holiday is.
1622. 01:36:08 And this was kind of shocking to me.
1623. 01:36:10 So above that, level 3, obvious connection.
1624. 01:36:14 And this is where Mark Manson resides.
1625. 01:36:19 Level 4 is the non-obvious connection.
1626. 01:36:21 This is where you get into the deep thinkers.
1627. 01:36:25 And I know we went almost a whole episode without talking about how to read a book by
1628. 01:36:29 Mortimer Adler.
1629. 01:36:30 You almost read it.
1630. 01:36:32 Almost made it.
1631. 01:36:34 But that is an example of these non-obvious connections.
1632. 01:36:37 And as I was reading this, and the category 5 is the category creation.
1633. 01:36:41 So as I'm reading this, but the Snow Leopard's book, I'm realizing that the non-obvious
1634. 01:36:46 connections, those are the ones that really mean the most to me.
1635. 01:36:49 Centopical reading, how to read a book, why I brought that one up now.
1636. 01:36:54 But it's never the thing that grabs you the moment that you read it.
1637. 01:36:58 And essentially with Ryan Holiday being the stoic guy, yes, he's level 5 category creation.
1638. 01:37:05 But the way that he's gotten there has essentially been by curating things that already existed.
1639. 01:37:11 Stoic philosophy and being really good at storytelling.
1640. 01:37:15 That's great.
1641. 01:37:17 But I think I would rather look for the people who are going to be the non-obvious connectors.
1642. 01:37:24 I want to read more of the difficult books.
1643. 01:37:26 I don't really like, I don't even know how to say his name.
1644. 01:37:30 Nicholas Taleb, the anti-fragile guy.
1645. 01:37:34 But he's got some good ideas.
1646. 01:37:37 And I need to dig in there and figure out what he's really saying.
1647. 01:37:40 So I walk away from discipline as destiny, feeling all charged up, excited, motivated,
1648. 01:37:47 not as much as courage is calling.
1649. 01:37:50 But essentially that's the formula for Ryan Holiday.
1650. 01:37:53 He's going to explain some obvious stuff and encourage you to actually go do it, which
1651. 01:37:58 is completely fine, except that that is not speaking to me as loudly as it once did.
1652. 01:38:04 I also would say that I don't feel as excited walking away from this one as I did from
1653. 01:38:11 courage is calling.
1654. 01:38:12 I liked courage is calling better.
1655. 01:38:15 And maybe that's just the subject matter and courage was the thing that I needed at the
1656. 01:38:19 time.
1657. 01:38:20 And discipline is an important topic, but not something that I'm actively excited about.
1658. 01:38:25 So maybe it's just, you know, that it's a timing issue.
1659. 01:38:28 That could be.
1660. 01:38:29 I actually do really like the stories, but would have preferred that they be packaged
1661. 01:38:35 into larger chapters.
1662. 01:38:38 I think it would have been my preference would be tell me everything that you want to tell
1663. 01:38:44 me about Lou Gehrig.
1664. 01:38:45 Let's just have a chapter on Lou Gehrig and talk about all the principles around that.
1665. 01:38:49 So I don't have to like keep tabs of all these things in all these different places.
1666. 01:38:53 I felt like I had 60 different chrome tabs open inside my brain when I was reading this
1667. 01:38:58 one.
1668. 01:38:59 I'm not at all the time.
1669. 01:39:00 So I'm used to that.
1670. 01:39:01 It was a little uncomfortable.
1671. 01:39:03 So, and that's even without taking action on one of my previous action items, which is
1672. 01:39:09 reading more than one book at a time.
1673. 01:39:11 I mean, this was this felt like reading more than one book at a time.
1674. 01:39:17 All that to say he's a phenomenal storyteller.
1675. 01:39:20 There's one story in particular here that just really impressed me from turn the other
1676. 01:39:24 cheek where the Nazi walked up on stage.
1677. 01:39:27 So Martin Luther King Jr. was given a speech and starts attacking him.
1678. 01:39:30 Not only does Martin Luther King Jr. not fight back, but when the crowd goes to intervene,
1679. 01:39:35 he's like, don't touch him.
1680. 01:39:36 Don't touch him.
1681. 01:39:37 And then after talking to the guy and saying, you're going to be okay.
1682. 01:39:40 No one's going to hurt you.
1683. 01:39:41 Would you come back to my office and we could talk this through with an actual Nazi.
1684. 01:39:48 So not people who are changing their names on Twitter or saying stupid stuff, an actual
1685. 01:39:55 Nazi professed Nazi.
1686. 01:39:57 Who is there in the flesh beating you up?
1687. 01:39:59 Like that, that is what turning the other cheek really means.
1688. 01:40:03 Could I do that?
1689. 01:40:04 Like, again, like you look at these stories and I don't think I got that in me, but I'm
1690. 01:40:08 I'm aspiring to get to that level of mastery where yeah, I could actually do that.
1691. 01:40:13 Right.
1692. 01:40:14 So really, really good book.
1693. 01:40:17 I do think courage is calling is better.
1694. 01:40:19 And I have a little nitpicks with this one, which really don't affect.
1695. 01:40:24 I feel the the rating of this in general, just stylistically, we're going in different
1696. 01:40:29 directions.
1697. 01:40:31 So I'm going to rate it at 4.5 just because I do like courage is calling a little bit
1698. 01:40:34 better.
1699. 01:40:35 And some of his other books, the obstacles away and still this is the key specifically.
1700. 01:40:40 I liked those better than than this one, but it as much as I kind of railed on it at the
1701. 01:40:46 beginning, like, this is a phenomenal book.
