Mark Manson: “I Didn’t Realize How Out of Control I Was.”

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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2:45Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

3:36Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Feels like an eternity ago, but back over Labor Day weekend, we were in Southern California. It's my wife's 20-year high school reunion. We saw some friends in LA, took the kids to the Santa Monica Pier. We had like a lovely little trip. And then I ran over and did a podcast with my friend Mark Manson. Actually, we did this huge deep dive into stoicism that ran on his podcast. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But afterwards, because we just hadn't talked enough and he hasn't been on this podcast like more times than basically anyone, we talked about some other things that I thought would be fun to talk about on the Daily Stoic Podcast.

4:22I've known Mark forever. I've known Mark since before The Cell Art of Not Giving a Fuck. I've been a big fan of his writing. Actually, I remember we had coffee or lunch or something in Austin when he was thinking about doing that book. I don't think either of us thought it could be this monster that it was, and it was one of the best-selling books in the country for like multiple years in a row. My actually favorite book of his is Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. Although it was funny, I sent him a picture when we were in Greece this summer, he did a book before this, before all those, like a self-published book on dating.

4:58It was in this tiny like print shop, like a copy shop where you'd make copies or get office supplies. It's a little shop. They had it next to a bunch of Greek titles in Ithaca. So I thought that was funny. But Mark is great. I'm a big fan of his writing. I'm a bigger fan of him as a person because we've gotten to know each other over the years. He's given me a lot of advice on my writing. It's been fascinating to watch him grapple with his success. We talked about this in one of our episodes, the idea of the catastrophe of success. It's been fascinating to watch him get in incredible shape, sort of undergo this transformation that he's undergone.

5:39And then it's been fascinating and inspiring and in other ways sort of motivated me to get really on top of my game to watch him just really crush it lately on the stuff he does on YouTube. and social media. I think he's a fascinating guy. I think you're really going to like this conversation. As always, if you haven't checked out The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I don't know, maybe you're like me. Sometimes you see a book that's just like selling like crazy and you're like, well, I don't want to read it. You have that sort of like indie sneer. I usually find whenever I read those books, I'm like, oh, I actually understand now.

6:12I'm the one that's wrong. Everyone who liked it is right and I was wrong. There's a journal, The Subtle Art of Not Giving and Fucked Journal. And then as I mentioned, Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. He's done some interesting Audible originals as well. You can check those out. You can follow him on all platforms at Mark Manson. And then check out his podcast because it's great. As I said, I will link to his episode and we will get into it. Here's me talking with Mark Manson.

6:45We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone. And then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

7:21My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

7:58Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 percent off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Look, when you're hiring, you don't want just anyone. You need the right person with the right background who can move your business forward. And when I need candidates who match what we're looking for at Daily Stoic for any of my businesses, we trust Indeed sponsored jobs, because when you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. You can give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed's sponsored jobs.

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9:43I've been thinking a lot about this thing you said. You were saying that you want to be careful when you get advice from successful people about balance because usually they became successful by their fundamental lack of balance correct and then they became successful and then they're thinking retroactively how they wish they used to be or they're making changes now and then acting as if that is the approach that got them where they are yes there's a a lot of i think a lot of positive lifestyle changes are a result of privilege and i don't mean that in like a pejorative way, but it's like, you know, once you do have the money to do a sauna every day or, uh, you know, have your like chia papaya creatine smoothie in the morning, like that does feel like the most important thing to you.

10:35And so I, I just, I remember how I was coming up, which was, I ate Red Bulls and Reese's cups every morning. I fell asleep with my laptop open on my chest and it would wake up in the middle of the night and continue working. So I just recognize the gap between who I am today and who I was when I was starting. And I try to be realistic about that gap and understand that, you know, my perceptual biases might try to convince me that the way I am today is the way I should have always been, but probably wasn't realistic back then. Yeah. It's funny. We were just talking about ancient philosophy in the thing we recorded, but, you know, Plato's idea of the cave, like you think what's important when you're in the cave and you come out of the cave and then you're like, whoa, no, no, I had it totally wrong.

