How to Win the War with Yourself | Ryan Holiday
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You said before that life is always whispering at you, and if you're not paying attention, it'll eventually .

scream at you. The circles they talk about, like two cars in the garage tics. What rock bottom is for you is a choice that you kind of get to make.

So do you realize that you are heading down a bad path after you have had to sell your house and your cars and you've lost literally everything? Or is IT that embarrassing evening at the company Christmas party that serves to send the message? How are you hearing what the world is trying to tell you? Or are you very much not hearing IT? And at some point, is I going to have to hold you down and scream IT into your year?

Welcome to the knowledge project podcast on your host shame perish in a world where knowledges power this part. This is your talking for mastering the best what other people have already figured out. Can you do me a quick favor? Most people who listen to the show are not subscribers.

Go ahead and hit that follow button right now. Thank you. My guess today is the modern day philosopher ryan holiday.

His books on helping people live Better and more meaningful lives have sold millions of copies. Building a meaningful life isn't just about inspiration, it's about action. And today, ryan shares the practical, ancient strategies that have helped world class athletes, artists and entrepreneurs transform their lives.

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Go to join overlap dot com that's join overlap dot com. How do we separate the signal from the noise? Like in a world of social media, you're getting feedback all the time. You do distinguish what's valid and sort of helpful feedback. And a whisper versus this is noise and IT .

offers new value yeah, this is really hard. Uh, you can see that often to be successful and entrepreneur, you get there by not listening. You get there by not listening to the odds, not listening to the doubts, not listening to the critics, and then you succeed.

So then you get this very wicked learning environment where you succeeded precisely because you did not listen to the message that the world was trying to send you. But if what you generalize from that is never listen to people you don't know me, a really tough spot. So take you on mask when you like musk was planning what became SpaceX, his friends held the literal AA style intervention that that you cannot start a rocket company.

This is the worst idea. You will lose all your money. Obviously he was correct and there were moments when he probably, uh the the conventional wisdom or the data or the advice from the investors overwhelmingly was to sell tesler or to do X Y N T.

So what happens when you know it's sort of a passing fancy, or you know an impulse consideration to buy twitter? Some people told them a good idea. Some people told a really, really bad idea, totally outside of his domain of expertise and all these things.

How do you know whether to listen or not? This is like the essential question. The quote is something like A, A reasonable person adapts to the world, and an unreasonable man adapts the worlds to themselves. And so therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

So often this thing that makes one of ground breaking artists, you know, IT discover, uh, a an inventor, an entrepreneur, an artist, whatever is what with the thing that makes you great is this ability to not listen to feed back at somebody imperia ly. You come across feedback that you should listen to. You go past the point that you aimed for. You go past a convention that is there for a good reason.

And we only see the survivors like, we never see the people who didn't listen and failed because they just sort of become noise, if you will, in in the process. Where is you get held up as like, oh, i've done all of these things and people told me I couldn't do them. I shouldn't do them. They can be done. And yet i've done that.

Yeah, what we take from that is not, he was right in these packed c instances for these reasons. What we tend to take from that is the short hand them to listen to other people or conventional wisdom is always wrong. But of course, many, many people had failed.

There was a graveyard of millionaires and billionaire who had lost their fortunes. Started private space companies. I think the good part is like not taking this sort of like business book headline cover story narratives from uh people's uh trajectories or from history, but actually really drilling down and getting to the actual reason as to why something worked or didn't work.

You let me see themselves as this ground breaking, you know, precedent shatter ing entrepreneur, another version to look this guy to took massive government subsidies at critical points that allowed him to do those things. The story you tell yourself about your own experience, this is really interesting. And then the story that society this says about your, about your experiences is also really interesting too.

Can you give me an example of where you missed a whisper? And it's got to later and later and then you're like, oh.

and we all have these in our personality. You you are coming across uh, you know some sort of personal limit or you sense that you are straining a relationship working with someone that you didn't you know you didn't you didn't quite think was right, but you ignore that. And then IT becomes very clear why you should have listens to that kind of gut level in the states.

I just take on too much and then i'm like, oh, okay, like earlier this year I ruled my ankle really bad. I had to go to are and they were like, you've got to take like six weeks off and I took like, are we going to half off? I heard IT again so badly like I I thought when I looked down, I would see like the one sticking out of my leg, like IT wasn't.

Thankfully, I had been given a very clear message, not just like from my own body, but from the medical professional. Is that like, you got to slow down and take a break. And I 怎么， and the irony, whenever I do this and i've done as many times, you end up losing more time than you. What if if you just taken the prescription when I was there, is when we rush the come back or we rush the recovery.

what I says, a lack of patients changes the outcome. And if you think about like money, that's a great area where people just try to get rich quick or is like the path or forming a way to get rich over time is pretty clear. yes. And almost, it's available to almost anybody. But you get into trouble when you started trying to rush the time line.

Yeah, there's A A land expression called fast. Elena just means to make case slowly. We often look for a short cuts and IT takes longer. Then if we just sort of done IT slow instead, it's IT is amazing at some level, how at all can be reduced down to something in a obs fables, or a cliche, or a little problem.

I ve been amazed, ed, lately at the idea that, like somebody said, that for the first time, someone will invent a new word to express a concept, or someone will invent a new way of thinking about things. Oh, that's great. But a lot of these things that we take for granted, like sounds like they're hardwired into our DNA. And so somebody was that was now lost, came up with that idea, the timelessness of the truth of that I just, I just love, and that it's been true for at twenty three hundred years or whatever.

And that would be true for twenty three hundred more years.

Yeah.

almost certainly I was listening to our old episode. One thing I never asked you was, how would you defined device m?

I've come to define. And as this idea that we don't control what happens, what we can sure, how we respond to, what happens. And then when people are always at me and I usually fall with sadia and stock is predicated on this idea that you can respond with virtue, or are annoying people, and natural disaster, extreme success, that sentence, you don't control that.

That happened. Maybe you controlled whether I was or wasn't going to happen. But now IT is happening. And to me, stoicism is the framework for which you orient your response.

Is that harder if we caused IT verses something we didn't cause? Like is that harder to handle the situation where we massed up versus we get a cancer diagnosis?

So yeah, because we have guilt, shame and frustration. But IT doesn't change the fact that it's now there. And I think that's part of what som is, is the ability to go. Okay, how I got here is separate and independent from the fact that I currently, amy, I might need to at some point examining those causes so I can learn from IT.

But my impulse to dissect and blame and question what has happened is actually just a really convenient traction from the choice in front of me right now, which is, what am I gonna do about IT? There's a passage of meditations, reMarks, realities of criticising. People are always trying to deal into what lies beneath, like they're always like, well, what does this mean or what what does that word mean? Or why is IT this way or who's full? What are the root causes? And again, that all matters, but usually not in the moment, the moment it's so what are you going to do?

When should we look back and and server reflect on that situation so that we can actually learn from IT? Like what is our contribution to IT?

For me, it's always once the the once the strong emotions about IT have disciplined.

How do you reflect? Do you right or do you .

think to me this is stoicism is journal and journal is stopping. Journal is to stocks. Meditation is to putis. m.

IT is the practice of having a conversation with yourself about your thoughts and belief and values and actions and that I don't think it's a coincident that mark rea is sol philosophical work was entitled meditations, which that the greek title was just to himself. Almost certainly he ddt not give in a title. And what makes you to a remarkable work is that he, what didn't intend IT as a work.

IT is a work in progress, that dialogue with the self. And so yeah, i'm usually doing IT there. And then obviously the benefit of being a writer, and you know, this is like you have this sort of forced self reflection that if I was just a regular person, I think I would do a lot more journal that I do, given that I have to wake up and think about all these things and write about them and talk about them, and I could ask questions about them. So sort of a there's something there a, there a benefit to the the profession certainly also just kind of opinion around in your head. I don't think here we doing IT.

it's because the thoughts in our head sort of make sense in our head. But when we put them on paper.

they don't yeah it's like also what i'm hearing right now is i'm talking is an understanding of my voice that when I listen to a recording of this, you see very clearly do not match up and that to me, a metaphor for so much of the human experience, which is that IT feels one way to us, us. We're feeling Better as it's coming out.