1702. 01:40:48 And I would recommend that everybody read this one.
1703. 01:40:52 As I said at the beginning, I'm not super excited to continue the journey down the stoic virtues.
1704. 01:40:59 I kind of want to get to the end of that so we can figure out what's next from Ryan holiday.
1705. 01:41:04 And maybe part of that is just I want the surprise.
1706. 01:41:08 I want to know that the I want to be surprised with what the next thing he announces is kind
1707. 01:41:13 of like the apple events, right?
1708. 01:41:14 When you don't read the leaks going into it and you see the presentation up on stage,
1709. 01:41:18 you're like, Oh, that looks so cool.
1710. 01:41:21 I prefer that.
1711. 01:41:22 So maybe that's just personality.
1712. 01:41:24 I don't know, but really good book.
1713. 01:41:27 Just taking it in context of everything else.
1714. 01:41:30 I'm going to rate it slightly lower at 4.5.
1715. 01:41:33 Fair enough.
1716. 01:41:34 All right, let's shelf it.
1717. 01:41:36 What's next, Mike?
1718. 01:41:38 Next is mind management, not time management by David Kadevi.
1719. 01:41:42 I think this was recommended by Carol in the last live recording, but it has been on my
1720. 01:41:50 radar for a little while.
1721. 01:41:54 And this one I have received.
1722. 01:41:56 I have not started it yet.
1723. 01:41:58 I'm very excited to dig into this one, though.
1724. 01:42:01 It should be good.
1725. 01:42:02 This was actually the one I was going to pick next that you picked it ahead of me.
1726. 01:42:06 Excited about getting through that one.
1727. 01:42:09 Following that one, I feel like this is a book we should have covered at some point.
1728. 01:42:14 It's ranked pretty high on a lot of lists.
1729. 01:42:16 I see it come up very regularly and I've wanted to cover it for a while.
1730. 01:42:21 But this is Robert Green's book, The 48 Laws of Power.
1731. 01:42:26 And part of me feels like that would be a good follow up to discipline is destiny.
1732. 01:42:31 Not 100% certain that that's true, but I would like to cover it partially because it's
1733. 01:42:36 on a lot of lists.
1734. 01:42:37 And it seems interesting to me.
1735. 01:42:38 So we'll give it a shot.
1736. 01:42:41 48 Laws of Power.
1737. 01:42:42 All right.
1738. 01:42:43 How about gap books, Mike?
1739. 01:42:44 I do have a gap book.
1740. 01:42:46 Actually has several gap books because I stumbled across some recommendations that looked awesome
1741. 01:42:51 from Ali Abdahl.
1742. 01:42:53 Still waiting for our link.
1743. 01:42:57 But the book is, Someday is Today by Matthew Dix.
1744. 01:43:02 The subtitle here is 22 Simple Actionable Ways to Propely Your Creative Life.
1745. 01:43:08 Really it's a book about showing up and creating every day, which is a little bit of a thing
1746. 01:43:13 for me recently.
1747. 01:43:14 Fair enough.
1748. 01:43:15 All right.
1749. 01:43:16 What have we got?
1750. 01:43:19 So I'm not really doing a gap book right now, at least not officially.
1751. 01:43:21 I've got a bank of books that I may be working through.
1752. 01:43:25 I'm not real sure how much book time I'm going to be cranking through now that I'm reading
1753. 01:43:29 a little bit more.
1754. 01:43:30 So we'll see.
1755. 01:43:31 Got some Charles Dickens books I'm kind of eyeing as well, which doesn't really fit
1756. 01:43:37 Mike's taste, but that's true.
1757. 01:43:39 It fits fine.
1758. 01:43:41 So there's that.
1759. 01:43:42 But regardless, we're very grateful to those of you who have joined us live today.
1760. 01:43:46 It's been kind of fun to read the chat as we go on YouTube.
1761. 01:43:49 If you haven't joined us live, it's kind of a fun little experience.
1762. 01:43:51 You get a little behind the scenes stuff before and after the episode as well, kind
1763. 01:43:54 of some bonus extras, like when Joe shows up late because he's fighting with tech.
1764. 01:44:00 But regardless, we're always grateful to have you in the chats, fun to interact live as
1765. 01:44:05 well.
1766. 01:44:06 But we're also super grateful for those of you who join us in the club.
1767. 01:44:10 Bookworm Club is kind of a cool little place, but club.bookworm.fm.
1768. 01:44:15 And especially to those of you who are members within that.
1769. 01:44:19 So bookworm.fm/membership.
1770. 01:44:21 It's a paid membership that will get you access to special wallpaper, special area on the
1771. 01:44:27 forums, our undying gratitude, Mike's mind node files, all sorts of cool stuff.
1772. 01:44:33 So we'd love to have you in there if you're not already.
1773. 01:44:36 And if you are, we absolutely love having you on board and we're grateful that you help
1774. 01:44:39 us keep the lights on.
1775. 01:44:40 Yes, absolutely.
1776. 01:44:42 Regarding the mind node files, there's actually a couple different versions in there too.
1777. 01:44:45 So you have the PDF, which is what I've created, but then there's also mind node files.
1778. 01:44:51 So if you use mind node or want to convert it, it's actually an editable mind mapping
1779. 01:44:56 file.
1780. 01:44:57 So you can build on what I have already started for you with these mind maps.
1781. 01:45:03 But if you are reading along with us, pick up mind management, not time management by
1782. 01:45:07 David Cadevi and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.