11:20And there There is a good impulse to want to come back and be like, hey, this thing that you're stressed about is not nearly as important as you think it is. Or this way that you're doing it, it doesn't actually have to be that way. So there is that good impulse. But yeah, there's a luxury of once you have made it or once you're good to be able to be like, yeah, just take it easy, do it slow. It's very rare that you find someone that's done something that's really impressive or big and they did it not as a maniac. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think fundamentally to achieve extreme success, you cannot be a balanced person.

11:58Like that's just that just strikes me as obviously true. And yet it's very hard to sustain success as a maniac or as an unbalanced person. And so that's the transition of like, especially if you do it and you're like, no, no, no. My goal isn't to get in and get out. Yes. I want to have a long career as a baseball player or I want to write books my whole life or I want to not go through five marriages. You know, like then all of a sudden you realize a lot of those habits or practices that were adaptive for one set of goals, which was like, go big or go home, you know, get rich, die trying. Well, if you keep trying, you're going to die.

12:37Right. These days I kind of think of it as volatility. So early on, volatility works in your favor. So if you have nothing, you want as much volatility as possible because if things go south, well, you have nothing to lose. So who cares? But things can go north very, very easily. Right. But then once you're on that trajectory and you are, you've kind of achieved escape velocity, you don't want volatility. Like you don't want, you don't want wild swings in your fortune. Yeah. Or your mood or your health. Right. When everything is going great and you've built this amazing career and financial security and family and everything, like you want to minimize volatility so you can maintain that trajectory.

13:23So I think that those biases are apparent on both sides. It's the same thing. It's like startup founders are always talking about how you should be a maniac, which makes sense because to get a startup off the ground, you have to be out of your mind and work all the time. Then they become investors. And then I think they have a vested interest in you being a maniac. Yes. Because they don't want a founder prioritizing their marriage or their relationship with their kids over this investment they've put in. Yeah. So there is a little bit of something of like, yeah, who is this? Who is this sleep at your desk, sleep when you're dead?

13:58You know, like burn the candle at two ends, hustle culture myth. Who is it benefiting? Yeah. Not the individual for the most part, but like the people who are trying to harness the power of said individual. I like in my own life. I like the fact that I know I can go there if I need it. Right. Like, so if I have a stretch, like, let's say I so like this year I started a second business like a maniac. Yeah. But I know I have that that on button. Right. It's like, OK, I can do this for six months. I've been there before. I've done it a few times in my career. Like I can work like a crazy person and sacrifice a lot of balance in other areas of my life.

14:37So I think it's useful like to have it as a skill, but you need to like be able to turn it off when you need to. Yeah, I heard in the Robert Caro books on Lyndon Johnson, he talks about he's like, I got it, but I have it on a leash. You know, like you have to have that like killer instinct. But if you're like all killer instinct all the time, you'll probably kill yourself. Yeah. But I feel like a couple of years ago, like kind of at the height of your success, not that you're not more successful now, but like you could do anything you wanted. You'd done it. You kind of made a bunch of changes.

15:09You did that cliche thing a little bit. Not that you were giving cliche advice, but you were like, no, no, no, I'm not going to keep living this way. What were the changes you feel like you made? There were significant changes, both in terms of lifestyle and I guess professional changes. I'll start with the lifestyle because that's more straightforward. I was a very volatile person when I was younger, right? So there were very few parties that I would turn down. There were, you know, if you ever wanted somebody to join you for an exciting night out, I was your guy. I was always the last person to leave the dance floor.

15:43You know, I was pretty much up for anything at any time, which I think served me well when I was young, A, because, you know, you have the energy, but also B, because I think novel experiences are more valuable. You know, you learn more about who you are and what type of people there are in the world and what you like. But as I got older and the responsibilities and obligations of my career started to stack up, that just started those sorts of decisions became more irresponsible over time. So I really just have buttoned up my personal life quite a bit. Like I stopped drinking. I don't really go out anymore.