And then with distance or from a different lands or you know a different medium, IT suddenly sounds and fields and looks very different. And I think it's because it's like i'm hearing IT through my own head right now, like my the way the sound ways are literally going through the balloons in my own are different than when I have headphones on and it's been recorded afterwards. Yeah, you grow up thinking your voice sounds like one thing, then you hear recording in my poo. I'm actually have a very different voice. You have these thoughts about things that feel like they make sense until you interrogate them or ask, is that true?

Thoughts aside, like I never thought about my voice until I heard myself yeah. And apparently have a very distinct voice that a lot of people don't like. It's a feedback on the audio book is that he should not read .

books interesting.

And then I get this thing where i'm like, I was in a hot tub in hawaii and this guys like, I know your voice from somewhere and I was like, no, all canadians on like this is like, it's such a distinct voice is camp pin warning work from but when I listened to myself talk, I I don't hear any of that .

you realized if that moment just how different objective reality and perception are, how sometimes it's good to get external feedback and sometimes it's good to be in the a bubble. Because can you do anything about your voice? no.

Like my therapy uses this phrase that I think about a lot, and SHE catches her herself to. And so I catch herself doing, but IT show, you know, somebody does something and then you're like, well, what that means or what you're and is says, you should preface IT with this this phrase. What I make up about that is what they're saying, what they're doing that means something to them.

And then you are having an interpretation of IT. IT is a remark, and then you are saying it's rude or it's manipulative or its provocative or offensive, loving or not loving, you're interpreting what IT is. And this is a very cool idea.

So is of the captive said that know, is that things that upset, as is our opinion about things, it's the way the voice sounds to us. That is the problem, not the, not the voice. So when you realize that doesn't magically give you the ability to not have the opinion, but that does help you realized i'm bringing a lot to this.

I'm making something up about that. That's what an assumption is. I am assuming something. And usually those things are making stuff harder, not easier.

There's an interesting cork to when you're talking with people, if you say something like the story telling myself is and it's wrong, people have a tendency to .

corrective and so .

we'll actually inform you is like, no, that's not what's happening, but you have to be brave enough to sort .

of put IT out there yeah I think about how much less threatened that is to say the story i'm telling myself about that is this as opposed to I don't like that you're doing is this yeah because one implies judgment and then the other implies not just the a certain interpretation about that, but an interpretation plus a loosely held this but you saying what I what I make up about that is where the story I tell myself about that is, or the way that sounds to me, is you are not expressing your interpretation of reality as reality, and therefore you are offering the person the opportunity to correct or update or contextualize that thing.

A lot of people think theism is simply suppressing your emotion. How would you respond to that?

The stocks got married. The stokes had children. The stocks went to the theater. The stokes who wrote moving works that were performed in the theater. The stokes bought in battle. The stokes participated in politics, and you know, the great causes of their time, the at that these people had no emotions, is, to me, totally belied by their actual data existences that we have a lot of evidence for. And when you look at more expresses meditations, you're not seeing a person who is devoid of emotion. You are trying to see a person who is attempting to be less emotional in high stakes situations or in stressed situations between that's very different than deny or disregarding the emotions altogether.

It's almost like you have a narrowed band. You don't have these big assumptions.

I mean that I make a distinction between being angry and doing something out of anger. I think that's like a pretty basic being new, being sad and then being in despair. Again, very different.

And and so I think to be tourism is a set of exercises and insights and practices to help you understand those emotions, process those emotions and not be ruled by those emotions. But I don't think there's ever this place for you are you're able to fully transat them, and i'm not sure you would want to this. Still, it's weren't saying that you should never laugh, you should never have fun and you should never experience pleasure.

I think they were saying, hey, you know this this lining feels pleasurable in the moment. How do you feel after and so let's try to have a full picture of that thing and they're saying, you know um. If you react every time you lose some one, life can be very hard, because losing people is a part of life.

So I think they're trying to to to baLance both a healthy set of emotions and and unpredictable, often painful existence and this sort of lower case stoicism that we have is about as far from the mark as lower case. Epicurism is from the philosopher of epicure us who didn't eat at find restaurants or engage in org es, or, you know, truly give his life over to pleasure as we understand that to me. Now.

can we experience, like Peter joy and really high highs without really low laws? Or do we need the laws to actually give us the variation?

You have not sure one has to make room for the low laws in the sense that life for force, that upon you. I think when the stokes talk about joy, they are trying to remind you that if joy for you is only possible when things are going amazing, your joy or your happiness is therefore out of your hands.

Like the one of the sort of philosopher questions that we get from all of the ages, as I could a person be happy, like on the rack, like, could you experience happiness is are being tortured to death. And I don't think they necessarily thought you could. But IT is an interesting thought experiment.

The idea, like, if joyed happiness are dependent on external circumstances, how how good is IT, and therefore, how fragile IT is. And so the idea to be able of the experience, joy and happiness in any and all situations is, I think, provoked an interesting. There's this one, SHE wrote this book called bomb shelter.

And I think about all the time he had what he thought was a Normal childhood. Mary fell pon SHE said what he thought was a Normal childhood. And then SHE only found out later that her father, they were outside washington to see that her father's job was to basically set up the government facilities.

He was a doctor, so he would have gone to in there if IT happened. But to set up basically, like the government in exile underground, in the case of a nuclear strike on washing. And so she's kind of thinking about what I must have been like for her father to like photo is kid soccer dams or punish them for not doing their homework or you know, do anything at home with like a literal sort of dominos over him at all moments.

Like his job was to prepare for a was to assume that IT was likely that they would all be, you know, evaporated that nuclear strike. And if that was to happen, part of his job was to like flee and survive. Not with like it's not like the doctor had to take their family with them. So she's just talking about that like the compartmentalise ation. And but that would require anything that's interest's because one that is actually if IT more reliable to every parent than you think that would be.

They're always thinking about stuff yeah.

you're always thinking about and yet you also have to listen to this ridiculous story about a video game character or something. You have to be present even though you're way for an email telling you that, uh, your job has been made redundant IT and you're about to be laid off or you have to have fun with your kids at an a museum park as somebody you know is dying in a hospital or whatever.

And I think when the stock thought about john happiness, they were thinking about a more resilient, ent form of that emotion, not fun, smiling cheerfulness happiness, but like a happiness of a person who is surviving the blows fate and flourishing as a human being in good situations, in bad ones. There's a story about this ones turck came to grip is and his his exiled for running a file of neo. And he's told that he's been conducted.

And you know he has like there's like an hour before the vertit comes down and I think he exercises or something he just like does what he just goes about his day and then they're told, okay, um you're being you're being excised and you can take some of your property with you was you going to be a Better, less x or not? He finds that you can take some of this property and he says to us for, okay, we will have our lunch on the road then or I forget what to act or something. He's like we shall have a lunch and attitude, you know, he's like, basically like what is going on the road and to me there's that is close to the stick idea of joy, happiness of you just got told everything was stolen from you.

You just got told you have cancer. You just got told, you know, insert horrendous event. Does IT break you or do you just go? Okay, what's max? So it's not arguing .

with the reality of the situation as as it's been given to you or the hand that you've been dealt. It's just how do I play this hand to the best of my ability? Yeah.

there is no complete about the unfairness, the preciousness, the surprise. Just what do we have for lunch?

Can you train yourself to think that way? Or is that something you think is more there's people dispose to that?

I know i'm not born that way. I wouldn't say that I am now that way, but I think I am further along in becoming that way than I was at the beginning. I think it's probably true for a lot of the decision making in cogniac stuff that you talk about, which is, like, are there people who are naturally gifted and have this sort of a computer, you know, mind? yes.

And then there are those of us that are not that way. But in the process of studying and thinking about them, can we slow that process down? Can we be more conscious of the things, less of a slave to the things? I would say, yes.

I found IT easier for me to lake in in these moments where something is happening that we're stuck in traffic. I love IT when the kids are in the car, because when the kids are in the car, I can be like, this is a good teaching most right? Like there is not much we can do about if this will make the best of IT.

Let's put some music on. Let's have a conversation. Lets do X, Y, Z. But if they're not in the car, immediate temptation is sort of like traffic.

You know what? We're really good at giving advice other people and then not so good at in at ourselves because we have that con distance. You know we're able to its our identity as less at stake or our emotions are less tied up and IT with your kids.

