The Daily Stoic

my other best friend from growing up gave me a pirated copy of the four hour week like line wire and i was like oh like there's another way to live here like you can you know whether the methods are still applicable today like the mentality behind it is really cool

in the four hour work week the funny enough one of the things that people always remembers the guest chapter by a j Jacobs about outsourcing his life with virtual assistance but they tend to miss and this is going to lead into my question the filling the void chapter

since the first book you're right that a portion has been donated to different non-profits or causes

five percent of the royalties of the four hour work week it's not a small amount of money

And so I knew from when I first discovered the four-hour work week that right the objective is going to be to build these sources of income on the side so that when I do medicine it's genuinely because I enjoy it and not because I need the money.

So it's also seems crazy that Justice is coming out here very, very shortly, which by the way, you can pre-order at dailystoic.com slash justice.

In fact, I have a little note card here on my desk that I wrote while I was doing the Justice book.

if you read The Jungle as a kid in high school or whatever eptanson clears expose of the meat packing industry then i strongly suggest you read his book the brass check which is actually an expose of the news industry around the same time and sadly almost nothing this changed

if you read The Jungle as a kid in in high school or whatever epton Sinclair's expose of the meatpacking industry then I strongly suggest you read his book The Brass Check which is actually an expose of the news industry around the same time and sadly almost nothing has changed

but another book for me is the is it called The Surrender Experiment who okay yeah we check this out yes surrendering to life it's about the person who digitize I think medical medical records or medical insurance I forget what he did but he just wanted to meditate in the he was a hippie in the you know in the 60s and just wanted to meditate in the forest with his shoes off and he kept like running into things that were guiding him and he just surrendered and surrendered and surrendered and I think he ended up becoming a billionaire from that and he was never that was never his goal it wasn't trying to do any of that and his shows of just like surrendering to the game of life surrendering to life and the power of saying yes and how that could change your life and also saying no when when it goes against your values but just The Surrender Experiment

I did all the Mickey singer books you ever read this the surrender

There's The Bhagavad Gita there.

The Bhagavad Gita is of course, another one. Just these myths.

Lord Krishna was talking about...3000 years ago, 3500 years ago...that is in the Talmud, that is in the Bhagavad Gita...

you are not entitled to the fruits of the labor, just the labor

I'm going to read from the second greatest book next to the Bhagavad Gita...

I had just finished reading the bag of a uh Gita mm-hmm and if you read that mm-hmm so just this recurrent idea through all of it about how it's like basically looks like everything is a process and as soon as you become results driven you are no longer aligned with yourself or aligned with god

Grief from the loss of a child is not a process. "It's a lifelong weight upon one's soul."

As the fascinating book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe reveals, it was definitely greed.

I picked up at a bookstore on vacation at the beach earlier this year. Fantastic.

And actually I had Cal Newport on the podcast recently and we were talking about his book Slow Productivity, and I asked him specifically about the relationship between productivity and walking.

Someone was reading Cal Newport's book, Slow Productivity, which I just thought was the absolute perfect place to be doing that.

Cal always does subtitles well.

We talked about Slow Productivity. We talked about autopilot. We talked about how to be indispensable. When to take that big swing when to really bet on yourself at use the leverage you've accumulated. And then we talked about pseudo productivity in the thing.

There's a time and place you go through phases. You're not just doing the same thing every day, which is more my style. And I think Cal really spoke well about seasonality.

His book Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, Deep Work and one of my favorites so good they can't ignore you.

Cal came out to the bookstore to do the podcast, he's on tour for his incredible new book, Slow Productivity which I absolutely loved. The subtitle is The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout and by the way some great stories in this book about John McFee who was one of my all time favorite authors.

there's a great you know there's a great chapter in cow newport's book which we I know we talked about them last time but you know I was just talking about this and his book so good you can't ignore they can't ignore you it talks about like I think it's a woman who is really unhappy with her job and her passion was yoga so she quits her job in a sort of a way that she's not going to be able to do it.

