236: Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike, we're back and we are going to take on Ryan Holiday's last book in the Stoic virtue series today, but before we do that, we should talk about some follow up items.
2. 00:00:12 Now, I had some follow up items in here that were for the old old section and you took them out of here and I don't know if you did that on purpose or not, but I still want to talk about one of them.
3. 00:00:23 I did, but I'm sorry. I didn't know you actually meant to revisit the list.
4. 00:00:28 I meant to keep those in there, but that's okay. I just want to be in 90 percent of the reason why I wanted to keep them in there is because I want credit for him.
5. 00:00:35 So I did download Justin's resources. Okay, check. Yeah, I did look into or we did the accountability thing primarily because you did it at the very end of the show last time.
6. 00:00:49 So thank you very much for doing that. I'm doing a terrible job saying accountable, but if you want to know more about that, feel free to go to the pro show.
7. 00:00:56 We talk about why I'm doing a terrible job or why I might be doing a terrible job and how to overcome that Mike basically coached me for the last 15 minutes.
8. 00:01:05 If you all don't know my theme for pro shows, my theme is to get Mike to coach me live on this episode.
9. 00:01:11 So I just ask him questions in ways that turn into a coaching session, but now let's go ahead and get to today's so my first follow up item was make an accessible reference guide of the reference items that were in the back of made to stick.
10. 00:01:30 So what I did is I pulled those out of there and then I told Gemini to format that and make it pretty and turn it into something that I could throw into my obsidian vault.
11. 00:01:41 And it did a great job and I feel really good about it. And now it's there for when I want to know and say what exactly did that made that made to stick book say I can quickly find it in obsidian.
12. 00:01:51 And there you go. Fantastic. So I'm feeling good about this one. I'm liking it. And what's yours. So what's your first follow up item or your only follow up item. We didn't have very many follow up items.
13. 00:02:03 Yeah. This is actually not something that you'll be able to hold me accountable to for quite a while because it has to do with the book that I'm writing.
14. 00:02:12 But I want to have that easy reference guide for the person or a treat book that I'm writing just like made to stick at the end of my book.
15. 00:02:21 So I haven't even started this yet but I am working on the writing as you alluded to we've got a fancy Google sheet which charts all the words that people have written.
16. 00:02:32 And I'm not making as much progress on that as I would like either. I need to get serious about this. Okay. Just everybody knows not making much progress. It's light like light years ahead of the amount of progress Cory's making.
17. 00:02:44 So Mike is doing a great job everybody. I'm just going to tell you that he's doing a great job. Not if I'm going to get it done by the end of November.
18. 00:02:51 I got to pick up that's valid. Yeah, that's valid. I get that. One more item of follow up is Mike. I have some disappointing news. I have some sad news that I'm going to break for you right now.
19. 00:03:01 Like I know what this is. I don't think I can go to sponsor games. I really I looked it. I looked it when the thing was in like you actually somewhat made this easier for me because at some point I get a text that basically says I'm in like done.
20. 00:03:16 You know, Mike, Mike sends me the message. It's like I would miss like three or four days of class right before spring break. And I just can't do that.
21. 00:03:25 Like if it was move your spring break. I can't do that either. But if it was like if it was school related, I could do it. But because it's not school related.
22. 00:03:35 It's just a completely personal thing. I just don't feel right doing it. So timing of things. I'm sorry, but I'm excited to hear what you're going to do and how you're going to grow from it and how amazing it's going to make the rest of your life.
23. 00:03:49 That would be sad for months. It will be fun. Yeah. So I did buy the ticket. I got the flights. Don't have the hotel yet, but I will be at sponsor games. So, yeah, if you want to come land sponsorship deals with me, you should join.
24. 00:04:07 Mike in San Antonio in March of next year. Yeah. Cool. I'll walk. It'll be great. Are you ready to get into our book for today?
25. 00:04:19 As ready as I will be. Okay. All right. That's a little bit of foreshadowing there, everybody. So this is wisdom's take wisdom takes work.
26. 00:04:28 Learn, apply, repeat. This is the fourth book in Ryan Holiday's Stoic Virtue series. And as you can imagine from the title, it is about wisdom.
27. 00:04:39 And it is in very, very fitting form to the rest of his books. There is an introduction to the book. There are three parts to the book.
28. 00:04:48 There's an afterward and or an epilogue or I forget what he calls it in this book, but and then there are a bunch of what I'm going to call tiny little chapters.
29. 00:04:58 And there are all the things that he wants to hit in the big themes of his part one, part two and part three.
30. 00:05:06 So without further ado, I think we get into it unless you have something else that you want to talk about before the introduction.
31. 00:05:12 Just that, as you mentioned, this is the last one in the Stoic Virtue series. There are four Stoic virtues. And I couldn't recall them off the top of my head.
32. 00:05:26 I think that's okay.
33. 00:05:29 I'm looking at them. So the reason I know them is I'm looking at them. Courage, discipline, justice and wisdom.
34. 00:05:43 Stoicism textbook per se, like it definitely is a stoic vibe to it. And Ryan Holiday has, I think, firmly established himself as the stoic guy.
35. 00:05:58 But I don't consider myself a stoic. I'm not a huge fan of stoicism, not a huge fan of meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I still get a lot out of these types of books.
36. 00:06:12 So I do think even if you are not a stoic that doesn't mean that you are removed from the ideal audience for this.
37. 00:06:21 It's interesting to me that like, I don't even think about it as a stoic series. I think about it more about it as wisdom or courage or justice or discipline.
38. 00:06:31 So I would go into it that way. It's not a short book. So this book's 400 pages. But at the same time, it also breaks down into those little chapters.
39. 00:06:41 So it doesn't, I don't know, I guess it doesn't feel like a 400 page wall to wall text type of a book. So just kind of know that going into it.
40. 00:06:49 Yeah, it does not. It reads much closer to, I would say, a normal 260-ish page book.
41. 00:06:59 Part of that, I think, is that the pages are formatted. Like the whole book is kind of short and squatty. It looks kind of weird.
42. 00:07:08 And so there's not as many words on the page. And then because the chapters are so short frequently, they end in the middle of a page.
43. 00:07:14 And so you buy back some pages that way.
44. 00:07:18 Okay, so let's get into the introduction. So the first thing Holiday is going to do is he's going to kind of remind us what the four virtues are.
45. 00:07:25 He's going to then introduce the idea that this book is all about the wisdom.
46. 00:07:30 And he makes a statement in here, the book aims to explain the method of some of the wisest people to ever live.
47. 00:07:35 And the reason why I bring that up is because that's what he'll do.
48. 00:07:39 The entire book is he will basically pick a wise person, talk about them, pick a wise person, talk about them, put a wise person, talk about them.
49. 00:07:47 And then kind of at the end of each section, when he wants to talk about that thing that he deems wise in whatever form it is, he's going to then do a wrap up or do like a summary of those things.
50. 00:08:01 So very story heavy in terms of the book. He's going to tell us a story and he's going to talk about it.
51. 00:08:07 He's going to tell us a story and he's going to talk about it.
52. 00:08:10 Yep. And it's kind of the same format, the same playbook that he's been following for the other books in this series.
53. 00:08:18 But this one feels a little bit thicker. So maybe this is the longest one. I didn't compare the page counts.
54. 00:08:23 Okay. Anything else with the introduction? I mean, he's really just telling us that wisdom is the mother of all virtues, that basically all of the other virtues rely on wisdom.
55. 00:08:31 It can't be delegated to somebody else. You have to earn it. That's where the wisdom takes work part comes from.
56. 00:08:36 We can get wiser, but never wise is an interesting way to frame that.
57. 00:08:41 And then, I mean, he's really just giving us an overview of the idea of what he considers wisdom to be or what people consider wisdom to be.
58. 00:08:50 So, yeah, I think that's that's fine. I guess the other thing I'll share at the beginning of this is that in terms of the stoic virtues, this one is, I think the most interesting to me.
59. 00:09:03 I don't think I've said that about the other books, but maybe maybe I have. I don't know.
60. 00:09:07 Like courage is appealing, but the whole idea of what actually is wisdom and how do you apply it?
61. 00:09:17 I feel like that is the one that is kind of custom fit for me to like the most.
62. 00:09:26 I mean, it's kind of the reason why we do this podcast. Right? As we read these books, we don't just read them to read them.
63. 00:09:33 We talk about the ideas, figure out what we're going to apply from them.
64. 00:09:37 That is essentially our version of trying to build this wisdom.
65. 00:09:44 Yep. I would agree. Okay. Then let's move into part one.
66. 00:09:49 Now, this episode is going to seem maybe a little bit different than than other ones because each of the three parts is actually quite long.
67. 00:09:57 So, I didn't count them, but Mike, you might know more off the top of your head.
68. 00:10:01 I mean, there's probably 15 subsections within each within each one of these parts.
69. 00:10:08 You know, I mean, like there's a decent number of pages in every one of the parts.
70. 00:10:14 So, the part one, the first part is called the the agogae or your training ground.
71. 00:10:19 I mean, it's going to come from either Greek or, you know, some ancient language, Latin, I would assume.
72. 00:10:24 I don't know my language is very well. So, I assume it's Latin, but he's basically talking about your training, your training ground.
73. 00:10:30 So, in this, he's going to unpack like a bunch of different concepts.
74. 00:10:33 So, I'll read some of them. I won't read all of them because that would be boring, but a most unusual education.
75. 00:10:38 Talk to the dead. Be curious. Ask the question. Focus, focus, focus. Learn to listen.
76. 00:10:42 So, like, he's going to say this and basically he's getting into the idea of we need to, I guess the way I'll say it is, like, wisdom just doesn't come from nowhere.
77. 00:10:51 Like, we have to have like a background in wisdom. So, that's where the training ground comes from.
78. 00:10:55 Just so you can get a structure of the book as we as we unpack the entire book, the next one is going to be called the sirens.
