213: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

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1. 00:00:00 All right, we got some follow up to get through here.
2. 00:00:04 You've got a bunch of action items.
3. 00:00:06 So I'm actually going to let you go first, Corey.
4. 00:00:08 How did you do on these?
5. 00:00:10 - Okay, I do, but I have to disclaimer this for a minute
6. 00:00:13 and I have to give myself a get out of deal free card.
7. 00:00:15 (laughs)
8. 00:00:16 I'm listening to Mike on focused interview Stephen Hackett
9. 00:00:22 and we're talking about Stephen's sabbatical.
10. 00:00:26 And Mike was like, oh, well, you know,
11. 00:00:27 I'm going to have family coming in
12. 00:00:29 and they're coming in from, is it Hawaii, Mike,
13. 00:00:31 did I remember that right?
14. 00:00:32 - Yep.
15. 00:00:33 - Yeah, okay.
16. 00:00:33 And he's like, I don't want to do,
17. 00:00:35 I'm going to try to do as little as I can and all this stuff.
18. 00:00:36 And I'm pretty, and I'm thinking to myself,
19. 00:00:38 I'm pretty sure we're going to record like around the time
20. 00:00:42 when his family's coming in.
21. 00:00:43 - Yep, I'm on there, right.
22. 00:00:45 - Yeah, and it's like, and we shouldn't do that.
23. 00:00:47 And it bothered me, like, I'm listening to this
24. 00:00:49 and I'm like, we should not do that.
25. 00:00:51 Like we should not do this, we should not do this.
26. 00:00:53 And then I'm thinking, like in the other side of my brain,
27. 00:00:56 I'm thinking, can I get meditations done in time
28. 00:01:00 to where like, if we changed it,
29. 00:01:01 like do I actually have the time?
30. 00:01:03 'Cause it's finals right now, right?
31. 00:01:04 So it's crazy, crazy time.
32. 00:01:06 So all of that, we pushed up the recording.
33. 00:01:08 The recording is, you know, what five days earlier
34. 00:01:12 than it normally would be.
35. 00:01:14 So therefore, I give myself a get a jail free card on these.
36. 00:01:17 And if you don't, I don't really care
37. 00:01:21 because I had finals and I got the book done.
38. 00:01:23 So, you know, I hit the priority stuff.
39. 00:01:26 All right, so here we go.
40. 00:01:27 What will I do to take action?
41. 00:01:28 So my first one was, what do I do to take action
42. 00:01:30 on one of my creative ideas and explore alternative
43. 00:01:34 publishing formats?
44. 00:01:35 I am happy and proud to say that I developed a prototype
45. 00:01:39 and I shared it with Mike, right?
46. 00:01:41 And it is by no means great.
47. 00:01:44 It is by no means anything I would share more publicly
48. 00:01:46 or more broadly at this point in my life.
49. 00:01:49 But it is something that explores a different format.
50. 00:01:52 And then what I'm pumped about with that is I saw,
51. 00:01:58 oh, Mike, help me with her name.
52. 00:01:59 And she's the tiny experiments.
53. 00:02:03 - And Laura LeCouff.
54. 00:02:05 - Yeah, and Laura LeCouff, right?
55. 00:02:06 She shared a thing called Write Book,
56. 00:02:09 which I had never heard of.
57. 00:02:10 And Write Book is a, essentially like,
58. 00:02:13 it's like a very specific website format
59. 00:02:16 for publishing books as a website that you can,
60. 00:02:21 and it's a really, really clean looking.
61. 00:02:24 Now, the thing I'm holding up on for starting this thing is,
62. 00:02:29 I don't think I want to run my own web server.
63. 00:02:32 I don't think I want the responsibility
64. 00:02:33 of running my own web server,
65. 00:02:34 but I told Mike via text,
66. 00:02:36 I kinda wanna like a reason to buy a Mac mini.
67. 00:02:39 So like, that's a reason to buy a Mac mini.
68. 00:02:42 And then I have a web server.
69. 00:02:44 But at the same time, I don't know what I don't know,
70. 00:02:45 and I haven't been able to learn about it for finals.
71. 00:02:47 But the minimum version of that,
72. 00:02:49 and the one Mike kinda pushed me towards
73. 00:02:50 and suggested for me is to just go to like,
74. 00:02:54 blue ocean or go to, you know, digital ocean or wherever,
75. 00:02:57 and just buy, you know, virtual space on some server
76. 00:03:00 and run it off of there.
77. 00:03:01 So that would be the next step, right?
78. 00:03:03 Like, the next step of this would be for me to explore,
79. 00:03:07 publishing this via something like Write Book.
80. 00:03:09 And if you're looking for it,
81. 00:03:11 Write Book is by 37 Signals,
82. 00:03:14 and I think it's like once,
83. 00:03:16 is like their product division.
84. 00:03:19 It's called once or something like that.
85. 00:03:21 So it's pretty interesting looking.
86. 00:03:23 Okay, that's number one.
87. 00:03:25 I did not think about the next one.
88. 00:03:26 What's your thing not as a professor?
89. 00:03:29 Didn't think about it.
90. 00:03:30 So I'm trying to figure out like,
91. 00:03:30 what's the thing not as a professor have no idea?
92. 00:03:33 What's the thing that excites me and what does that mean?
93. 00:03:36 I think I've talked about this one before,
94. 00:03:37 but this one stayed true.
95. 00:03:39 It's learning.
96. 00:03:40 I just love to learn.
97. 00:03:42 And then the extension of that is,
98. 00:03:44 I love to learn new cool things
99. 00:03:47 and then help other people learn new cool things.
100. 00:03:49 So that's definitely one that I think
101. 00:03:51 is the thing that excites me.
102. 00:03:53 And then I didn't even remotely start this next one.
103. 00:03:56 Every day for 30 days straight,
104. 00:03:57 write down what you want and how you wanna be.
105. 00:04:00 Commit to taking no longer than two minutes
106. 00:04:02 for this exercise.
107. 00:04:03 This will not happen unless something gets thrown
108. 00:04:08 into my face every day at a certain time.
109. 00:04:12 And if I don't have that thing thrown into my face,
110. 00:04:13 I will forget to do this every time.
111. 00:04:15 So I didn't even get to start this one.
112. 00:04:17 So Mike, those are my follow-up items.
113. 00:04:19 I'm really happy that I hit the big one
114. 00:04:22 and then have like a plan for over break
115. 00:04:24 for what I wanna do with the big one.
116. 00:04:26 And then I'm okay with the fact
117. 00:04:27 that I didn't hit the other ones
118. 00:04:29 'cause the book is red.
119. 00:04:30 So how about you?
120. 00:04:31 What are your follow-up items?
121. 00:04:32 All right, well, first of all,
122. 00:04:34 I did not know that when you were asking me to move the date,
123. 00:04:37 you were gonna use that as an excuse
124. 00:04:39 for not doing your action items.
125. 00:04:41 (laughs)
126. 00:04:43 But I'll allow it.
127. 00:04:45 Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
128. 00:04:47 So first, actually I should follow-up
129. 00:04:50 from a previous action item
130. 00:04:52 because I mentioned in the last episode
131. 00:04:55 that I was working with a fractional video editor.
132. 00:04:58 This was something that you really pushed me to do
133. 00:05:00 when we were reading, which one was that?
134. 00:05:03 Anti-time management, I think?
135. 00:05:06 Yeah, it was zero that one or free time with Jenny Blake.
136. 00:05:10 It was one of those two, but I don't remember which one it was.
137. 00:05:13 So I committed to doing it and last time I had mentioned
138. 00:05:16 that I had started working with the company,
139. 00:05:19 but it was basically going through a trial
140. 00:05:22 and hadn't done anything with it yet.
141. 00:05:24 I got the first result back
142. 00:05:26 and I shared it with you prior to the call.
143. 00:05:29 And I think this is going better
144. 00:05:32 than I could have possibly imagined it would. (laughs)
145. 00:05:36 Which makes me feel stupid for taking so long to do it,
146. 00:05:40 but that one is going really well
147. 00:05:43 and I'm excited about getting help in other areas as well.
148. 00:05:46 So the other action items from the previous episode
149. 00:05:50 create a short list of people
150. 00:05:51 whose opinion of you really matters.
151. 00:05:54 I sort of forgot about this one.
152. 00:05:56 I didn't do this yet.
153. 00:05:57 Have an answer for the question, what's your thing?
154. 00:06:00 I feel like this one I made progress on.
155. 00:06:04 I don't know exactly what this is yet,
156. 00:06:07 but I will say that I'm getting ready
157. 00:06:10 to do the next practical PKM cohort.
158. 00:06:13 And as a result of that coming up,
159. 00:06:16 I've actually been working with a designer developer
160. 00:06:19 to create a new sales page for that.
161. 00:06:21 As part of that process,
162. 00:06:22 I actually did a bunch of video calls with people
163. 00:06:26 who have gone through the cohort previously.
164. 00:06:28 I put out a call and said,
165. 00:06:29 I want to put together some case studies,
166. 00:06:30 anyone willing to hop on a call with me
167. 00:06:33 and answer some questions basically.
168. 00:06:36 So I did that with three or four different people.
169. 00:06:39 And that was really enlightening
170. 00:06:41 to see what they got out of the cohorts.
171. 00:06:44 Sharing all of the stuff with the designer developer,
172. 00:06:47 they had me fill out this big long form.
173. 00:06:48 It took me probably three or four hours to do.
174. 00:06:51 And it was all stuff that I knew,
175. 00:06:52 but just like explain it a million different ways.
176. 00:06:56 So having to go through that
177. 00:06:58 and then seeing what they got out of that
178. 00:07:01 and putting the copy together,
179. 00:07:02 'cause actually the copy is approved.
180. 00:07:05 So now they're designing it.
181. 00:07:07 But seeing basically somebody who is new
182. 00:07:10 to the Mike Schmutz universe,
183. 00:07:11 kind of restate what I do was really helpful as well.
184. 00:07:17 So I think the thing that I do
185. 00:07:20 is I demystify obsidian and show people how to use it
186. 00:07:24 in practical, tangible ways.
187. 00:07:27 I think we talked in the last episode
188. 00:07:30 about the high ticket offer.
189. 00:07:31 And I do want to experiment working closely
190. 00:07:35 with people to develop these different systems
191. 00:07:37 in terms of getting attention, building an audience,
192. 00:07:41 and then ultimately building and selling something.
193. 00:07:45 That really gets me excited
194. 00:07:46 when I think about helping people go from,
195. 00:07:49 I have these ideas, I wanna get more out of them,
196. 00:07:52 and I want to ultimately sell something online.
197. 00:07:56 And that kind of goes in alignment
198. 00:07:58 with all of the stuff that we talked about.
199. 00:08:01 And a lot of the books that we've read lately
200. 00:08:04 never play it safe, for example, good work,
201. 00:08:06 stuff like that.
202. 00:08:08 Where I wanna help people along that path,
203. 00:08:11 which now I've gone through.
204. 00:08:14 Not that I'm gonna tell them, quit your job,
205. 00:08:17 but give them some success,
206. 00:08:20 and then they can decide,
207. 00:08:21 is there enough signal here for me
208. 00:08:22 to want to completely pivot?
209. 00:08:25 But you really don't know
210. 00:08:25 until you've tried some of that stuff.
211. 00:08:27 So I think that's the hardest part for a lot of people
212. 00:08:29 is going from zero to one.
213. 00:08:31 Once you have something,
214. 00:08:32 then you can figure out how to scale it, but.
215. 00:08:34 - Do me a favor, the signal to noise thing that you say,
216. 00:08:37 say it again for me.
217. 00:08:38 (laughs)
218. 00:08:39 - Yeah, make noise listen for signal.
219. 00:08:41 - Okay, make noise listen for signal, okay.
220. 00:08:44 - And what that means to me is when I would share things
221. 00:08:50 online when I was going through the ship 30 for 30 cohort,
222. 00:08:53 I found that when I'm talking about productivity,
223. 00:08:55 I'm talking about creativity.
224. 00:08:57 I get people who will like things and retweet things,
225. 00:09:00 whatever, but then the minute that I started sharing
226. 00:09:04 how I do that sort of stuff inside of Obsidian,
227. 00:09:07 I would get 10 times the amount of engagement.
228. 00:09:11 So the numbers are sort of irrelevant.
229. 00:09:12 It's more the trends.
230. 00:09:15 When I do this, I receive more signal.
231. 00:09:20 That's basically what you do,
232. 00:09:22 and you don't really know what the thing is
233. 00:09:23 until you share all this stuff online,
234. 00:09:25 and then you can start to build these flywheels,
235. 00:09:28 and that's what I think I'm kind of uniquely positioned to do.
236. 00:09:32 I just went through a training today,
237. 00:09:34 which was kind of along the lines of newsletter growth
238. 00:09:37 and finding your niche, and one of the questions they ask
239. 00:09:40 is what is the thing that you can do better
240. 00:09:42 than anybody else in the world?
241. 00:09:44 And I don't have the evidence of this yet,
242. 00:09:46 but I kind of think this is it.
243. 00:09:48 (laughs)
244. 00:09:49 You know, the PKM systems that will help you
245. 00:09:54 get valuable assets from the things,
246. 00:09:57 the notes and the ideas that you collect,
247. 00:09:59 and then how do you push that across the finish line
248. 00:10:02 in terms of creating something valuable
249. 00:10:03 that the marketplace actually wants.
250. 00:10:05 So.
251. 00:10:06 - Nice.
252. 00:10:07 - Yeah, that's all right.
253. 00:10:08 - All right, and then the last one,
254. 00:10:09 what do I do for fun?
255. 00:10:11 I've talked about this on Focus, I'm thinking about this,
256. 00:10:13 I still don't have an answer to this.
257. 00:10:15 (laughs)
258. 00:10:16 - Okay, what do you not do for fun then?
259. 00:10:19 Maybe the negative side of this will help you.
260. 00:10:22 - So here's the thing that makes this tricky,
261. 00:10:23 is there are a lot of things that I do for work
262. 00:10:28 that are fun, but I enjoy reading books.
263. 00:10:33 I enjoy not for work, but I enjoy going for long runs.
264. 00:10:39 But I am classifying those as something
265. 00:10:41 that's something I do for my health.
266. 00:10:43 Reading books is something that I do for work.
267. 00:10:45 Like there has to be, and when my vision for this
268. 00:10:49 is what is the thing that I do purely for the activity itself?
269. 00:10:54 I get nothing else of value from it
270. 00:10:56 other than I really enjoy the thing.
271. 00:10:59 And that I don't know.
272. 00:11:01 - Okay, all right.
273. 00:11:03 - Not even guitar?
274. 00:11:05 - Well, I mean, I play bass currently,
275. 00:11:08 and I play it for the worship team, so.
276. 00:11:10 - So you're saying it's for the church, right?
277. 00:11:12 So it's got another purpose.
278. 00:11:14 - There's always some sort of justification
279. 00:11:16 for the things that I do.
280. 00:11:18 And that doesn't necessarily invalidate those things.
281. 00:11:24 But it does in my mind because that's the mindset
282. 00:11:27 I'm trying to break free from.
283. 00:11:30 If that makes any sense to anybody else.
284. 00:11:32 It's very clear in my own mind.
285. 00:11:34 You know, if I see that there's value in something
286. 00:11:39 I can kind of put together like a sales pitch
287. 00:11:42 for you should establish this habit.
288. 00:11:44 And then once I understand that the motivation is there,
289. 00:11:47 like I have no trouble doing that sort of thing.
290. 00:11:49 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
291. 00:11:50 - But you know, I just do this 'cause it's fun.
292. 00:11:53 I don't know what that is.
293. 00:11:55 - Okay, all right, we gotta have it longer.
294. 00:11:57 We gotta, like maybe that's a whole like,
295. 00:12:00 pre-show one day, us digging in and trying to figure out
296. 00:12:05 what Mike likes to do for fun.
297. 00:12:07 - Yeah, I guess, man, not looking forward to that one.
298. 00:12:12 - Board games?
299. 00:12:13 - Possibly, I do those not all the time,
300. 00:12:18 probably several times a week,
301. 00:12:21 but also like the justification
302. 00:12:24 for those in my mind is relationship building,
303. 00:12:28 a lot of I'm playing those with my family.
304. 00:12:30 So that's family time.
305. 00:12:31 That's not just Mike wants to do this time.
