It Doesn’t Take Long to Do This | Mark Manson's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:55It doesn't take long to do this. It was a bad year. You dropped some balls. You picked up some bad habits. You let some good habits slip. You wasted time on stuff that doesn't matter. You made plans for a creative project, but no progress on them. But just because that's true doesn't mean it has to continue that way. As Mark Sorrellis writes in Meditations, now they see you as a beast, a monkey, but in a week they'll think you're a god if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the Logos. A week! A week is all it takes to turn it around. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, But the point is, it doesn't take long to get going in the right direction again.

1:42It doesn't take long to turn things around, to pick up the balls you dropped, to replace one bad habit with a better one, to recommit to your principles and begin acting like the person you know you can be. And that's what we built the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge around. It's just three weeks, 21 days to start the year right, to create momentum, to transform you from whoever you are right now to who you're capable of being in 2026. 21 days of stoic-inspired challenges, one per day to help you be what you're capable of being. You could be one way, one thing right now, but it doesn't have to stay that way and it doesn't take much to get going in the other direction.

2:31If one week is all it takes, imagine what you can do in three weeks. I know that I have personally been transformed by the challenges we do each and every year. This is almost the 10th year of the challenge. I have habits and practices that I do each and every year because of the Daily Stoic New Year in New Challenge and I'd love to see you in there. And just a little note, if you want to do this challenge or any of our challenges or courses throughout the rest of the year. I just sign up for Daily Stoic Life as part of this. You get all the challenges for free. So you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com or just go to dailystoic.com slash challenge to sign up for the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge.

3:09It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there. And I can't wait for us to start on January 1st, dailystoic.com slash challenge.

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6:05What have you been reading? Or what do you like? Dude, everything, so speaking of podcasting, like, most of my reading is just whoever's coming up next on the podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. That is nice because it forces you to read new books that you probably ordinarily would take, like, a long time to get away from. Yeah, so I just went back and read some of Cal's stuff, read his new one, and then I'm interviewing Noah tomorrow. Noah Kagan? Yeah, so I'm... We had that around. He was here. He did, like, a thing at the store. It's down here. It's the bright green. oh there it is yeah i actually need to finish have you read die with zero i've been raving about that lately yeah actually my wife's reading that right really and it's blowing her mind yeah yeah yeah um yeah it's fantastic gets you thinking about a lot of interesting stuff he's gonna come in did you end up going so people don't know we're in this sort of writing group that met before the pandemic that was shane parish uh james james clear before he'd done any books Tim Urban Tim Urban Near Near Hooked Steve Cam You, me I think we're forgetting some Oh David Epstein Oh yeah David For Range Did you go?

7:19No Okay It's actually this coming weekend Oh right right right That's why I'm not going Yeah Spring break Shane's book is good Yeah I still need to have him on yeah he came out he did it yeah do you read the Michael Lewis one of going infinite yeah so good is it I think people people gave him so much shit yeah he fillets the dude he comes off as a complete really yeah totally the only thing his somewhat contrarian argument is like okay first off he spent about five billion dollars in investments yeah and one of them alone he invested in em what was it ethmorpic or whatever what the big ai company that's now worth like a trillion dollars right right right so like that one investment is going to make up for yeah so so like it's hard his argument is like um at the end of the day there may not be that much fraud there yeah uh Which is not in any way clearing him.

8:32It's just that it's not like$40 billion to evaporate or whatever. It's a little different. But he comes off as a great example of a person who's very smart but also a moron. Yeah, totally. He doesn't read. He thinks he knows everything. He doesn't think personal or soft skills matter. He's actually a horrendous manager. He's not on top. So he comes off as someone who, yeah, I thought that book was really interesting. I liked it. And then you're just watching one of the greatest of all time. He could write about, there's a Malcolm Gladwell blurb where it's like, if I found out Michael Lewis wrote a book about staplers, I would read that book.

9:13And it's true, I would read him about anything. Lewis got destroyed because he gave a 60 Minutes interview and defended SPF on it. The interview was not great. Yeah. But it's not the book. It was a bad look. I actually just read a news story recently. It said that SBF has been giving his prison guards crypto trading advice. And the prison guards are already up like 10x. Yeah, that's hilarious. I was like, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I thought it was good. I thought it was good. I'm going to use him in the wisdom book as like an example of a smart student person. Musk being another great example of that.

9:53Oh, yeah, yeah. Of a person whose brain is apparently so open that, or whose mind is so open that their brain falls apart. Well, it's also, Musk is a great example of, like, domain brilliance, right? Yes, of course. What else? Did that Montagna book come in yet? Do you know, Tristan? We don't? God damn it. um the press so that the weirdness of the bookstore is that a lot of the books that i really love are not super popular and so they are constantly out of print um and it's hard to get them like this i've been raving about this book which i think you would like as a it's a biography of pontius pilate oh wow which like you don't think of as a guy who had a shitty job yeah right He's just the governor of a province of the Roman Empire, and there's a troublemaker in it.