79. 00:11:03 The perilous rocks you must be where. And the next one is called the apothesis or touching the divine.
80. 00:11:08 So, basically it's like train yourself, then be careful of these things, then basically extend this idea of wisdom or try to achieve actual wisdom.
81. 00:11:19 Maybe, maybe not. We'll talk about that when we get there.
82. 00:11:22 But I think the best way to do this, Mike, is to just kind of look at it and say, "Hey, what do we want to talk about in here?
83. 00:11:28 What stood out to you? What makes sense as you went through the training ground portion of the book?"
84. 00:11:35 Sure. Well, one that I really liked was talk to the dead, because this is about books.
85. 00:11:42 So, he mentions that books are conversations with the dead. He says that we all have time to read.
86. 00:11:49 And on page 26, there's a quote says, "There are many paths to wisdom, but nearly every one of them runs through books."
87. 00:11:57 And I have not heard Ryan Holiday talk about this topic, but I feel confident in saying that he would advocate for physical books.
88. 00:12:07 Would you think that? That seems very true to you. I think he would advocate for reading, not necessarily physical books.
89. 00:12:15 Well, he has a bookstore where he sells physical books, and the way that he writes his books is with analog note cards.
90. 00:12:27 His book writing style is wild. I think you're absolutely right.
91. 00:12:31 He would 100% say physical, physical, physical all the way through, because he picked up what's his name, his mentor.
92. 00:12:39 Goodness gracious. Robert Greene? Yeah, he picked up Robert Greene's note-taking and index card thing, because he talks about it at the end of the book about how he picked that up.
93. 00:12:47 So, yes, you're right. Even though you and Ryan Holiday are wrong, yes, you're right.
94. 00:12:54 I don't know that we are, but that's okay. He asked the question in this chapter, "Can you think of any truly wise person who doesn't read?"
95. 00:13:02 I thought that was a pretty interesting question. Well, and this ties back into our book on Charlie Munger, where it talked about how, you know, voracious of a reader Charlie Munger was.
96. 00:13:11 And I think about this, too, is like the idea of just everybody that you know. Everybody that you know is that you consider wise, I would say, is a very strong reader.
97. 00:13:24 You know, they're the strong reader, and they've got 60 years of experience, and the thing that they're wise in. It's one of those two things.
98. 00:13:30 Well, it's probably both of those things. I was thinking about that because, "Can I think of any truly wise person who doesn't read?"
99. 00:13:37 And I really couldn't. And I was trying to think of a scenario where that would fail to be true.
100. 00:13:49 And because on the surface, initially, I was kind of thinking, "There's got to be someone somewhere that I would consider." Yeah, they're wise.
101. 00:13:58 But I couldn't do it. The other thing I want to hit on from this, by the way, the books are conversations with the dead idea.
102. 00:14:08 This is really interesting to me because I have long held the belief that books are like the best investment that you can make for $20.
103. 00:14:24 You can get the best ideas from some of the most brilliant minds that have ever walked the earth,
104. 00:14:32 which is why when someone recommends a book, I open up the Amazon app and I buy it right on the spot.
105. 00:14:38 Because even if that just sits on my bookshelf for years until I actually go pick it up to read it, it's nothing.
106. 00:14:48 I mean, we spend so much more on pumpkin spice lattes, stuff that makes no real difference in our lives.
107. 00:15:00 And when you think about what books actually have the potential to give you, it's kind of crazy that they are so cheap.
108. 00:15:10 These should be probably hundreds of dollars if they were going to, even the bad ones, if they were going to accurately reflect the value that they can provide to somebody's life.
109. 00:15:22 And most people can't be troubled to go get a library card and get them for free.
110. 00:15:28 And this is why I am so for libraries and I'm so for access to information and knowledge in that way, even to the point where, and again, you're going to roll your eyes at me probably when I say this.
111. 00:15:44 But it's like the idea of digitizing books and having a record of those things, that way they stay around long term.
112. 00:15:51 I think this is so valuable for us, because there's so much information and so much knowledge contained.
113. 00:15:58 And one of the points I think Holiday makes different places in here is the fact that if you want the wisdom out of those books, you can't just matrix style plug in and download the information.
114. 00:16:11 You have to work through it.
115. 00:16:13 And as Mike kind of said, and you all know this from the fact that we do the show, this is the value of what we do here.
116. 00:16:20 Yes, we're making a product and hopefully you're benefiting from it and you're gaining something from it.
117. 00:16:25 But us working through these books and then talking about them and hashing these ideas out, that work that we put into that hopefully is slowly and slowly and slowly making us wiser as we think about life and as we think about how to apply it to life.
118. 00:16:39 So I couldn't agree more that I think this conversation with the dead, I like that idea, I like the idea of books or like you said books are cheap. They're a relatively cheap way to get access to a lot of different ideas and cool ideas.
119. 00:16:52 And I think the work is a benefit.
120. 00:16:55 When I think about it compared to social media, the work is a benefit because social media takes no work.
121. 00:16:59 I just turn it on and the algorithm just pops stuff in front of my face all the time.
122. 00:17:03 This actually makes me go find the book, it makes me get the book, it makes me read the book.
123. 00:17:07 I think that's a valuable thing in this situation.
124. 00:17:10 So on that topic, not to spend too much time on this first one here, but I just published a newsletter slash blog post about being a river, not a reservoir.
125. 00:17:23 And I was kind of responding to a newsletter that Ali Abdall had shared a week or two ago as we record this about what he calls the creation to consumption ratio.
126. 00:17:35 So going back to the pro show about being a professional creator versus a side hustle creator.
127. 00:17:44 He actually advocates for as much time creating something of your own as time that you spend consuming things that other people have made.
128. 00:17:55 And he kind of advocates for the one to one ratio there and I kind of think that's impossible.
129. 00:18:01 So as I was thinking about it, my take on it is you don't worry about the ratio, you just have to have an output from all these ideas and things that you collect and consume.
130. 00:18:13 But I made the point as I was putting together that newsletter, that the argument could probably be made that you should consume way more than you create.
131. 00:18:23 If you have high quality sources. And I think I called up books specifically, but I'm guessing that Ali is not.
132. 00:18:36 I know he reads, he's got a whole book club section on his YouTube channel, but I think just the way that that is phrased, it kind of assumes that you're not going to wrestle through a 360 page book like we just did before sitting down to record
133. 00:18:52 an hour and a half podcast on it. Like those two don't match up one to one. So I think the more important thing is not how much am I consuming, but really like what are you consuming?
134. 00:19:06 What is in your information diet? That's another topic in one of these sections, but not the one that we're in.
135. 00:19:13 Are you okay if I move us to a couple different ones that lump together? Some of the ones that sit out here for this one is find your classroom, find your teacher, become an apprentice.
136. 00:19:24 So not surprising that I would call out those three. I want to talk about him as a package because I think they are a package.
137. 00:19:30 And what I really like is his approach to being more open to classroom. He calls out things like the military, an internship, an apprenticeship, starting a company, doing a thing.
138. 00:19:42 There are these ideas that can be your classroom. I think traditional classrooms are good, and I think they are useful, and I think that it's going to be very hard to become a wise person without at some point experiencing a traditional classroom.
139. 00:19:56 Like I just think that's the case. I also think that it's going to be hard to become a wise person without experiencing a non-traditional classroom.
140. 00:20:04 So I think both of these things are very, very true. I think about some of the ways I've learned the most isn't in a classroom where there's been a lecturer or a teacher actually talking to me.
141. 00:20:17 It's been working with somebody and watching what they do and trying to figure out why did they think that way and how did they do that.
142. 00:20:24 And this rolls us right into that thing about find your teacher. And I love what he says here basically is avoid bad teachers. And I think this is so true.
143. 00:20:35 And this is where part of the educational system, I get kind of frustrated with it because I think about the educational system a lot.
144. 00:20:42 If your student, whether it be your child or your nephew or whatever it might be, if they get in with a bad teacher and you can't figure out a way to get them out of that bad teacher, that can ruin the whole year for them.
145. 00:20:55 If they're in a traditional educational environment, that can ruin the whole year. And not only the psychological impact it has, so it's a whole year of learning plus the psychological impact.
146. 00:21:05 Now by no means am I saying don't have grit and you can't help your kid learn to deal with a struggling situation or that's the wrong way to put it, but help him deal with a difficult situation.
147. 00:21:15 But what I say is if you're in a situation where somebody's clearly, they're just a bad teacher, it's okay. It's just like a bad book.
148. 00:21:23 We've talked about this on the show in the past. If there's a bad book, it's okay to put it down and just not finish it and be like, "I don't like this book. This book is bad. I'm going to put this down."
149. 00:21:31 The same thing I think is true with a teacher. We did an entire episode on apprenticeship and we read an entire book about apprenticeship.
150. 00:21:41 So I don't want to go too hard into the apprenticeship, but Mike, I think the more and more I'm doing education, the more and more I'm thinking about learning, the more of a fan I'm becoming for apprenticeships.
151. 00:21:52 And again, I don't think that you get rid of the traditional classroom, but I think if you combine classroom environment with an apprenticeship in the right way and at the right ratios, man, what an educational opportunity.
152. 00:22:04 We're strong on internships here, and I've always been a fan of co-ops and those type of things.
153. 00:22:10 I just think there's a huge value in apprenticeships. So I really like the way he framed and he packaged these three things, and I also appreciate the way he put them in the order that he put them in.
154. 00:22:19 Classroom, teacher, apprenticeship, and kind of how he blended all that together, I found those to be really valuable for me.
155. 00:22:26 Yeah, so my oldest is 18, and we're looking at schools and things like that. So we actually went and toured the technical college the other day and learned about a lot of those programs.
156. 00:22:41 I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on stuff like that, because those seem pretty interesting. They obviously have the classroom element where you're learning what to do, but then you actually go do it.
157. 00:22:52 I think if you want to get into, I forget the name of the program, but there's literally a program where you spend a whole year building the house. If you want to learn how to build the house, they'll actually walk you through it and you get to apply all the learning.