16:18I moved to California. I now drink papaya creatine smoothies every morning. And I don't necessarily like recommend everybody do that all the time because, you know, there are different seasons of life. But it has had a very positive effect in terms of like doling the volatility. On the professional side, you know, there's this funny transition that happens in your career and you never know exactly where it's going to happen. So early in your career, you need to say yes to everything because you don't know what's going to work. You don't know what's going to help you break through late in your career or once you've become successful or achieved a certain amount of success.

16:53You need to say no to most things. But that inflection point, it's very unclear where that inflection point is. You're never sure if you're actually nailing it. So I hit a point probably around the pandemic where I was like, I need to start saying no to things or I'm going to lose my mind because this is just way too much. So I would say what I've gotten much better at the last few years is just being very conscious of the projects I choose, the things that I commit myself to, the things that I invest my time and money into, and really, really making sure that it's like a fuck yes before I do it.

17:31instead of just being like, oh, wow, that's a big number. Sure. You know, and then six months later, regretting. It's funny because you wrote that article a long time ago. Yeah. I find this all the time where like you write something, you say something and obviously you meant it. And obviously you were applying it at some level. And then you go, it's not that I didn't know what I was talking about. I definitely knew what I was talking about. I just didn't fully integrate what I was talking about. Like, and now it's like, oh, now I have to really do this. it's funny because we just recorded a long podcast on stoicism for my podcast right before we started recording this and we were like one of the last things you and i talked about was how if philosophy is not just something you read and understand it has to be a daily consistent practice and that that's actually the hard part of it like it reading a book is not the hard part i think this is just another example of that in the case of the fuck yes or no thing you know the which for people listening who aren't familiar with it it's the simple adage that if it's not a fuck yes it should be like any significant decision if it's not a fuck yes then it should be a no i wrote that article 10 or 12 years ago i wrote it in the context of dating it was useful in a lot of kind of simple you know oh should we buy this couch it's really expensive well it's not a fuck yes then i guess not what i what i didn't realize at the time is that as your life kind of levels up the sexiness of the things you should say no to also level up.

18:57Yes. Right. So there are things today that you and I should say no to that our 25 year old selves dreamt of. It seems irresponsible to say no to them. Exactly. Exactly. I guess the higher up the mountain you climb, the more difficult those no's become. And I didn't anticipate that. so I in my head I'm like oh I got this no thing down and then you know subtle art blows up bunch of new book deals come in movie deal comes in Will Smith shows up like I'm like yes yes yes yes yes and and I basically had to learn that lesson all over again yeah well you're you're just learning it it's like you're playing high school basketball and then college basketball and professional basketball and then you're playing in the Olympics yeah the playoffs and then the championship.

19:48It's like, it's the same game, but just the stakes are higher and the other people are better. And the problems you're solving in that game are different. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it feels irresponsible to say no to some things. It feels ungrateful to say no to certain things. And I think humans are really bad at calculating opportunity costs. Yeah. Like I know if I don't do a speaking game, I know exactly how much money that costs, even though it doesn't actually cost any money, but I know what I'm not getting. Yes. There's no way to know what the individual toll of one thing is on a marriage, is on a relationship with a friend, is with your health, is with your overall productivity, is with the burnout that you are slowly, steadily progressing towards.

20:36That's the trap of it. Yeah. Like you said, I think to a certain extent, you have to make a lot of those mistakes to develop that awareness. I do feel like I am a little bit better at having that awareness of, you know, so like I took a speaking gig overseas a month or two ago. I do not, I do very few speaking gigs these days for exactly the reasons that we're talking about. And it's funny because I had checked in the hotel, I'd been maybe been in the hotel for an hour before I was like, I'm an idiot. I should have stayed home. I should never have said yes to this. Like, what am I doing here? I just flew 13 hours to get here.