306. 00:12:35 - Yeah, like that's where my head went too,
307. 00:12:37 is I was like, oh, that's family time, you know?
308. 00:12:39 So it's hard.
309. 00:12:42 - We'll work on it.
310. 00:12:43 We'll work on it, Mike.
311. 00:12:44 We'll work on it.
312. 00:12:45 We're figured out. - All right.
313. 00:12:46 - Well, you ready to talk about today's book?
314. 00:12:49 - Yep, I guess, sort of, kind of.
315. 00:12:52 - Yeah.
316. 00:12:54 Okay, so today's book is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
317. 00:12:59 Corey is really excited about this one.
318. 00:13:02 - I have never been more excited in my life.
319. 00:13:06 - Well, I was nervous about this one as well.
320. 00:13:11 I shared this in the last episode,
321. 00:13:13 but one of the things that makes me nervous about this
322. 00:13:17 is that this is sort of held up as this book of ancient wisdom
323. 00:13:23 and there's so much incredibly great stuff here.
324. 00:13:27 And you hear so many people talk about this.
325. 00:13:31 It's sort of like, once you read this,
326. 00:13:33 you're gonna achieve enlightenment
327. 00:13:35 and your world will never be the same.
328. 00:13:38 And I kind of expected that that was not going to happen for me.
329. 00:13:43 And so I was nervous about talking about this book.
330. 00:13:46 I have no doubt there are people who looked at the title
331. 00:13:48 and they're like, "Oh, boy, this is gonna be a good one."
332. 00:13:50 And they may be disappointed.
333. 00:13:53 - Maybe.
334. 00:13:53 - I don't know.
335. 00:13:54 - Yeah, they may be.
336. 00:13:57 - It's a weird book because Marcus Aurelius
337. 00:14:01 never really intended for this to be published.
338. 00:14:05 It was sort of like his journal or his diary.
339. 00:14:08 That's not exactly it, but they're private writings.
340. 00:14:14 And so it's organized into these,
341. 00:14:17 well, there's an introduction
342. 00:14:18 'cause the one that we read is the Gregory Hayes translation.
343. 00:14:22 And so there's kind of an introduction by Gregory Hayes
344. 00:14:26 about Marcus Aurelius.
345. 00:14:28 That was the hardest part of the whole book
346. 00:14:30 for me to read, honestly.
347. 00:14:32 And then it gets into the 12 different books.
348. 00:14:37 Some of them have titles, some of them don't.
349. 00:14:39 For the sake of the outline,
350. 00:14:41 I did not actually put them in.
351. 00:14:43 Book two and three have the name of the place
352. 00:14:46 that Marcus Aurelius was in
353. 00:14:48 when he was capturing these deep thoughts.
354. 00:14:50 Book one is sort of debts and lessons.
355. 00:14:53 And in the introduction, it talks about how
356. 00:14:55 that was sort of the time that he was growing up
357. 00:15:01 and going through school.
358. 00:15:03 But other than that, it's just sort of
359. 00:15:05 all these little random bits of information.
360. 00:15:08 So I put in the outline the 12 different books.
361. 00:15:10 I have my mind map here and I have a couple different things
362. 00:15:14 from each one of these.
363. 00:15:15 My thought is that we'll just kind of go through this
364. 00:15:17 and share one or two things from each one of these
365. 00:15:21 that we wanna talk about.
366. 00:15:23 - Yeah, I had no idea.
367. 00:15:25 Like we're reading this book and I'm like,
368. 00:15:26 I have no idea how we're gonna talk about this book
369. 00:15:28 because here's what it reads like.
370. 00:15:31 It reads like somebody's fleeting notes in Zetlkastin.
371. 00:15:36 - Yep, okay.
372. 00:15:37 - That like somebody randomly lumped together.
373. 00:15:41 But they didn't, like I couldn't wrap my head around
374. 00:15:45 like why they lumped it together the way they did
375. 00:15:47 or how they lumped it together the way they did.
376. 00:15:49 And then Mike mentioned it, the intro is 60 pages long.
377. 00:15:54 So like the content of the book, you know,
378. 00:15:56 if you take the notes out of the back
379. 00:15:57 and then a couple other things, it's like 280 pages
380. 00:16:00 or something like that.
381. 00:16:01 I don't know what it is.
382. 00:16:02 It's like, you know, something.
383. 00:16:03 Well 60 of that is just the intro.
384. 00:16:05 It's explaining about Marcus Aurelius.
385. 00:16:08 It's explaining about stoicism.
386. 00:16:09 You know, it's explaining all these things.
387. 00:16:12 And I agree with you completely.
388. 00:16:13 Like I'm reading through this thinking,
389. 00:16:15 okay, when are we gonna get to the meditations?
390. 00:16:17 Like I wanna get to the meditations.
391. 00:16:18 When are we gonna get to the meditations?
392. 00:16:22 And so it's like, this is a, how do I say this?
393. 00:16:25 It's a very strange book, partially because what Mike said,
394. 00:16:28 I don't think it was ever meant to be a book.
395. 00:16:31 It was just meant to be a guy like,
396. 00:16:32 basically grabbing note cards and writing things down.
397. 00:16:36 And then he would throw the note card away
398. 00:16:37 or maybe he would like keep it around.
399. 00:16:38 And then somebody was like, oh,
400. 00:16:40 look at all these cool note cards.
401. 00:16:41 Like let's take these note cards
402. 00:16:42 and let's package them into something.
403. 00:16:45 I learned a decent amount though about like,
404. 00:16:49 you know, like the early Roman,
405. 00:16:52 or not even the early Roman Empire,
406. 00:16:54 but the Roman Empire and like people in stoicism,
407. 00:16:58 like I learned a bunch about that from the intro.
408. 00:16:59 So that was good.
409. 00:17:02 Yeah, so actually, I guess we should formally talk
410. 00:17:05 about the introduction here.
411. 00:17:08 This is the long section by the translator Gregory Hayes.
412. 00:17:12 A little bit of this is about the life of Marcus Aurelius,
413. 00:17:15 which gives context.
414. 00:17:17 There's a little bit about stoicism.
415. 00:17:19 There's a little bit about some of the key concepts
416. 00:17:22 that pop up throughout the meditations.
417. 00:17:27 Yeah, I've got a couple of things jotted down
418. 00:17:29 and I'll just share kind of the important things
419. 00:17:32 I think as we get into the books.
420. 00:17:34 So one of the things that pops up over and over and over again
421. 00:17:36 is the description or the mention of the logos,
422. 00:17:41 which I have a Bible college degree.
423. 00:17:44 I know what that means in a biblical context,
424. 00:17:47 but in terms of stoic philosophy,
425. 00:17:50 Gregory Hayes kind of mentions
426. 00:17:51 that it's rational connected thought.
427. 00:17:53 That's kind of what Marcus Aurelius defines
428. 00:17:56 as the difference between man and the animals.
429. 00:18:01 Yeah.
430. 00:18:02 So that's what that means.
431. 00:18:03 Well, I want to double down on this
432. 00:18:06 because if you didn't read the introduction well,
433. 00:18:12 like you skim through the introduction or something like that,
434. 00:18:14 I mean, the meditations will use the word logos
435. 00:18:18 over and over and over again.
436. 00:18:19 And I had to keep reminding myself like,
437. 00:18:21 what do they mean by logos?
438. 00:18:22 Like what does he mean by logos?
439. 00:18:24 What does he mean by logos?
440. 00:18:25 So it's like, that's a big important one.
441. 00:18:27 If you're thinking about reading this book,
442. 00:18:29 make sure you pay attention to that setting
443. 00:18:31 the way Gregory Hayes describes that word logo.
444. 00:18:34 So I could not agree with you more.
445. 00:18:36 There were two things I wanted to talk about
446. 00:18:38 in the introduction.
447. 00:18:38 This was one of them.
448. 00:18:39 And let's see if you hit my other one
449. 00:18:41 because this was a major one that if you don't wrap
450. 00:18:45 your head around this, it basically makes
451. 00:18:48 a lot of the rest of the book very confusing.
452. 00:18:50 Yeah.
453. 00:18:51 So well, I actually have a little bit of issue
454. 00:18:54 with that because it was hard for me to disconnect
455. 00:19:00 my understanding of logos from how it's used
456. 00:19:06 in biblical texts and going through Bible college
457. 00:19:08 where it's basically the written word.
458. 00:19:13 And then there's the rainbow,
459. 00:19:15 which is like the revelation revealed meaning behind it.
460. 00:19:22 So that's what I kept thinking of every time I had no word
461. 00:19:26 in logos and I had to catch myself every single time
462. 00:19:29 be like, oh, that's not actually what he means.
463. 00:19:34 And so that kind of hits at something that I think
464. 00:19:38 is inherently going to mean that I don't get as much
465. 00:19:41 out of this as a lot of other people is like this key
466. 00:19:45 concept that he's talking about right at the beginning.
467. 00:19:48 We kind of have a difference of opinion
468. 00:19:49 on what that actually means.
469. 00:19:51 (laughs)
470. 00:19:52 Yeah, let me describe it a little bit more
471. 00:19:54 just in case it helps anybody.
472. 00:19:56 So there's a really interesting connection here
473. 00:19:58 that you would say stoicism in stoicism, the logos,
474. 00:20:02 it ties directly to this idea of free will
475. 00:20:07 and like, can I do a thing?
476. 00:20:08 And like, how does the logos play into me directing it?
477. 00:20:12 And this is a quote.
478. 00:20:14 So according to this theory, man is like a dog
479. 00:20:17 tied to a moving wagon.
480. 00:20:19 If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon,
481. 00:20:21 he will be dragged by it.
482. 00:20:22 Yet the choice remains his to run or be dragged.
483. 00:20:25 In the same way, humans are responsible
484. 00:20:27 for their choices and actions,
485. 00:20:28 even though these have been anticipated by the logos
486. 00:20:31 and form part of its plan.
487. 00:20:32 So it's essentially like, there's this logos,
488. 00:20:34 there's this driving force.
489. 00:20:36 Our will is, are we gonna go along with that?
490. 00:20:38 Or are we gonna be pulled along along by that?
491. 00:20:40 And it's like, that was a really good image in my head
492. 00:20:45 about what stoicism and Marcus Aurelius think of
493. 00:20:49 as the logos.
494. 00:20:50 The logos is this driving force, this driving force.
495. 00:20:52 And that helped me process a lot of the meditations
496. 00:20:56 really, really well, or at least get his perspective
497. 00:20:59 on them as we went through.
498. 00:21:02 - Yeah, basically the life is gonna happen
499. 00:21:06 and you can either not be bothered by it
500. 00:21:09 or fight against it.
501. 00:21:12 The dog being dragged is a interesting visual,
502. 00:21:16 but very much in alignment with,
503. 00:21:19 I mean, you can see that philosophy
504. 00:21:21 throughout the rest of the meditations.
505. 00:21:24 You mentioned stoicism, that's the other thing.
506. 00:21:26 I think that really is communicated
507. 00:21:29 in the beginning part here.
508. 00:21:30 They talk about the four stoic virtues,
509. 00:21:34 which the explanation of them in this introduction
510. 00:21:37 really doesn't do anything for me
511. 00:21:39 because I think Ryan Holiday actually describes them better
512. 00:21:42 in a couple of the books that we read for Bookworm.
513. 00:21:44 There's four virtues, courage, temperance, justice,
514. 00:21:46 and wisdom, and Ryan Holiday is in the process
515. 00:21:51 of writing a book for each one of those stoic virtues.
516. 00:21:55 So I like Ryan Holiday's books about stoicism
517. 00:22:01 a lot more than I liked meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
518. 00:22:06 The reason I think that this one maybe gets held up
519. 00:22:09 or put on a pedestal is that Marcus Aurelius
520. 00:22:13 is an interesting person.
521. 00:22:16 And you kind of have to understand the historical context.
522. 00:22:18 That's the other thing that's in here,
523. 00:22:19 I think is kind of his story.
524. 00:22:22 So he was born in 121 AD.
525. 00:22:25 His father died when he was really young
526. 00:22:27 and paraphrasing here because the names,
527. 00:22:30 they kind of lost meaning to me.
528. 00:22:33 I'd never heard of these people before,
529. 00:22:34 but he became heir to the Roman emperor at the time
530. 00:22:42 because they didn't have an heir.
531. 00:22:45 And when he took power, he also kind of shared it
532. 00:22:49 with his cousin or whatever this other guy,
533. 00:22:53 because it was the right thing to do.
534. 00:22:56 And he basically as the emperor,
535. 00:23:01 maybe I'm getting the details wrong and I apologize if I am,
536. 00:23:03 but basically he was a big public figure
537. 00:23:06 and he was doing his best to live a good life.
538. 00:23:09 And I think from that perspective, it's kind of interesting
539. 00:23:12 because I like the idea of writing down
540. 00:23:15 all of these different things that you've figured out
541. 00:23:17 about how to live a good life.
542. 00:23:18 And I could see you presenting this to your heirs,
543. 00:23:21 like having a historical record.
544. 00:23:23 It's kind of like these are all my journals, you know?
545. 00:23:25 - Yes, yes.
546. 00:23:26 - After you pass away.
547. 00:23:27 But the fact that somebody took these and printed them
548. 00:23:31 and I kind of can't believe how much popularity
549. 00:23:34 they've gotten, he actually Marcus Aurelius
550. 00:23:39 speaks about other philosophers
551. 00:23:41 and probably a lot of the things that he mentions in here
552. 00:23:44 are not completely original.
553. 00:23:46 I've heard that from other people
554. 00:23:47 who are deeper down the stoic rabbit hole than I am.
555. 00:23:52 And yeah, so there's probably a lot of stuff
556. 00:23:54 that if you just look at what is written in meditations,
557. 00:23:57 gets improperly credited towards to Marcus Aurelius,
558. 00:24:02 but that is basically the backdrop here.
559. 00:24:06 One other thing about stoicism
560. 00:24:10 is that this I guess was really popular
561. 00:24:13 amongst the wealthy Roman senators.
562. 00:24:18 Gregory Hayes makes a point in the introduction
563. 00:24:21 to call out that it wasn't just the wealthy Roman senators
564. 00:24:25 who believe this stuff.
565. 00:24:27 But I don't know, there's just something about stoicism
566. 00:24:33 that kind of rubs me the wrong way.
567. 00:24:36 On the surface, the whole idea of don't get upset
568. 00:24:39 about things, just remain even keel,
569. 00:24:41 no matter what happens, that makes sense.
570. 00:24:44 And I agree with a lot of the talk
571. 00:24:47 of how the virtues get lived out,
572. 00:24:48 the emphasis on you've got a place
573. 00:24:50 inside of this larger community
574. 00:24:52 and we've got to work towards the common good,
575. 00:24:54 but it just feels weird.
576. 00:24:57 - Yeah, okay, so the one piece of flavor
577. 00:25:01 I'll add to Marcus Aurelius's background,
578. 00:25:05 he was a very military kind of a person, right?
579. 00:25:08 So he was out fighting wars
580. 00:25:10 and he became pretty successful at fighting wars.
581. 00:25:13 But I think that plays into these meditations, right?
582. 00:25:18 So I think that's a component piece
583. 00:25:21 that if you remember that going through,
584. 00:25:24 while you're reading these,
585. 00:25:25 you're like, "Oh yeah, this would make sense
586. 00:25:28 "in the context of somebody who's constantly fighting wars
587. 00:25:30 "and that's their job and they're getting famous
588. 00:25:32 "for winning these battles and doing those things."
589. 00:25:35 But at the same time, they're off on the battlefield.
590. 00:25:38 You know, on the battlefront and they're not really
591. 00:25:40 at home all the time in Rome or whatever.
592. 00:25:44 So listener, the goal here is not to make this
593. 00:25:50 a Christian podcast, right?
594. 00:25:51 Like that's not the thing we're trying to do.
595. 00:25:54 But my worldview has to come into this
596. 00:25:56 because I'm going to analyze the things we read
597. 00:26:00 through a world view, just like anybody's gonna
598. 00:26:02 analyze the things they read through a world view.
599. 00:26:05 So the other thing that stood out to me
600. 00:26:07 actually wasn't stoicism.
601. 00:26:08 I kind of knew we were gonna get into stoicism.
602. 00:26:10 So the first one I had mentioned was the idea logos.
