This Is How You Release Your Anxiety | Quality Over Quantity

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14You worry, you get stressed, you want to get there early, you want it to go well, you don't want anything bad to happen to your loved ones, to you, to anyone. In the tunnel vision of your anxiety, these are all the things that you can think about. They consume you. They change you. They overwhelm you. But can you right now in the calm of morning when you are not anxious, take a minute to step back. Think about what your anxiety costs you. Think about it honestly and painfully. Think of the arguments it's created. Think of the dead time it left you with at the airport. Think of the things it made you say no to, the things that might have been so much fun.

0:51Think of the reputation it gave you. You think of the damage it has done to your relationships, to your self-confidence, to your ability to enjoy life. One of the most wonderful passages in meditations is where Marcus Aurelius looks at his own troubles with worry and fear and says, Today I escaped my anxiety, or rather I discarded it, for it is within me. Your anxiety is within you. Worse, it is eating at you and harming you. It does not make your life better. No, it comes at the expense of life, which is why we must, as best we can, let it go, not let it control us, not let it take from us the things that we can never get back.

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4:17Ryan Holiday: Quality over quantity. Today's entry comes to us from Seneca's On the Tranquility of Mind, 9-4. He says, what's the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles could hardly be read through in a lifetime? The learner is not taught, but burdened by the sheer volume. it's better to plant the seeds of a few authors than to be scattered about by many. You know, there is no prize for having read the most books before you die. Even if you were the most dedicated reader in the world, a book a day even, your collection would probably never be bigger than a small branch library. You'll never even come close to matching what's stored in the servers at Google Books or keep up with the hundreds of thousands of titles published on Amazon each year.

5:04Ryan Holiday: What then if when it came to your reading and learning, you prioritized quality over quantity? What if you read a few great books deeply instead of briefly skimming all the new books? Your shelves might be emptier, but your brain and your life would be fuller. And, you know, I get this question a lot. People go, how many books have you read or how many books do you own? The answer is I don't actually know because this isn't what I think about. And sometimes you'll read about some, you know, historical figure or some, you know, rich person. I have over 30 ,000 books or, you know, he amassed a library of 5 ,000 books or whatever it is.

5:40Ryan Holiday: I just don't think about it that way. It's not who cares how many you read. Seneca has a great line somewhere in one of his letters where he talks about, you know, so you've drank a bunch of fancy wine. You just acted like a sieve or a sponge. It went right through you. Right. And if you're thinking about quantity, you're missing the point. The point of reading is, one, to absorb and retain and become better for the information. But two, the point is to get better as a human being. And it may well be that rereading, Seneca talks about lingering on the works of the master thinkers. This is really important.

6:17Ryan Holiday: And it was hard for me. It was only a few years ago that I really started making a conscious effort to not just read more, but to reread more. The reason we reread is that we're getting something out of the book that wasn't there the first time, that we didn't see the first time. It's probably a lighter ecological impact, too. But the point is, by rereading, we are getting better. But, you know, you don't get an extra book to put on the shelf. You don't get to go to the bookstore and pick something up. You have to sit with something you already have, and you have to really enjoy it. Thinkers, focus on getting better.

6:52Ryan Holiday: focus. It's also not about speed reading, just trying to churn through as many books as possible. It's about the experience. I talk about this too when people ask me about speed reading. It's like nobody tries to have sex faster. Nobody tries to get through their meals faster, right? Nobody tries to get through their kid's childhood faster. No, important, powerful, meaningful experiences you want to enjoy. You want to slow them down. You want to savor them. And I think reading is that as well. So take your time. Don't rush through. Don't get caught up in ego. Don't think that this is some sort of race.

7:27Ryan Holiday: It's probably, you know, a bit gauche to even talk about how many books you have. I honestly don't know. I know I have more than I need. I know I have more than I've read. I know there's lots more that I want to read, but that's as far as I'm going to get, as far as quantity goes. I am much more focused on quality. And so should you. As Truman says, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers. You can check that out at dailystoic.com slash reading. But anyways, get out there, get reading. Just don't think of it as a race. It's not a race. It's about doing it well, not doing it the most or doing it the best.

7:59Ryan Holiday: It's about doing it well for you. And keep reading.