158. 00:23:09 If you want to get into woodworking, they've got a $10 million lab with all this crazy equipment in it where you can actually do this stuff. And it just seemed like a really neat approach to at least the things that you would learn with the trades.
159. 00:23:23 Getting some experience before you would have to go start at the bottom if you want to become a plumber or whatever.
160. 00:23:29 Yeah, I mean, I think there's an immense opportunity there. And if you look at the nation right now, there's a lot of skilled labor holes that we have right now.
161. 00:23:42 So I don't know them. I haven't kept up with the data very recently, like I haven't gotten looked at it in the last week or two or whatever it is.
162. 00:23:51 But I can tell you that my brother is always looking for welders. He's always looking for pipefitters. He's always looking for people who are in the skilled labor.
163. 00:23:59 Electricians, I know there was a period out here in Denver where fiber optic installers, and you could not find enough of fiber optic installers.
164. 00:24:07 So I'm a huge fan of those things. I think what you have to encourage the student to think about and what the parents have to help them think through is not necessarily the next five or 10 years, but think through like 25 years from now.
165. 00:24:20 It's like in 25 years, what do you think about like still going out and managing job sites and, you know, like welding and getting into all those crazy positions and like being electrician versus are you setting yourself up to where as you naturally like get older, right?
166. 00:24:38 And you don't want to do those manual labor type jobs anymore. Have you set yourself up in a way that it allows you to then manage the people that are doing that work or apprentice the people that are doing that work and mentor the people that are doing that work.
167. 00:24:49 And I think there's a, there's a both sides of that conversation because I think that there are certain individuals where those jobs fit much better with them, especially at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old.
168. 00:25:04 Like, I mean, just without a doubt, like that's what they need to be doing right now. Just like I think there are certain people who come out and they're like, I need to go to the military.
169. 00:25:12 Like, that is the education I need right now. It is not a formal education. It is the military. Like, that's what that's the education I need.
170. 00:25:19 And, and I think there's a lot of value in that. And then my, my question is, okay, what do you do after that? Like, what, what happens after that?
171. 00:25:26 Or are you okay with doing that thing forever? Like, for the rest of your, your career? And if you can answer those, those, honestly, I think, you know, that's a completely, completely okay thing.
172. 00:25:37 I also find, I have to say this because I'm a university faculty member, right? Like, I also think there's a whole other set of the world that when you graduate under, when you graduate high school, going into undergrad, like going to the traditional four year undergrad program is the absolute right thing for them to do.
173. 00:25:51 That's exactly what they need to do. That's, and they know why they need to do it. And then there's a whole group of people that have no clue what they want to do.
174. 00:25:58 And they're in, and they're in the murky middle. And they come out and they say, well, what do I need? I need a couple years to figure stuff out.
175. 00:26:06 And that could look, that could look like gap years that could look like actually enrolling in a university and using the university to explore those opportunities.
176. 00:26:13 It could look like a, a practicing under somebody meant, you know, being getting mentored. So there's my overly long winded answer of, I think they're all viable options.
177. 00:26:23 And you got a, the hard work is figuring out which one's best for you.
178. 00:26:28 Sure. One other thing I wanted to talk about in this section, there's actually a little chapter called Create a Second Brain, which I got to admit.
179. 00:26:39 When I read that title, I was like, huh, because I knew that he writes on, he creates his books on the analog note cards.
180. 00:26:48 As you mentioned, he just picked up from Robert Greene.
181. 00:26:51 So that was curious that that was here really what this is, is an admonition to keep a commonplace book.
182. 00:27:00 Exactly. I was going to say that too. Yeah.
183. 00:27:02 Yeah. So he mentions engage in the practice of capturing information and recording it so it can be drawn on later.
184. 00:27:08 And then later on, I think it was the acquire experience section. He talked about Da Vinci, who is methodical about processing and recording information he came across inside of his commonplace books.
185. 00:27:19 He talks a lot about Da Vinci and his notebooks and things like that actually come up later in a different section.
186. 00:27:27 But there's one other quote from this Create a Second Brain section that I think is absolutely great advice.
187. 00:27:36 Study all systems, but make your own one you'll actually use, right? So this is essentially why I have taken the approach with practical PKM that I have.
188. 00:27:49 And I've struggled a little bit with Life HQ because I don't want it to be done for you system that you just start using and then you never think about it again.
189. 00:28:05 Turns out that's what people say they want, but I feel like the most successful version of any PKM system is one where you take the foundation and then you apply your own tweaks to it, which is why I have written over 60,000 words and documentation for Life HQ.
190. 00:28:25 So I literally have a whole book written already just inside of Life HQ with all the how to's and things. But regardless of whether you use Life HQ or not, I just want to call out that this is great advice about not just copying somebody else's system.
191. 00:28:43 I kind of recoil a little bit when people are like, oh, I use Para or I use, you know, whatever sort of organizational structure because those systems are kind of built to force your brain down predetermined paths.
192. 00:29:01 And if those paths work for you, great, but they're probably not a perfect match. And so you, you do have to figure out, you know, what is the path of least resistance for how you work and then build the structure to support the way that that you work in and just using a prebuilt thing out of the box.
193. 00:29:21 I feel like it's just not the right way to do it. But I've also not heard anybody describe why or not why, but really what I consider to be the correct approach so succinctly.
194. 00:29:35 Yeah, I think, I think he does a good job here. I also want to say that I don't think your life HQ is meant to do that. I don't think you ever sell it like that you sell it as like a look why see it as a get over the hurdle.
195. 00:29:50 Okay, here is a preceded thing to get over the hurdle and then you got to tweak it and you got to make it your own like that's the way I think you've done there so I'll stop there but I agree like I think you have to have some sort of a system or wisdom will take longer to develop
196. 00:30:06 as I think if you don't have some sort of a system of commonplace book, a digital commonplace book, some sort of life HQ type of a thing, you're just going to lose too much because of especially how fast information hits us these days and how much information hits us
197. 00:30:21 and how busy we run our lives. We all run our lives entirely too busy, I think, but what are you going to do? That's just kind of how life is right now unless you make an active choice to not do that.
198. 00:30:36 I have one more, one more out of here that I want to talk about and then we can move from my perspective. The join a scene section, the join a scene chapter, I really like the join a scene chapter, right? So like this is where I get my first action item out of the book and my first action item out of the book is what
199. 00:30:53 makes sense for me. So I will freely tell you that like one of the reasons why when Mike asked me to go to his bookworm with him, I was like, yes, because like the scene around people who take in information and process it critically
200. 00:31:10 is a very valuable scene for me. It's one of the reasons why I like universities. It's one of the reasons why I like academia. I think you can go too far. I think it can get, you know, you take yourself too serious in certain environments, but I like those scenes where people take
201. 00:31:25 information and I think critically about them. So that's a good scene for me. I also get jealous of things like he mentions the inklings and like different music scenes and the PayPal mafia and there's everything. And I get jealous because here I am, I'm 40 something years old and I don't have that scene and I want it.
202. 00:31:42 Like I want that scene. So Mike, I'll freely admit to you. Like I get jealous of your, I don't know what you call it, your creator group. Like a business accelerator. Yeah. It's like I get, it's like I want a group like that. But then I'll tell you, it's like, well, hold on, if you pushed me hard and you said, well, which one do you want?
203. 00:32:00 Like what do you want? Like create it, Corey, like go make that scene. And I would go, oh, you know what I mean? Like, so it's a double issue. Yeah. So I actually would generally advise not to go make the scene, but to join the scene, especially at the beginning, because you kind of don't know what the scene should look like.
204. 00:32:28 Your ideal scene. He does bring up the jinto, which is Benjamin Franklin's club of 12 friends devoted to mutual improvement. But I feel like if you just grab 12 random friends and be like, Hey, guys, let's get together and mutually improve each other.
205. 00:32:42 The first version of that is terrible. The second version of that is a little bit better. Third version of that. Okay. Now we're on to something.
206. 00:32:48 Yeah. And by then, by then your 12, your 12 people as dwindled down to six, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So you're better off just trying a bunch of different scenes, especially with the internet. I think it's more accessible than the never to join that sort of thing.
207. 00:33:05 That being said, the creator business accelerator. I mean, I've told you before that would love to have you, you in there. And then I'm doing it currently as like a 10 week sprint for people.
208. 00:33:15 But I fully intend to make this just like a bi-weekly group coaching thing that's added on to the library in the long term.
209. 00:33:26 I feel like occasionally doing the sprints to kind of give people the positive peer pressure, the accountability to actually do the thing is can be useful.
210. 00:33:35 But really the scene that he's talking about isn't like a cohort style where you show up for a short period of time and you do something.
211. 00:33:45 It's a place that you show up consistently because you join the conversation and then you walk away and then your brain continues to turn things over.
212. 00:33:54 And it's like, oh, well, here's a question I have. And then you come back and you ask that. And so that's where the really good stuff happens.
213. 00:34:00 I feel like is the regular meeting of the minds, so to speak.
214. 00:34:05 This is the scenario where I believe the virtual medium has hurt us.
215. 00:34:12 Before the virtual medium had a possibility of existing, that scene had to be done in person and we had to agree to meet somewhere and we met somewhere and then we established it.
216. 00:34:24 I just think there's a more, there's a stickiness to that, that I think that stickiness is harder to get virtually.
217. 00:34:30 Now I'm not saying that the virtual hasn't brought other pros to it.
218. 00:34:34 I just think the virtualness is less sticky than it is when you're in person and you're going to the local coffee shop or brew house or whatever it is, like the stories he describes.
219. 00:34:46 Okay, Mike, do you have any more from this first section because I'm ready to go to the second one?
220. 00:34:51 No, let's go to the second one. Okay, second one. So part two, the sirens, the perilous rocks you must be where.
221. 00:34:59 So as you can obviously tell where he's getting this from is the idea that, you know, the sirens would call you in and then what would they want you to do?