Read his book, Digital Minimalism. Definitely read Deep Work. Definitely read So Good They Can't Ignore You.

Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of that and it's going to be an issue that the pressure got really intense to do some sort of deep reset, which is the term I like to use. But as I talk about, So Good They Can't Ignore You, we're bad at that. At least our instincts of that are bad.

Yeah, I think suddenly that book is way more relevant than it's been recently because everyone is thinking about these type of transitions.

And most recently, Digital Minimalism and his new planner, the Time Block Planner, a daily method for deep work in a distracted world.

And of course, if you haven't read Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, we're So Good They Can't Ignore You. You are definitely missing out.

In The Little Prince, if you guys remember this as a kid or maybe you've read it to your own kids, he has this great line. He says, vain men never hear anything but praise.

if you read The Little Prince...he says we're responsible for what we've tamed

But the big model for me and this is why I wanted to talk to you about it was The Little Prince, because you have this sort of fantastical surreal kind of adventure story for kids. It's also operating on this totally different level for adults.

if you haven't read the four hour work week or the Tools Of Titans or the four hour body or the four hour chef any of his books you are really missing out

I saw this thing this guy was sitting in his living room and uh stray bullet comes through the window berries in a book behind his head actually in Tim Ferriss's tools for Titans I think just right behind his head just sitting there bullet gets buried you know misses him by a couple inches he's not in a war zone he's in his freaking house

He has a great chapter in Tim Ferriss's book, Tools Of Titans.

the choice. Let me find them both sorry. The choice and The Gift both two books I carry the paid report. I love them quite a bit.

I have raved about Dr. Eager's book The Gift 14 Lessons To Save Your Life and the choice embrace the possible both of which we sell at the Painted Port shall I'll link to those

Her new book, The Gift, I just ordered. I'm very excited about her TED Talk is also incredible. It was truly an honor to do this interview with Dr. Edith Eger.

Steve Rinella wrote this amazing book called American Buffalo which is about this hunt and he goes on for American Buffalo tells great story of the American West and Megafauna in the United States one of my favorites we sell that in the painting porch

one of my all time favorites

I just reread American Buffalo which I told you is one of my favorites but even though I hadn't read it in probably 10 years I think about a line in the book like probably once a week it's the scene you find this Buffalo skull and you pick it up and you start sort of asking yourself these questions about like who shot at first like who found it first like I think you have it you're like what did this person think about this what time did they wake up in the morning what did they think about God I think about that question all the time whenever I come across something really old like this is a this building I'm talking to you and it's like 100 and something years old I think about like the person that sat in this room before me and like what went through their head what their understanding of the world was like and that that line in the book has always struck me as a very beautiful encapsulation of that idea

there is a fine line between being practical and being a candy ass which is a word that Steve's father used to describe someone who was the opposite of tough.

I reread it earlier this year. I love it. We carried the paint approach. You have to read American Buffalo seriously. One of my all-time favorite books.

I think about that question all the time whenever I come across something really old

It's the scene you find this Buffalo skull and you pick it up and you start sort of asking yourself these questions about like who shot it first? Like who found it first? Like I think you have it you're like what did this person think about this? What time did they wake up in the morning? What did they think about God?

I'm actually reading a book right now called Essentialism. Greg McKeown, he says when we say yes to all opportunities and things that are put before us, we're saying no to the essential stuff that we were put here to do.

You bought meditations and you skimmed it. You read the summary of antifragile or Essentialism on one of those business sites.

Essentialism to me is a core Stoic concept. Marx really says, every day you should ask yourself this question with everything that you do. He says, is this essential? And he says what you find is that most of what you do is not essential. Most of what you say is not essential. And when you eliminate that, not only do you have more tranquility, he says you get the double benefit of doing fewer things better.

So if you haven't read Essentialism, you absolutely should.