603. 00:26:15 But the second one is the use of the word God in gods.
604. 00:26:18 Because when I'm used to reading that word,
605. 00:26:22 especially the word God, right?
606. 00:26:23 Like it means a certain thing in Christianity, right?
607. 00:26:27 So every time I read that, I'm referencing the thing
608. 00:26:30 that my Christian worldview calls up on.
609. 00:26:35 Well, it's meant completely differently
610. 00:26:36 when Marcus Aurelius uses it.
611. 00:26:39 So Hayes describes it from the stoic perspective,
612. 00:26:41 of course, God or gods, right?
613. 00:26:44 And they use the term interchangeably, Hayes says.
614. 00:26:47 Are merely conventional terms for what we might call nature
615. 00:26:50 or the logos or providence or how things are.
616. 00:26:54 So it's like, I had a hard time
617. 00:26:56 'cause every time he used the word God or gods,
618. 00:27:00 it wasn't the Christian God that I'm thinking of, you know?
619. 00:27:04 It was this idea of nature or, you know, the logos
620. 00:27:08 or this force, you know, whatever it might be.
621. 00:27:11 So it's like, that was a really challenging one for me
622. 00:27:13 to remember, think about it, like interpret it the way
623. 00:27:17 it was written, don't interpret it the way
624. 00:27:19 you would interpret that, interpret it the way it was written.
625. 00:27:21 And there were a couple times when I would read something
626. 00:27:23 and I'd go, oh yeah, I completely agree with that.
627. 00:27:26 And then I'd be like, oh wait, he's using God
628. 00:27:28 in a different way than I would use God in that situation.
629. 00:27:32 And it's like, so I had to check, I guess,
630. 00:27:35 check myself on that a couple of different times
631. 00:27:37 and we could get into a much more, like,
632. 00:27:39 a much deeper philosophical and worldview conversation,
633. 00:27:42 but that's not the nature of bookworm.
634. 00:27:44 So we're not gonna do that.
635. 00:27:46 So at this point, Mike, I'm ready to,
636. 00:27:48 I can roll into book one.
637. 00:27:50 - Well, on the topic of the God and gods
638. 00:27:54 that they used throughout there, I guess I actually
639. 00:27:59 didn't have too much trouble with that.
640. 00:28:03 I just sort of assumed that they were gonna be referring
641. 00:28:07 to something different than what I was gonna be
642. 00:28:12 familiar with, but he does mention Zeus, for example,
643. 00:28:17 at different points.
644. 00:28:19 And so I didn't really think about the specific definition
645. 00:28:25 that you had there, but sort of in my mind,
646. 00:28:28 I was kind of lumping this together.
647. 00:28:31 Oh, they mean this and that means, you know,
648. 00:28:33 this other thing.
649. 00:28:35 And I know nothing about Roman mythology
650. 00:28:37 other than there were lots of gods that they worship
651. 00:28:40 or lots of different things.
652. 00:28:41 - Yes.
653. 00:28:42 - And then I remember, I don't remember the specific passage
654. 00:28:46 in the Bible where Paul's arguing with people in Rome
655. 00:28:48 is like, you worship all of these gods.
656. 00:28:51 I'm really talking about all of these ones
657. 00:28:53 that you don't understand, it's this one, you know?
658. 00:28:55 So that, I don't know, that translated pretty easy for me,
659. 00:28:58 but the whole, every time they mentioned the word stoicism,
660. 00:29:04 I don't know why, I cringe a little bit.
661. 00:29:08 - Okay, okay, I don't have that same gut or reaction.
662. 00:29:12 So yeah, I don't feel that way.
663. 00:29:14 - I'm trying to figure out why that is.
664. 00:29:19 And I really don't know.
665. 00:29:21 I think maybe it's just the thinking out loud,
666. 00:29:26 you know, not fully processed this,
667. 00:29:29 but maybe it's just the blind acceptance
668. 00:29:33 of whatever happens.
669. 00:29:35 And maybe you could make the argument that this is me
670. 00:29:38 just trying to grasp at having some agency.
671. 00:29:43 Like I wanna be able to feel like I have power
672. 00:29:46 over my situation,
673. 00:29:47 which is definitely a Western worldview.
674. 00:29:51 But I don't know, I feel like at least a little bit
675. 00:29:56 of that is healthy.
676. 00:29:59 - Yeah, yeah, well, okay, so see if I'm gonna say something
677. 00:30:03 that's different than what you're thinking.
678. 00:30:05 And actually, I made this comment in my notes
679. 00:30:08 right after book two.
680. 00:30:10 Like, it's a very like nihilistic book, right?
681. 00:30:13 Like there's a whole lot of like, listen,
682. 00:30:16 it doesn't matter, none of this matters.
683. 00:30:18 Look at all these famous people that came before you.
684. 00:30:20 Look at all these people that everybody loved before you.
685. 00:30:22 They all died too, right?
686. 00:30:24 Like you're gonna die, it doesn't really matter.
687. 00:30:26 Like stoicism in my mind has a lot of that built into it,
688. 00:30:31 right?
689. 00:30:31 So what are we trying to do?
690. 00:30:32 We're gonna try to live the best life we can, you know,
691. 00:30:34 like you said, wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, right?
692. 00:30:37 Like those type of things.
693. 00:30:39 But then there's this whole big umbrella
694. 00:30:41 that sits over top of it that's like,
695. 00:30:43 but it doesn't really matter.
696. 00:30:44 So, you know, like do it because it's the right thing to do
697. 00:30:48 for the community and for, you know, all this other stuff.
698. 00:30:51 But like it doesn't really matter, right?
699. 00:30:53 And that, I don't, I don't resonate with that.
700. 00:30:56 Like that's not my, I think it does matter.
701. 00:30:58 I really do think it does matter.
702. 00:31:00 Exactly.
703. 00:31:01 So the way that you describe that,
704. 00:31:02 I didn't connect those thoughts before,
705. 00:31:04 but that is the prevailing message is,
706. 00:31:06 it doesn't really matter.
707. 00:31:08 Now, I'm speaking as a fan of Oliver Berkman's 4,000 weeks
708. 00:31:13 and cosmic insignificance theory,
709. 00:31:15 which is sort of like it doesn't really matter.
710. 00:31:18 But even that feels like it does matter.
711. 00:31:22 Just don't get bent out of shape
712. 00:31:23 if it doesn't go the way you want.
713. 00:31:25 Yep, yep, yep.
714. 00:31:27 So yeah, I think you're,
715. 00:31:29 I think you're kind of hitting the nail on the head there.
716. 00:31:32 Well, let's get into the books here.
717. 00:31:34 So book one is debts and lessons.
718. 00:31:39 And this is basically a list of all of the different lessons
719. 00:31:43 that he's learned from the different people in his life.
720. 00:31:46 And I jotted down a couple of them here.
721. 00:31:50 I didn't catch this in the introduction,
722. 00:31:52 but I did at the end.
723. 00:31:54 I should have, and I will at some point,
724. 00:31:58 for all of the things that I jotted down in my notes,
725. 00:32:01 I captured the quotes,
726. 00:32:03 but I did not use the numbered coding system,
727. 00:32:07 which I should have done because there's,
728. 00:32:09 there's basically all of these numbers
729. 00:32:11 for the individual thoughts in the books.
730. 00:32:12 And so if they're asked,
731. 00:32:13 if they're referring to the 12th bullet in the first book,
732. 00:32:17 they'll do one dot 12.
733. 00:32:19 I didn't do that when I captured these.
734. 00:32:21 So I just have like rusticists,
735. 00:32:23 Alexander the Platonist, Maximus, you know.
736. 00:32:26 Remind me. Remind me, Mike.
737. 00:32:28 Does Hayes in the introduction tell us
738. 00:32:31 how things got grouped the way they did?
739. 00:32:35 Sort of.
740. 00:32:36 So he mentions the kind of the story behind book one,
741. 00:32:40 which is his schooling and book two and three,
742. 00:32:43 which were specific places.
743. 00:32:44 And then the rest of them, no, not so much.
744. 00:32:48 At least not that I caught.
745. 00:32:49 I got into like book six and seven.
746. 00:32:51 And I was like, this feels,
747. 00:32:53 I can't tell a dramatic theme difference
748. 00:32:55 between book six and book nine.
749. 00:32:57 Like I don't know,
750. 00:32:59 and that felt very unsettling is too strong of a word,
751. 00:33:02 but like, I didn't have an anchor.
752. 00:33:04 Like I didn't know what we were doing.
753. 00:33:05 I just felt like I was reading a bunch of like,
754. 00:33:08 you know, just random quips from a really famous Roman guy.
755. 00:33:14 - Yeah, which is, I don't know,
756. 00:33:18 I guess a little bit unfortunate,
757. 00:33:20 but again, they were never really meant to be published.
758. 00:33:23 My guess is that they kind of grouped these together
759. 00:33:26 because they found these pieces together
760. 00:33:29 and they were probably representative
761. 00:33:31 of a specific point in his life.
762. 00:33:35 But if you were going to package them as a book,
763. 00:33:39 obviously you would want to do it
764. 00:33:40 by subject or something like that,
765. 00:33:43 which Ryan Holiday has basically done
766. 00:33:45 with those sort of virtue series, so.
767. 00:33:48 - Okay, hold on one second,
768. 00:33:50 I want to look for something real quick.
769. 00:33:53 I'm looking for, I bet you there's a dissertation, Mark.
770. 00:33:56 Mike on this, right?
771. 00:33:58 There's somebody's written a dissertation
772. 00:33:59 on how this got produced.
773. 00:34:03 Yeah, there's a bunch of research on this, right?
774. 00:34:05 And it's interpretation with things, okay, cool.
775. 00:34:07 So yes, somebody has done a bunch of nerd science
776. 00:34:09 on this to figure out why, so that's fun.
777. 00:34:13 - Nice, all right, if you find something useful,
778. 00:34:16 we'll put it in.
779. 00:34:17 - Okay, yeah, I'll look for that.
780. 00:34:21 - All right, so just some things that I jotted down here,
781. 00:34:26 the first one from Rusticus to read attentively,
782. 00:34:29 not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of it.
783. 00:34:32 I mean, that's basically bookworm in a nutshell right there.
784. 00:34:36 It's sort of frustrating actually later on
785. 00:34:38 because he kind of contradicts that
786. 00:34:40 a couple of different times in the other books
787. 00:34:42 where it's like, "Yeah, you don't really need to read."
788. 00:34:44 Like, "Yes, you do," but I like that one.
789. 00:34:49 And not just getting the gist of it,
790. 00:34:52 what does that actually look like?
791. 00:34:55 I think, for me, that means,
792. 00:34:58 if you're going to read a book, read a book
793. 00:35:00 and get what you can out of it,
794. 00:35:02 don't force yourself to,
795. 00:35:04 well, I gotta get at least this much out of it.
796. 00:35:07 If you get even one thing out of wrestling
797. 00:35:09 with a book that's worth it,
798. 00:35:11 for most people who don't have a podcast
799. 00:35:12 to talk about these things,
800. 00:35:13 they don't have to finish the books.
801. 00:35:15 If you're not enjoying it, just put it down.
802. 00:35:17 Go read something else
803. 00:35:18 that you're actually gonna get something out of.
804. 00:35:20 Life is too short to read bad books,
805. 00:35:23 but if you're going to go through the effort,
806. 00:35:27 don't just settle for the Blinkist version.
807. 00:35:29 Yeah, don't be it, this is like,
808. 00:35:32 there's different levels of knowledge.
809. 00:35:34 There's information, so you can go find it
810. 00:35:36 when you need to dig it up again.
811. 00:35:39 Then there's, where you actually know it,
812. 00:35:42 you can spit it back, but the highest level of this
813. 00:35:44 is where it actually changes things for you,
814. 00:35:46 and you really start to apply.
815. 00:35:47 It changes what you actually do.
816. 00:35:49 So that's the big takeaway, I think, from that one for me,
817. 00:35:54 and I would argue that that is relevant
818. 00:35:56 for anyone in any stage of life.
819. 00:35:59 I had no notes from book one.
820. 00:36:01 Like I read book one, got to the end of it,
821. 00:36:03 and was just like, I don't know what just happened, right?
822. 00:36:07 'Cause it was just a list of people's names,
823. 00:36:09 and then it was like a CRM of their like characteristics
824. 00:36:13 that Marcus really liked, that he thought were good.
825. 00:36:19 And in my example of that would be his father, right?
826. 00:36:22 And the only thing under there, so this is number two,
827. 00:36:24 my father, integrity and manliness.
828. 00:36:28 - Done, right, and then we move on to it.
829. 00:36:30 - Yeah, well keep in mind, he did die when he was really young,
830. 00:36:32 so that's probably all he could remember.
831. 00:36:34 - But, again, I'm not like, I'm just saying like,
832. 00:36:37 this was a hard book for me to like really grasp.
833. 00:36:40 So it's like, I have these ideas,
834. 00:36:42 but I can't say anything was like,
835. 00:36:44 monumental or stood out to me from this first section.
836. 00:36:49 So, I don't have much to help you here, Mike.
837. 00:36:52 - Yeah, no, that's fair.
838. 00:36:53 There were two other ones that I jotted down,
839. 00:36:55 so I'll just share these quick.
840. 00:36:56 Alexander, the Platonist I mentioned, which the quote here
841. 00:36:59 is not to be constantly telling people or writing them
842. 00:37:02 that I'm too busy, unless I really am.
843. 00:37:04 - Yep, yep.
844. 00:37:05 - I feel like that's a trap that people fall into.
845. 00:37:07 Like, hey, how's it going?
846. 00:37:08 So busy.
847. 00:37:11 And the Maximus, the sense he gave of staying on the path
848. 00:37:14 rather than being kept on it.
849. 00:37:15 So, to me, this means you're choosing to walk the right path
850. 00:37:18 as opposed to being forced to walk the right path.
851. 00:37:22 And that's a maybe minor distinction there,
852. 00:37:26 but it kind of changes everything, I think,
853. 00:37:28 in terms of how you engage with your day-to-day.
854. 00:37:31 So, there's not a whole lot more to dig into with that.
855. 00:37:35 That's just what I wrote down.
856. 00:37:36 (laughs)
857. 00:37:38 - So, I'm glad you said that because I'm like,
858. 00:37:41 calling things out as we get into the later books,
859. 00:37:44 or after book one.
860. 00:37:46 And I'm like, I just don't know what I'm gonna say about this.
861. 00:37:48 Like, I don't know how I'm gonna talk about it,
862. 00:37:49 I don't know what I'm gonna say about it.
863. 00:37:50 So, I'm glad you called that out
864. 00:37:52 because we'll see how the rest of this goes.
865. 00:37:55 We will see how the rest of this goes.
866. 00:37:56 So, I guess onto book two, then.
867. 00:37:59 - Okay, I'll start, would you like me to start
868. 00:38:01 since I had nothing to say on book one?
869. 00:38:03 - Yeah, go for it.
870. 00:38:04 - Okay, so, basically, like,
871. 00:38:08 some of these are kind of like reminders to himself.
872. 00:38:11 So, it's called "On the River Grand Among the Quatty."
873. 00:38:15 Right, which I don't really know what that means.
874. 00:38:18 I assume there's a river that's named Grand,
875. 00:38:20 and then I have no idea what "Quatty" means
876. 00:38:22 'cause I didn't go look it up.
877. 00:38:23 - Yeah, it means nothing to me too.
878. 00:38:24 - Okay, so, you know, like, he's reminding himself,
879. 00:38:28 you know, like, he's talking about intelligence.
880. 00:38:30 And Mike, you had talked about, like,
881. 00:38:32 actually acknowledging which one of them you highlighted,
882. 00:38:35 or you called out.
883. 00:38:37 I didn't start doing that until, like, halfway through the book,
884. 00:38:39 and I was like, I should've been doing this the entire time.
885. 00:38:42 Like, I should've been calling out which one I was hidden.
886. 00:38:44 So, I don't have 'em for the first one.
887. 00:38:46 But, intelligence, and he says, think of it this way.
888. 00:38:49 So, it's like, almost like he's talking to himself
889. 00:38:51 as he writes these things down.
890. 00:38:54 Stop allowing your mind to be a slave
891. 00:38:56 and be jerked around by selfish impulses
892. 00:38:58 to kick against fate in the present
893. 00:39:00 and mistrust the future.