222. 00:35:06 They'd want you to run a ground onto the rocks. So when we're thinking about wisdom, what are these sirens that we must be aware of?
223. 00:35:13 I'll give you some of the things he talks about here. Empty cup, empty the cup, right to think, assemble your board of directors, think for yourself.
224. 00:35:22 Don't break your brain, grow up, don't be a snowflake, those kind of things.
225. 00:35:26 So this is a very interesting section to me because in some of these chapters, he like latches on to individuals and just, I mean, Mike, I texted you about this throughout the week.
226. 00:35:41 He kind of just goes off, right? Like, I mean, he just goes off and it's like, I'm like, did he just start ranting?
227. 00:35:48 Like, it just go crazy on this rant about somebody that he sees doing this wrong?
228. 00:35:54 So he does rant a lot. Now, I'm curious, are you wanting to actually talk about the afterword as part of this, or are we just keeping it to the three sections?
229. 00:36:02 No, we can talk about the afterword. Yeah, we can talk about the afterword. Okay. Well, I will save it then.
230. 00:36:06 Okay. We'll save it for the afterword. But he does. Like, he kind of goes off on a rant. Now, he ties it back into wisdom.
231. 00:36:14 So it's not that he just goes off on a rant and says, like, I'm going to use this as my platform to rant about a thing.
232. 00:36:20 He does tie it back into wisdom and he makes connections, you know, to the title of the chapter and then back to it.
233. 00:36:25 So I just thought that was strange. Like, that was, that caught me off guard after the first chapter where the stories were all like, kind of look at this thing and let's aspire to be like this.
234. 00:36:35 And then this one, it was all like, here we go. You know, he's going to, he's going to go off again.
235. 00:36:40 So yeah. And let's just, let's say the quiet part out loud here, you know, the person that he's talking about in this first chapter, the storm within us is Elon Musk.
236. 00:36:50 Yeah. And again, we can talk more about this in the afterword because I think that gives a lot of context. But at this point in the book, it's kind of like you're being kind of brutal here.
237. 00:37:02 But in my, my big thing is like, it's like, regardless of how I feel about the individual, I'm just thinking, holy cow, like here we go.
238. 00:37:10 You know, and he just, he goes for it. Okay. So what are some of the things that sit out to, to me in this?
239. 00:37:17 This is where you get to watch your information diet, which we've talked about before and I think is, is very valuable.
240. 00:37:23 I really like the assemble your board of directors and the idea of if you have the wrong board of directors, they're going to lead you in the wrong way. If you have the wrong advisors, they're going to lead you in, in the wrong way.
241. 00:37:37 I like that he, he calls out the fact that we fill ourselves with, so this is empty the cup, but he fill, we fill ourselves with distracting information. And we kind of allow that to arise to an importance level that it shouldn't have or it doesn't deserve.
242. 00:37:53 And we need to empty the cup. That's what he's talking about is get rid of that distracting things. This ties into a chapter that you talked about in the last section, which is focus, focus, focus.
243. 00:38:02 So it's like, if you put those two together, they're a nice pair that we, you know, we getting rid of the distracting things will allow us to focus more.
244. 00:38:10 I'll stop there on those like, there's a lot of stuff in here that I think is really, really wise and well done, but those are a couple that I caught out first.
245. 00:38:19 Yeah, so let's talk about the Watch Your Information Diet, because that was another one that, that I liked. So he frames this by saying that what we put in our minds is just as important as what we put in our bodies.
246. 00:38:34 Now, I don't know if you follow Ryan Holiday on social media or not. He's actually a pretty good Instagram follow. He's sharing little clips from the podcast that he records in his bookstore. The latest thing he's been doing, which I really love is some famous personal walk in and he'll make like personal recommendations.
247. 00:38:53 So there's a video of like him walking around grabbing books off the shelves. This is why this one's really good, that sort of thing. But he also is a big time runner.
248. 00:39:04 So he'll post screenshots of, I just ran 20 miles at a seven minute 30 second pace. He's way faster than I am. So he's not quite to the level of Saheel Bloom in terms of like Saheel is just such a specimen that it feels like every time he shares that stuff he's kind of showing off a little bit.
249. 00:39:29 Okay, okay. You know, I don't get that vibe with with Ryan Holiday at all, but he's another one of those guys who he obviously takes care of his body. Right.
250. 00:39:39 He's very, very much in shape. So watching your information diet, for me, hits a little bit different than somebody else who's sharing this who isn't a big time athlete, because you could look at somebody who's like in decent shape.
251. 00:39:56 And they say, yeah, watch your information diet, what you put in your mind, just as important as what you put in your body. And you're like, okay, yeah, I guess so. So you kind of believe it's important because I'm looking at your body and I can see you don't really, you're not all in with that, that aspect, right?
252. 00:40:10 But when Ryan Holiday says it, it has more weight. It feels more extreme. It's like, okay, this is really important. You better pay attention to this. He says you can consume too much, applies to both food and facts. 100% agree.
253. 00:40:28 Yep, I agree. Which is the kind of inspiration behind the newsletter I mentioned. You know, at some point, you got a quick consuming and you just got to create something out of it. But then also the kind of not necessarily action item for me associated with this, but the thing to think about is that a fool here is only what they want to hear.
254. 00:40:48 So consider your information sources. In fact, he explicitly says in this section to seek out the things that challenge you. That's sort of a theme throughout.
255. 00:40:57 There are a couple different places where he talks about finding people who disagree with you, people who have different points of view than you do. I think it was the last chapter, actually, he talked about how no matter where you go in the world, they think that their norms are normal.
256. 00:41:14 Yep, yep, yep. Right, and so you kind of, it's sort of a systemic way of pushing back against that, I think, which is pretty good advice. Yeah. There's a section in here where he talks about thinking for yourself.
257. 00:41:27 And he uses Churchill as an example. And he uses some other examples or other people as examples that I didn't write down. But this idea that tradition for the sake of tradition should be thought of as poor.
258. 00:41:45 We don't just do things because that's how everybody's done them. But at the same time, we don't just change things just because we won't change things for no reason.
259. 00:41:53 And I like this idea of coming out and analyzing a situation and not just doing what everybody else is doing for the sake of their doing it, but saying like, "Is this the best way to do that?" And I think my engineer brain likes this because I'm very utilitarian.
260. 00:42:08 Like, Mike, if you tell me this is the way to do X, Y, Z, and I look at it and I go, "Mike, no, it's not. There's a much better way to do this." And just because you and your 100 million other people are doing this, that doesn't mean that's the way I have to do it.
261. 00:42:22 So I like this idea of thinking for yourself and essentially this chapter is kind of like overcoming groupthink. Don't just fall for groupthink because that's what the group thinks and that's what you want. And again, I said this before, I think the order in which he writes these chapters is very wise.
262. 00:42:42 Like, I think he does it in a good way where he flows you through it, not in a, like, not in like a direct or an overbearing way, but in like a subtle way.
263. 00:42:55 You know, so I'll talk about, you know, what's your diet and then I'll talk about think for yourself right afterwards. And then right after that, he's going to talk about another one that I like.
264. 00:43:02 It's called, "Don't break your brain." So, okay, I just told you you're taking too much stuff in. I just told you, "Don't fall for groupthink." Now I'm going to tell you, "Hey, every once in a while, just take a break."
265. 00:43:11 Like, take some time off. Like, don't just constantly be letting things into your mind. And what makes me, what brings, makes this valid, I think, is the way I'll say it is.
266. 00:43:23 What makes this valid for me is I see this happen to people. Like, I see them not control their information diet.
267. 00:43:29 I see them not think for themselves. And then I see them just constantly watching, you know, whatever it might be, like watching the news or watching, you know, whatever it might be.
268. 00:43:38 It's really wrecking their brain. So, I like the way he flows all this together.
269. 00:43:43 Which is a byproduct of the way that he writes his books, in my opinion.
270. 00:43:49 I agree.
271. 00:43:50 Because he's got to have note cards for each one of these chapters, and he's flipping through them all, and oh, this one goes here, this one goes here.
272. 00:43:57 And actually using the tangible objects to create the order is way different than organizing the folders and the file hierarchy on the screen.
273. 00:44:07 And I'll agree with you here, Mike. So, I'll give you an attaboy.
274. 00:44:11 Scrivener is essentially the version of this. It's like the note card version of writing with his index card system, his physical index card system.
275. 00:44:21 But I'll tell you, I've used Scrivener before, and I've played around with it, and it just, it doesn't feel the same.
276. 00:44:26 Like, I've done the note card version where you have the physical thing, and I've done the digital version where you have Scrivener in the app, and you can move the note cards essentially the exact same way.
277. 00:44:34 And it doesn't feel the same. It's more tangible as the right word. There's another word there, but it's more clarity producing to do it with the physical thing than it is to do it with the digital form.
278. 00:44:48 100%.
279. 00:44:50 There was another thing in here I wanted to mention. Oh, don't be a snowflake. He says people have been banning and burning books they don't like for centuries, and then he says something very profound.
280. 00:45:06 People are allowed to be stupid. Yeah, exactly. And then he says, we have a choice between truth and repose, so we can basically either just like take the easy route, or we can try to get to truth and live right, but that's going to take a lot of work.
281. 00:45:27 And then this is where he talks about how we have to seek out disagreement and exposure to those conflicting and challenging ideas. That's what makes us, makes us stronger.
282. 00:45:36 So I think that's really powerful and something that everyone should seek to embrace, which is not the natural. Like you kind of mentioned the news sources. I don't care what side you're on. If you watch the news, it's not the journalistic presentation of facts that it used to be.
283. 00:45:58 It's very opinionated, and I'm sure it's all based off of the ratings, like the shows where they call the other side stupid, and can you believe what this person has done now?
284. 00:46:09 You know, get more people watch that. So that's kind of just what gravitates towards, but that is having an effect on you, and it's not a good thing.