21:12So it is a lesson that keeps coming up time after time. But I do feel like the calibration gets better. Do you have any good systems or rules? Like to me, it's often about saving me from myself. Yes. You know, like if I think I can do it, if nobody is saying that's a bad idea, I'll probably do it. Yeah. So in the case of speaking, you know, I initially had fuck yes or no, but then it's like every speaking opportunity, especially if there's a bunch of money attached. It feels like a fuck yet. When you get the email, you're like, fuck yeah, I'll go, I'll go hang out in this country and get paid for it.

21:45So then I created a rule. I was like, okay, it needs to be, it needs to be a speaking opportunity that I would be interested in or enjoy, even if I wasn't getting paid for it. Like that became the rule for a while. But then I noticed that I was still convincing myself like, like, oh yeah, of course I'll go. I've never been there. Even though you could go there for any reason at any time. Exactly. Exactly. Or I have a friend that lives there. I haven't seen in four years. Like I could have dinner with them. Meanwhile, you're not processing that you like you're going to fly to London and have dinner with a friend.

22:16Yeah. Also, you haven't texted or called that person. Right. Like four years. Yes. You could do something about it right now. But yes, exactly. And so that failed. And then I realized that, like, I still couldn't trust my brain. And so now my process is my I've told my head of operations to literally not show me any speaking opportunities unless she believes that they could fundamentally change my career. Oh, so that is the current rule. And then the irony is you don't miss the things that you don't know about. Exactly. The dilemma is only there because someone told you about the thing. Like for me, again, these are all privileged.

22:56I understand if people are like rolling their eyes. But like I it was later in my career that I realized I don't have to blow up my day because some random radio station read something I wrote and the host wanted me to have me on. and they have a slot at 2.15 central time, do I want to do it? And the ease at which I would be like, well, I had all these plans, but this is the job, you should do it. And then just the ability to be like, well, I'm not going to do it. That takes a certain amount of discipline. But just getting rid of press request thing on my website just meant I don't get the requests anymore and I don't know what I'm not doing and I'm fine.

23:39yeah and if it wasn't happening you would be fine yeah to bring this back to bring like a much simpler example that also from my personal life so as part of that like getting my lifestyle in order i lost a ton of weight as you know between 2020 and 2024 i lost about 60 pounds and struggled quite a bit through that period you know there were a lot of plateaus and rebounds and you know know, it was a very jagged line down. And I struggled a lot with the eating part of it. And it was funny because it was a very similar process in that, okay, initially, you know, I'm like talking to my health coach and like, okay, these are the calories.

24:23These are the macros, like don't eat desserts. Don't drink too much. Don't whatever. I'm like, got it. This is easy, right? Well, you, you go out on a weekend or, you know, do a quick trip with the wife or maybe it's your anniversary or something and like there's this quick very quickly you find that there's almost always a reason of like well what's one little dessert tonight or you know i had one glass of wine but what's the second glass of wine and so you you like make these little what's the word i'm looking for concession you make these little concessions that feel like a one-off to you but you're actually making them like almost every single day yeah and so of course they end up to you not losing any weight.

25:01So eventually I was like, okay, you know what? I need to have like rules for myself. So I had rules of no desserts, no, no alcohol on weekdays, like created all these rules for myself. Well, even then I would still start finding like reasons of like, well, you know, I haven't seen my brother in six months and you know, he just got married last year and we're having a great night. And so like, who am I to spoil this evening or whatever? him anyway long story short i i literally got to the point where i'm like i just went to my wife i said i'm not eating at a restaurant for the next 30 days like period yeah because i know if i'm in the environment my brain is going to start lying to me and i'm going to make up all these stupid reasons to like start eating a bunch of crap that i shouldn't be eating whereas if i'm at home i'm stuck to the stuff that's in the fridge i'm okay and uh i think of this as like knowing when not to trust myself.