894. 00:39:01 So, again, there's this idea of like,
895. 00:39:02 there's this thing, there's fate that's gonna happen,
896. 00:39:04 and stop fighting it.
897. 00:39:06 Like, stop fighting fate.
898. 00:39:07 Just that idea that is invested,
899. 00:39:10 or invested, no, this is not the right word,
900. 00:39:12 that infiltrates this entire, entire book.
901. 00:39:15 One of the things that resonates with me a lot,
902. 00:39:19 and he hits it here in book two,
903. 00:39:22 the angry man seems to turn his back on reason
904. 00:39:24 out of a kind of pain and inner convulsion, right?
905. 00:39:26 Like, he talks about, he must've had anger issues
906. 00:39:30 because he talks about anger quite a bit in this,
907. 00:39:32 and like how anger's foolish,
908. 00:39:34 anger's not wise, anger is an issue.
909. 00:39:37 And that resonates with me,
910. 00:39:38 'cause it's like I tend to get frustrated by things.
911. 00:39:41 So, that's one of the things that resonated with me more,
912. 00:39:45 is like, can I see this as an example of ways
913. 00:39:48 that I could look at frustration and anger.
914. 00:39:52 - Yeah, a couple of things that stood out to me from this,
915. 00:39:56 were the discussion of sin.
916. 00:40:00 He said, "Sin derived out of pleasure,
917. 00:40:02 "deserves a stronger rebuke than sin committed,
918. 00:40:05 "out of pain."
919. 00:40:05 And then later on, I think he talked about
920. 00:40:08 how you can commit injustice by doing nothing.
921. 00:40:11 Actually, I think that was book nine or something like that,
922. 00:40:13 but that got me thinking, you know,
923. 00:40:17 what is the right thing to do?
924. 00:40:18 That's really what he's talking about here.
925. 00:40:20 So, disconnect the religious association with the word sin,
926. 00:40:23 but basically that's here, that's not acting rightly.
927. 00:40:27 And the only other thing that I really wanted to chew on
928. 00:40:32 from this was a quote that said,
929. 00:40:33 "Concentrate every minute like a Roman
930. 00:40:36 "and doing what's in front of you
931. 00:40:37 "with precise and genuine seriousness,
932. 00:40:39 "tenderly willingly with justice."
933. 00:40:42 I mean, that sounds good, but essentially it's like,
934. 00:40:45 do the right thing, stay in the moment.
935. 00:40:48 That's how you could sum this up.
936. 00:40:50 And that's actually probably how you could sum up
937. 00:40:52 the entire book.
938. 00:40:53 - Yeah.
939. 00:40:54 Well, and I think, you know, I'm thinking about this,
940. 00:40:57 kind of live right now, like I didn't have this thought
941. 00:40:59 before we came into this recording,
942. 00:41:01 but this is a good like quote book,
943. 00:41:04 or you'd be able to pull a bunch of quotes from this
944. 00:41:06 that are relevant to you,
945. 00:41:08 and then throw those into a quote book
946. 00:41:10 and have that and revisit that.
947. 00:41:11 And I think it would be very, very valuable to you, right?
948. 00:41:13 Like if you've pulled out the ones that are relevant to you
949. 00:41:15 and then maybe revisited that, you know,
950. 00:41:17 every couple of years or whatever,
951. 00:41:18 and said, you know, have things changed.
952. 00:41:20 I think that would be a very valuable way to use this book,
953. 00:41:24 or the content of this book.
954. 00:41:26 - Yeah.
955. 00:41:27 Which is basically how I approach taking notes on it.
956. 00:41:33 I mean, it's impossible to grok the key ideas
957. 00:41:36 if there was such a thing from these random writings
958. 00:41:39 and condense it down into an outline.
959. 00:41:43 So, I think that's what you gotta do,
960. 00:41:46 is you just gotta find the things
961. 00:41:48 that really stand out to you.
962. 00:41:50 And that's probably why it got so much traction is like,
963. 00:41:53 there's all these little quotes
964. 00:41:55 which are attributed to Marcus to realize,
965. 00:41:57 oh, that's really good.
966. 00:41:58 Where did that come from?
967. 00:41:59 Oh, meditations.
968. 00:42:01 - Yep.
969. 00:42:01 - Yep.
970. 00:42:02 - Yep.
971. 00:42:03 All right, I think I'm good for book two.
972. 00:42:04 You wanna go to book three?
973. 00:42:06 - I'm ready to go to book three.
974. 00:42:08 - All right, so book three is in,
975. 00:42:11 I don't know how to say this.
976. 00:42:13 Come month 'em.
977. 00:42:16 - I've got Carnuntum.
978. 00:42:18 - Carnuntum?
979. 00:42:19 Okay.
980. 00:42:19 - Carnuntum?
981. 00:42:20 - Maybe I mistyped that when I took the notes.
982. 00:42:23 - Okay.
983. 00:42:24 - Oh, yeah, you are right.
984. 00:42:27 Low resolution monitor here.
985. 00:42:28 Carnuntum.
986. 00:42:29 - Which I just did a Google search on
987. 00:42:32 which I should've done before,
988. 00:42:33 but it's a Roman legionary fortress.
989. 00:42:36 - Okay.
990. 00:42:37 - And headquarters of a fleet.
991. 00:42:38 So I've got the idea for that one.
992. 00:42:41 - Gotcha.
993. 00:42:42 - Well, some random notes here, I guess.
994. 00:42:47 Don't waste the rest of your time here
995. 00:42:49 worrying about other people
996. 00:42:51 unless it affects the common good.
997. 00:42:54 I jotted that down, but he says it a lot better later on.
998. 00:42:57 So I'm not sure I have anything else to say about that.
999. 00:43:03 He does mention commonplace books in book three,
1000. 00:43:06 which I thought was interesting.
1001. 00:43:08 Are you familiar with the idea of the commonplace book?
1002. 00:43:10 I've heard it before, but I don't remind me what it is.
1003. 00:43:15 - So commonplace book has been around
1004. 00:43:18 for a really long time.
1005. 00:43:19 Most famous version of this is probably a series
1006. 00:43:22 of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.
1007. 00:43:25 I think there are five of them that are bound
1008. 00:43:27 into three notebooks called the Codex Forrester.
1009. 00:43:31 If you wanna jot a note down,
1010. 00:43:32 I can grab the link and I can share that in the show notes
1011. 00:43:35 because someone actually digitized these
1012. 00:43:37 and you can look at them.
1013. 00:43:38 It's basically all these random bits of things,
1014. 00:43:42 sketches, the basis of his inventions
1015. 00:43:44 as he's thinking through things.
1016. 00:43:46 - Okay.
1017. 00:43:47 - So that probably is what Marcus Aurelius
1018. 00:43:52 was doing with these different books.
1019. 00:43:54 It's like, this feels significant,
1020. 00:43:57 so I'm gonna write it down
1021. 00:43:58 and then maybe I'll come back to this later.
1022. 00:44:01 It's essentially what it is.
1023. 00:44:02 - Okay, okay.
1024. 00:44:03 - So the term commonplace book
1025. 00:44:04 has kind of gotten a resurgence with all of the PKM stuff
1026. 00:44:10 because basically what an app like Obsidian is
1027. 00:44:12 is a digital commonplace book.
1028. 00:44:14 You capture the bits and pieces of things
1029. 00:44:17 that seem significant and then you dump them in there,
1030. 00:44:20 but now you've got bidirectional links
1031. 00:44:22 and local graphs and all of these tools that you can use
1032. 00:44:26 to actually, I think, get a lot more out of those,
1033. 00:44:29 those bits and pieces.
1034. 00:44:30 When Leonardo was doing this,
1035. 00:44:32 he had to flip back through the pages and, oh yeah,
1036. 00:44:35 that thing, oh, I see how that applies over here,
1037. 00:44:38 which interestingly, that is a great kind of metaphor
1038. 00:44:43 for the digital second brain stuff I feel
1039. 00:44:45 because one of the things that stands out to me
1040. 00:44:48 from the life of Leonardo is he's capturing
1041. 00:44:52 all these things, he's thinking about all these things
1042. 00:44:54 and then he's trying to figure out
1043. 00:44:56 how to make sense of all the stuff in his world.
1044. 00:44:58 And he mentions how he gets this idea
1045. 00:45:02 for the way that sound works as someone throws a pebble
1046. 00:45:06 into a well and he sees the ripples
1047. 00:45:08 emanate from the middle, the moment that he hears
1048. 00:45:11 a church bell ring in the distance.
1049. 00:45:14 So then he's like connecting those dots.
1050. 00:45:16 And so that's where I think these tools for thought
1051. 00:45:19 can be useful in making these different connections.
1052. 00:45:23 So I like the mention of the commonplace book,
1053. 00:45:27 but that's the only thing he says about it.
1054. 00:45:30 And then you need to get used to winnowing your thoughts
1055. 00:45:33 so that if someone says, what are you thinking about,
1056. 00:45:35 you can respond at once and truthfully
1057. 00:45:36 that you are thinking this or thinking that.
1058. 00:45:39 That kind of hit me because my brain tends to be pretty busy.
1059. 00:45:42 And if someone were to ask me,
1060. 00:45:44 what are you thinking about right now?
1061. 00:45:45 Like, I don't always have an answer, like 12 different things
1062. 00:45:48 here, pick a card, any card.
1063. 00:45:50 - Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah.
1064. 00:45:52 It's that live in the moment kind of thing,
1065. 00:45:54 which is a very common theme of his,
1066. 00:45:58 be in the moment, be of the moment,
1067. 00:46:00 do the right thing right now, kind of a thing.
1068. 00:46:04 A couple of things I pulled out of this one is
1069. 00:46:06 he gets into this idea of every day
1070. 00:46:09 we move closer to death, right?
1071. 00:46:11 So this memento mori kind of concept.
1072. 00:46:14 So it's like a lot of these things we've heard other places
1073. 00:46:16 and other people on PAC.
1074. 00:46:18 And then another one would be like,
1075. 00:46:21 stop worrying about other people,
1076. 00:46:23 which he talks about that a good bit, right?
1077. 00:46:24 Like, stop caring about what other people think,
1078. 00:46:26 stop worrying about what other people think.
1079. 00:46:28 And then he'll usually qualify it, right?
1080. 00:46:31 Like, so in this one, unless it affects the common good, right?
1081. 00:46:35 So stop worrying about what other people think,
1082. 00:46:37 unless it actually matters to like the common good
1083. 00:46:40 and then you should worry about it.
1084. 00:46:41 But otherwise, don't worry about it.
1085. 00:46:42 Like, you're wasting your time worrying about it.
1086. 00:46:46 So it's like, I just, like, I get these,
1087. 00:46:49 these are good thoughts.
1088. 00:46:50 These are, you know, things that I think are valuable to us,
1089. 00:46:55 but they are just floating out there kind of in the ether.
1090. 00:46:58 And I'm not sure.
1091. 00:46:59 I'm still not sure what to do with them, so.
1092. 00:47:01 - Sure.
1093. 00:47:02 - Wanna go on to book four?
1094. 00:47:04 - Yeah, yeah.
1095. 00:47:05 - So book four has no title.
1096. 00:47:09 The first of the title, this books.
1097. 00:47:10 So now we'll just mention the random thoughts that we all do.
1098. 00:47:17 - Let me catch us up on something for accuracy.
1099. 00:47:19 I did a quick search in the, in the Quatty people.
1100. 00:47:22 The Quatty is, or a people.
1101. 00:47:25 So when he says on the river grand among the Quatty,
1102. 00:47:29 there are people group.
1103. 00:47:30 Okay, so now we know that.
1104. 00:47:31 All right, we figured out that Carnuntum is a Roman fortress.
1105. 00:47:36 Cool, we got that.
1106. 00:47:36 And now we go to book four,
1107. 00:47:37 and we don't have any titles anymore.
1108. 00:47:38 So, we did it, Mike.
1109. 00:47:41 We're complete.
1110. 00:47:42 - Nice work.
1111. 00:47:45 - There actually are, I think, some profound things
1112. 00:47:48 for me to chew on here.
1113. 00:47:49 Again, not, you know, completely attributed to Marcus Aurelius,
1114. 00:47:53 but one of the things he mentioned is
1115. 00:47:55 if you seek tranquility, do less.
1116. 00:47:57 I tend to do too much.
1117. 00:47:59 So that's a reminder, but not an action item.
1118. 00:48:03 I don't think I have any action items from this book.
1119. 00:48:06 Spoiler alert, I agree.
1120. 00:48:11 Yeah, then just a couple of admonitions.
1121. 00:48:13 You know, like nothing that goes on
1122. 00:48:14 and anyone else's mind can actually harm you.
1123. 00:48:18 He's saying choose not to be harmed,
1124. 00:48:19 and you won't be harmed, you don't feel harmed,
1125. 00:48:21 and you haven't been, things have no hold on the soul.
1126. 00:48:25 Disturbance comes only from within,
1127. 00:48:27 from our own perceptions.
1128. 00:48:29 So, a lot of this, the things that stand out to me anyways
1129. 00:48:34 can be summed up as kind of don't care so much
1130. 00:48:38 what other people think.
1131. 00:48:39 And that's probably something that I needed to hear.
1132. 00:48:44 And then the only other thing I jotted down from here
1133. 00:48:46 is no random actions, none, not based
1134. 00:48:49 on underlying principles.
1135. 00:48:52 That resonates with me because of the PKM stack model
1136. 00:48:56 and the vision and values piece at the very top.
1137. 00:48:59 I think I try to do this anyways,
1138. 00:49:02 and I try to help people codify this.
1139. 00:49:04 I don't know, I'd have to spend some thinking time on it
1140. 00:49:08 to see if there's anything in my life
1141. 00:49:10 that isn't in alignment with the vision and values piece,
1142. 00:49:14 but strikes me as this is sort of the direct opposite
1143. 00:49:18 of my action item from last time
1144. 00:49:20 about just have fun with things.
1145. 00:49:23 It's like, no, if it's not useful, don't do it.
1146. 00:49:25 So, yeah.
1147. 00:49:27 - Okay, can I explain a frustration I have with
1148. 00:49:30 not just the book, but philosophy in general,
1149. 00:49:34 like just the concept of philosophy in general.
1150. 00:49:37 Okay, again, I'm gonna give you a quote.
1151. 00:49:39 All right, so this is number 39
1152. 00:49:40 'cause I started to book four, number 39.
1153. 00:49:43 Or to put another way,
1154. 00:49:43 it needs to be realized that what happens to everyone,
1155. 00:49:46 bad and good alike, is neither good nor bad.
1156. 00:49:50 - Well, hold on, right?
1157. 00:49:52 So, what happens to everyone bad and good alike
1158. 00:49:55 is neither good nor bad.
1159. 00:49:57 But how do we call it bad and good if it was neither,
1160. 00:50:00 okay, okay, anyhow.
1161. 00:50:01 So then, that what happens in every life
1162. 00:50:04 live naturally or not,
1163. 00:50:06 is neither natural nor unnatural.
1164. 00:50:07 And it's like, my brain goes, I don't like this.
1165. 00:50:11 I just don't like this, I don't like this like,
1166. 00:50:14 and I don't know if that's a limitation of me,
1167. 00:50:16 like if I am just not wired to be a philosophical thinker,
1168. 00:50:22 like in the way these folks are,
1169. 00:50:24 if I'm too like practical, if I'm too,
1170. 00:50:27 I don't know, the engineering in me,
1171. 00:50:29 which the irony of this is I have a doctor of philosophy
1172. 00:50:33 and engineering education but I cannot stand philosophy.
1173. 00:50:37 Like the philosophy, like the way it's written
1174. 00:50:39 and the way the ideas are bounced around.
1175. 00:50:42 But it's like that, that's a frustration I have.
1176. 00:50:44 But if you read the introduction,
1177. 00:50:47 Hayes will tell you, like he was,
1178. 00:50:50 like philosophy was his thing.
1179. 00:50:51 Like he was thinking about philosophy.
1180. 00:50:53 He was trying to be a philosopher.
1181. 00:50:56 You know what I mean?
1182. 00:50:57 And that's why they called him.
1183. 00:50:59 - So let me just mention though, you're right.
1184. 00:51:02 But there is a specific phrase that he uses
1185. 00:51:04 in the introduction that Marcus Aurelius
1186. 00:51:08 would basically push back on the idea
1187. 00:51:10 that he was a philosopher.