285. 00:46:20 So it may be human nature to just be drawn to that sort of stuff, but recognize the effect that it's having on you and push back against it. It's kind of a good way to summarize the book, to be honest.
286. 00:46:33 Yeah, I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to lump three together again because I think he does such a good job.
287. 00:46:39 Okay, so this one, this one I would lump four is he's got grow up and then don't be a snowflake seek criticism and make mistakes and, and Mike, if you wanted me to make a very strong claim for why it is worth it to go to a university.
288. 00:46:55 If you put those four together, if the university is good, if they're doing what they should do now I'm not going to tell you that all universities are good and they're doing what they should do.
289. 00:47:03 They should help you grow up, they should help you not be a snowflake right and understand that there are these other ideas out there.
290. 00:47:11 And by no means like do you have to agree with all of them, or are we trying to get you to agree with them, but you should be exposed to a lot of them right and you should think through those in an environment where the stakes are lower.
291. 00:47:22 And I would say the classroom environment is where the stakes are lower, you should see criticism that's essentially 95% of my job is to criticize people, not in a mean way, but in like you submitted a thing, hey, this isn't good enough.
292. 00:47:35 Hey, you could have tweaked this you could have changed that right you could have done this thing and then make mistakes and I'll go back to the idea of where do you want to make mistakes, you want to make mistakes in low stakes environments.
293. 00:47:44 The educational system is a low stake environment, what's the worst that happens, you fail my class and you take it over again.
294. 00:47:51 Oh my gosh, everything's going to be okay, you know I'm like if I make a mistake in business, there's a real good chance that I have to fire people or there's a real good chance that I don't have money to eat and I have to, you know, do different things.
295. 00:48:03 So, I like the way we tie it back to wisdom right like these four ideas really lump together really well for if I can figure out a mechanism for these or a way to get better at these, I will become more wise and I think that's that's really valuable for us.
296. 00:48:20 Yeah, agreed. Okay, anything else on this one before we move to part three. I don't know, I guess the other one that I like is well there's couple I like right to think right is one that I like for obvious reasons because this is talking about how writing is a form of contemplation.
297. 00:48:42 He defines writing as thinking with your fingers. I think that's really cool. I had not heard this story, at least the details of this previously we talked about the Amazon executives who got so tired of pointless meetings that they banned PowerPoint and required a six page structured memo days before the meeting about the subject.
298. 00:49:01 I love that I wish I could do that. It's not going to work, but that's pretty cool. And then don't fall for it is also kind of interesting because this is really about why people get duped into joining cults or whatever he says we drink the Kool Aid because we want it to be true talks about how charisma is a powerful weapon.
299. 00:49:28 And no one wants to admit when they've been fooled so I think he does a good job though. I don't remember specifically from this chapter or not but this isn't all just like hot takes real pointed statements he does a good job of tempering this with this could happen to anybody.
300. 00:49:47 So kind of like when it happens to you be willing to change your mind and make things right again. That's not exactly how he said it but that that's kind of the takeaway as I think about what he says here.
301. 00:50:01 Good, good, good, so for those of you listening like this is a hard book to talk about in just in general because there's a reason why these things have made it into this book. And I think they're valuable like I don't think there's any section of this book
302. 00:50:19 that I would have just completely said you didn't need to put this in there or this is a waste of my time like I really don't think there's anything like that and I don't want to get the sound rating too far but what it what it means is like Mike and I can't talk about all of them.
303. 00:50:31 So like we're we're glossing over like big chunks of this book not because it's bad just because we can't talk about all of them so we're really trying to hit the highlights for you so just keep that in mind as you're looking for like why did you talk about this section I read the book and I think this is the most important section.
304. 00:50:46 Yep, I agree that that's an important section it's just we can't talk about talk about everything.
305. 00:50:51 Okay so let's go into part three, part three is called the apotheosis or touching the divine right so the apotheosis or touching the divine.
306. 00:51:00 And in this one, I struggle with trying to understand exactly what Ryan was trying to get at in this last one.
307. 00:51:17 Like is he basically like in part three like hey I told you how to try to get wise and then I told you how to not make mistakes as you're trying to get wise and now I'm telling you just go be wise like just go be a wise person even though you'll never achieve wisdom
308. 00:51:33 like pure wisdom go do the thing.
309. 00:51:36 I don't know if that's right or wrong but I don't know if you have a thought on that or not but that's that's I had a trouble wrapping my head around part three.
310. 00:51:45 I think if you look at the like two page spreadies got for the different sections as I look at this it's really talking about discipline.
311. 00:51:55 So I feel like kind of inherent with that is practice.
312. 00:52:03 So yeah I think you're on the right track when you're saying okay now go go do it.
313. 00:52:09 It's like a enough understanding now let's actually apply it.
314. 00:52:15 Yeah let's apply it yeah maybe maybe applied that maybe that might be another one to say there.
315. 00:52:20 Okay so our chapters in this one our sub chapters in this one shrewd sensible sounds strong practice empathy embrace the mystery be self aware, suffer into truth laugh and he's just got a lot of them.
316. 00:52:33 So one of the things that we didn't really do all that well up until now and talking about this the first part the anchor individual so might correct me if you think I'm wrong here.
317. 00:52:45 The anchor individual is montane so he talks a lot about Michel de Montaigne right for so that's the first part or part one part two is I would say the anchor is musk and then in part three the anchor is Lincoln.
318. 00:53:00 So have this one anchor person and then he'll bring in other stories throughout that but I think link I think link it is our is our anchor in part three.
319. 00:53:10 Probably though Churchill shows up in a lot of them.
320. 00:53:13 Oh yeah he does yeah in fact I was I was reading the book last night and there's a quote from Churchill on page 323 and 324 under the laugh section that I literally laughed out loud and Toby's like what's so funny.
321. 00:53:27 So I'll read this to you this is really about self deprecating humor is what he's talking about at this point being willing to laugh at yourself.
322. 00:53:36 So it says ask for a blood sample Churchill told his doctor you can use my finger or my ear and of course I have an almost infinite expanse of arse.
323. 00:53:48 So I cracked up until he was like what's so funny and like want to hear really funny quote from Winston Churchill.
324. 00:53:57 Did he think it was funny.
325. 00:53:59 He did he did that's good that's good.
326. 00:54:01 Alright so I think one of the ones that stands out to me is this embrace the mystery idea that the more we learn the more we don't realize we know anything.
327. 00:54:09 I wish that I had a prepared way to show you what we were taught in grad school about getting your your doctorate and getting your PhD.
328. 00:54:19 And like they drew this curve.
329. 00:54:21 So I'm going to try to draw a curve like the outside of a circle and then they drew a little bump on it right.
330. 00:54:26 And then they drew a little dot on the bump and they're like okay like here's the world's knowledge and that's the big curve.
331. 00:54:32 This is the thing you decide to study right when you're in grad school and then the little dot is what you're expected to do in order to get a doctorate it's like you're expected to make that tiny little dot on the outside of that bump.
332. 00:54:43 And it just makes me think about this and because the more you the more you learn about an area the more you realize you come out and you're like man there's just so much I don't know about.
333. 00:54:50 Like there are seven other people studying the exact same thing I'm studying from slightly different angles.
334. 00:54:56 Like you think about you with the PKM stuff. There's a bunch of people doing PKM stuff and you're all able to survive in your own areas because you're all thinking about it a little bit differently and you're experiencing the different aspects of it.
335. 00:55:09 And I mean how much more does that get with biology or engineering or whatever it might be so I really like this embrace the mystery chapter of essentially the wise person.
336. 00:55:20 There's a section here we talked about the wise person steel man's the other person's position. So what do you try to do you try to take the other person's position instead of knock it down.
337. 00:55:29 You try to say like how is this the absolute right answer and why am I wrong.
338. 00:55:34 And can I convince myself that your idea is the absolute right answer and that I'm wrong.
339. 00:55:39 And if you can do that okay you got better for it. And if you can't do that you still got better for it you know and like I really like the way you embrace it frames that embrace the mystery chapter.
340. 00:55:51 Yeah that kind of compliments some of the other things that he mentioned in this book that stood out to me and I can't find the specific place which means you probably talked about it kind of all over the place but when you think you know it all.
341. 00:56:07 When you know nothing.
342. 00:56:11 So maybe it's kind of tying to this be humble idea because mentions that fools are rarely humble brilliant people often are an experience should reduce your ego not enlarge it.
343. 00:56:28 That is a really powerful phrase so the more that you learn the more you understand the more wisdom you collect the more you realize how much you don't know you don't know essentially.
344. 00:56:44 So it's kind of like at the beginning maybe when you don't have that context that understanding I've totally mastered this topic.
345. 00:56:55 And you take the same amount of knowledge you multiply it by 10 and once you have that understanding you're like yeah I really don't I don't know that much.
346. 00:57:04 Which I think is I mean obviously the ideal approach but is something that I've tried to apply to my own life so there are a couple chapters here always stay a student and be a teacher that I really liked.
347. 00:57:19 Always stay a student you mentioned that you should continue to learn your entire life.
348. 00:57:24 We don't know what the future holds or what we ask to learn so we got to stay curious.
349. 00:57:29 I have a different way of saying this which is keep going and keep growing.
350. 00:57:35 And to me that means that you've never arrived there's always more to understand and it really doesn't matter how quickly you get something it doesn't matter.
351. 00:57:48 How much you actually collect in terms of notes, ideas, wisdom.
352. 00:57:56 The process is the thing that is important and you should constantly be engaged with that kind of another way to say this.
353. 00:58:04 For me one of my personal core values is permanent beta.
354. 00:58:09 Essentially the application never gets shipped.
355. 00:58:14 You never hit 1.0 you're always tweaking you're always making improvements and if you don't that's when that's when you should be concerned.
356. 00:58:25 There's a different idea here would be a teacher that I like but anything else you want to talk about with always stay a student idea so you'd nod in your head.