25:55Yeah. So there's, you know, there's this cliche of like, trust yourself, you know, you know, best, whatever. That's true in some cases. Right. But, uh, I mean, I I've learned in the case of accepting speaking gigs and in the case of eating desserts or drinking alcohol, I can't trust myself. Yeah. What, uh, I heard the definition of an addiction is when you have lost the freedom to abstain. Like when you no longer can be like, I don't want to, Yeah, that's a problem. And I think we all have those things. And then that's where the discipline is not. Well, just try harder not to do the things. Yeah.

26:29It's how do you outsmart the part of yourself that is failing to not. Absolutely. I've always said, like, if you're relying on willpower, you've lost. Yes. It's over. Like, you shouldn't even put yourself in the spot where you're having to make a decision between the dessert and the salad or flying to Dublin or staying home with your kids, right? Like, if you're in that spot and struggling to make that decision, you've failed yourself to a certain extent. Yeah. It's all easier said than done. And then it's like, it's the day-to-day-ness of it.

27:08Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

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28:46I've sort of been practicing this thing of like more often than not, like more often than not, am I making the right choice? Right. So it's like with the exception of the things that are like obviously such destructive things that you can have. none of them in your life but like how am i just how am i getting better or more often than not deciding to do this thing that's like consistent with the person that i want to be the values does that make sense like like am i saying no more often than not am i saying no to the dessert more like how just consistently can you get better at doing it and that's progress now obviously sometimes you have these hard rules but just like like going like hey i'm trying to just get better at doing you're never going to be perfect at the thing that the thing is how over the course of your life do you get better at this really tough thing that by the way most people are not even aware of as like a battleground yeah they're just doing whatever i would say the more often than not is that's like the healthy place to end up it's funny because as you're saying that i'm thinking to myself i'm like 2019 mark yeah if you told him like oh just doing more often than not like i'm drunk that's the problem yeah i'm drunk almost every night yeah whereas today i i do operate on them more often than not, you know, with the with food and exercise and everything.

30:00And it's and it's working. It's OK. But I had to go through that period of hard rules and basically treating myself like an untrained dog. It's like once the inner dog is trained, then you can let it loose and off the leash. But until it's trained, you have to keep it. Well, the interesting thing is that it's because you spent the first 30 plus years training yourself to do the thing. Right. Right. And just desire, outcome, desire, outcome, or, you know, offer, accept, offer, accept. Yeah. And then it's, it's, it's hard to turn on a dime and be like, no, no, no, I'm actually the person that like, doesn't jump on opportunities now.

30:41Like I got here because I'm that person. Yes. So your identity is tied up in it. And then I think, you know, it was interesting you're saying about like the habits you can get away with when you're younger. I think a big part of it is also like, as you get older, you realize, oh, you can't just brute force this anymore. Like there's things that like, I think like habits and routines, this isn't just me as like an older person, a person with success and whatever to be able to be like, oh, I'm just, I'm describing something unattainable. It's more like, no, no, no, no. Early on, I could write on the back of a crowded bus or, you know, I could write with no sleep.

31:20I could just do the thing on sheer energy. And now it's like, no, no, no. If I am like not taking care of sleep and not taking care of food and I'm not controlling environment, it's not that your ability declines, but your raw willpower declines. And so to continue to perform at the same level, you have to find other areas to elevate what you're doing or you won't, you'll fall off. I think the age thing is a really good point. I don't know if it's that the willpower declines. I would say the margin for error declines, right? Like when I think back to my 20 year old self or 25 year old self, yeah, I could go out, I could drink all night, I could party and I could sleep three hours and then wake up and bang out a whole day of work.

31:59And it was no problem. Today, I would be dead. It would be absolutely impossible. In fact, today, if I just don't sleep quite right, I'm like, I feel it the next morning. And so I think, and maybe this comes back to why I don't totally trust people after they're successful, because usually after they're successful, they're like in their fifties and they are really cranky about their sleep and their nutrition and their exercise. And they think it's a really, really big deal. And they like, you don't remember that when you're 23, you're fucking indestructible. You can kind of get away with anything.