1188. 00:51:13 But that is who he's trying to be
1189. 00:51:14 and they use the term for him of philosopher king.
1190. 00:51:19 - Yeah, I was gonna bring that up, okay.
1191. 00:51:21 But he would push back and say he's not
1192. 00:51:23 like the other philosophers.
1193. 00:51:25 - He would basically say, I'm not a philosopher
1194. 00:51:28 and I don't know if that's just like false humility
1195. 00:51:31 or what, but that's what he would have said.
1196. 00:51:33 - Okay, all right.
1197. 00:51:34 So that like, I tried to wrestle around with that.
1198. 00:51:37 And then in book four, I have a couple different sections here
1199. 00:51:41 where he's talking about like this idea of essentially
1200. 00:51:46 it doesn't matter.
1201. 00:51:47 Like it doesn't matter 'cause you're gonna die.
1202. 00:51:48 It doesn't matter 'cause you're gonna die.
1203. 00:51:50 People who are excited by posthumous fame,
1204. 00:51:53 forget that people, people who remember them
1205. 00:51:55 will soon die too, right?
1206. 00:51:57 And it's like, okay, so okay, you're gonna become famous.
1207. 00:51:59 The people who are gonna remember you as being famous,
1208. 00:52:02 they're gonna die and then you're not gonna be famous anymore.
1209. 00:52:04 And like the crazy thing about it is that's actually true.
1210. 00:52:07 Like, I mean, like what he's saying there is so true.
1211. 00:52:10 Like, okay, a couple generations out, people go, who?
1212. 00:52:15 Right, like, I mean, we're getting to the point,
1213. 00:52:18 like it's all, I'll throw out like a big famous sports name,
1214. 00:52:20 Joe Nameth.
1215. 00:52:21 But you're getting to the point where people are like,
1216. 00:52:23 Joe Nameth, who the next Joe Nameth, right?
1217. 00:52:26 And then all the old people are like,
1218. 00:52:27 you don't know Joe Nameth is, right?
1219. 00:52:29 Like I can't believe you don't know.
1220. 00:52:30 But it's like, it's so true.
1221. 00:52:32 It's just a matter of like, that was such a core part
1222. 00:52:36 of his philosophy on the way the world worked
1223. 00:52:41 and like, don't think too highly of yourself, you know?
1224. 00:52:46 So what would that be?
1225. 00:52:47 Like, you had wisdom, courage, justice and,
1226. 00:52:50 would that be temperance?
1227. 00:52:52 Is that like in the temperance side of stoicism?
1228. 00:52:55 - Maybe, I don't know.
1229. 00:52:57 I don't think I know enough about it, to be honest.
1230. 00:53:01 - I definitely don't.
1231. 00:53:03 Yeah, I don't know why I struggle with this so much.
1232. 00:53:08 It's sort of like the Stoics wanna just unpack
1233. 00:53:14 everything they possibly can about
1234. 00:53:16 these four specific virtues.
1235. 00:53:18 And I'm just kind of like, those are our four virtues.
1236. 00:53:22 There are more, and I'm not gonna bad a thousand anyways.
1237. 00:53:26 So I'm just gonna try to do what I think is right.
1238. 00:53:31 - Maybe that makes me a bad philosopher too, I don't know.
1239. 00:53:33 - Like, it's just, I don't know what to do about it.
1240. 00:53:36 Like, and I think it's good.
1241. 00:53:38 Like, I'm actually, as crazy as it's gonna sound,
1242. 00:53:41 I'm happy that I read this because everybody talks about it
1243. 00:53:44 and it's such a popular book and all those things.
1244. 00:53:46 But I will tell you like, it wasn't enjoyable.
1245. 00:53:49 I wasn't like sitting down thinking, yeah,
1246. 00:53:52 get to read more meditations tonight.
1247. 00:53:54 It was a matter of like, okay, like,
1248. 00:53:55 let's try to get something out of this.
1249. 00:53:57 But, you know, just another one to show you the mindset
1250. 00:54:01 that Marcus Aurelius had.
1251. 00:54:03 Survey the records of the other areas.
1252. 00:54:04 See how many others gave their all and soon died
1253. 00:54:07 and decompose into elements that form them.
1254. 00:54:10 It's like, it's gonna happen, it's coming for ya, right?
1255. 00:54:12 Like, just get ready for it.
1256. 00:54:13 And it was so ingrained in him.
1257. 00:54:16 I'll stop, I'll get off my soapbox,
1258. 00:54:17 but we can move to book five,
1259. 00:54:19 but it's like, it's just so ingrained in all of this.
1260. 00:54:23 - Well, I think part of it maybe is,
1261. 00:54:24 even though Gregory Hayes is translating this,
1262. 00:54:26 there's a certain part of this,
1263. 00:54:28 which just doesn't translate well,
1264. 00:54:31 because you're kind of talking about
1265. 00:54:33 there's these lives of these other famous people,
1266. 00:54:35 and I have the Ryan Holiday version of this,
1267. 00:54:39 which is a Gregory Hayes translation,
1268. 00:54:41 but then at the end of it,
1269. 00:54:42 there's another thing on the life of Marcus Aurelius
1270. 00:54:46 from one of Ryan Holiday's books,
1271. 00:54:48 which is The Lives of the Stoics.
1272. 00:54:50 - Okay.
1273. 00:54:51 - So, Ryan Holiday basically takes that sort of stuff
1274. 00:54:56 from the historical manuscripts
1275. 00:54:58 and tells a good story about the events
1276. 00:55:02 that happened in these people's lives.
1277. 00:55:03 - Okay.
1278. 00:55:04 - And I just don't care enough to put in that much effort.
1279. 00:55:07 - Yeah, you should understand.
1280. 00:55:10 - So, yeah, book five, again, title this.
1281. 00:55:15 And a couple things jettled down from here.
1282. 00:55:19 First one was on practicing the virtues,
1283. 00:55:22 and again, there's four stoic virtues, right?
1284. 00:55:25 But then he says, focus on practicing the virtues
1285. 00:55:27 that you can actually show, honesty, gravity, endurance,
1286. 00:55:29 austerity, resignation, abstinence, patience, sincerity,
1287. 00:55:33 moderation, seriousness, and high-mindedness.
1288. 00:55:36 And reading through a list like that
1289. 00:55:39 is very reminiscent for me of the fruit of the spirit
1290. 00:55:45 in the Bible, and so that's kind of how I translated this,
1291. 00:55:50 is like, there's these list of things
1292. 00:55:52 that you should try to do.
1293. 00:55:54 And I don't know, there's some good questions
1294. 00:55:58 to ask yourself, what am I actually doing with my soul?
1295. 00:56:02 And he mentions that the things that you think about
1296. 00:56:05 determine the quality of your mind.
1297. 00:56:08 I think that's actually pretty profound.
1298. 00:56:11 Struggling to remember who it was that talked about this.
1299. 00:56:16 But I read something recently
1300. 00:56:19 about the quality of the ideas
1301. 00:56:23 that you have come from,
1302. 00:56:26 the quality of the things that you read, obviously.
1303. 00:56:28 And reading harder things results in better ideas,
1304. 00:56:32 but that's a skill that you have to develop.
1305. 00:56:36 And someone wrote this thing about,
1306. 00:56:40 and they had a term for it,
1307. 00:56:41 which I'm escaping my mind right now,
1308. 00:56:44 but it's sort of like, again,
1309. 00:56:47 I try to justify everything and make you the reason
1310. 00:56:50 for doing the thing, but it was like,
1311. 00:56:53 if you put in the effort to develop your mental abilities,
1312. 00:57:00 kind of like if you go to the gym and you lift
1313. 00:57:03 and you develop the muscle, you can lift more.
1314. 00:57:05 It's like if you consistently read these non-fiction books
1315. 00:57:09 and the things that are a little bit harder,
1316. 00:57:12 it improves the quality of your mind,
1317. 00:57:13 your mental acuity, things like that.
1318. 00:57:15 You're able to do more
1319. 00:57:17 because you've gone to the mental gym, essentially.
1320. 00:57:20 They had a much more succinct
1321. 00:57:22 and about articulated argument around that,
1322. 00:57:24 but that's kind of what I thought of with that.
1323. 00:57:29 - He gets into another one of his kind
1324. 00:57:32 of fundamental threads here,
1325. 00:57:34 but it would be this idea of like interacting
1326. 00:57:37 with other people and how people interaction
1327. 00:57:40 should take place that,
1328. 00:57:44 and this could be because he was in management, right?
1329. 00:57:47 Whether it was in like leadership and management, right?
1330. 00:57:49 That was his primary job,
1331. 00:57:51 whether it was running Rome
1332. 00:57:53 or whether it was leading an army or whatever,
1333. 00:57:56 but our job is to do other people good
1334. 00:58:01 and to put up with them,
1335. 00:58:02 which I think is like,
1336. 00:58:03 I wonder how much of this is translational
1337. 00:58:05 versus how much of it is like,
1338. 00:58:06 actually the way he was thinking,
1339. 00:58:08 where it's like, listen,
1340. 00:58:09 we wanna help the people do good,
1341. 00:58:11 and then there's gonna be some people
1342. 00:58:12 who are just annoying and are bothering
1343. 00:58:16 and you just gotta deal with them.
1344. 00:58:18 And that's a big part of what we have to do as well,
1345. 00:58:20 but it ties into this bigger stoic idea.
1346. 00:58:23 Now, I found the definition of temperance, right?
1347. 00:58:26 The quality of moderation or self-restraint.
1348. 00:58:28 So it's this idea of self-restraint,
1349. 00:58:30 like you wanna get frustrated with them, don't.
1350. 00:58:32 They're just people put up with them.
1351. 00:58:34 You want to, whatever, don't.
1352. 00:58:35 You wanna go do this thing that isn't ethically
1353. 00:58:40 or morally right, because that's another thing
1354. 00:58:42 that Hazel talked about in the beginning is,
1355. 00:58:46 or really, Marcus, really is what will do things
1356. 00:58:49 from the ethical or moral rightness standpoint.
1357. 00:58:53 You know, what is right, what is wrong,
1358. 00:58:54 what is moral, what is immoral,
1359. 00:58:56 and he's trying to think through those things.
1360. 00:58:58 So, you know, again, there's good things populated in here.
1361. 00:59:07 You had talked about not having action items.
1362. 00:59:08 I don't know what to do with them.
1363. 00:59:10 Like, I don't know, other than just to review them
1364. 00:59:12 every so often, I guess.
1365. 00:59:14 Yeah, that's about it.
1366. 00:59:16 All right, ready for book six?
1367. 00:59:19 All right, so a couple of things from book six for me.
1368. 00:59:27 Let's see, "When Jard Unavoidably By Circumstances,
1369. 00:59:30 "revert at once to yourself, and don't lose the rhythm
1370. 00:59:33 "more than you can help."
1371. 00:59:35 Feel like this was written for knowledge workers
1372. 00:59:39 in the modern day.
1373. 00:59:45 "What's left for us to prize?"
1374. 00:59:46 I think it's this to do and not do what we were designed for.
1375. 00:59:52 I really like that one.
1376. 00:59:54 I like the phrase not to assume it's impossible
1377. 00:59:57 because you find it hard, but to recognize
1378. 00:59:59 that if it's humanly possible, you can do it too.
1379. 01:00:02 I'm interpreting that maybe a little bit differently
1380. 01:00:05 than he intended it to when he wrote it.
1381. 01:00:10 But it echoes to me of when we read the Chase Jarvis book,
1382. 01:00:17 kind of you have more ability, you have more strength,
1383. 01:00:19 you have more time, you have more in you than you realize.
1384. 01:00:23 That's something that I tend to need to hear.
1385. 01:00:26 And then the other thing that really stands out to me here
1386. 01:00:30 is I do what is mine to do, the rest don't disturb me.
1387. 01:00:34 That's a good reminder to just focus on what you can control
1388. 01:00:38 and then let the rest of the stuff go,
1389. 01:00:41 which is easier said than done, but.
1390. 01:00:44 - Yeah, there were two major ones that set up for me
1391. 01:00:48 on this one.
1392. 01:00:48 Pride is a master of deception.
1393. 01:00:50 When you think you're occupied in the weightiest business,
1394. 01:00:53 that's when he has you in his spell.
1395. 01:00:56 So it's like, oh, I'm doing something super important
1396. 01:01:00 right now and then the pride seeps in
1397. 01:01:02 and it undermines the whole thing.
1398. 01:01:05 Another one would be ambition means tying your wellbeing
1399. 01:01:09 to what other people say or do.
1400. 01:01:12 Self-indulgence is tying it to the things that happen to you
1401. 01:01:16 and then saying that he is tying it to your own actions.
1402. 01:01:19 And I just thought like that was a really clever way
1403. 01:01:21 to break those three things down, right?
1404. 01:01:24 Ambition, self-indulgence, and then actually staying sane.
1405. 01:01:27 I liked those.
1406. 01:01:29 And then I've heard this one before,
1407. 01:01:30 I didn't know it derived somewhere
1408. 01:01:32 from the meditations or marks realized,
1409. 01:01:34 but what injures the hive injures the bee, right?
1410. 01:01:37 Like I really like that idea of this like calming good.
1411. 01:01:40 Like what injures, calming good eventually will come down
1412. 01:01:42 and injure all the other people as well.
1413. 01:01:45 And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that saying as well.
1414. 01:01:49 - Yeah, I had never read that before,
1415. 01:01:52 but I had heard the flip version of that of what's good
1416. 01:01:57 for the hive is good for the bee.
1417. 01:02:00 And I'm kind of curious if that framing
1418. 01:02:04 in that phrase is the reason behind the name Beehive
1419. 01:02:07 for like those social newsletters.
1420. 01:02:09 Are you familiar with the Beehive service?
1421. 01:02:11 - I am, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1422. 01:02:13 - Yeah, I just went through a webinar by Matt McGarry
1423. 01:02:17 who is, he knows what he's talking about
1424. 01:02:19 when it comes to newsletters,
1425. 01:02:20 but he's like Beehive certified, whatever.
1426. 01:02:23 So there was a big emphasis on using Beehive.
1427. 01:02:27 And yeah, I'm a kick customer for life, I think,
1428. 01:02:31 but it's an interesting to me.
1429. 01:02:34 All right, so let's go to the next one here,
1430. 01:02:36 which I guess is book seven.
1431. 01:02:40 This is where there's, I think, a shift towards the theme
1432. 01:02:48 that keeps popping up here to me is sorta like,
1433. 01:02:54 everything in moderation focus on the present moment.
1434. 01:02:57 So some of the things that stand up, nagata down,
1435. 01:03:01 you don't need much to live happily.
1436. 01:03:05 He talks about how I can control my thoughts as necessary,
1437. 01:03:08 then how can I be troubled?
1438. 01:03:11 And no matter what anyone says or does,
1439. 01:03:14 my task is to be good.
1440. 01:03:17 And so kind of focusing on what you can control
1441. 01:03:20 and letting the rest go.
1442. 01:03:22 There's another one here.
1443. 01:03:23 It's silly to try and escape other people's faults.
1444. 01:03:25 They aren't inescapable, just try to escape your own.
1445. 01:03:28 Good reminder, I think, not nitpick all the things
1446. 01:03:32 that people do wrong.
1447. 01:03:33 It's easy to get upset when you notice that stuff,
1448. 01:03:36 but really what you should be focusing on
1449. 01:03:39 is all of your own faults
1450. 01:03:42 and trying to address those,
1451. 01:03:44 which I think kind of communicated implicitly
1452. 01:03:49 throughout all of the stoic discussion here is,
1453. 01:03:53 if you can master these virtues,
1454. 01:03:55 it's sorta like enlightenment
1455. 01:03:56 and you'll not be bothered by all this stuff anymore,
1456. 01:03:59 but you're never gonna get there,
1457. 01:04:01 so just continue to walk the path.
1458. 01:04:03 I think that's kind of what he's after
1459. 01:04:06 with a lot of this stuff.
1460. 01:04:08 - Perfection of character to live your last day
1461. 01:04:11 every day without frenzy or sloth or pretense.
1462. 01:04:14 I like that idea of think about the last day,
1463. 01:04:18 think about how you would wanna live that last day
1464. 01:04:21 and then can you put that on repeat?