357. 00:58:33 I just think we call it life-long learning in my world and the goal is always to be life-long learning and I think that can be why as people get old and in their old age.
358. 00:58:47 I don't know if you've ever met these people like you meet the person and just like oh my gosh there's 75, 80 years old and they just are so alive.
359. 00:58:54 They're just so alive and then you meet the other 75, 80, 85 year old person and you're just like goodness gracious like how do they do it every day.
360. 00:59:02 They're like so down and they're just so depressed kind of a thing and I don't know if this would be my only answer but I think one of the reasons why is because I think a lot of those people that still feel alive are trying to learn.
361. 00:59:16 They're trying to do stuff they're out there they're learning they're growing they're taking that random art class at the local community college.
362. 00:59:23 They're meeting with their friends to talk about whatever they're talking about like and they're still trying to learn about the world and I just think that is so huge and I don't think it ever ends.
363. 00:59:31 And I think once we allow ourselves to get lazy and stop learning, I think all this other stuff starts to seep in.
364. 00:59:39 So now we let that information diet go to crud and we let movies and entertainment to fill our life but I think if we keep learning and we say the focus of like okay I'm out of school.
365. 00:59:51 That's okay I can still learn like there's still a ton of stuff to learn you know like there's learning all over the place.
366. 00:59:56 So I really love that idea.
367. 01:00:01 Yeah and then so coupled with that is the idea of be a teacher which wait a minute that doesn't make sense that it's linked but one of the things that he mentions in the section of be a teacher is that we learn as we teach which I think is absolutely true.
368. 01:00:15 Yeah he mentions in here that wisdom cares about progress not itself and he admonishes us to teach everything that we know and that is interesting to me the timing of me coming across that statement is interesting to me.
369. 01:00:30 I have a t-shirt that says teach everything you know because for a while kit previously convert kit had this merch store with some of their values they're you know saying one is create every day default to generosity is another one teach everything you know is another one.
370. 01:00:48 And one of the people that I respect a lot is Matt Raglan and he shared a post this last week because we record this basically saying teach everything you know is dead.
371. 01:01:01 It's like hard disagree Matt. And he's got a little bit different point with it because he's attacking it from or approaching it from a newsletter marketing perspective and basically his point is that if you're if you give away everything that you know with the free stuff no one's
372. 01:01:20 going to buy your your product you have to like get them interested but you have to hold back some of the really good stuff.
373. 01:01:28 And I still disagree with that. Okay. Okay.
374. 01:01:34 So I think if you're trying to sell a knowledge product as a historical artifact that you don't ever want to touch that makes sense make you never want to have to update it.
375. 01:01:52 It's just this is the thing that is insanely valuable and I'm not going to give you access to it until you.
376. 01:02:00 If you want to trust the paywall. The case can be made. However, the world is changing so fast and new information is coming out all the time I feel like if you take that approach.
377. 01:02:12 You've got approximately 12 minutes before people don't care and they're just going to ask the LM and they're going to give them everything anyways so what people are wanting is not an information product what they're wanting is connection
378. 01:02:26 they're wanting curation. They want to connect with a real human who's going to help them sort through all the noise and find the good stuff.
379. 01:02:39 And I don't think you can just do that by saying oh yeah just pay me money trust me I got the goods like changes too fast.
380. 01:02:49 Things might be a little bit different but in light of this same be a teacher. Physics I never learned physics as well as when I had to teach physics.
381. 01:03:00 I mean I tried like it was never that I didn't want to learn it was just okay now I'm in front of a bunch of people and I need to teach them physics man I got to learn the subject like I really got to learn the it gets to another point that the will I'll jump into here
382. 01:03:13 the essence man there's a big difference between understanding the procedure or the surface level thing and then understanding the essence of a thing.
383. 01:03:22 And I didn't realize I was going to I was going to reference Munger twice in this one but you get in the Munger's book and he would talk about the same thing right like this these scaffolded lattices and how they would come together
384. 01:03:32 This is where I think his commonplace books make so much sense or linking you know thoughts in a tool like Obsidian this is where I think you're able to actually distill things down and get to the essence of the idea
385. 01:03:46 and having that coordinated or realized realize not realized but like have an artifact of that something you can look at something that's tangible really helps you get to the essence of something.
386. 01:03:59 So again I like the way I like the way he brings things together to make you think a little bit differently about him or I should say to give you the opportunity to think a little bit differently about him.
387. 01:04:10 That's what I really like about this.
388. 01:04:12 Yeah that chapter on grasp the essence this is Ryan Holiday in a nutshell for me because this is where he brings up the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln obviously only 271 words historically very short and that example has been used so many times.
389. 01:04:31 What I didn't know was that Abraham Lincoln was not like that was kind of a surprise he wasn't even supposed to have spoken there that day there was another guy Edward Everett who had been speaking for two hours.
390. 01:04:46 So everybody's get ready to go home and then Lincoln pops up and he delivers that guy he's a very good dress and is like that's a people remember that was that's historical context that is fascinating to me that I had no idea was there
391. 01:05:01 and Ryan Holiday just does an awesome job doing all the research thing telling those stories but what's what's to emphasize his point about grasping the essence.
392. 01:05:11 Finally Edward Everett talked to Abraham Lincoln afterwards and he said if I hope that I could communicate as much quality words about the idea in two hours as you did in those 207 words or something like that but like basically just saying you know I used all these
393. 01:05:30 words I took all this time and I don't think I said as much as you said in your short little thing so yeah that is the job is to distill it down and it's hard to do it's why when I transfer my book notes to obsidian I forced myself to write a three sentence summary.
394. 01:05:48 It's hard to summarize a book especially a book like this yeah I know good luck like yeah but that is a valuable exercise and it's it's not just the collection of information like it's the human critical thinking process he talks a little bit about
395. 01:06:10 why and the LMS and the the afterwards so we don't have to go there just just yet but this is the application of that in my opinion this is like a exhibit A for why you need to do that kind of stuff.
396. 01:06:23 The only other one I want to talk about here there's like three or four more that I could talk about the only other one I really want to talk about is don't lose the wonder because I think this happens to a lot of us we stop that sense of just trying to find new things
397. 01:06:38 and you know there's a bunch of different philosophies on why that's the case you know we beat it out of kids in school or we've been told just play by the rules so many times or you know we're not trying to look for innovation here we're just trying to get the job done kind of a thing
398. 01:06:51 so it's like I agree with all that stuff but I just really like this idea of how can we continue to be driven by this why does that work why does that do the thing it does why are we doing it that way like asking the question why so this would
399. 01:07:07 tie to another concept that I've been exposed to a lot and it's like the five wise you know in any situation you ask yourself why why why and you have to get down to like level five and then really you start to get to the essence of a thing
400. 01:07:20 when you start to get to the to the fifth why and you start to actually understand what's going on so I just like this idea of this reminder I should say of keep keep wondering keep being curious about a thing
401. 01:07:31 and he ties it to wisdom I'm not as worried about tying it to wisdom as I am just I think it's a good approach to life is keep asking those questions
402. 01:07:39 yeah couple other that I want to touch on real briefly first be happy he talks about the how for many people happiness is conditional and then he talks about peace and peace like education he says is something you must give yourself
403. 01:07:58 I completely agree with this if you wait for the external circumstances to align and then you'll be happy you'll never be happy and then the other one which I think is really important maybe the most important chapter in this section is the one I'm practicing empathy
404. 01:08:22 because there's a line in here which makes this something that is not just conditional for the people that I like or the people that I agree with he says you can empathize without accepting or excusing
405. 01:08:41 when we don't curate our information sources and we create this tribalism by the way there's a great Cal Newport deep life podcast episode where he talks a little bit about this in terms of what is he called the slope of terribleness I think
406. 01:09:01 you're gonna dig up the link for the show notes but it just kind of pourshes you more and more towards the extreme and it dehumanizes the other side and well those crazy people believe this how can anybody believe that
407. 01:09:15 you know I'm not even going to engage with them and I feel like the practice empathy section here is like no they are humans who have their own issues and they're struggling with things and you should maybe just chill out a little bit dude
408. 01:09:28 and try to understand where they're coming from just because you understand them doesn't mean you have to agree with them case in point Ryan holiday and Elon Musk I'm really actually looking forward to talking about the afterword because there's a really important context in there I think
409. 01:09:43 he obviously disagrees with certain people in this book vehemently but I also feel like he practices what he preaches in terms of at least understanding where they're coming from it is a little bit weird the way that he talks about some of this stuff
410. 01:10:01 is at the beginning it's almost like that context should be there before you say some of this stuff but yeah I'm getting into celebrating now so I'll wrap it up there but yes empathy opens us up to everything and everyone is what he says in that section
411. 01:10:15 and I think that is very important in missing in the world today yep I agree I agree he ends this part three with wisdom is virtue virtue is wisdom it's a chapter that I think is kind of like a it's a pre afterward it like in my mind like I actually think it belongs more in the pre afterward
412. 01:10:32 then it doesn't in the part three but like you know wisdom is about action wisdom proceeds other virtues is some other of all virtues it doesn't just happen to you but you get it but once you get it stays with you it takes work
413. 01:10:44 like he just does a good job I think I think wrapping it up and kind of reminding you what what his point was why he wrote this book and why this book matters now we can get into the afterword
414. 01:10:56 okay and in the afterword he kind of gives a personal story about you know him dropping out of college and then you know kind of having a bad experience in his first working things but he was successful and he learned a lot from watching other people
415. 01:11:11 and he talks about some of the reasons why he is so well he wrote so many words I guess is the way I'll describe it and he calls out musk so many times in this which mike I'll let you I'll let you take all take that on
416. 01:11:27 and and then he he talks about the fact that you're better off for writing a thing like I just I think he does a good job at kind of helping us understand a little bit more about him and a little bit more about
417. 01:11:42 what he kind of what he did in this book I wouldn't have said it until you just said it Mike but I completely agree with you I wish he'd have done that at the beginning of the book
418. 01:11:51 I really wish he'd have done at the beginning of the book I think it would have made the rest of the book make a lot more sense but I didn't think about that
419. 01:11:59 so that's a good thought so what do you have on the afterword?