10:46And we don't know that much about him, but she's the obituaries editor for The Economist, so she's a really interesting writer. And it's one of the greatest biographies I've ever written in my life. Really? So good. And it's a good example. Like, multiple times he tries to do the right thing, but it would have required just, like, 10 % more spine. Yeah. Like, he kept trying. Like, because basically at the end, he says, like, you guys decide. He tried to let Jesus go. Yes. And then at the end, he goes, all right. You guys do it. You know what I mean? He says, I wash my hands of it. Yeah. Right?

11:26That's where the expression comes from. but like he if he had had just a time if he just said like my job is to make the decision that's my job yeah and a good chunk of people are not going to be happy with the decision like all of history might have turned out differently yeah and then at the same time she does talk about it which i don't think about from a biblical standpoint which is like or is he the fall guy because the prophecy was that he would come and be put to death right so somebody had to do so he actually didn't have a choice yeah like he he was just the guy like his number came up and god said you have like you know what i mean like so the other the other way is that like it couldn't have happened any other way and so i don't know it's really i love that book i think you'll love you'll like it um trying to think what else

12:17what else are you what have you been into or have you read any of these recently

12:25What have I read recently? Ooh, okay. Talk about the best way to understand the present is to read from a long time ago. Do you know who Jan Morris is? So Jan Morris was, what's his name? What's his actual name? Is it, oh, James Morris is the journalist who climbs Everest with Hillary. He is the great historian of the British Empire. and then in like 19, what year is it? I don't know, 1960, 1970, gets gender reassignment surgery. Super early, yeah. Yeah, but so it's a memoir of what it is like to be trans, but from like three generations or multiple generations before any of the things that have now made that discussion toxic, you know?

13:16So you're like, oh, this is just what, do you know what I mean? So you're just like, oh, this is what it's actually like and how hard it would be and what you would feel and all of these things. But none of the political, none of the culture war stuff. And you can't possibly say that this wasn't a dude. You know what I mean? This was like a man's man who's in the army. Like all this stuff. But like deep down knew he was someone and something else. I thought it was incredible. It's one of the best books I read last year. I've been reading a lot of business shit lately. Because of the podcast? I've been hiring a lot.

13:54Oh. So I'm like hitting that point where I'm like, sure. I should like kind of know what I'm doing when it comes to. Yeah, like people. Yeah, dealing with people, managing. What have you liked? Because that's a section I don't have a lot of great books. So I just finished Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things. That book's great. Yeah, I really like that one. I read some of Drucker's stuff. Have you read The Daily Drucker? I have not. That was the inspiration for The Daily Stoke. Really? My agent, Steve, did that book. No shit. Yeah, you go like, people know Peter Drucker is a leadership expert, but they're like, where do you start?

14:30Yeah, yeah. And there isn't like a class. It's not like, if you're like, I want to read Jim Collins, you read Good to Great. That's just a classic book. There isn't one for Peter Drucker. And so you could get the wrong one. And so he was like, why don't we just do one page a day of the best stuff? Yeah. And it was a huge hit. And so that's when he suggested the Daily Stoic, that's the model he was using because he had done it as a publisher. Wow. So it's pretty good. You might like that. Nice.

14:59I don't flip through it enough, but I should.

15:05No asshole rule is good. Is this like bonus footage of you pitching me books to buy from your bookstore? so we do this it's so funny we do this every time like the whole point of the book store is like i love all these books like these aren't like like we should have if this was like a regular bookstore none of these books would be in it probably and or some of them would be but most of them would not be in it and we'd have way more books like a bookstore this size should have 15 000 books in it yeah uh like titles sure not inventory yeah and so so it's mostly like i just i love all the books so i could you could ask me anyone i'd tell you why it's amazing yeah but so we do this like we go like we just started doing a recommend it and then they'd like walk they walk up at the end and try to pay and i was like i did not just trick you on camera into buying seven books or whatever i didn't i didn't think you were gonna make me pay no when admiral mcraven was here he was like no no i'm gonna pay and i was like well but i wasn't picking the books based on like what i think you should buy i was just saying like i was just picking all my favorite like i maybe wouldn't buy this one if I was paying for it.

16:10Because I think you just might get one thing out of it. So yes, I'm not this isn't me on camera bullying you into buying it. We always recommend Shopify. It took us from an idea to a real business. We got set up I think in less than a day with very little effort. We could just focus on the supply chains of the product development. Shopify gives us the ability to customize without the complexity. We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer. We're Thirsty Turtle, and we leveled up our business with Shopify. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash au. Hey, it's Ryan.

16:49I try not to make too many puns on my last name because I've been hearing it my whole life. But if you want to give a holiday gift of me, Ryan Holiday, and the Daily Stoic, well, you can. We have a special offer. If you want to give Daily Stoic Premium as a gift, You can do that. Your friends, your family members, co-workers, whoever you give it to can get ad-free episodes, early access and exclusive bonus content. Plus, we'll even throw in premium episodes of the Daily Dad podcast. You can get both premium plans for together for 25 % off. It's a limited offer available now through the end of the holidays.

17:29That's through December 31st. You can click below to get it for them today. Happy holidays.