You're you're able to see the impotence and the unfond dst of the frustration and you also feel obligated to help them with the meta skill of that because of the specific instances with the kid. You're like, well, what how is this good of matter for their life? But we're not as good as that for us. I mad that someone said X, Y or z, not, hey, how can I get Better in my life and not responding when people say X, Y is IT so you you'll learn, as you teach the stokes, say.

what other misconceptions do you run into a vote .

devis m um well, that it's all old, rich White dudes with a lot of married and uh a desire to point out the biases and to of structural patterns of not just the ancient world, but all forms of history, just to focus on what what was obscure or what's not included. We forget just how enormous the Robin empire was.

I mean, the robot empire makes contact with the hong dyna sty during Marks really as where and its stretches as far as england in africa and the middle east and you have appetite s as a slave ark really as whose, uh, the empty zeno, the founder of stoicism some people were convinced he is black. IT is described interestingly in some of the few descriptions we have of his physical form, but in the case is like a meditation. Ian merchant, and so just the idea that that IT was, like all people, the same social class, just because rome was a cas society, doesn't mean that all of physical hers perfectly conformed to that case.

Just because we cheer mostly of the men doesn't mean their work to a woman. Kats s. Daughter porsha is involved in the assassination of juice cor, all the stokes sort of lives and daughters.

There's fascinating essay from the Sonia rus is who's not just epithet sis, physics teacher, so is teaching a slave. But you know, we write excessive about why women should be taught philosophy so we know he has female students. We just don't know any of their name.

And there's been a backlash about still it's like this bro, a philosopher for brows and silicon valley, or this is for meat heads, or, you know, this is for soldiers yeah there is, I think, connection to certain masculine and worlds in service. And but I mean, a huge percent of my audience is not male. But I also just on a historical basis, that's not true.

And so there's this idea if if soissons is like for due to the army and it's about suppressing your emotion, I get why it's not going to be attractive, but that's not what IT is. Just like if you think epicurism is orgies and parties and retreating from the world, you're going to be like, what is this? But that's not what a preparation was talking about either.

I thought I was not, you know, I thought I thought I was sister as who maybe i'm getting really confused here who created like this first sort of stoic crisp? S yes, that was the one created what?

Sorry, stoicism?

no.

Zee o was the founder of choices. M O K Z O studies under this cyc philosopher creates, by the way, created is is an equal partner with his physical ical life in advance. There's always been a female influence from the beginning, but Z O is credited as the founder of social m.

He sets IT up on the stop pocula vis porch in the afi, an aga that's where stock ism comes from. Then there is, and then recipes. But IT doesn't really become a real school of flows until later with sort of qualified. But zeo is is, is the family .

is the connection with really instead of sports and military, if we sort of generalize, that is the connection just with anybody who's doing hard things. And yet we tend to hold up these professionals as .

I think so I think I mean, that's what sports are as a metaphor for any kind of pursuit of excEllence. It's just the most visible, you know, it's a very visible because it's a gay with rules that have been getting in the end of the most observer able form of excels and IT entertained form of excEllence. And look in the end of world, they're using sports metaphors than two because it's the same the same process.

What are the those is talking about how he thinks that. Philosopher has to be like an athlete. This is like a ball player. You catch the ball and throw back, catch the ball and throw back, and whether it's a good throw or a bad throat, you should have to catch IT.

You consider that is like the greatest athletes of all time because he does deals with the things that life threats and including this, the death sense. There's weight lifting metaphors and racing metaphors. And some of the dogs were also athletes.

So I didn't we just there is something about sports that is the sort of unmitigated pursuit of excEllence, and yet it's also not unmitigated because we expect our athletes to exhibit sports spending and Grace and coolness and depression. You know, we like all these traits that go into being a for well rounded person are at play in sports. This is, I think, why the olympics are this sort of during we still observe some of the same exact sports almost that, you know, the dogs would have been very familiar with.

Do you think everybody can be at the far right of the curve? And whatever domine there an or as sports or scale and be a Normal sort of person.

I thinking about this all the time, I would like to be both. And I think you do realize there are trade offs part. There is something inherent unbaLanced about excEllence in a simular domain because you are focusing all of your energy on one thing. There's something this morning c about like the athlete's physic. And that's probably just the physical manifestation of also, if you could look at their mind and their priorities, probably equally out of work.

But if they weren't out of work, then they wouldn't be on the right end. But I mean, what I really admire.

and I ve gotten to meet a handful of them over the years, and I always reluctant to be like, well, this one is a good example.

This because you don't really know what's happening anyone's personal life, but I think it's really something special when you meet someone who has inarguably attained the heights of their profession or in some sort of all time grades, you know great achieve the great prizes of their thing, whether it's politics, sports, business, art. And they seem reasonably well adJusting. They haven't left a trail of bodies behind them, literal or otherwise.

You know, their family wasn't utterly neglected. Their health wasn't utter ly neglected. Their moral priorities weren't so weren't grow testy out of alignment.

So when you meet someone, you're like, they did IT as good as you can really be done, but they didn't have to turn themselves into a monster to do IT. That's that's, I would argue, a much raphi. Power corrupts.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So I think makes Marks really as such, a fascine examples. Here you have one of the few humans to hold absolute power, as we would really define IT, and doesn't seem to become danged or context, is into an overwhelmingly passionate tail. That, to me, is a rare of feet. Then, if you told me he had won the single greatest, you know, military Victory of all type like the greatest Victory, the stokes, that they would be the Victory over those very impulses.

There's another roman I think IT was like since, you know, your history with, other than I do since and atas who like gave up power yeah.

I tell the stories my son, all the time since that is maybe not real, maybe real, but his example was certainly very real to the greeks and the, oh, I guess, to the romans and not to the greeks. But yeah, rome is sends out to me in this big battle in their defeated. And they are these tracks.

And so rome had this sort of a emergency, you know, smash in case of emergency button. That said, you know, you could make someone dictator to save the republic. And so they they go to snana U A bit in general, and they make him dictator.

And he rose up every, you know, struggling man and boy enroll at this time, and marches out, me, defeat. He's rescues the argue, he defeats the enemy, and that he returns to roll, resigns as dictator after, like, seventeen days. And then he returns to his farm. IT just goes back to his regular civilian life. And it's this example that is told for generations and generations and generations, so much so that George washington hears IT as a Young boy, and he resigned his commission repeatedly.

I was just in an apple as A A couple weeks ago, and you can stand in the courthouse where he resigns his military commission and then when he resigned after two terms as president but king George, when he hears after the revolution and what is to become of George washington, he's told that, you know, I think he intends to return to his farm, not make himself and the washington name, you know, a hereditary monarchy. And kim George says, know, if you can do that, he will be the greatest man on earth. And there is something about relinquish ing power or walking away that takes an incredible amount of disciplining strank.

And if we don't usually appreciate in the moment and in fact, we tend to ridiculed market like uh you know Andrew luck the quarter back yeah he walked away yeah and we don't hear about anymore. So he's not out there like fighting for his legacy, arguing about his accomplishments. He's dot on T.

V. So he just sort of recedes for memory. But he also made like a hundred million dollars playing football. He, as far as we know, escaped without any serious long term, you know, brain injuries. I don't know what he does all day, but you know, the idea is.

Any way to go at the top?

Yes, yes, to be there. Has there been any boxer history that's walk away too early? Probably not. IT clearly takes some more discipline to walk away early or on top that he does to go for the sixth to rank or the three p or whatever, if those things are extraordinary ly hard. But clearly if less people do this other feet, IT must be because it's even harker.

do you ever think of of walking .

away from writing? yeah. Why do you think that's someone .

who was saying at all you're sort of alike you're in the middle of that, right? Like you're like to elf E T for me is the part .

that I like. It's probably the least hard on me be the other stuff that I think would would be like the bookstore you too. no. yeah. Like youtube or podcast or speaking or to just be now just gonna this one part.

I don't know how people do podcast once a week or more like I phone once every two weeks are. How often do do IT twenty six times here?

Is that a deliberate choice?