420. 01:12:03 I didn't jot down the specifics here oh wait I think I found it in the afterword where he talks about Elon Musk but but basically what he says trying to to find it
421. 01:12:20 so let me let me buy you a little time I just want to make sure I'll speak for me I don't know if Mike wants to comment on this either I really don't have like any strong feelings about Elon Musk like I really don't like so I'm not I'm not trying to be a defender
422. 01:12:34 of it what we're like I think what we're trying to call out and Mike correct me if I'm wrong what we're trying to call out is it seemed strange like it just seemed like very aggressively strange for someone to do that in a book with somebody who's still alive
423. 01:12:48 it was just weird so go ahead Mike for somebody who is not an active political figure now you could you could make the argument that Elon Musk is dipping his toes into politics and places where maybe it doesn't belong
424. 01:13:03 but a large part of the original criticism of Elon Musk was really with the acquisition of Twitter or X yes and he talks about Elon Musk's algorithm and part two which is basically break stuff cut stuff
425. 01:13:20 so you can kind of see his thought process when he moved in and he let a whole bunch of people go that's what Elon Musk does and as much as people who want to complain about while X is a husk of what Twitter was and how are they even keeping the lights on
426. 01:13:35 it's actually met technically he's maintaining it pretty well given you know he basically cut a whole bunch of unnecessary labor to support this this bloated thing and dialed it down to the essence you know you may not like the methods you may not like the public stories
427. 01:13:52 and ask the personality but in terms of the running the business what he did was you could argue successful however I personally don't like what has happened to X or Twitter it used to be my favorite social media platform
428. 01:14:09 there anymore and that's kind of sad but I don't care social media I really shouldn't be hanging out there anyways but that whole narrative kind of feels like it's anchored in a bit of resentment or bitterness towards Elon Musk as a person
429. 01:14:33 and I found the section here in the afterword he knows Elon Musk okay so I knew this previously but his bookshop The Painted Porch is actually in like his Bastrop Texas that's where Tesla's headquartered
430. 01:14:50 and he says on page 367 we have many mutual friends I've been invited to his house I'm a fan it would have been much easier and safer to write about almost anyone else
431. 01:15:05 a significant portion of my readers will disagree with my take entirely so that is important context that I kind of wish you had prior to telling the stories about the active person right and I'm sure if Elon has read this
432. 01:15:25 not excited about what Ryan said and he's not being invited back anytime soon agreed but also you kind of have to tip your hat to Ryan Holiday for you know I know this was difficult to write I know you have this history with this person
433. 01:15:43 but you did it anyways because you thought it was the right thing to do like props to you for that in context of the message of the book
434. 01:15:53 when he says it just because it is someone who is currently living and it's not a historical anecdote like many of the other figures that he chooses to talk about it does feel a little bit like a cheap shot in a sense
435. 01:16:12 but then like the way he wraps this this up I kind of feel it redeems it a little bit the whole the whole afterward I feel like that's maybe my favorite section of the book to be honest
436. 01:16:27 I feel like you get a whole bunch of context there that you didn't have before this is where he brings up how he learns so much from Robert Green and how he picked up that crazy note card idea from him he shares a lot of the mistakes that he made as a younger person
437. 01:16:43 I'm not sure if you've read any of his older books about the internet marketing stuff but I haven't read those now I have them I haven't read them yet but everyone that I know who has read them is like oh yeah these are really good and so when he says he could have been really successful
438. 01:16:58 in that world I believe him so I don't know I feel like switching from that to talk about stoic virtues feels like that was a risk and I didn't view it like that before it kind of I don't know that I ever really thought about it but
439. 01:17:22 just Ryan Holiday is the stoic guy right so just maybe subconsciously you're like well it was easy for him to just talk about those things and he's making all this money off of it no he could have made way more money continuing to talk about internet marketing and he chose not to
440. 01:17:37 like that's kind of cool and then the whole thing about you know his history with Elon the whole tone of the afterward is very self deprecating maybe like he's sharing a lot of his flaws
441. 01:17:55 yes I feel like it's possible you read all four of the stoic virtue series you have no idea who Ryan Holiday is and right before you get to the afterward of this one you're like wow this guy he's the next Socrates he's the next Seneca Marcus Aurelius 2.0 you know he's really got it all together
442. 01:18:14 and then he's basically like no I am a worm not exactly what he says but I actually really appreciated that perspective at the end and I don't know how you interject that prior to the end but it is kind of weird that it happens
443. 01:18:32 at the very back of the book but I'm glad that it's there yeah like I wouldn't I would say it a little bit differently than you said it in terms of it almost felt like a hey there's one more thing I gotta tell you
444. 01:18:44 right like I just kind of taught you for a bunch of hundred pages there's one more thing I gotta tell you and it's a little bit about my life and it's a little bit about you know these other things
445. 01:18:56 and it just yeah I mean it adds a lot of context that I wish we'd have had prior to reading the book but I'm glad we got it regardless like I'm glad we got it at the end
446. 01:19:07 Blake in the chat said it almost felt like he was just so disappointed in how Elon has changed and I think Mike and I both agree with that the reason I say Mike agreed is he wrote agreed
447. 01:19:17 but like I that makes sense like that actually makes a lot of sense it's like here you are you're doing these things you're out there putting people trying to put people on Mars and you're building you reusable rockets
448. 01:19:28 and you're changing the auto industry and all that stuff and then like you let me down you know kind of a thing like I'm just so bummed at that
449. 01:19:36 okay let's move on sorry one other one other thing I should call out with this it's not just Elon that he picks on he also talks about Trump oh yeah he does pick on Trump too
450. 01:19:46 so but what I appreciate about this is not this guy is just such a moron which is sort of the narrative whenever I hear anybody talk about him publicly they're either maga or how can anybody possibly listen to a word that this guy has to say
451. 01:20:02 what he does in this book is he talks about like the information diet and he talks to Trump's aides and he he basically is raised raising red flags for not the the person but the process
452. 01:20:17 yes so he's letting you draw your own conclusions about the person but he's basically saying you know how people used to have to wrestle with the information
453. 01:20:26 and yeah they presented the brief but for Trump that's not good enough it's got to be even more condensed what he wants is something that's like this social media stuff where it's a quick hit oh and by the way that's really dangerous
454. 01:20:37 and he's letting you kind of draw your own conclusions there but he's not if you're understanding the whole message of this book there is something important about Ryan holidays commentary on this that is missing from everybody else who publicly disparages
455. 01:20:54 Trump as president I think and that is that he's not an evil person he is the product of the choices that he's made but he would say that applies to all of us and the tone of the like the end called action to all of this
456. 01:21:10 is not watch out or you're going to end up like these losers exactly we're trying to become wise we're never going to get there so let's all agree we're going to become a little bit wiser
457. 01:21:22 and here is a data point and a story to help you become wiser I agree with you completely like I think you're absolutely right okay let's go to action items I'll start it's my book so my only action item of this is what scene makes sense for me to join
458. 01:21:39 it's really the only action item I have coming out of this book I liked you know the the wisdom that was in this book like I liked what you know Ryan Holly talked about I just didn't get a lot of tangible things that I could I could do coming out of this
459. 01:21:53 like what are your action items I don't have any I guess the argument could be made that I liked the a lot of the writing and the distilling things down so if there is like an action item for me from this I think it is to more consistently
460. 01:22:16 identify my thoughts on things by writing more regularly and that's not just writing words for the personal retreat book that's really just like the opinion stuff I didn't again it didn't have an action item but kind of the thing I was thinking about as I wrapped this up was I have all these
461. 01:22:31 books and I am trying to take those seeds and create new things out of them but really it was just kind of an encouragement to work with the notes that I have in obsidian more regularly and more effectively and again I'm not thinking that there's a problem there I'm having trouble
462. 01:22:53 creating things I've got the creativity flywheel go and stuff like that but just how do I get a little bit more juice out of the orange that makes makes total sense and I already think you get a lot out of it so good job good job for wanting to think more about that so that's great
463. 01:23:11 all right let's go to style and rating to my book I will start well Mike I had an interesting thing happen as we went through this book or as we went through this conversation so this book was a three
464. 01:23:25 and like I struggled to get it to a three for me there are a bunch of reasons why it was a three for me prior to our conversation again I'll say prior to our conversation is I don't know like I think some of the
465. 01:23:40 examples that he used I didn't resonate with me some of his statements that were as aggressive as they were I just disagreed with like there are parts in this book where in my notes I'm like I completely disagree I completely disagree there weren't any chapters that I completely
466. 01:23:59 disagreed with but they were like the sub points that he would make I completely disagreed with so there were a couple different things there which in my mind when I start to get that kind of stuff and then you add the like
467. 01:24:09 kind of sour taste I had my mouth at him attacking my like I was just kind of like man I just didn't like this book this just wasn't that great of a book I have to admit that like I don't get a fascination with the Stoics so you you already don't have me like when you're coming
468. 01:24:26 there do I think courage discipline justice and wisdom are great absolutely I think they're fantastic do I think that they you know this idea of stoicism is like you know this
469. 01:24:37 panacea that we should all strive for really so long story short I was at a three as you and I talked about this book and I'm reviewing the chapters again I'm reviewing my notes and we're talking about this.
470. 01:24:49 There's a lot more valuable in here than I originally like upon finishing the book gave gave it credit for so I really do have to bump it up to a four like I have to bump this book up to a four there's a lot of good stuff in this book.
471. 01:25:02 There's just a couple things in here that are going to knock it down to a four for me so my overall rating is a four Mike where did you end up on this one.
472. 01:25:13 Well first let me share some of the previous rankings for the other Ryan Holiday books right so 201 right thing right now believe we both rated that one a five discipline is destiny this maybe was before you joined the show it was yep.