32:34Yes. It's funny. I did this book a couple of years ago with Chris Bosh. He was telling me this story about flying with LeBron James and they're all on the heat. And LeBron is like doing yoga in the aisle of the team plane. And they're all laughing at him. And this was like still like three or four years ago that he's telling me this. And he's like, we're all making fun of him and busting his balls about it. And he's like, he's the only one of us that's still playing. And so it is true that some of these are things you can't understand until you're older. And yet also this element of the earlier you understand them, even just partially, Even if you're just paying lip service to them or only partly investing in them, they have profound returns later.

33:17It's the same. It's like, I don't know, same putting money in your retirement account. Like putting$100 in when you're 20 is just profoundly different than putting$100 in when you're 30 because of the power of compounding interest in time. It's an interesting analogy because, yeah, I think if we're talking longevity or like sustained energy over time, then it makes a ton of sense to me. When it's like asking yourself, am I doing something that is a short term sprint or am I trying to do this thing for a long time? And oftentimes there's parts of it. It's like you might be running this company, but you're in this industry for a long time.

33:54Or you might be working on this, but then you're in this marriage for a long time. The conflicting, contradicting incentives of the short term of one and the long term of the other. That's the balance you got to figure out. Yeah, I agree with that. that balancing act really becomes more apparent down the road. So yeah, I guess if you do get good at it early, you will be more prepared because I had to go through a very ugly and painful transition, you know, through my thirties into my forties to kind of get my shit together. So I guess it's, I guess what I'm saying is the advice that quote unquote successful people give to aspiring people, it's not so much about how to be successful.

34:34It's about how to prepare yourself to stay successful over a long period of time. Yeah, you see this too, like another example of it, and this might be too inside baseball, but like people are like, you're listening to a successful person give you the math on self-publishing or self-funding or bootstrapping or whatever. And it's like, this is only their experience in light of having succeeded. And you don't know how it's going to pan out for you now. And so actually what the best path is, is very different. Do you know what I mean? Like it's very clear once it's worked. Yes. What you should have done.

35:11Yeah. But you don't know if it's going to work. And so it really is like, what are this sort of just more foundational, general best practices, not like the person just wishing they could have done it slightly differently. Yeah. I also just think that like people, the advice people want to, like, that's the advice people want to hear. Yes. They want the inside baseball. Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry. I'm referring to the other thing. Right. So it's like, if you're a startup founder and you're completely lost and you're you've tried like multiple iterations of a product you have no customers nothing's working you're running out of money like there's a piece of you that wants the answer to be wake up at 5 30 get some sunlight yeah drink a papaya smoothie like sure that's what's gonna work yeah you know so i think there's a demand there's just a massive demand for that message and in this day and age any any message that has a demand is going to be met by somebody.

36:05Yes, right. No, like aspiring writers want to know what fucking program to use. What font to write in. Yeah, what pencils or how do you find an agent? And it's like, because the advice of like, you have to make something that's really good that people want is so obvious. And then also like, obviously the main thing they're struggling with. Yeah. And it's more fun to fiddle at the margins. Yeah. You know, literally like, it's like, wow. You know, like what, you know, what is your screen look like? And it's like, that's not, that's not what, there's not a market in delivering that. I mean, if only the right pin or the right font, you know, determined that.

36:44Yeah. So how have you thought about this lately? Because you seem to really be into video and social and stuff now. How are you thinking about, because again, you could just peace out. What gets you excited about this? You know, it's funny. I went through a little bit of a, I guess, identity crisis, you would call it. Well, let me back up. So the short answer to that is like, I'm really enjoying scaling out the kind of online media side of this career. And it's funny because I'm actually enjoying it a lot more than I enjoy writing books. And that was a little bit of an epiphany for me a couple of years ago.