Yeah, I don't think I could remember IT actually like I don't think you would be genuine if I was doing IT weekly. I'd be finding people that I could talk to, not people that I wanted to talk. You know. I mean, like i'd be filling a slot versus I really want to talk to this person and that .

this would you also do your interviews are longer, right? So if you might be to say if if somebody's doing two a week and then an hour, what's the same as you doing? But I thought .

all the work that goes into IT, it's not like I show up, i've got this one page name.

but this is like no one marketing company. One of the reasons I never wanted to hire employees was that I was skeptical that there were enough projects that I would be interested in working on to pay for the people, which meant if I hired someone, they would represent a certain number of projects per year just to get back to. Even I had go back and forth between the whether that was a constrain, kind of limiting belief, or if that was actually like a peer and like adb stance.

and you kind of resistance yourself from the world too, right? Like, so I hired somebody to do the research for the poc. I could show up the beautiful questions. The part of what I enjoy about IT is actually doing all the research in the world.

the pressure to scale, like I know a lot of people in the this kind of information media space that have taken on a private equity investments like there's like the charm group and so theyll buy like half of the business room, all the business, and in the ideas like what how do we listen to a much larger company? I'd expressed no interests in doing that because like to me, part of the whole joy of doing IT, not having a boss and not meeting to get at to a certain level or do a certain amount of things which you are forgoing with, you bring on somebody else.

I was going to john native, but there's the whole foods guy, and he sort of said, I not love this analogies. Like when you bring people on, they're usually hitchhikers. They'll be in the car with you and as long as you're going in the right direction at the right speed, they'll pay for the gas. But the minute you you're like, oh, i'm really curious what's over here, they're going to be like, know what do you do? You can do that and then all the sun, you have a boss and you have all this pressure and they own half .

of year old likes. You went from being the driver to being the passenger, kind of a the other person that is like has an and they have a AK and they their own steering will and they their own accelerator. The pressure to scale is obviously first world problem because you're most people and not that long.

Go for me, the problem is breaking through or breaking out what to do that because that is so rare, there's an events amount of structural pressure, economic pressure, cultural pressure to, you know, take a winner and turn IT into a big winner. I supposed to just be like, this is nice, even with the book store, the every couple weeks of get an email being like, hey is not about opening another one and it's like I already hit the lottery by IT not fAiling. Do I need to start a trade of bookstores? I don't think that I do, and I don't think that would improve my life quality at all, but it's easy to be disciplined in some areas and not another areas.

So when you're successful, one of the tendencies is disturbed, saying yes to all these other projects are hiring a team and then you're distance from the work and you can be like you go do this and then all the sudden you start taking on projects just to do them. Yeah, how can we use stories? M, as a means to sort of focus our energy and remove distractions.

Mark, he is right to meditation to can imagine the immense pressure and inbound that's coming at the empty fifty million people. He says, in everything that you do and saying, the thing you have to ask yourself, is this essential and he says, because most of what we do and say and think is not essential.

And he says, when you eliminate the IT essential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential things Better, knowing that what you're saying, the us. Two, means saying no to other things. And they conversely say no to things means saying yes.

Detectors is like the very trippy, never get easy baLanced that I was struggling with, like even this morning, my wife and I were like, okay, offered to do this, and I got offered to do that. What do we want to say yes to? What do we want to say no to? And then just the you would think at some point, not needing IT would make IT easier to say no. But opportunity costs.

you get more opportunity and success tends to sew the seeds of its own destruction .

IT be easy to say like oh, when you you be disciplined while you're successful, you know don't don't take on too much. You say know a lot of things, but. In sports, for entertainment or art or even know whatever IT is that you do.

You don't do IT forever. Do you have a narrow window and there's going to be at some point where IT dries up. And so are you going to look back though there was almost a bit of ego in my in my selection process because I was assuming that I would have get to do IT forever. I continued to wrestle with that consulting.

How do you think about opportunity costs? Is that always increasing for you? Or is a base sort of like on the workload writ in front of you?

Or I was thinking about how handle like what seems like a lot of money to you as a kid always remains a lot of money to you even as your income goes up. It's hard for you. It's hard for me to pass on things because that seems like a lot even though proportionally IT no longer is.

I'm trying to do work and get more clearly more objective about like no hey actually yes, that to you ten years ago to any person on the street, that is a lot. But given what your time is actually worth at its current valuation, that's actually someone you should say no to. That's hard.

Imagine if you're a billion or how hard that must get. No one throwing them pity party. But like that must be very disorienting and destabilizing to not have a good way to value what to say yes or note, the problem is financial upside is always clear opportunity.

Opportunity costs are sometimes clear, but often not clear. If I get offered to do, I don't like speaking king, that's the opportunity costs the same, no, or whatever they're offering. The opportunity costs are saying yes is whatever creative work I might have done had I stayed home.

And then also intangibles like the rhythm of our households, my personal happiness, how easy things are. And so one, the downside is, in one sense is very quantifiable and the upside and the other case is very hard to quantify. And in some cases, the consequences of that are quite lagging. And so you're faced with brief case with cash in IT and and there's a bit much were all tired.

How do you baLance that? My uncle tell me this thing. One knows a teenager about how easy to Price his business.

So he was up. He ran out plan company. What he did was basically the first seventy five percent of hours were Priced at a hundred percent.

So the regular rate, but seventy five to eighty, he would increase the rate, eighty to one hundred to increase, and over one hundred percent of like a work week. Then IT increased IT even more. And he was super transparent with people about this is like, i'm really busy right now. I hate to give you this quote, but to do the job properly, here's what we have to Price IT out and he's pricing and like hundred and fifty because he want them to say no yeah doesn't want to be the one to say no.

He's like i'll figure out how to do IT for the surprise and he's was so surprised by the number of people who said yes in part of because of his honesty, right? But I use this this sort like one of the simple principles that I use, which is like, if i'm super busy, i'm going to Price IT Marks. I actually kinda you to say no, right? If you're going to say yes, then i'll make IT work. But it's at a certain prize and said the pricing that we uses dynamic in some ways. And there's like a baseline, which is like here's them in a mom.

you need a certain amount of self confidence and security to be able to do that. And you can see why if you're like you ever just had a dorval avoided inside you, how vulnerable that makes you yeah because you want to be want IT, you want the validation, you want the chain that feels good.

But like you like I I get five speaking requests a week yeah and there's no way you can say yes to everything. So you have to have a system .

to sort of what if I think the first step is you have have someone between you and the total to eliminate three of the five. There were not serious or not even not serious, but were at a number that might be tempting in. But it's Better for you not to see .

because you're more likely .

to say what could happen as you become successful, as you can become jaded and entitled and you want to be the like you to keep yourself as the good guy, the nice guy, that the person who is saying.

yes, yes.

So you have to sets of boundaries and the task other people with enforcing them yeah I I think some people go, oh, is that you don't want to pay these people commission, you just do IT yourself. And I think there's a danger in doing yourself, which is that almost you can go to your head and also kind of and then .

when he goes away, what yes, this I worry about this all the time, right? It's like world five and i'm like saying, no.

you know, that book die was zero yeah the great but but the ideas, you know, thinking about what you what do you try to do all this for? You try to humiliate a large amount of money that you don't get take with you and you die. We are borrowing money from our poor selves to loan to our future rica yourself.

The example this is the bush is a good when you tell me like a meet soon, who's like living away below their means, saving up money. They know in the future they're going to make a lot of money. It's very clear how that profession works, right? And so theyd be more effective.

They did not racking up a ton of debt but like not living as if they don't know for certain their financials. They're not actually you know making thirty thousand dollars. They're just temporarily making that anyones that advice is very helpful and clarifying in more predictive linear professions, but that I would be bad advice to give to a rocky in the NBA because they may only be able to do IT for two years.

I think that is tRicky when you have a very clear element of unpredictably and a very historically, a very clear drop off, like at some point you age out, at some point 就是 trend or moment goes away and maybe you can you will survive long and offer to come back。 But like the idea that for me, as are author, that my sales are only going to go like this, it's preposterously naive that IT adds a layer to like, okay, so you're saying no because you're too busy right now. Yes, but in six years you'll feel like .

an idio you wish for this request to come back. Is IT ever okay? It'll lose your cool. Like is our strategic points where IT actually makes sense to sort not be stoic and to, I wouldn't say, completely lose control, but to have more variation.

We have this idea that like crying is is not manly, right? Like be IT overwhelmed with your emotions is somehow a weakness. But we make an exception culturally for anger.

If you went through some problematic work thing and you cried in front of your whole team, you would reasonably expect that team would be like, what's wrong? ashamed? right? I'm not saying that's right, and they just would.