1465. 01:04:23 Can you live that last day every day?
1466. 01:04:26 And I think that's just a really neat way
1467. 01:04:28 to think about it.
1468. 01:04:30 There's a couple of things in here,
1469. 01:04:32 but I just don't understand how,
1470. 01:04:34 I don't know how to say this.
1471. 01:04:36 I can't communicate how to explain these.
1472. 01:04:40 So, frightening to change.
1473. 01:04:42 What would exist without it?
1474. 01:04:43 What's closer to nature's heart?
1475. 01:04:44 Can you take a hot bath without the firewood burning,
1476. 01:04:47 essentially?
1477. 01:04:48 And it's like, the way he describes it's like so,
1478. 01:04:50 it's like so top of the brain, if that makes sense.
1479. 01:04:54 It's so unpolished and raw,
1480. 01:04:57 and it's like, well, come on.
1481. 01:04:59 And maybe that's tying back into the logic
1482. 01:05:02 and the reasoning and the,
1483. 01:05:05 I don't know.
1484. 01:05:06 But I have a hard time describing
1485. 01:05:10 what I get out of these things.
1486. 01:05:12 I kinda like that about it.
1487. 01:05:14 I kinda like that it feels like
1488. 01:05:16 somebody walking around with some note cards going,
1489. 01:05:19 here's a thought, he writes it down
1490. 01:05:21 and he throws it on the table.
1491. 01:05:22 And then there's somebody behind him walking up going,
1492. 01:05:24 I'm gonna pick that one up.
1493. 01:05:25 I'm gonna pick that one up, I'm gonna pick that one up.
1494. 01:05:27 Yeah, like it just feels,
1495. 01:05:30 I guess like fleeting thoughts or fleeting notes.
1496. 01:05:35 Another one that comes out of
1497. 01:05:36 is this idea of simplicity, right?
1498. 01:05:39 Like you talked about it a little bit
1499. 01:05:40 where kind of some of the best things come from simplicity.
1500. 01:05:43 And I really like this concept.
1501. 01:05:45 I think if I had an action item,
1502. 01:05:48 not necessarily from this book,
1503. 01:05:50 but just in general, if I had an action item,
1504. 01:05:53 one of them would be like,
1505. 01:05:54 how do I make life more simple?
1506. 01:05:56 Right, like right now it's too crazy,
1507. 01:05:58 there's too much chaos.
1508. 01:05:59 How do I make it more simple?
1509. 01:06:00 How do I simplify everything?
1510. 01:06:03 Like not just this thing.
1511. 01:06:06 How do I simplify everything?
1512. 01:06:07 And I think that would be a fun experiment,
1513. 01:06:09 although I think it would be really,
1514. 01:06:11 really, really hard to do
1515. 01:06:13 if you did it for most areas of your life.
1516. 01:06:16 Yeah, less but better is essentially
1517. 01:06:18 what we're after with some of that stuff.
1518. 01:06:24 All right, book eight, couple things.
1519. 01:06:27 Again, there's like 50 different bullets for each of these,
1520. 01:06:32 but I just jotted down a couple that stood out to me.
1521. 01:06:37 The first step, don't be anxious.
1522. 01:06:39 The second step, concentrate on what you have to do.
1523. 01:06:42 Simple enough.
1524. 01:06:44 Yep, yep.
1525. 01:06:45 You were talking about the actions
1526. 01:06:49 and how that's what builds our life.
1527. 01:06:50 He says, in this book,
1528. 01:06:52 you have to assemble your life yourself action by action.
1529. 01:06:55 And I like that, it's sort of reminiscent
1530. 01:06:58 of the atomic habits idea if you ask me.
1531. 01:07:03 Another thing he says is give yourself a gift,
1532. 01:07:05 the present moment.
1533. 01:07:07 Get an admonition to stay in the now.
1534. 01:07:11 And then external things are not the problem,
1535. 01:07:13 it's your assessment of them,
1536. 01:07:14 which you can erase right now.
1537. 01:07:16 Good reminder that you can change your perspective
1538. 01:07:19 in a moment.
1539. 01:07:21 The perspective you have towards the things that happen
1540. 01:07:24 is really powerful for either good or bad.
1541. 01:07:29 And so that which you can erase right now,
1542. 01:07:32 that's the key part, I think.
1543. 01:07:35 Is you could be upset by this thing that happened yesterday,
1544. 01:07:39 last week, last year.
1545. 01:07:42 You can just continue to hold on to that.
1546. 01:07:43 And he's basically saying in a moment,
1547. 01:07:45 you could be free from that if you just let it go.
1548. 01:07:48 And I think that's a powerful idea.
1549. 01:07:52 - I've heard this described as framing before,
1550. 01:07:54 which I think, I can't remember if it's in one of the books,
1551. 01:07:56 but it's like how you frame that situation.
1552. 01:07:58 Oh, I failed that exam.
1553. 01:08:01 It's like that is one framing,
1554. 01:08:02 or versus I didn't perform as well as I could have.
1555. 01:08:08 I have opportunity to grow, I have room to grow.
1556. 01:08:10 Those are two different framings.
1557. 01:08:11 And I think that's something that he talks about here,
1558. 01:08:15 where he's talking about it from the perspective
1559. 01:08:17 that you're looking at it,
1560. 01:08:18 or I forget the word that he actually uses.
1561. 01:08:21 The one thing I called out in book eight
1562. 01:08:23 was these three relationships.
1563. 01:08:25 So relationship with the body you inhabit,
1564. 01:08:28 the divine or the cause of all things,
1565. 01:08:31 and then the relationship with the people around you.
1566. 01:08:33 And I thought this was a pretty clever way to summarize
1567. 01:08:37 kind of these relationships that are core and essential.
1568. 01:08:40 What's your relationship with yourself, essentially?
1569. 01:08:43 What's your relationship with those around you?
1570. 01:08:45 And then what's your relationship with some higher power?
1571. 01:08:47 Like something that is the cause
1572. 01:08:49 or kind of the definition of everything.
1573. 01:08:52 So I like that from book eight.
1574. 01:08:55 - All right, book nine, just keep moving along.
1575. 01:09:00 Couple things, I mentioned the one already,
1576. 01:09:02 which is that you can commit injustice by doing nothing.
1577. 01:09:06 So the way I would describe this, I think, is sins of commission
1578. 01:09:13 and sins of omission.
1579. 01:09:15 So things that are wrong because you did them,
1580. 01:09:18 and then things that are wrong because you did nothing.
1581. 01:09:21 So one of the things that a sin of commission, for example,
1582. 01:09:27 actually taking a negative or evil action.
1583. 01:09:32 And then the sins of omission, like you see something happening,
1584. 01:09:35 but it's in your power to stop it and you do nothing.
1585. 01:09:38 The example, it stands out to me.
1586. 01:09:41 And this is kind of graphic maybe,
1587. 01:09:44 so maybe people haven't seen this,
1588. 01:09:47 but as we record this, recently on the news,
1589. 01:09:51 the United Healthcare CEO was gunned down in New York.
1590. 01:09:55 And I've seen the video of the guy who shot him,
1591. 01:10:00 and it strikes me because he's moving towards the CEO.
1592. 01:10:04 And there are people who, when he starts shooting,
1593. 01:10:07 are walking the other way and they just run out of the picture.
1594. 01:10:09 And I'm like, if you just turn to the right,
1595. 01:10:12 take this guy out the minute that you hear that go off
1596. 01:10:15 'cause you can see them in the video,
1597. 01:10:17 you could have stopped the whole thing.
1598. 01:10:18 And I would like to think that if I'm in that position,
1599. 01:10:21 that's what I would do, but you really never know
1600. 01:10:23 until you're in that situation.
1601. 01:10:26 But I feel like the sins of omission,
1602. 01:10:28 that's the one that, sadly, the culture today is sort of like,
1603. 01:10:33 oh, it's not a big deal.
1604. 01:10:34 Seems like there's more and more people who's like,
1605. 01:10:36 I just don't want to get involved, you know?
1606. 01:10:38 And I think that's it.
1607. 01:10:41 Now, arguing about things online,
1608. 01:10:43 that's not the place to get involved.
1609. 01:10:46 But if you find yourself in a place
1610. 01:10:50 and you're able to do the thing, do the thing.
1611. 01:10:53 So that part, I guess, of the stoic,
1612. 01:10:55 that part of the stoic message or stoic manifesto,
1613. 01:10:59 I agree with.
1614. 01:11:01 And then you can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind,
1615. 01:11:04 things that exist only there and clear out space for yourself.
1616. 01:11:08 Again, I tend to have a pretty busy mind,
1617. 01:11:09 so guilty of that and recognizing that
1618. 01:11:13 I do have the ability to flip that switch
1619. 01:11:16 and just choose what I'm gonna focus on,
1620. 01:11:19 which is the other thing that I'd jotted down,
1621. 01:11:22 concentrate on what you're doing and what you're doing it with.
1622. 01:11:26 And that kind of sounds to me a lot like stewardship.
1623. 01:11:31 So, essentially, what is it that you're doing
1624. 01:11:35 and then what are the tools that are at your disposal
1625. 01:11:37 as you do the thing?
1626. 01:11:40 And not wishing you had more resources,
1627. 01:11:43 not wishing the circumstances were different,
1628. 01:11:46 but what is the right thing for me to do right now?
1629. 01:11:50 - So, you stole my big one.
1630. 01:11:53 My big one was the discard the junk that clutters your mind.
1631. 01:11:56 'Cause I think that's a really important one.
1632. 01:11:58 There's another one in here.
1633. 01:11:59 Number two, real good luck would be to abandon life
1634. 01:12:04 without ever encountering dishonesty, hypocrisy,
1635. 01:12:07 self-indulgence, or pride.
1636. 01:12:08 So, it's basically like, hey, listen,
1637. 01:12:10 if you just died before you were dishonest
1638. 01:12:12 or HIPAA creator and that stuff,
1639. 01:12:14 you guys, but the next best scenario
1640. 01:12:18 is the die when you've had enough of that.
1641. 01:12:20 And it was like, it's like, jeez, holy cow, it's so,
1642. 01:12:25 I don't know, I don't know the word to describe it,
1643. 01:12:28 but it's just so like, defeatist or so,
1644. 01:12:31 this is just the way it would be better
1645. 01:12:32 if you just had never lived,
1646. 01:12:34 or you were able to live without experiencing these things.
1647. 01:12:37 And I don't know, I just, I do not resonate
1648. 01:12:39 with that way of thinking at all.
1649. 01:12:41 - Yeah, I get what you're coming from.
1650. 01:12:44 It's kind of like that everything is meaningless,
1651. 01:12:47 but I don't think that's the way that he was saying it.
1652. 01:12:51 Basically, my interpretation of that phrase,
1653. 01:12:55 if you are able to live your whole life
1654. 01:12:57 and avoid all this stuff, that would be awesome,
1655. 01:13:00 but it's never gonna happen.
1656. 01:13:01 (laughs)
1657. 01:13:03 Not, you know, end it before you walk,
1658. 01:13:07 before you encounter somebody who's gonna think ill of you.
1659. 01:13:11 - Yeah, I did not mean to come across that way,
1660. 01:13:14 like that's what he's saying you should do.
1661. 01:13:16 I'm saying, like that's his mentality,
1662. 01:13:19 like that's his mindset for it is like,
1663. 01:13:21 these things, dishonesty, hypocrisy, self-indulgence,
1664. 01:13:24 they're so bad, it's better off
1665. 01:13:27 if you would die before you experience those things.
1666. 01:13:32 - Sure. (laughs)
1667. 01:13:34 - I mean, later he describes it like a plague,
1668. 01:13:36 a mental cancer, worse than anything.
1669. 01:13:38 - Yeah, that's true.
1670. 01:13:39 - So, I mean, he's very, he doubles and triples
1671. 01:13:42 and quadruples down on these ideas.
1672. 01:13:45 - That is fair, that is fair.
1673. 01:13:48 All right, to the next book, book 10,
1674. 01:13:51 and a couple things that jump out to me here,
1675. 01:13:55 the first one, and I jotted down,
1676. 01:13:58 this is a little bit of a longer phrase,
1677. 01:13:59 but it's important to catch the whole thing.
1678. 01:14:01 He says, "Everything that happens is either
1679. 01:14:03 "endurable or not.
1680. 01:14:05 "If it's endurable, then endure it.
1681. 01:14:07 "Stop complaining.
1682. 01:14:08 "If it's unendurable, then stop complaining."
1683. 01:14:12 (laughs)
1684. 01:14:13 - He was a no-nonsense guy, that's pretty short, right?
1685. 01:14:17 I mean, at least in these meditations.
1686. 01:14:19 - Yeah, so, I don't know that I really struggle
1687. 01:14:25 with this per se,
1688. 01:14:27 but I can see how this is the seeds of,
1689. 01:14:32 there's a stoic concept amorphity,
1690. 01:14:36 which I've actually got one of those stoic virtues,
1691. 01:14:39 it's not a stoic virtue,
1692. 01:14:40 but Ryan Holiday has these coins,
1693. 01:14:43 and one of them is amorphity,
1694. 01:14:45 and basically, it's celebrate whatever happens.
1695. 01:14:50 It's part of the journey,
1696. 01:14:52 and that meant something to me
1697. 01:14:53 when I was going through
1698. 01:14:55 the trying to get my business off the ground.
1699. 01:14:58 It's like, well, this is just part of the process.
1700. 01:15:02 Just keep going,
1701. 01:15:03 and when you frame it that way,
1702. 01:15:06 it's kind of like, well, this kind of sucks,
1703. 01:15:08 but it's necessary,
1704. 01:15:10 as opposed to, oh, when is this ever going to end?
1705. 01:15:14 And you just keep hoping
1706. 01:15:15 that eventually you're gonna get out of it,
1707. 01:15:17 and then nothing happens, and it's just demoralizing.
1708. 01:15:20 So that's sort of the picture that I have of that,
1709. 01:15:23 but again, his direct admonition here
1710. 01:15:27 is just stop complaining about things.
1711. 01:15:29 He also says, to stop talking about
1712. 01:15:32 what the good man is like, and just be one,
1713. 01:15:36 which is kind of funny,
1714. 01:15:37 'cause we're spending hours here talking
1715. 01:15:40 about what he said about being a good man,
1716. 01:15:43 but it doesn't matter how good a life you've led,
1717. 01:15:47 there'll still be people standing around the bed
1718. 01:15:49 who will welcome the sad event.
1719. 01:15:51 And what I read that was sort of picturing in my head
1720. 01:16:00 kind of don't read the comments as it pertains to YouTube,
1721. 01:16:04 because I mean, I have a YouTube channel,
1722. 01:16:07 I need to get back to publishing regularly on YouTube,
1723. 01:16:11 but I've noticed this.
1724. 01:16:12 The majority of the comments can be positive,
1725. 01:16:15 and oh my gosh, this was amazing,
1726. 01:16:16 thank you for explaining this.
1727. 01:16:18 And then there's the one jerk who's like,
1728. 01:16:22 this is crap, you know?
1729. 01:16:25 I experienced this in the webinar actually today,
1730. 01:16:27 there were like 1,500 people on there,
1731. 01:16:28 and there were a handful of people
1732. 01:16:30 who just kept saying stupid negative stuff,
1733. 01:16:33 'cause a webinar, he's teaching you this stuff,
1734. 01:16:35 and then he's selling his course at the end.
1735. 01:16:37 You know the drill, right?
1736. 01:16:39 And they just, yeah, very, very negative,
1737. 01:16:43 and like eventually I just started thumbs downing
1738. 01:16:45 everything that they would say,
1739. 01:16:47 'cause I'm like, just stop.
1740. 01:16:51 - This is course of ours every semester, right?
1741. 01:16:53 Like, you know, 90% of the percent of them are good,
1742. 01:16:56 and then you have that one, it's like, well,
1743. 01:16:58 you were a funny shirt on the third week of class, right?
1744. 01:17:02 You know, it's like, okay, thanks, thanks for that.
1745. 01:17:05 But no, like your points were made,
1746. 01:17:07 it's like, you know, there's always gonna be that person,
1747. 01:17:10 there's always gonna be somebody
1748. 01:17:11 who can find something wrong with whatever you do.