37:22I think what happened, I'd forgotten that I started my career being an internet guy, right? Just posting a bunch of blogs and shit on Facebook and seeing what stuck. And I loved it. I lived it and breathed it. And eventually as part of that process of growing that online audience and that online following, uh, I did a book deal and then that, that book deal turned into just like an absurdly mega bestseller. And, and I think what happened then is because the most successful thing I had ever done was write a book, I assumed, oh, I must be an author. Yes. Narrative and identity are very tricky and deceiving.

37:59Yes. So it was what the world was rewarding me for. It was what everybody knew me for doing. It was the thing I was most validated for is the thing I was making the most money doing. So I'm like, I guess I'm an author now. So I wrote a bunch of books and they went well. They did very well, but it, I burned myself out and I struggled a lot mentally during that period. And so then I came back to the kind of doing the online stuff a few years ago and I loved it. I'm a dog just chasing a car. I'm like, yeah, show me the numbers. Let me go viral. I want to see the numbers go up. So I'm having a blast doing it.

38:34I actually canceled a book deal. It was funny. I actually went to my publisher and I said, you know, I want to like launch a podcast and I want to do a lot more video content. So I want to push the book back a year or two, but I'll have a much bigger audience and I'll be able to test ideas and stuff. And they were like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. And then they threatened to cancel the contract. And so I said, yeah, sure. Here's your money. And no regrets. So yeah, what I'm enjoying now is actually, it's very much the, I would call it the business media side of this career. This is really important.

39:07I actually, I was just giving this talk at EO and I was talking about like, you have to find out why you got into the thing you got into and what's the thing you like doing so if you're like if you really love to cook and then you start a restaurant and then you spend all the time in the back office of the restaurant looking at vendors or whatever dealing with critics or then like the rewards for you succeeding were that you don't get to think to do the thing you love yeah now it might be that actually you didn't you love the energy of being in the restaurant and running the restaurant and actually cooking wasn't your main thing it was just a means to getting there you have to know that too you have to know like what is the part of the thing that you actually like to do.

39:44Yeah. And then you have to hold on to that thing real tight as you succeed because everything is going to be conspiring and incentivizing to make you not be able to do that thing as much. So for me, it's like the writing is the writing of the books is the thing I love the most. And so I have to be careful on the other things that I go, hey, did I like I just told my wife the other day, I walked, she was like, how was work today or whatever? And I was like, I'm not getting the middle of this book. I fucking love it. Like I was like, I don't, I'm dreading continuing in the sense that I know at some point, like I'll get, this is the part that I love.

40:20Like I'm figuring it out and I'm like, I'm in the middle of it and I want to stay here. And so it was like, okay, the decision for that is like, I'm not going to rush it. The publisher was like, so when do you want this? And, you know, they were trying, I was like, I'm not going to give them a date. That means I get less time to do the thing. Like, I'm just going to, I'll do this as long as I want to do it. because that's what the reward for succeeding at your thing should be, that you get to not rush through it. But you have to know what that thing is. And then you need the discipline and you need the confidence to go like, no, no, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, not what you think I'm supposed to be doing.

40:53Yeah. And it it's hard. Like it's it kind of comes back to the speaking thing, right? Like it's it's hard, especially when there's like financial incentive, especially when there's a lot of social validation, social pressure to to say yes to certain things or do certain things. So that's been my big realization is that I'm an internet guy. Yeah. And I always have been. And I will write another book, but it will be in the service of kind of the online media career, not the other way around. Yeah. And it's so easy to essentially punish yourself with success. Right. So the success means you don't get to do the thing you love anymore.

41:34And then you wonder why more and more success isn't making you happy, making you happier. It's because it's actually taking you away from what you like. It's like you're a coach. I just love working with athletes. And it's like, OK, but you just took this promotion. And now it's actually your assistants who are doing the part of the job that you like. And to have like I remember my dad, I think about this all the time. My dad was a police detective and he got promoted. He took the sergeant's test, became a sergeant. And like the way it would work is your promotion is like you then start at the bottom of the totem pole of the new thing.