But if you got so angry that you punched a wall, not only might not you be judged for that, I might be like part of the legend of which is interesting. And the dogs would point out that, like, those are both the same process of being overwhelmed by emotions, and one is actively harmful to you and your world, and the other is not. And so it's kind of straight.

So it's it's interesting. We have a couple of stories and marxians crying, but we don't have any stories of him losing his temple. And I think he was chased by the factor was a story about haydar in his predecessor, who is gets frustrated with the secretary. He grabbed the secretary, petty stabs IT in the man's eye. Like this is the thing that the king could, the emperor could get away with literally anything.

And so I do think it's interesting, the allowances we make, particularly with men, for certain kinds of emotions and not other kinds of emotions that i'm i'm not saying, oh, hey, we should be all with one or with the other, is just the idea of the stoic. Suppressing their tears and sadness and love affection but then, you know, being a four text of temple and rage strikes me as a contradiction that doesn't make any sense. And the idea would be to be kind of and even killed across the board.

That being said, there is a difference between being angry and doing something out of anger. And then there's a third, which is the performative element of anger, your head baseball coach, and you've got to serious a bad calls. Losing your temper, screaming at the ref and getting ejected not only doesn't help your team, but IT cost your team points because you get two typical.

But if you are so even killed that you're just allowing the rest to run over you or you're allowing a lack physical effort from your team to go unchastened, also probably not good. And so I am fascinated by the way that a great coach can. Turn up or down certain levels.

I was at a spurs game one time, and I watched great pop of which get rejected, and tim duncan took over and the team was down. My separate points and tender can coach the rest of the game. And they came very nearly a within winning like came down like the last two seconds and they didn't win.

But they almost sit. And somebody who told me after that pop had look bit at and i'm going to get myself thrown out. You're going to you're going to have the rest of this game. And he was just he saw that the team needed an energy shift and that that was a tool in his tool kit. I I find that very interesting.

On to move on, talk about discipline OK for a second. When we think of discipline, I mean, the image that comes to mind for me, and probably a lot of other people, is like the army drill surgeon. What is discipline?

Why not self discipline? So the the discipline of an army sergeant is obviously important. But I don't think that's a virtue because it's being imposed on you. Of course, the central that an army is disciplined.

how would you to find self discipline?

But the virtual self discipline is the discipline that you insist on yourself. So it's what you do and no one's watching. It's what you do with the direction that is given to you.

And I think when we think of self discipline and we shouldn't just be think the physical discipline is not just as you beautiful m look and how far can you march and self discipline is can you keep your head about you when things are falling apart? Can you be a calm, you know, reassuring presence? Can you keep emotions in check? So self discipline is sometimes rendered as the active temperament, which doesn't have a good computation in this lange. But IT IT is the sock and say, the greatest empire is command of oneself and so whether you're the empty or a slave, whether you're a soldier or a CEO, it's this idea of not like, what are you allowed to get away with, what is being asked of you and it's more like, what are you asking of and insisting of yourself to me, about yourself to.

or do you struggle the most with that.

knowing one's s limitations, setting reasonable bounds on things. I don't have a problem getting up and working. I have a problem getting up from and stopping working. I mean, I have other services to, whether it's food or you know my screen or devices is whatever. But I think for the most parts, discipline for me is closer to baLance and say no, that IT is to insist yes.

for a lot of people, sort of the discipline to eat healthy, the discipline to go the gym, the discipline and then if we miss one, we think it's like it's over, like we've how do we get back on track?

You told me something though, that have been thinking about what you said, that your you go to the gym every day yeah as opposed to I work out three days a week yet because there's a consistency to everyday is and .

it's on a choice then yes.

IT takes away the live. You can tell yourself which is i'm doing IT tomorrow .

yeah you can do unchanged like duration or scope but like work out sweat everyday. It's like it's so life changing for me and other people who tried IT after a listening to me. It's in life changing for them too.

No, it's a great way thing I tried to write every day, do a little something every day and that's Better for me than， okay, i'm not doing that. And then next month I am going .

to start doing that. He used the word try like I tried to write every days like how do you get back on track if you you went two or three days, you're traveling, you're talking, you're just busy with all the stuff that goes on. You get home, the family needs you. And then all the sudden it's three, four days.

I always, always have the opposite problem, which is telling this self that beat five minutes laid on this not as big a deal as IT feels in the moment. I am tending to fight the compulsive side of IT. And so the ball for me is going, but I just have a nice weekend opposed to i'm behind. I'm going to blow apart this nice weekend to check some arbitrarily box in a race that I am prepostor ously ahead on on and by the way, don't even need to be doing .

but if you don't push yourself, like what's the flip side of that? What do you worry about? You scared you'll just stop and be lazy or i'd be .

that's the thing about most compulsive tendencies as they are not based on anything. You have this belief that if you don't do IT, things will fall apart. I'm the same way.

like I work everyday. Yeah.

it's not based on anything real. And most of the time what you get is not even the reward for doing IT. You get the relief for having not, not done IT.

The feeling is not. I'm proud of myself. I did a great job.

This made a huge difference. The reward is, see, you're not a piece of ship. And that is not not a way to go through life.

Does your work a holism sort of an amazing that that but does that cause issues in your relationship?

Yeah of course I think that always has. Um and so what you you often times alcoholism or any kind of serve compulsive tendency to do is adapting from some sort of in the child od wound or insufficiency or it's it's sort of a way of suing something that you feel. But unlike a lot of addictions or compulsions, it's somewhat productive.

It's somewhat .

productive and it's socially adaptive. Do a hero ween. Or, you know, drinking all night tends not to have positive social reinforcement. But being really good at what you do, and thriving on that feeling of being validated for being good at what you do is nevertheless is a pretty worked feedback loop.

Are you sort of like motivated? I think about this all the time and IT, but sometimes that novaes me and sometimes i'm like it's hopeless. There's like this gap between where I think I could be and where I am. I no matter where that is on a relative like y axis, it's like that gap is what i've focus on which like how do I shrink this gap and then you know like where I think I could be is probably growing slightly faster than where I am and so the gap is widen yeah and that it's like I need to there's so many things I want to do there and I have so much excitement.

energy around IT what they do throw on top of that what you hear other people are doing yes, it's even more hard to run your own race. Said, guys, this word you simia and talks about being on the path that you're on. This is not being distracted by the path that Chris ross yours says, especially the path of those who are lost.

And I think about that all the time. You don't know where someone's trying to end up. You don't know where they're going to end up.

You also don't know what is propelling them, addiction or psychological issue. What's propel them is millions of dollars of a fortune to inherit IT. Or you know in some dark money, you know donor IT could be a brazilian things you don't know. And so that I think the more indifferent and probably ignorant you are of what europeans are doing, the healthier you are in the the clatter your compass reading will be. I think of IT is like swiming .

in your own land. And there is this video. I think that is from the olympics post twenty. I forget what you was, but this guy is swimming and he looks over as competitor and IT ends up distracting him just enough that he loses the race yeah because he's like one. He's not worried about ham and his land and his goals and his stroke, and he looks over just enough to distract and need lost by like millisecond.

Others though, though the other one that keeps me up there, there was amount, bike race and the japan olympics, I think. And the woman thought he was in first place, but he was actually in second place. So because like it's sometimes you know like swapping your own each other, like the marathoners and the longer races you might be might be two minutes.

That's a closer gap and you can see what the other people are doing, even if IT was an instrumental lead for her to get first, her second play time was not the best that I could be, right? So clearly, at sub level, we understand the competition is healthy and motivating in yet too much competition is the thing, and ultimately itself, the feeding. And so that baLance is tough.

What can we do to cultivate more discipline?

I've been, look, I think having a physical practice is a way to cultivate more mental and cognitive discipline.

like going to the gem or running.

running back. I do a dirt sports, and they held me as a writer like I couldn't do what I do as a writer without those physical component even like ever cold plunge. And there's something about like i'm going to get in this thing that is uncomfortable and i'm going to decide how long i'm going to stay in IT, whether or not that has any health benefits whatsoever.

And i'm pretty skeptical. Got this point and flag all of those claims because i've seen what nonsense like these same communities will propagate. So to nee, the benefit is, is purely that is hard, that it's hard and that I am .

doing the hard thing. And how do you sort of teach your kids are and still discipline?