I find that his books are just brilliantly designed too. He's got really cool graphics in them and art. Ironically, they're very simple designs. They're like sort of line drawings, which I think goes to the point, which is that little things can make a big difference. Little things done well make all the difference.

I really enjoyed both these books.

I learned from Greg McKeown a few years ago that when the word priority came into the English language in the 1500s, that it was only a singular word.

I would have mad there's actually a great book called How the Word is Past yeah that's the book yeah yeah that's one word is passed

one of my favorite books of the year, How the Word is Past by Clint Smith.

His book How the Word is Past, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America was an instant number one New York Times bestseller.

It starts out in New Orleans, it ends all the way at a slave market in Africa. He stops in at a Confederate cemetery.

Some of the most fascinating writing that he does is about the Angola prison, a former plantation turned maximum security prison in Louisiana.

This is a great book. You absolutely should read it and I really enjoyed my conversation with him and I'm excited to bring it to you.

Check out his book How the Word is Past, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery in America

I mean, I, I took a lot of that from Blue Knights. Like, you get the sense that she is a John Didion is reckoning for the first time having lost her daughter with what it must have actually been like to be her daughter, like to actually be that person.

And you get the sense that she was really wrestling with that after having lost her daughter.

And I think that that, that's part of her, you know, her guilt and anxiety is, is that she, she didn't realize she wasn't prepared. And she, when he was saying, I can't deal with it, she didn't, she thought he was just, you know, trying to bail instead of saying I'm literally, literally cannot deal with this.

Or was she really struggling in ways that I was blind to and should have been more compassionate and understanding? And how do they contribute to the problems that she had later in life?

And someone I've read all her stuff, and there's incredible stoke themes in Blue Nights, a year of magical thinking.

And then the last one, the most beautiful, and haunting, which is a sort of memento mori exercise, she talks about this in Blue Nights, she's at the church watching her daughter get married.

Joan Didion writes hauntingly in her beautiful book Blue Nights which you should absolutely read.

Have you read Blue Nights by Joan Didion?

so this is her table is it in the bookshop i'm sorry this is this is her table like this is the table her family would have like dinner and she there's this paragraph in the book where she's at her daughter's wedding this is like July 2003 and she's walking on the street she says I wonder if someone walking down Amsterdam Avenue saw the mother of the bride and thought before this year is out her husband will be dead at their table and her daughter will be in a medically induced coma and like leave this world like just a few months later and so you think these things happen to other people and she she talked about this her her she was sitting in her kitchen with her husband and he just keeled over and died and uh I believe a heart attack no a brain in yourism and she rushed to the to the fridge where she had like the number for emergency service like for the hospital and she she said I remember writing that number down and putting it on the fridge in case somebody in the building needed it right like you never think it's gonna happen to you you think these are things that happen to other people and so there's this kind of arrogance or entitlement this idea that we're the exception to the rule that won't happen to us and this is why we put stuff off this is why we you know take people or things for granted and then it does happen and it's not just loss it's like hey I have a platform I get to do this you know dream job but also like it can be taken from you you can fuck it up the rules of the game can change you can be the victim of an injustice like you don't know how long you get to do it so to not enjoy it while you do it and we're worse to procrastinate or to defer is you know a rejection of the gift that is the present moment.

There's a great book that I recommend I carried in the bookstore and I had them on the podcast a while back by Tom Nichols called The Death of Expertise, right?

There's a great book that I recommend I carried in the bookstore and I had them on the podcast a while back by Tom Nichols called The Death of Expertise, right?

I was very glad to talk with Tom Nichols on the assault on modern thinking his book The Death of Expertise is a must must read definitely a book for and of these times to check that out

It doesn't feel good to be right about something terrible. I would trade all the copies that that book has sold to have been 20% less correct.

The Death of Expertise is a title...Some people said, aha, seeing you mean the failure of expertise and I meant no, the death of the respect for expertise because expertise exists.