473. 01:25:37 Okay so I get rated at four and a half Joe rated it five encourages calling this was 130 the first one this was a double five star book.
474. 01:25:51 I was very nervous about this one to be honest I will be fully transparent I was not looking forward to reading this one.
475. 01:26:03 Okay. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I did. I thought I would.
476. 01:26:11 As I shared there were literally points where I was laughing out loud reading this and that doesn't happen very often true it wasn't a chapter titled laugh but still Ryan Holiday tends to be a very I'll say heavy reader
477. 01:26:31 or writer like the ideas that he tackles the things that he writes about just feel like they are really important and sometimes that translates into you feel like reading the book is a bit of a slog just not because the writing is bad or the stories aren't
478. 01:26:51 interesting just I really got a wrap my head around this topic and I don't want to mess it up sort of a thing it's a philosophy book right like so in my mind I equate that directly to being a philosophy book I've never read a philosophy that isn't like that.
479. 01:27:05 Okay sure that that is a good way to describe it I didn't feel that way about about this one and maybe it was just the expectations going into it like I'm probably not going to like this.
480. 01:27:17 And then he sort of changed my mind as as we went. Blake mentioned in the chat that he thought that this was his favorite of the four books and I think it's my favorite as well.
481. 01:27:35 Okay.
482. 01:27:36 And that doesn't mean that I agree with everything that he said in here so when you were saying that there were parts of this that you very much disagreed with.
483. 01:27:45 I think that's actually good writing.
484. 01:27:48 Good writing will make you either agree or disagree that that's the natural conclusion but it should force you to decide for yourself what are you going to do with this.
485. 01:28:02 Going all the way back to how to read a book by Mortimer Adler.
486. 01:28:05 I feel like there are so many books where the message is watered down so that it's palatable and it's not going to take anybody off in a broad range of disciplines but the ones that are valuable are the ones where you know all that stuff is garbage
487. 01:28:25 this is what really matters and then you can either agree or disagree with that.
488. 01:28:29 I think there's actually a lot more in this book that I agree with than I disagree with and I do agree with you.
489. 01:28:37 I have zero interest in stoicism.
490. 01:28:42 The more I study about it the more I know about it and like nope I'm good with my Christian value system.
491. 01:28:49 You know I remember we were talking to Donald J. Robertson for the Focus Podcast.
492. 01:28:54 Remind me to grab this link and put it in the show notes.
493. 01:28:58 I don't know if it was the Deep Focus section or if it was part of that episode but Donald J. Robertson was talking about how there are large sections of stoic philosophy where it's like we don't know what this person actually wrote or actually thought or actually said.
494. 01:29:11 So we're filling in the gaps when it comes to this stuff.
495. 01:29:15 And I remember taking a class in Bible College about all of the validation behind what was actually included in canonical scripture and it's like it's crazy the rigidness of the scrutiny that stuff was under before it could be included
496. 01:29:37 and then like stoicism and this philosophy there's a there's large questions as to what exactly they thought about this but we think that you know based on what other people have said.
497. 01:29:48 So it's like secondhand records passed down through generations.
498. 01:29:52 I guess we'll build a philosophy off of that like yep it's bonkers to me.
499. 01:29:58 So all that to say I think there's actually probably a lot of overlap if you compare them side by side.
500. 01:30:03 I like these I probably why I like these these books so much.
501. 01:30:07 All that to say I am going to rate this five stars.
502. 01:30:11 I did not think I was going to.
503. 01:30:13 Okay.
504. 01:30:14 I expected to rate it three or below to me.
505. 01:30:18 Do be a favor.
506. 01:30:19 Give me a recap.
507. 01:30:20 What are your ratings on holidays books?
508. 01:30:23 Do you remember?
509. 01:30:24 I think it was five, five, four point five and then this one, which I'm going to rate as as five.
510. 01:30:31 Wow holiday I mean man he is up there on your high ranking author list.
511. 01:30:36 That being said I'm done with the stoic virtues.
512. 01:30:40 Can we talk about something else now?
513. 01:30:42 So the funny thing is I get done reading this book and I think should I go back and read.
514. 01:30:47 Courage is calling and discipline is destiny and the answer is no.
515. 01:30:51 Like I don't think I'm going to do that like I think I would get something out of them but I don't know if it's worth me going back and reading them at this point in my life.
516. 01:30:58 Maybe it's something that that is that is fair so Blake called this out.
517. 01:31:02 He mentioned that so probably one of my favorite of the four books though made me want to read and write more instead of running through a wall like courage.
518. 01:31:11 That's what courage did and absolutely had that that effect on me.
519. 01:31:16 So I don't know like maybe it's just the stoic packaging that I am.
520. 01:31:23 I am done with because almost every single one of Ryan Holidays books I have really liked.
521. 01:31:29 Victor in the library mentioned that he went and read the obstacles the way which I remember rating five stars back in the day and he's like I can't believe you rated this a five star book.
522. 01:31:41 I don't really remember it it was like book number two that we did for Bookworm or something.
523. 01:31:46 I would have to go back and look at it again but my my thought on every single Ryan Holidays book that we've read stillness is the key was another one.
524. 01:31:57 I think the only one I haven't read is ego is the enemy which sounds like actually in the after where he talks about that one.
525. 01:32:04 I actually want to go back and read that one now because it's sort of how he got into the bad situation that he found himself in sort of a warning tale.
526. 01:32:14 I guess just the packaging of the stoic virtues is the thing that sort of rubs me the wrong way but the content in terms of the books that he's written has been fantastic.
527. 01:32:28 I don't know where he goes from here.
528. 01:32:31 I know he's got like the daily stoic and all that kind of stuff.
529. 01:32:35 I don't know maybe this is where Ryan Holiday and I part ways.
530. 01:32:39 But I wondered that I wondered I was like well I wonder where he goes from here I wonder what's next for for him.
531. 01:32:46 So he's probably just riding the train he's probably not worried about the next one yet although I would be if I was thinking about the next one because how can you know it.
532. 01:32:55 Yeah I don't know well that's the thing that the reason that wisdom takes work I feel like is a five star book is like Blake mentioned it makes me want to want to write more.
533. 01:33:08 I feel like you can get to the end of this feel like I've shared everything that I want to share about this.
534. 01:33:17 I don't know what's coming next but if you are pursuing wisdom you will figure it out because the pen is not going to stop moving across the page.
535. 01:33:27 So I'm actually kind of excited to see where this goes but like I said I do feel this is a potential fork in the road here where Ryan Holiday and I part ways which other people probably felt the same way when he decided he was done talking about Internet marketing
536. 01:33:47 like always sharing such good stuff he's gonna talk about stoic philosophy come on exactly exactly.
537. 01:33:55 All right Mike it's time to do it we got to put wisdom takes work on the shelf what is our next book Mike.
538. 01:34:03 Next book is now for something completely different. Toxic grit by Amanda gets her demand to speak at crafted commerce.
539. 01:34:15 And as I shared last time a little bit nervous about this one because it feels like while I do agree 100% with the overall theme you know maybe you shouldn't just push through and keep doing things that really shouldn't be done.
540. 01:34:28 But the description makes it sound like it is written towards women and I think on one hand that's good because that's a voice that's needed in this space.
541. 01:34:39 A little bit nervous to talk about it because who are you and I non-women to reiterate this book but we'll give it the old college try.
542. 01:34:48 And we'll learn a lot I guarantee we'll learn a lot from it so yeah yeah. All right and then after that I'm going to pick sketch your mind by Zolt Vixen.
543. 01:35:00 And he is the maker of the Excalidra plugin for obsidian so we're gonna Mike said it best when we were talking about this book before the show.
544. 01:35:09 It seems like the Bob Dotto's assistant for writing only for like sketching so that's a good way to put it and I'm excited to see what it's all about so sketch your mind will be after that after toxic grit.
545. 01:35:24 Mike do you have any gap books between now and next time? Not currently we will we will see but I still feel like I'm trying to get caught up after our trip to Tennessee.
546. 01:35:38 I get that completely. Oh Mike I have a gap book that is very very very very long. The very very very long. It is a book about it's a Bible book basically for that seminary thing I'm doing.
547. 01:35:54 And for the life of me right now I can't remember the name of it. It's like the king in something but it's basically like one of those ones that you read for seminary that's like that big and it's multiple hundreds of pages long.
548. 01:36:07 But I have to read the first four parts of it so I wish I remembered the name of it right now but I'm not gonna go find it so that's my gap book. It's not really relevant I'm gonna be reading it for the next like month and a half so it'll be fine.
549. 01:36:18 Everything's gonna be great with that one so for those of you listening along thanks so much.
550. 01:36:24 We are so glad you're here for those who are pro members. Thanks for being a pro member and helping support the show helping support the buying of books and hosting and all of those things if you're interested in becoming a pro member.
551. 01:36:36 This week we talked about being a independent creator and having to do creation versus being a non independent creator and getting to do creation of things for the Internet.
552. 01:36:50 So that was our conversation to Mike and I are both laughing kind of smiling at the same time while we say that but you can go back and hear that there is a longer ad free pro show you get the bootleg it's released right after the recording which is typically about one or two weeks early.
553. 01:37:05 There's a wallpaper. It's seven dollars a month and you can go to patreon.com/bookworm FM if you're interested in supporting the show and thanks again to those who do.
554. 01:37:14 So I'm going to add one more perk to the bookworm pro membership. This is news. This is news. Okay. I'm yeah.
555. 01:37:21 This was the thing that at the beginning I was like I will talk about this later but I had this thought and I it just seems to fit here so last summer I did a almost three hour reading masterclass.
556. 01:37:36 I'm going to add the replay to patreon for for bookworm pro subscribers. So I sold that masterclass for 50 bucks but if I mean if you're supporting a podcast called bookworm that masterclass is perfect for you so we'll add that to the perks as well.
557. 01:38:00 If you are reading along with us pick up toxic grit by Amanda gets and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.