42:06So it's like he's the sergeant, but he's not supervising police detectives. He's a sergeant at the jail, like the shittiest place. And he was like, what have I done? He's like, they make TV shows and movies about detectives. Yeah. And he just realized like, oh, I like doing this thing. but because you know obviously you take the next thing you rewarded yourself with the thing that less people want or that you yourself don't want and so knowing what that thing is is like the whole game it's funny i've i've experienced something similar to your dad but in reverse so for all the 2010s especially when the books were taking off everybody kept telling me keep your team as lean as possible you know don't hire a big team don't do all this crazy stuff like just keep it simple outsource everything you don't want to be a manager you don't want to have to deal with people and I was like okay yeah I don't want to have to deal with anybody so I kept a super lean team super small we didn't we didn't do anything crazy and then a couple years ago when I decided to start scaling up this side of the business I started building the team and now we're up to like 21 22 people dude i fucking love having a team it's awesome i'm like this is so much fun i wish i did this 10 years ago it can be hard sometimes when you're like wait did i just have to deal with like three hr issues this week or whatever there's there's definitely there's downsides to everything but yeah you're like wait i was just taking this out of me like someone was still doing and worrying about all the things it was just me yeah and uh that book died with zero he talks about like this idea he's like you're stealing money from your poorer self that your richer self won't care about yes you know his point is like if you're a doctor you're not going to make a lot of money your first couple years but if you're like living very lean you're kind of being an idiot because you know for a fact that in the future you're going to be all right and you should be able to to to be able to make reasonable decisions about like you don't need to drive this clunker car if like in the future you'll you know and so yeah sometimes you're like well i don't know and you're like you're just you're playing it too safe and really the the savings there are just coming out of your sanity connections you could have had cool work you could have done that you didn't know about yeah and and also like casey neistat said to me once he was like you do work not to make money but you do work to do more cool work yeah right and so it's like wait isn't this is the whole point the whole point is to work with cool people and do things that you're proud of hopefully at a bigger level than you were doing before and and sometimes i think yeah i do think we over celebrated the kind of lean solo no strings attached it's like i like that my success means other people can buy their first house or you know we're able to like do x y or z like that's cool that that's also success yeah again it comes back to your point of just like knowing who you are and what you want because now there's this this whole movement around solopreneurs and whatnot and i i totally get it there's some people that that's the optimal way to do it like you don't want to have to deal with anybody else but yeah i i looking back i think i was just maybe intimidated or brushed it off i i wish i had been a little bit more aggressive in the past with that.

45:30I think I agree with that. Well, cool, man. This was awesome. Yeah. Do another short one sometime. Yeah. I'm asking this purely of selfish ego, egotistical reasons. Am I the most frequent guest on Daily Stoic? I don't know. Cause I think we've done it remote once or twice and then in person, maybe once or twice. I think this is four or five. That's it's somewhere near the top. I usually have set the record on most people's things because I've done the most books and it's like kind of uncomfortable to even ask to be like hey hey ritual can i come on for the seventh time you know it's like so usually i have the record on everyone's things well i'm gonna but i i think the model of like oh i already had them on is weird yeah you know unless your podcast is like i get their life story i want to hear what's going like i've been doing this kind of shorter and look maybe the people can tell me they hate them but i i i think the shorter ones where you're just like checking or shooting the shit about a few things.

46:25I think it's better. And I think most podcasts are not, even though we just did a three hour one, but I think like 40 minutes is also good. Yeah. And 20 minutes can be good. Like it, not everything needs to be this fucking marathon. Yeah, yeah. Because I usually make myself, I get like 20 or 30 % of the way in and then something new comes out and I never go back to the one I was listening to. Well, cool, man. Awesome.

46:52Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.