I meant the death of the respect for expertise because expertise exists. I mean we all use it every day even though we talk about you know, oh I don't like experts and I don't want to listen to the egg heads.

the way we got here was this rapid and unchecked growth of narcissism beginning sometime in the early 70s where people simply said you know I don't have to listen to experts because I am to use Richard Hofstetter's wonderful world. I am omnicompetent.

it was this weird narcissistic childlike insistence that it's not just that I don't trust experts but I am smarter than experts

She's saying that all she basically has to do in the morning is get downstairs into the cab.

If she gets downstairs into the cab, the rest takes care of itself because then she has, she gets in the studio, she gets inside.

there's this dancer name is Twila Thorpe she wrote this book called The Creative Habit and she's talking about she gets up she starts a routine and she's like when I leave my apartment and I'm waiting for the cab she's like I already won

I read this there's this great book called the The Creative Habit by Twilith Art but she's a great choreographer and she was saying like for her the workout is actually it's from waking up getting dressed walking down stairs and getting in the cab if she can do that then the workout will happen right because like once she gets in the cab to go to the studio she's never she's never not not followed through from there but if she doesn't do the the proceeding steps to start the process obviously nothing else can happen and I feel like really the willpower in swimming is is the I'm willing to jump in the cold water at 6 a.m. and swim those couple crappy laps that's the the what separates the the amateurs from the professionals

Favorite books, novels of all time, this is the movie going by Walker Percy.

It's not exactly stoic, although there is a bunch of stoic themes.

Walker Percy was introduced to stoicism by his uncle Will Percy.

And there's this amazing passage in the book. Let me find it real fast.

He's struggling.

He has this sort of stoic aunt who tries to give him something to lead on.

His world kind of feels like it's spinning out of control. He doesn't know what's important, what he should try to do, who he should try to be.

This is what his aunt Emily says.

She says, I don't know what we're doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe.

That is a secret which the high gods have yet confided in me.

Yet one thing I believe, and I believe it with every fiber of my being. A man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can.

In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.

But a man must go down fighting.

That is the victory.

To do anything less is to be less than a man.

There's a big passage from Marcus Aurelius in The Moviegoer that the aunt recites, and the aunt is modeled on William Alexander Percy, who introduces Walker to Stoic philosophy.

I love the moviegoer. Go read Richard Ford right after reading the moviegoer. It's so clear. What is it, The Sportswriter? Yeah. It's so clear, the influence.

No, it's such a brilliant novel. And then the stoicism... He's almost presenting the stoicism as the antiquated thing that he's getting away from. But it is a fascinating book with a lot of stoicism in it.

There's a big passage from Marcus Aurelius in The Moviegoer that the aunt recites, and the aunt is modeled on William Alexander Percy, who introduces Walker to Stoic philosophy.

I love the moviegoer. Go read Richard Ford right after reading the moviegoer. It's so clear. What is it, The Sportswriter? Yeah. It's so clear, the influence.

As Bink Bowling says in the Walker Percy novel The Moviegoer, the Age of Catos is Gone.

As Aunt Emily tells Binks in The Moviegoer, a man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can.

Oh, like I just read this book, three lives from Mississippi about, um, the, the murder of those three civil rights workers. Like there's murder is not a federal crime.

I want to nerd out about this because I would love to read that book. So tell me what that was and let's talk about Plutarch.

Funny enough, there's another book that matches the subtitle that I also love, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by my friend Russ Roberts.

Also great. Carry that in the painted porch. There's a stoic connection there too.

The economist Adam Smith had a similar concept, which he called the impartial spectator.

It's called Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, We Care It At The Painting Port. It's a must read.

My editor, Nikki Papadopoulos, many years ago gave me this wonderful book called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts, which also turned me on to Adam Smith's more philosophical work.

I ended up buying copies and sending them to all my friends, carrying them at the paint and porch; if you haven't read either, you absolutely should.

The line from Adam Smith is in the wonderful book by my friend Russ Roberts which you should check out. It's called Adam Smith can change your life, we carried it at the painting porch. It's a must read.