It's that my kids are still pretty Young and so I I am hesitant to give them my somewhat unhealthy adult levels of discipline. Artie is just like letting them enjoying letting them just not be up. My assumption is that they have whatever I have. And so allowing them to enjoy not having IT is part of how I think about IT. Because I watch as they get into things, they would just like kind of get into things, they go all and then they're like, I need all of this.

I read a story about tom ready watching the sun, playing video games, and as some getting so upset at you, like, throws the camera, rows the controller of the TV here, whatever, and is just like he was, like, do I have that? And IT IT doesn't always take you where you want me to take you. And so I suspect that that parts there .

so IT can help you, but I can also get nowhere.

Yeah and would you wish IT on someone, especially someone who right now is yang in pure and has no none of these adults tions a lot of people at this lexi, a talk about how that this lexie is shared in informs. Success they have. Then if you you ask them, would you want your kids to have IT you like fucking added in mind, we know like hard things, things and struggle and university, we know it's good for us. And yet we don't .

want them fear kids.

We don't want them for our kids. And and we also know those leg, if we hadn't had that and produce what had something else. Never remember someone who had zero adversity. I like this.

People asked me, hey, should I create university in my kids lives? Or do I need to seek out obstacles? And i'm of two buds, I think, like having a physical braceway of creating diversity at the same time was IT doto. S. I would like gamble all his body away so that he would write Better.

I don't really need you. How would you define character?

I just heard something someone said like character, like your reputation is what other people think of you and characters like what you do and people don't see .

there's like an element of right and wrong and Better than this, but who sort of defines what's right and wrong?

That's the hard part. I so I just been doing this series of the car t of virtue, courage and discipline and justice. And on one that, yeah we go, how do we know what's right and wrong as that the ten commandments, is there some, you know, scientific basis or utilitarian argument for what's OK about? And then IT is remarkable, how much societies and cultures all agree on some fundamental level as to what yeah there's disagree with.

Some some countries burn their debt. Some, barry, their debt, some, you know, do this so that pretty much every culture, religious tradition and philosophical school has formulated some conception, the golden rule and all of loss is that, you know, come to some level of, like, what would happen if everyone did that? What of things they don't like about philosopher is the way that IT looks at these moral questions.

And IT makes them so complicated as to make them most worthless. Like, how do you know what's right and wrong? What about this? What like we always focus on the edges cases as a way of there's such .

a middle around that we can all agree .

that it's like ninety five percent you know where like should you know a not cease banging on your door? They want to know if you have a drew in your basement, should you light to them or should you tell the truth because you like this is a concave goral imperative. A role is racist, had a track and it's gona kill five people.

But if you pull this lever, it'll go here and kill one person. What would you do? It's a way of away from the fact that we have morally charged decisions in front of us all the time and we don't think about IT and don't do anything about IT. And that that middle ground, if everyone just stood a little bit Better on this middle ground, the whole world would be immensely Better.

We've all sort of had moments where we didn't act to the person. We didn't choose the action to the person that were capable of being total. How do you live up to the best version of yourself?

We think of virtue as this thing that you have or don't have. Think of IT as a count when IT be far Better to think of virtue as a verb. Air stole says, like, how do you get Better at playing the flute? It's by playing the flute.

How do you become a more generous percent? It's by do IT more generous actions is. So compares virtue to any other craft that, you know, a carpenter build stuff, and that's how they become a carpenter.

So a good person does good things, not the way we sometimes think about IT, which is like, go through your regular life. And then perhaps you will find yourself in some decision of enormous moral consequence upon which the fate of the world will depend. And then let's hope that you draw from this ethical framework that you read about in the book and will make everyone proud.

But in fact, it's like a series of small daily decisions, just like any other discipline. And that's why these virtues are so related. But there's a discipline to justice.

I keep my word. I help people. I. Think about the consequences of my actions on other people. I don't do insert X Y S Y thing that might be illegal, but not right. And so if you think about IT as a practice, you can get yourself.

Not only can you get yourself to a place where are capable doing, but by nature doing the practice. It's never pick some random ass person and put the fate of the world on their shoulders. You have to be involved if the thick of things, making decisions of consequence, to ever find yourself in a position of decisions of consequence.

live in a world where your slip up in character, which we all make, yes, can now become viral. On the it's like you feel that somebody, you weren't generous, when you could have been generous, you have did something stupid, somebody had their phone out, and now you can't recover from this.

Still a profumo scandal in london in the sixties, there is a Cameron officer, and the british governments who has this affairs was cheating on his wife. He is cheating on his wife for the prostitute that turns out to be a russian spy and lies about IT IT, bringing about the fall of, I forget which government but IT brings about the prime minister vouches forum, and then has to apologize and end up resigning as a result.

And I tell the story of perfume because I think is so interesting. So you destroys his political career. And, you know, today we would say he was cancel.

And what would happen today is that this person would be basically shut by one half of a society, then presisely like, embraced by another darker side of society that doesn't like those people, right? And you would see him get radicalized and fighting against council culture. You know, we almost know exactly how that scandal would go. He would like get rid of all of his political belief for before, embrace a different set of political beliefs and kind of become almost like they become almost like these jokers like figures. And instead he just quietly shows up one day at this charity and forgetting with him of IT um IT was like a like a salvation army style charity house.

And he shows up one day and ask if they needed to help and they put him to work in the kitchen like he's washing dishes and he volunteers there every day for the next forty years and he becomes it's like chief funder er and its main leader IT just quietly goes about his life doing good work and eventually there is an arc of redemption to the you can't do good everyday for decades without IT inevitably being noticed. Did you get a political career back? no.

Did everyone forgive him? no. Is his name still an extradition? Ly, link with a certain scandal, sure. But on net, most people look back, and o probably overreacted. We certainly made judgments about this person based on a singular set of decisions that his subsequent actions revealed to be a more complicated and liberation. exactly.

And I think a to meet at the danger in today's world is not so much that you'll make a mistake and people will judge and criticize you for IT because I think that's always been true. You're right. The internet makes the internet is not a place where Graces common place and where things can be reached out of context and all that.

Yet actual danger is that in all of that scandal, and attention and negativity does IT change who you are like. I am fascinated by people who are facilitated of, pressed by the people who have mess up, had scandals in the subjects of cancer culture, moms are whatever. And then they emerged from IT, not character res of themselves.

Ves, that IT actually wasn't this life defining formative trade like the stock. Talk about link. Look, people can come and take all your stuff from you, and you can be treated profoundly unjustly, but like no one can affect your character. That is the thing you have. But often times as the first thing to go because we're angry or we feel mistreated or because our world power collapses are what so so like, can you not turn into a radicalized aswell?

Is to me the interesting question. There's another sort of subset to this that we are of sometimes will behave Better than we want to because we know we're being recorded, we know we're being watched and then it's it's not character anymore because if character sort of like what you do, no boy's watching.

And yeah look, philosopher debate that question too. Like is IT good if you're doing good because you want to reward because you're following, you should just .

be enough to do good because you're doing good. yes.

But if I had to choose, you know like people are today or like it's all this virtues in million, it's like certainly Better than the alternative. You know, i'm not sure this sort of input like this. The cruelty is the point. Vice signalling is preferable, even if it's more honest.

I would love people to be signaling word that as they say what a hypocrisy is, the is the credit that vice plays to virtue like like you're at least same that you think it's important even if you can't live up to IT. You know, I would rather have virtue signal in the than not then the nalasky by low. Nothing matters.

Where in life do you have highest standards?

The easy answer would be professionally because it's easiest and it's the most measurable and you get the most feed back. Is there something a little shameful and sad about that? Probably I don't know anyone that's like guys suck at work, but i'm great to.

So we we, we naturally. Are unbaLanced, like I don't work as hard at being apparent as I do IT being a great writer. But at the end, which is, which am I anything more meaningful? But once so much more measurable, more people care about the other one, because IT affects more people. List ly, short term with that. Yo, what do you feel like you, the highest standards.

How I hold myself to these, like unrealistic expectations in every domain. I wants to be the best father. I also want to be super successful at what I do at work and trying to pursue those two things. I won't a great son to my parent. I want to be, I want to be the best at whatever IT is that i'm doing.