1749. 01:17:14 All right, how much are you gonna,
1750. 01:17:15 and then this ties into some of these other ones,
1751. 01:17:17 which I think there's, and there's probably works
1752. 01:17:20 that are done around this,
1753. 01:17:22 tying some of these together, right?
1754. 01:17:23 Like if you tie this meditation together
1755. 01:17:25 with this meditation, with this meditation,
1756. 01:17:27 look at his train of thought,
1757. 01:17:28 but then you're making it up, because he didn't do that,
1758. 01:17:32 so it's like, you're kind of making up, you know,
1759. 01:17:36 meditations, the one, or one of the ones I called out
1760. 01:17:40 in this chapter is basically like, hey, you know,
1761. 01:17:45 it's the saying that your mom or your grandma,
1762. 01:17:47 your dad always said, well, when you point the finger,
1763. 01:17:50 there's always three pointing back at you.
1764. 01:17:52 So when faced with other people's bad behavior,
1765. 01:17:54 turn around and ask when you've acted like that.
1766. 01:17:57 And it was like, oh, okay, shoot, like, you're right.
1767. 01:18:00 And then it's a, hey, stop it.
1768. 01:18:04 Like don't get angry at them,
1769. 01:18:05 because you do the same thing, don't be a hypocrite.
1770. 01:18:08 Like that's the whole thing is don't be a hypocrite,
1771. 01:18:10 don't be a hypocrite.
1772. 01:18:11 But I mean, I think what I'm realizing
1773. 01:18:13 is we have this conversation is like,
1774. 01:18:15 just how not fluffy he was in any of these meditations.
1775. 01:18:21 Like it was more a matter of just like, here's the point,
1776. 01:18:24 here's the point, here's the point, kind of a thing.
1777. 01:18:26 - Yeah, so the don't be a hypocrite thing,
1778. 01:18:30 that is kind of hitting on, I think,
1779. 01:18:34 one of the important things that he mentions over and over again,
1780. 01:18:37 just bringing the focus back to yourself.
1781. 01:18:40 Ed Coles is it this way that we judge others by their actions,
1782. 01:18:44 but ourselves by our intentions,
1783. 01:18:46 because on some level, you're always gonna be hypocritical.
1784. 01:18:50 People always be able to look back at your life
1785. 01:18:53 if they look close enough and point out the inconsistencies.
1786. 01:18:56 And that used to bother me,
1787. 01:18:58 that I used to never wanna publish anything online
1788. 01:19:01 because I didn't wanna be wrong.
1789. 01:19:04 - Yeah, yeah.
1790. 01:19:05 - And I had to get over that.
1791. 01:19:06 You have to get to the point
1792. 01:19:08 where you're just doing the best that you can.
1793. 01:19:10 Everybody's doing the best that they can.
1794. 01:19:12 Nobody's perfect.
1795. 01:19:14 And the real thing that I think makes that click
1796. 01:19:16 is just not worrying about trying to fix
1797. 01:19:19 anybody else but yourself.
1798. 01:19:21 - Yeah, exactly, exactly.
1799. 01:19:24 All right, Mike, let's wrap this thing up.
1800. 01:19:25 Let's get to book 11.
1801. 01:19:27 - So book 11, again, I got a couple things I'll share here.
1802. 01:19:34 Let's see, he mentions that a branch cut away
1803. 01:19:37 from the branch beside it is simultaneously cut away
1804. 01:19:40 from the whole tree.
1805. 01:19:41 So to a human being, being separated from another
1806. 01:19:44 is to be cut loose from the whole community.
1807. 01:19:49 And this kind of resonated with me.
1808. 01:19:53 I mean, I don't know that I agree 100%
1809. 01:19:56 with the specifics of that.
1810. 01:19:59 But I think the larger message here is that you can focus
1811. 01:20:03 on, well, I have an issue with this person.
1812. 01:20:07 Or you get offended by something that somebody says.
1813. 01:20:10 Then you start to try to avoid that person
1814. 01:20:12 and pretty soon you've just removed yourself
1815. 01:20:15 and isolated yourself from the community,
1816. 01:20:19 which was the thing that was giving you life.
1817. 01:20:24 And you don't realize it right away.
1818. 01:20:25 It's kind of like you cut off a branch.
1819. 01:20:27 So that metaphor is really powerful to me
1820. 01:20:29 because I get this picture of there's someone
1821. 01:20:32 in our neighborhood had a storm go through.
1822. 01:20:35 This big branch fell down and it was laying
1823. 01:20:36 in their front yard for like a week and a half.
1824. 01:20:41 And you drive by at the first three, four days,
1825. 01:20:44 looks like it's healthy.
1826. 01:20:45 And then a week later, all of a sudden,
1827. 01:20:48 the whole thing is just shriveled up.
1828. 01:20:50 And it's like all of a sudden, overnight,
1829. 01:20:53 things went from good to bad.
1830. 01:20:56 And I feel like that's the sort of thing
1831. 01:20:59 if you remove yourself from the community,
1832. 01:21:02 you live in isolation, it's not good,
1833. 01:21:04 but you're not going to notice it in the moment.
1834. 01:21:07 Just a reminder that you need other people.
1835. 01:21:12 Then there was a quote here which I thought applied to AI.
1836. 01:21:17 - Okay, okay, let's see this.
1837. 01:21:19 - The natural can never be inferior to the artificial.
1838. 01:21:23 Art imitates nature and not the reverse.
1839. 01:21:26 - I like that too, yeah, I like that too.
1840. 01:21:28 - And I've been waiting actually till we recorded
1841. 01:21:31 this episode.
1842. 01:21:32 I wanted to hear what you thought of that
1843. 01:21:33 'cause it kind of strikes me that AI keeps getting better,
1844. 01:21:38 but the more I see it improve, the less I feel
1845. 01:21:44 it's ever going to get to the point
1846. 01:21:45 where it develops this super intelligence
1847. 01:21:48 and it takes over the world
1848. 01:21:49 because it can't differentiate the difference
1849. 01:21:54 between a noun and a verb
1850. 01:21:57 based on how I use this word in a sentence.
1851. 01:22:00 There are definite places where it just completely falls
1852. 01:22:04 on its face because I think it's an imitation
1853. 01:22:07 of the real thing.
1854. 01:22:10 And there will probably always be those holes.
1855. 01:22:13 I'm not sure you'll ever get to the point
1856. 01:22:14 where you can fix all of that.
1857. 01:22:18 - Yeah, there's a guy named George Box
1858. 01:22:20 and he has a saying that says all models are wrong,
1859. 01:22:23 some are useful.
1860. 01:22:24 - Yeah.
1861. 01:22:25 - And I really like that connection to this idea
1862. 01:22:28 is like, if you look at the complexity of nature
1863. 01:22:32 and like how crazy it is
1864. 01:22:35 and how different factors have to come together
1865. 01:22:37 to make those systems and keep those systems operational
1866. 01:22:41 and then when you get into like complex systems theory
1867. 01:22:44 and you're thinking about how this ecosystem impacts,
1868. 01:22:46 this ecosystem and impacts this ecosystem,
1869. 01:22:49 like I just can't see us, you know, like art mimics nature,
1870. 01:22:55 I would say design mimics nature,
1871. 01:22:57 technology mimics nature, right?
1872. 01:22:59 Like we're going to continue to make this more
1873. 01:23:02 and more advanced and more and more advanced,
1874. 01:23:04 but we're still not going to be able to,
1875. 01:23:06 I don't know, I guess I do want to say it,
1876. 01:23:08 I don't want to go that strong.
1877. 01:23:09 I don't know if we're ever going to be able to recreate
1878. 01:23:12 actual, the complexity that actually exists in nature.
1879. 01:23:16 And I think that's a comforting thing to me, right?
1880. 01:23:19 Like we're going to get better and better and better,
1881. 01:23:20 but we're never going to be able to do it.
1882. 01:23:22 Like our models will be wrong, but they will be useful.
1883. 01:23:25 And we will continue to make more and more useful models
1884. 01:23:27 that are close, but not perfect.
1885. 01:23:30 - Yep.
1886. 01:23:31 - That's all I got for book 11.
1887. 01:23:32 Anything else you wanted to call out?
1888. 01:23:35 - Okay, so he hits on kindness a good bit in this one.
1889. 01:23:40 So I just think that's an interesting one.
1890. 01:23:41 I don't know if that's a theme that runs through it,
1891. 01:23:43 but he hits on kindness and then he talks about goals.
1892. 01:23:48 So I didn't know if you flagged that one
1893. 01:23:49 and got cranky about it.
1894. 01:23:52 He says, "If you don't have a consistent goal in life,
1895. 01:23:54 "you can't live in a consistent way."
1896. 01:23:56 And I was like, I wonder what Mike thinks about the goal.
1897. 01:23:58 Mark has a really simple comment.
1898. 01:24:00 - I actually liked that.
1899. 01:24:01 I almost wrote that one down, but I didn't.
1900. 01:24:05 I don't think goal means smart goal.
1901. 01:24:09 I think it means having something that you're aiming at,
1902. 01:24:12 a compass, not a map.
1903. 01:24:14 - Yeah, I was poking the bear.
1904. 01:24:16 I was intentionally poking the bear on that one.
1905. 01:24:18 So, but no, I don't really have much else on this one.
1906. 01:24:22 And then I got mixed up.
1907. 01:24:23 I thought book 11 was the last book.
1908. 01:24:26 We have another book, book 12.
1909. 01:24:28 - We do.
1910. 01:24:29 - So here, you can see where I'm going with this, Mike.
1911. 01:24:33 - Yeah, yeah.
1912. 01:24:34 All right, so book 12, let's see.
1913. 01:24:39 Practice even what seems impossible, I like that.
1914. 01:24:43 I think myself, personally, I tend to,
1915. 01:24:48 if I don't think it's realistic,
1916. 01:24:50 it's kind of like, well, why even try?
1917. 01:24:53 And I have to fight back against that,
1918. 01:24:55 because I do believe, as I mentioned a couple of different
1919. 01:24:57 times, that we're capable of more than we realize.
1920. 01:25:00 And then the other thing walks you through other things.
1921. 01:25:02 If it's not right, don't do it.
1922. 01:25:03 If it's not true, don't say it.
1923. 01:25:05 That's a good one liner, a good way to live your life.
1924. 01:25:08 And then it never ceases to amaze me.
1925. 01:25:10 We all love ourselves more than other people,
1926. 01:25:13 but care more about their opinion than our own.
1927. 01:25:15 - Yep.
1928. 01:25:16 - That's really good.
1929. 01:25:17 - You called out some of the same ones I called out.
1930. 01:25:20 So that's great.
1931. 01:25:21 - Yeah, I mean, I feel like Adam Grant talks about that
1932. 01:25:25 in Hidden Potential, and he, I don't think,
1933. 01:25:30 says it any more eloquently than Marcus Aurelius did.
1934. 01:25:34 - Yeah, I like the number 24, three things
1935. 01:25:38 that are essential at all times, your own actions,
1936. 01:25:41 external events, and then he describes this last one.
1937. 01:25:44 If you could get to the 30,000 foot view and look down,
1938. 01:25:48 you realize how pointless everything is, right?
1939. 01:25:51 And I'm like, ah, you had me.
1940. 01:25:52 Like, here are the essential things.
1941. 01:25:54 What you do, some of these external events that happened,
1942. 01:25:57 and then everything in life is meeting.
1943. 01:25:59 - Kind of like insignificant stuff.
1944. 01:25:59 - This is like a significant story, yep.
1945. 01:26:01 - Yeah, just stop caring about it.
1946. 01:26:03 So, you know, that's a recurring theme.
1947. 01:26:08 And I had another one here that I wanted to call out.
1948. 01:26:12 Constantly run down the list of those who felt intense anger.
1949. 01:26:16 We get back to this idea of anger,
1950. 01:26:18 and I don't know if this is just hitting me,
1951. 01:26:19 you know, with my frustration and my anger kind of thing.
1952. 01:26:23 The most famous, the most unfortunate,
1953. 01:26:25 the most hated, the most whatever,
1954. 01:26:27 ask, where is all that now?
1955. 01:26:28 Essentially, your energy that you're putting into
1956. 01:26:33 being frustrated and being angry,
1957. 01:26:35 you're throwing that, you know, what's the phrase?
1958. 01:26:39 You know, good something to bad.
1959. 01:26:41 You're putting good energy into bad ends,
1960. 01:26:44 or whatever it is.
1961. 01:26:45 There's a phrase there.
1962. 01:26:46 I can't remember what the phrase is.
1963. 01:26:46 - I don't know what it is.
1964. 01:26:48 - Yeah, but like, don't do that.
1965. 01:26:50 Like, don't waste your time.
1966. 01:26:52 Don't waste your time on putting good energy into bad things.
1967. 01:26:56 - Agreed.
1968. 01:26:58 Well, we made it.
1969. 01:27:00 - Oh, we made it.
1970. 01:27:01 (laughs)
1971. 01:27:02 So, action items.
1972. 01:27:04 I have none.
1973. 01:27:06 - I have none.
1974. 01:27:08 Like, none.
1975. 01:27:10 I like my action item, like if I need an action item,
1976. 01:27:13 I will put this book on the shelf.
1977. 01:27:15 (laughs)
1978. 01:27:16 - Like, and I work. - I work, I'm done.
1979. 01:27:18 Yeah.
1980. 01:27:19 - All right, well, let's go to a style in rating then.
1981. 01:27:22 - Okay.
1982. 01:27:23 - And I have to go first, don't I?
1983. 01:27:25 - You do have to go first,
1984. 01:27:26 and I'm strong on that one today.
1985. 01:27:29 - Dang it.
1986. 01:27:30 All right.
1987. 01:27:32 Well, I don't love the style.
1988. 01:27:35 I will say that.
1989. 01:27:38 I think the concept is kind of cool,
1990. 01:27:41 and I'm glad that I have read it.
1991. 01:27:43 If for nothing else, I no longer feel fomo
1992. 01:27:47 when people talk about meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
1993. 01:27:51 - Yep.
1994. 01:27:51 - It does strike me that there is some good wisdom
1995. 01:27:58 to be gleaned here.
1996. 01:28:00 The writings are very old.
1997. 01:28:01 He lived 121 AD, you know.
1998. 01:28:05 So, maybe I have a different perspective simply
1999. 01:28:10 because I already am reading historical wisdom literature.
2000. 01:28:18 If you wanna define the Bible that way.
2001. 01:28:21 And so, that is probably unfair to measure this against,
2002. 01:28:26 but that's sort of how it reads to me,
2003. 01:28:28 at least the modern translation here.
2004. 01:28:32 And I don't think Marcus Aurelius would like it to be
2005. 01:28:36 put on that sort of pedestal.
2006. 01:28:39 I think that's probably unfair.
2007. 01:28:42 But the bottom line is if I'm gonna read something like this,
2008. 01:28:45 I've already got a good resource for me.
2009. 01:28:49 So, I went through this
2010. 01:28:51 and I was able to map a couple of things where like,
2011. 01:28:54 "Oh yeah, you know, I see this is a biblical principle here."
2012. 01:28:57 And honestly, that's what got me into
2013. 01:29:00 reading these nonfiction books.
2014. 01:29:02 I was going, so my whole journey
2015. 01:29:06 into the productivity space started
2016. 01:29:09 when I was teaching a personal management class
2017. 01:29:14 for the Bible college that I graduated from.
2018. 01:29:17 And recognizing that there were a lot of biblical principles
2019. 01:29:23 that were written, that the best-selling books,
2020. 01:29:26 productivity books were written about.
2021. 01:29:28 I was like, "Oh, they're basically talking about these things,
2022. 01:29:31 but they've removed the scripture references."
2023. 01:29:33 But the principles obviously still work.
2024. 01:29:36 And honestly, I like that.
2025. 01:29:38 I like reading the books that other people are written
2026. 01:29:41 and trying to make those connections myself.
2027. 01:29:44 As I started doing that, I was like,
2028. 01:29:47 "I'm gonna write my own book."
2029. 01:29:48 And I started writing and publishing every day.
2030. 01:29:50 That's when I got connected with Asian efficiency
2031. 01:29:52 and the rest, as they say, is history.
2032. 01:29:55 But that was the thing that got me into doing everything
2033. 01:29:59 that I do currently and all of the creating that I do online.
2034. 01:30:03 Before that, it was never really a blip on my radar.
2035. 01:30:09 So I like doing that kind of stuff.