And I go through these assumptions where I think if that is harmony, not baLance, because I can't baLance being great at work and being a great father, insist sometimes I like, it's going to be busy for the next couple miles and traveling a lot and we're going to, you know, my kids are teenagers now it's little easier. But like, we're going to figure this out together, right? And then they'll come back and they will restore and theyll sort of be a different violence.

But I also like, it's caused me to do these crazy things. But it's like I am home every day when the kids get home from school. My work day when I have the kids is basically like nine to three. And in that period I got to work. And so my work is really shorter than when I don't have them.

Like rca got I make up for this last time because yeah, it's not coming at the expensive of being a great father or a great parent or a present parent and then when I fail at these things, like the parenting thing meant, like i've gone on to bed crying, you know, just being like, man, I lost my cool in the kids. I wasn't a good dad today. And then you can beat yourself up, but you're holding yourself to this expectation.

IT is interesting how this is like basically every woman to experience, up until very recently, and almost no men were thinking about these things, were dealing with a set of expectations and a set of responsibility, ie. S, for which there is not centuries of cultural experience and lessons and examples to drawn. You don't have been like your dad wasn't ever doing that and your grandfather certainly wasn't ever doing that.

And then you go back couple generations and then like put you know all of their kids names. IT has changed. Wait for the Better.

But yeah, I think about that too. You go. Okay, I tried to.

I I I mean, they're dropping my kids off or picking them up or sometimes both everyday that i'm in town. I'm not always in town, but when i'm home i'm doing that. And so yeah, very quickly. Your day is super circumscribe. And then there is this chAllenge, attention of, like, can you be great at what you do working not even bankers hours, but like, stand on mom hours or something?

You know what pushes me? They go to bed so over. Like, I I logged in and I do work. You know, we used to travel in the summers, go away for .

kind like a month.

and we just pick a random place, and we live there. And I would be present with them all day. And then as soon as they went to bed, i'm like, god, I got to work right now. It's easier as they sleep in. I get a four work day before they get out of bed.

Tony Morris and talked about how he wanted to do all her writing before SHE heard the work, mom, and so he would have to get up at light for in the morning. And SHE d right, until six or something. I'm not quite on that schedule, but I do.

Yeah, I try to like my days circumscribed by their day. And I also go how to bother other people doing that. This is craze.

I could pick my out together. I stop working if I wanted to. But like, how can you expect society to function in in canada, have some social safety net.

But like, how could you expect your average american parent to drop their kid off at school sometime between nine and seven and nine and then pick them up between two and four if you get? And then also, so let's say you are two different kids. Two different schools are more yeah it's in say no one, no society can function this way.

We're expecting ride fully. So for parents spend a lot of time with their children, but the world is not conducive to that and all unless you've retired or you're not working. I think about IT is all the time, right?

Like I have a eight minute commute to work yeah in the morning and i'm like, I don't know how people would do thirty minutes, you know like that's an extra almost an hour day or in all is just on commuting. And then I think about family and the role of, like, i'm so blessed to have my parents close by an active part of my life and my kid's life. And there's a lot of people who don't have any family support in the city that they live in.

And I wonder like how they do IT all the time. Then I get tax from people going like, oh god, I just had the kids alone for we can. I don't know how you do this all the time and i'm like, okay, maybe I am not that .

ad but also just think about the fact like for basically up until it's a twenty years ago and that might be generous and we're not all in different skills, but like only one parent was thinking about these things, that's really at all. And so they are just the immense cognitive load. And only one of the genders is aware of that in any way.

Yeah is insane. In retrospect, he sad, unfair and then still doesn't change. In fact, it's now different and not a lot is gone into helping people manage that.

I have a lot of respect for the parents out there. Yeah what their single parents are together, it's a lot going on. You've said that writing helps clarify your thinking. Can you double click on that opt?

I have a chat about this in the book that i'm doing now. You know amazon has this culture where they you're not allowed to call a meeting less. You've written a memo about what's going to be discussed at the meeting, and multiple people have to edit that memo before you can sit down and do IT.

And why is I suck as memo are fun. Anyone likes reading memo. It's that the act of having to put your thoughts in the agenda and the purpose of the meaning on paper is essential.

There's this story about ison hower at the outbreak of the second world war. Martial is chief staff, U. S. army. And he's bet ison hour before he sees some promises in the town officer and he calls him in and he says, you know, IT looks like or or two about to break out japan's on the march.

What do you do and a job interview and the island hour could have just pull an answer off the top of his head. And ref, he says, can I have a desk in two hours and I in our sure and he goes, he gives a type. This sounds ly basically types out a memo.

Everything he has studied and learned and thought about this exact problem, his whole military career, he's been in the Philippines, he's been in south america, has been, uh, you know, it's done a lot, but IT gets IT on paper and I think there's something about getting IT on paper instead of spouting up, whatever my hand like the answer I just gave you is not as good as the answer with the analysis of that problem that I wrote in the book and i'm doing right now. That's how my mind works. And I think that tell how most minds work.

Well, the process of really stopping to think and clarifying and going over, john didion said that writing is a hostile act because you're having to convince someone to see things the way that you see them or think the way that you think. And that's like critics and immense amount of skill to do that. Very few people can do that off the top of their head.

can have to meet people where they are and then take .

them or you want them to go yeah and you know, Thomas merton, the cathode monk, he becomes this monk and he's a trapeze monk, which they didn't technically take a value silence, but they are supposed to spend their lives in contempt lation. But he becomes this prolific writer, and a lot of people upset because is somehow a violation of the value. And he was saying, not like writing is contempt of thinking about what I think.

And for people were not writers, maybe that doesn't make sense to me. Writing by impulse to write comes from my inability or the insufficiency of what I can come up without the top of my head, my belief in my ability, if I sit down and have an uninterrupted bit of focus and concentration that I can get IT. I can, I can do that hostile, active, changing me. Your thinking .

as a writer, how do you see the impact of ai?

I haven't seen IT do anything that even a pretty good writer. Can do, but I can do things a lot Better than people who are about IT writing. We clearly have problems in our society with people who are extremely gradually and suspected to misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theory in nonsense.

I don't know about you, but when you interact with A I about something you really know about, you realize it's not very good and it's very, very proud to telling me what he thinks you want IT to hear. So one of the things i'm nervous about IT is people's inability to handle that. Like what are things you learn as a project manager?

Like if you're working with someone who has technical expertise is you have to know enough and they have to know that you know enough that they can't bull shit you like, they can say no, that's not possible, right? Or that's gona take six months or that's going to cost this amount of time. You have have enough technical domain expertise that you can push back and get to the truth of things.

And when I ve worked with A I and I am needing IT to track something down that maybe I am like, hey, didn't so one so say something about this they go, oh yeah, they said this and then I go wait or was IT actually so and so and I go, yeah, yeah I was that and and and what it's doing is it's telling me what I wanted to here in the same way that people google stuff for sees up on social media and they go, that feels true. That's IT. If what human beings are good at is using tools and using and CoOperating with other people, what we're going to have to have in this age of AI is a strong sense of bullshit and an ability to know when to push back and to examine and went to verify because a lot of what it's gona spit out is not true or is only partially true. And if you're just defaulting to IT, you're going to be embarrassed .

to use IT for any writing or any purpose.

I mean, I use IT what I do, presentations I have to do like I want a picture of insert of thing that's never been painted by a renaissance page before. And I know like when i'm trying to visualized things, I use IT and sometimes we will use IT in videos. And we're like, you know show markets is really is like in a suit of army mark, just like so I use IT for things like that, like track stuff down.

But that I I verified that I have to I have to get a second opinion. I have to haven't verified in some way because I that skepticism keep to me happened because IT the cost, the reputation costs are bored. It's dressing wikipedia.

You know it's good if it's right. The reputational hit is felt by you alone totally. Do you use IT? Yeah.

we use IT all the time at home. The kids like will write their S A. The way that I I encourage IT at home is like you're growing up in this.

Like you need to use IT a here's the appropriate the appropriate use isn't like I need run esa on the civil war that twenty five hundred words go. The appropriate use is you write something reasonably good yes, and I want to see your full history so yeah, guy, always keep the kids for distributed. You submitted.

You're like your grade nine teacher. What would you say at the weak points of the art? So it's like almost like a personal tutor ah and then also BMI like, here's a draft chapter like what do I miss? What what do you think? And sometimes it's pretty insightful.

I've use that with my kids will have fun like they'll be like draw this or make that they get increasingly excited about making IT do more.

Yes.

third things and the idea of seeing IT as a as a tool as opposed to a replacement for something I think is really important, I want them to be familiarized with the inherent limitations of IT. Yeah, right. So it's like, you say, draw you know what I had to do? I was doing this slide and I was like, draw this security doing X, Y, Z.

And then one of the characters in the back have glasses on. And I was like, this is a making sense that can have glasses. So I give the classes and then it's like, they redid IT.

And then no more people have glasses. And like, yeah. And it's also its inability to to iterate, not very good at this, I want this, but five percent different IT starts from scratch, you know. And so again, I think the more you learn the limitations of IT and the logic of IT, and if you can get good at prompting, like prompting as a skill, I want to have that.

Here's a look interest. I actually get IT at its own proms. I am going to prompt A, I I want to a summary of this, the cast, and then it'll give me like a five, a sentence thing that I could basically just submit back.

Do IT all and tweak a few things here and there. But he gives me a much Better just prompt than I would give IT. This is the worst it's ever, probably gona be.

And so it's gonna exponentially Better over the next day here or twenty years. And I would be interesting to see how we use IT. And I find IT interesting as the schools are like, don't use IT.

And unlike you can use that, I need the chat history because I want to go in how I have to argue with your teacher. I want to say here's what you submit is your first driver. And now that they've done this thing where they they make them right to draft in the school, they take a picture of IT. And so your final submission can't differ too much from the original submission.

I do this thing, so when I read a book, I often type up the passengers that I like .

to know about yeah .

and sometimes because i'm just sending into myself to print in back to whatever i'll do IT. In gmail. In gmail always had this kind of predictive A I and IT where it's guessing the end of said, yeah and I always found that really interesting as a writers on tibet, some sentence from heading way.

So this is a sentence that has been written before, unlike my average of making this up. This is a sense that exist. So so that there's a right answer, but there is an answer and we're largely agree with you that having we did a good job, right.

Consider one of the great rider. So it's like it's like you're you're doing the simulation of a path that someone actually flew. Never is the A I able to predict the next couple words in that sentence.

I've always found that very interesting and it's a reminder to me that still the the act of creative genius of of doing not any sense, but like the right sentence, the right way with the right word, like twins said, that know it's the difference between lightning and lightning bug. You do get a sense of the limitations of AI when you can see how insufficient IT is compared to really rate stock. Tyler calling rote this book like ten years ago, called averages over.

And I think that kind defines my philosophe of life, which is that these technologies aren't eliminating. They're going to be eliminating large chunks of the people who are able to do that thing. But the people who could do that thing that in or an excEllent level will probably .

it's leverage .

that will be Better at IT and be more highly compensated and the importance of IT will be higher. And so you you have to figure out what is the thing that you're going to be excEllent that and then you have to be as rising. So what is unbaLanced in the pursuit of that excEllence? But it's like the cost of bean media go get higher and higher.

One thing I have noticed is like the length of emails and the grammatical perfection in emails has increased quite event. I'm like, I know you there's no way you wrote six steam sentences without making a grammatical error spelling air. People are just putting in their point form and being like generate and none violent email to send to this person.

Put this in nonviolent communication and you get IT. You know, like this is half a page. This should be like two sentences.

just like social media ais bots talking to bots. Like a lot of our life is going to be like A I talking to A I like if I open .

in his email and I don't know the persons is more than like five sentences now i'm just delete.

right I know what you're going to have to get Better, just not go up to get good at spot in motion. You're going have to be good at spotting AI version on a yeah .

because the cost to generate an AI emails zero at least before you had to type something in your copy paste no, like you've got ten those emails. It's like joe and you're like, wait, my name is ryan. What you reading right now that's chAllenging.

You're thinking I just have read these three huge books outlaid. So i've been doing a huge deep David the link and for the books that i've writing now. And I think that's like you don't made the earlier in my writing career, I would have read one book and called IT and now want to read another and another and another and so i'm just going deeper and deeper and stuff um really book now about the founding of australia that and finding religion called the fatal shore about like why why did they start a penal colony on the other side of the earth?

What was .

what the argument was that london had extremely strict real system in a bit more for profit prison system. And I believe that, like, there is essentially a race of people that were criminals, as opposed to crimes being an act of opportunity or desperation. And that reform was possible, that amErica rebels and the ability to send colonists or the undesirables across the atlantic to amErica evaporated, and they had to find some new players to do. IT, that's crazy. It's fascinating.

Do you read many business books like what are the best business powerful? Es.

that's business biography. Don't read that many business biography I like my dream book is like a nine hundred page biography of someone I know nothing about or someone that I know a lot about because you .

want the detail.

And then on, i'm looking for illustrative stories or insights into how that person Operated or solved problems. So like you know, I read a book about specifically as a politician, I read a book specifically about lincoln cabinet. I read a book specifically about you linking and literary explanation. You know, like, yeah, I want to go really deep in a specific thing and and then i'm finding stuff that didn't appear in one but appears in the other end. That's how i'm building out the chapter that i'm writing.

And do you do that without having the story in mind? You're like, oh, this stories is representative of xyz target.

Sometimes i'm just reading generally about something like i'm not writing anything about australia was there and now i'm interested in IT and I have some basis of knowledge and building on and will help me understand the seventeen hundred and eighty hundred is and often it's i'm chasing something down that I think I know is down this hot way.

How do you to find success today? And how is IT changed? Do you remember what .

I said the other times now? I still think my definition of success is autonomy. Like i've been saying recently, like successes, how much you see your kids, and power is how much control you have over your schedule.

My son school called in a, and I was like, aren't I? I beat that. You know, I like that to me.

That's that's both success and power. I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. I did need to worry about the cost of yeah, missing a day's work or whatever I just could handle IT. Turns out IT wasn't actually sick, you know, just had a call for something. And so we just turned out all day and had to talk that afternoon and he cay with me.

How is that change from like a decade ago when you would define success when you were Younger?

I think success was often more predicated on like either very specific things or relative to other people. And they are accomplishments. And I think i've gotten closer and closer to just not really care. And part of that is living where I live, how my life is set up, just value in different things.

The relative thing is fascine, because if you compare yourself to people who are relatively not pursuing the same goals, not maybe not as successful as you are, you sort of feel good about yourself, but maybe you're not reaching your potential because you can sort of coast a little bit. And if you prepare yourself to people who are Better or more successful than you're perpetual sort of like not where you want to be. And I can sort of like destroy your your satisfaction. I tried to revive .

myself that I write about an obscure school of venture philosophy that there's a floria the ceiling to that look for you compare ourselves to James clear. We're all failure. yeah. And for our books sales. But if you compare yourself to the millions of people who were killed, even have a meeting with an editor, so huge success, so long as I can be helpful, they really think about how bad as you would have previously defined success.

oh, total. And there's also like a reality, sort of like a relative success and absolute success, which is if you sell, I think I don't know what the actual number I heard that was like fifty thousand books, the top one percent of books ever published in the history of humanity. There's always a different way to change your perspective on where you're and sort of and what a front of mine needs to say this.

Like if we threw everybody's shoes in a big pile and you picked up the shoes and you get all the problems with that, you probably pick your own shoes like the whole world. basically. You know, you could pick anybody's problem a year. Most of the time, we're going to pick us. There's a lot of people who would try to pick our problems.

What I feel jealousy, I try to remind myself that you can pick and choose like if you want what someone has, you have to trade your whole life. And in that case of this, would never take IT, or maybe not even your whole life, but lets you say, like h why did they get this opportunity? I should have ve got this, but it's have to swap your whole career for theirs.

Would you do IT? And IT becomes more complicated. It's we want yeah we want to build a little from here, a little from here, a little from here.

But that's not a possible combination because every decision, every goal inherently is making things, not goals. There's trade, ffs. Yeah and yeah, you can be like, I want to be classical musician and then compare yourself to Taylor swift.

There are there are different generations of music that have different floors and ceilings. So like, you know, might be easier to break out as a classical musician and and I think it's easy but like there's a there's a set audience and there's also a ceiling. You're never gonna the number one album in the country, but by going for the number one out in the country, you might get nothing. And just understanding that you made certain choices and that you can strategy is, by definition, choosing certain objectives and not choose and other objectives. And if you try to start tle two strategies, you destroy yourself.

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