2036. 01:30:12 But this one is just, I don't know,
2037. 01:30:16 it's hard for me to do that with
2038. 01:30:18 because it was never really intended to be written
2039. 01:30:21 as a book that we would typically read for Bookworm.
2040. 01:30:24 I feel kind of bad having picked this for Bookworm,
2041. 01:30:27 to be honest.
2042. 01:30:28 This is not the right medium
2043. 01:30:32 to be discussing this sort of thing.
2044. 01:30:35 I will say that I actually got way more out
2045. 01:30:37 of the conversation that we had today
2046. 01:30:39 than I thought we were going to.
2047. 01:30:42 I was really nervous as I was taking notes.
2048. 01:30:43 And a lot of these quotes is like,
2049. 01:30:45 "Well, I gotta have something that we can discuss."
2050. 01:30:46 So I'll just pick the things that resonate with me.
2051. 01:30:50 But yeah, this book is not for me.
2052. 01:30:52 I can see why it's for some people.
2053. 01:30:55 And I think if you're big into stoicism,
2054. 01:31:01 this is sort of like going to the source.
2055. 01:31:05 I know some people would argue this isn't the source.
2056. 01:31:08 It's the writings of Seneca
2057. 01:31:12 and other people that Marcus Aurelius references.
2058. 01:31:17 I just don't care to go that deep.
2059. 01:31:20 - Yeah, I agree, I agree.
2060. 01:31:22 - Like I said, I'm glad that I read it.
2061. 01:31:23 I think there's some good stuff in here.
2062. 01:31:25 There's definitely some stuff to get you to think.
2063. 01:31:28 From a Bookworm perspective,
2064. 01:31:30 I don't think it's a very good book for this format
2065. 01:31:35 other than we had a cool conversation about it.
2066. 01:31:38 I'm gonna rate it three stars.
2067. 01:31:41 You could make the argument
2068. 01:31:42 that I really dislike this book
2069. 01:31:44 and I should rate it lower than that.
2070. 01:31:46 But like I said, I think there's some good stuff in here.
2071. 01:31:48 And I don't think it's a difficult read, to be honest.
2072. 01:31:52 The hardest part is the Gregory Hayes introduction.
2073. 01:31:57 If you remove that and just read the content itself,
2074. 01:32:02 I think that there's some stuff in here
2075. 01:32:03 that'll get you to think.
2076. 01:32:05 And ultimately that's a good thing.
2077. 01:32:08 But yeah, I think if unless you're wanting to go deeper
2078. 01:32:12 down a stoic rabbit hole, Ryan Holiday's resources
2079. 01:32:15 are the ones that I would recommend to people.
2080. 01:32:18 - All right, Mike, you were way more generous
2081. 01:32:23 than I'm going to be.
2082. 01:32:24 - I figured that might be the case.
2083. 01:32:26 I'm going to completely remove the bookworm aspect
2084. 01:32:31 of this, right?
2085. 01:32:32 I'm thinking about this and I'm rating this book
2086. 01:32:34 based on solely on do I like this book?
2087. 01:32:38 Would I read this book again?
2088. 01:32:39 And would I recommend other people read this book?
2089. 01:32:42 And what I will tell you is no, did I like this book?
2090. 01:32:46 No, would I read this book again?
2091. 01:32:48 Absolutely not.
2092. 01:32:49 And would I recommend that anybody read this book?
2093. 01:32:52 No, I would not.
2094. 01:32:53 Now there may be, I shouldn't, I don't want to be a hypocrite
2095. 01:32:56 'cause Marcus Reelis has told me not to.
2096. 01:32:58 So there might be a person that I find
2097. 01:33:03 that I would point to this book and be like,
2098. 01:33:04 you know, that one time I read this book
2099. 01:33:07 and you might like actually like this book.
2100. 01:33:10 But I don't think that's going to be very often.
2101. 01:33:12 I am glad I read it.
2102. 01:33:15 So don't read this, Mike.
2103. 01:33:17 Like remember, you know, like we just read about this.
2104. 01:33:19 Don't read my opinion.
2105. 01:33:20 Like don't own that opinion, right?
2106. 01:33:23 It's just my opinion.
2107. 01:33:26 I'm glad I read it.
2108. 01:33:27 I'm glad I worked through it.
2109. 01:33:29 I would not have been upset if we weren't recording
2110. 01:33:34 a podcast on this and I could have stopped reading it
2111. 01:33:37 at about book four, right?
2112. 01:33:39 Like I'd have just been like, you know,
2113. 01:33:41 I know where this is going.
2114. 01:33:42 I'm good, everything's going to be okay.
2115. 01:33:45 And then I would have probably been just as happy to go
2116. 01:33:47 with like what are the best pull quotes
2117. 01:33:50 from Marcus Aurelius's meditation
2118. 01:33:52 and I would have read those and gone.
2119. 01:33:53 Yeah, those are pretty good, pretty good pull quotes.
2120. 01:33:55 So it's purely based on me, what I like, what I didn't like.
2121. 01:34:01 I think there is some good ideas in here, right?
2122. 01:34:06 I think it's really cool.
2123. 01:34:07 Like you mentioned it a little bit
2124. 01:34:08 how I think wisdom transcends time.
2125. 01:34:12 So therefore, you know, like I see smart, good ideas,
2126. 01:34:17 you know, way back in, you know, 120 AD or whatever,
2127. 01:34:21 160 AD, whatever one.
2128. 01:34:23 So I like that.
2129. 01:34:26 But Mike, this book is a one star for me.
2130. 01:34:30 This is a one star book for me.
2131. 01:34:33 I have figured out where my one star book is
2132. 01:34:36 and this book is a one star book for me.
2133. 01:34:38 All right.
2134. 01:34:40 Like you rated it a three and I like almost like when,
2135. 01:34:44 like I almost had like a, like a, like a breath,
2136. 01:34:46 like a surprised shock breath in there.
2137. 01:34:49 It's just, I mean, I just,
2138. 01:34:51 the one star is coming from the valuable stuff
2139. 01:34:53 that's in there, but I know would never need
2140. 01:34:57 to read this book again, ever.
2141. 01:34:58 I get it.
2142. 01:34:59 That's fair.
2143. 01:35:00 So I think the one star version of this for me
2144. 01:35:04 would be if it was like two or three times as long.
2145. 01:35:07 Yeah, written in Latin.
2146. 01:35:11 Yeah.
2147. 01:35:12 So I, I don't know.
2148. 01:35:14 I mean, I guess I've cranked through enough books.
2149. 01:35:17 I didn't enjoy that.
2150. 01:35:18 This one wasn't too tough for me because of the length.
2151. 01:35:20 It wasn't, it wasn't that long.
2152. 01:35:23 And how many books have been rated one star on book work?
2153. 01:35:26 Oh, that's a good question.
2154. 01:35:28 So there are, I don't, I don't know.
2155. 01:35:30 There are two books specifically that I remember
2156. 01:35:34 absolutely hating, but even those,
2157. 01:35:36 I'm not sure I ever rated them just one star because
2158. 01:35:41 just talking through them and also like reading them,
2159. 01:35:44 I was able to find something and like,
2160. 01:35:46 oh, that's valuable.
2161. 01:35:48 So one star for me means like,
2162. 01:35:50 I got absolutely nothing out of this.
2163. 01:35:52 This was a complete waste of time.
2164. 01:35:54 And, but the two that I absolutely hated were
2165. 01:35:56 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
2166. 01:35:59 and then the Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer.
2167. 01:36:02 And the Art of Asking, I actually couldn't,
2168. 01:36:06 I couldn't finish that book.
2169. 01:36:07 I had to, 'cause it's kind of like her memoir.
2170. 01:36:12 It's like a bunch of random thoughts that just her talking
2171. 01:36:17 about her life experiences and things.
2172. 01:36:18 And it's, oh man, I had to get the audio book
2173. 01:36:22 and listen to it while I was out for a run.
2174. 01:36:25 That's the only way that I could finish it.
2175. 01:36:26 I'm like, this is, this is so bad.
2176. 01:36:29 And well, my one star is there's some value in there
2177. 01:36:34 but not a crazy amount and not in a form.
2178. 01:36:38 But here's one thing that we're learning, right?
2179. 01:36:40 You're always learning something.
2180. 01:36:42 I'm learning that these books where there's lists of ideas.
2181. 01:36:46 So like the 101, you know, thing like the 101 book
2182. 01:36:50 that we read not too long ago.
2183. 01:36:52 I didn't like that style of that book either.
2184. 01:36:54 Was 101 essays that'll change the way you think?
2185. 01:36:57 Right, I didn't like that book either.
2186. 01:36:58 I don't like this book.
2187. 01:36:59 Where it was just basically like 50 something,
2188. 01:37:02 you know, 12 times 50 ideas.
2189. 01:37:04 So I think I'm learning that that,
2190. 01:37:07 I'm gonna avoid those books.
2191. 01:37:09 No listicles for Corey.
2192. 01:37:11 That's what we're learning.
2193. 01:37:16 All right, let's put meditations on the shelf.
2194. 01:37:20 What's next?
2195. 01:37:22 So I have the next book.
2196. 01:37:23 The next book we are doing is called
2197. 01:37:25 Simple Marketing for Smart People.
2198. 01:37:28 The one question you need to win customers
2199. 01:37:30 without gimmicks, hype, or hard selling,
2200. 01:37:33 it's by Billy Broaz and with Tiago Forte.
2201. 01:37:37 So that's how it's titled on the front cover.
2202. 01:37:40 Billy Broaz with Tiago Forte.
2203. 01:37:42 So I'm doing this one somewhat selfishly
2204. 01:37:46 or maybe completely selfishly.
2205. 01:37:47 I don't know how that works.
2206. 01:37:48 But I wanna learn more about marketing.
2207. 01:37:51 And I'm by no means trying to say I'm a smart person,
2208. 01:37:54 but I'm just saying I wanna learn about marketing
2209. 01:37:56 and I wanna do it in a simple way.
2210. 01:37:57 Like I don't wanna read a textbook on marketing.
2211. 01:37:59 I don't wanna go listen to 75 hours
2212. 01:38:02 of podcasts on marketing.
2213. 01:38:04 I wanna get a good gist of what marketing is all about.
2214. 01:38:10 And reading about this one and Tiago Forte is a name, right?
2215. 01:38:14 So I know of Tiago's work.
2216. 01:38:17 So there's a methodology that they're gonna pitch to us
2217. 01:38:19 and I'm looking forward to unpacking this one.
2218. 01:38:22 It's a little bit of a shorter book.
2219. 01:38:24 For those of you, it's 174 pages.
2220. 01:38:26 The print length version is 174 pages,
2221. 01:38:28 so it shouldn't be too hard to knock out.
2222. 01:38:31 And hopefully we get some good stuff out of it
2223. 01:38:32 around marketing.
2224. 01:38:34 Mike, you have the book after that?
2225. 01:38:36 - Well, real quickly, it's a pretty easy read.
2226. 01:38:38 I will say the discussion for this will probably be best
2227. 01:38:44 if you come to it with some sort of application.
2228. 01:38:49 Like this is how I could see this being applied.
2229. 01:38:53 I know that's the direction I'm gonna take
2230. 01:38:54 as I go through it again,
2231. 01:38:56 'cause I've read it previously,
2232. 01:38:57 but I'm working on the cohort stuff
2233. 01:39:00 and thinking through how can I actually apply this stuff
2234. 01:39:03 as I finish up the sales page and things like that.
2235. 01:39:08 So yeah, it's a good one.
2236. 01:39:10 And this is the one,
2237. 01:39:12 if you wanna learn something about marketing,
2238. 01:39:13 but you're put off by the Alex Hormozis
2239. 01:39:16 and the Russell Brunson's, this is anti that.
2240. 01:39:20 - Yeah, good.
2241. 01:39:21 - All right, after that, we have a long book.
2242. 01:39:23 So I'm eveninging it out,
2243. 01:39:24 but we're gonna read "Port Charlie's Almanac"
2244. 01:39:29 by Charlie Munger.
2245. 01:39:31 And Peter Kaufman, I think that's the version
2246. 01:39:33 that we're gonna read.
2247. 01:39:35 So I'll put the link in the show notes
2248. 01:39:37 for people if they are interested in reading this with me.
2249. 01:39:40 "Port Charlie's Almanac" has been around
2250. 01:39:42 in some way, shape or form for a while.
2251. 01:39:44 And it's one of those books
2252. 01:39:45 that I just keeps popping up on the list is like,
2253. 01:39:48 this is really something you need to read before you die.
2254. 01:39:52 And yeah, so it's like 350 pages.
2255. 01:39:56 It's a bit longer,
2256. 01:39:57 but since we're going through civil marketing
2257. 01:40:01 for smart people prior to this, it's kinda good timing.
2258. 01:40:03 And I think this is gonna be a good conversation.
2259. 01:40:09 It'll be interesting to see that book,
2260. 01:40:12 'cause Charlie Munger is the guy who works
2261. 01:40:14 with Warren Buffett, right?
2262. 01:40:16 So essentially a wisdom type of book,
2263. 01:40:19 but modern as opposed to the ancient one
2264. 01:40:21 that we just went through.
2265. 01:40:22 So maybe Coria Lovett, maybe you'll hate it.
2266. 01:40:26 - Hey, Shane Parrish says,
2267. 01:40:29 "There's a billion dollar education inside this book."
2268. 01:40:32 Ooh, there's big words right there.
2269. 01:40:35 - That is big words, yep.
2270. 01:40:37 All right, got any gap books?
2271. 01:40:40 - No, I don't think I have any gap books right now.
2272. 01:40:43 If I have gap books, I'm not committing to them
2273. 01:40:47 because finals is ending and I'm grading finals right now.
2274. 01:40:51 And then the holiday is here.
2275. 01:40:53 So I don't know if I'm gonna do any gap books right now.
2276. 01:40:56 - How about it?
2277. 01:40:57 - I do have a gap book.
2278. 01:40:59 So yesterday I was sitting in a chair upstairs,
2279. 01:41:03 Toby walks into the living room
2280. 01:41:06 with this look in his eye and I'm like,
2281. 01:41:08 "Oh boy, what's gonna happen?"
2282. 01:41:09 He's like, "I have a challenge for you."
2283. 01:41:12 And I was like, "Oh boy, what's that?"
2284. 01:41:14 He hands me a book and he's like,
2285. 01:41:16 "Read this over Christmas break."
2286. 01:41:19 And it's a fiction book, "Tale of Two Cities."
2287. 01:41:22 So I said that I would read it.
2288. 01:41:27 "Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.
2289. 01:41:29 - And I think like your holiday break
2290. 01:41:31 is going to be the best of times
2291. 01:41:33 or the worst of times, we'll figure that out.
2292. 01:41:37 - Nice, yeah, I've never read that book.
2293. 01:41:38 So I think I'll have the band with to pull that off.
2294. 01:41:43 All right, well, I'll just put out a quick plug here
2295. 01:41:46 for the Bookworm Club membership.
2296. 01:41:50 If you want to support the podcast directly,
2297. 01:41:52 that would be great.
2298. 01:41:53 We would very much appreciate it.
2299. 01:41:54 You can do so by going to patreon.com/bookwormfm.
2300. 01:41:59 And there will be some additional perks
2301. 01:42:01 coming to that membership shortly.
2302. 01:42:03 Right now what you get is a pro version of the show.
2303. 01:42:06 So it has an extra segment where today
2304. 01:42:09 we did a brief 2024 retrospective.
2305. 01:42:12 There's also a bootleg feed,
2306. 01:42:15 which is the recording.
2307. 01:42:17 As soon as we get done, I upload that.
2308. 01:42:19 And it has all of the flubs and it's unedited,
2309. 01:42:23 but you get it a couple of weeks in advance.
2310. 01:42:25 There's a 4K Bookworm wallpaper
2311. 01:42:27 and a couple other things are going to be coming to that
2312. 01:42:30 in 2025, so stay tuned.
2313. 01:42:32 It costs $7 a month,
2314. 01:42:33 but if you want to support the podcast directly,
2315. 01:42:36 we would really appreciate that.
2316. 01:42:37 You could do so by going to patreon.com/bookwormfm.
2317. 01:42:41 - And if you're reading along with us,
2318. 01:42:44 pick up simple marketing for smart people
2319. 01:42:47 and we'll talk to you next time.