You Aren’t Killing Time. Time Is Killing You | Ryan Holiday Answers On Ego And Mentorship

0:00You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

0:39Over 150 ,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than$2.5 billion over the last several years, and research suggests that these donations will save over 300 ,000 lives. I myself am one of those donors. I donate to GiveWell every year. It means a lot to me. And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last.

1:13To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's GiveWell.org, code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. Look, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of HelloFresh, right? They're the number one meal kit in America. They make home cooking easier with chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. This fall, they're serving up even more to love. It's not the HelloFresh you remember.

1:46It's even better. HelloFresh is bigger. They've doubled their menu. You can choose up to 100 options each week. It's healthier. You can choose from 15 plus high protein recipes, and they now help you eat greener with veggie packed recipes that have two or more veggies per week. And it's tastier. You can get steak and seafood recipes delivered every week for no extra cost. They have three times the seafood options. They also have hearty fall recipes like classic beef chili or honey glazed pork tenderloin. We just got home from a week away. We're trying to think about what we're going to eat this week.

2:20It was such a relief to see that HelloFresh box sitting on our doorstep when we got home. They've got everything you need for the recipe that they pick out. There's no last minute trips to the store. Plus, the meals are delicious and easy to make. The best way to cook just got better. Go to HelloFresh.com slash stoic10fm to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. One box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's HelloFresh.com, Stoic 10 FM, to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life.

2:59Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

3:44As winter fades and spring emerges, as we adjust our clocks for daylight savings, it's a good time to pause and reflect, where did that time go? It seems like only yesterday that we were bundled up against the cold, watching the last leaves fall from the trees. Now the days are getting longer and the air feels warmer. We talked recently about Philip Larkin's beautiful poem about the changing of the seasons, how their circular renewal contains within them a kind of finality. The winter you just had is over forever. Those cold winter afternoons where you didn't want to go outside, where you didn't do anything, where instead you waited for the temperature to go up, a break in the snow, you weren't just killing time.

4:24That time was killing you. Seneca reminded himself that death is not this thing in the future, but something that is happening now. It's always happening. It is the ticking hand of the clock. It is the spring flowers. It is the fall harvest. It is the summer rains. It is the first snow of the year. This idea is a reminder that each moment is precious. It tells us to wake up and really live, not just watch the time go by, to embrace the longer days and make the most of it. And if that's speaking to you, if you're feeling like that's something you want to do, well, I would love to have you join us in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge.

5:00This time of the year, we're supposed to be thinking about spring cleaning, but how many of us get our whole houses in order? Not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, our assumptions. Think about how you spent the last week. How many of those days were as efficient and productive as they could be? Where did you waste time? Where did you make things more complicated than necessary? Where have you fallen back on old habits? Where are you, like so many people, still stuck in the doldrums of winter. Well, the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge, which we've been doing for many years now, is set to push you to examine those parts of your life, to examine your choices, to examine your relationships, and move you forward to living your best life to help you seize this new season that is upon us.

5:41We'd love to have you join us. It's going to be 10 challenges delivered every single day. It's not a long challenge. It's a short, to-the-point challenge that packs some punch. There's going to be a Q &A session with me. It's going to be a 10-day calendar to track your practice. It's going to be access to a private community where you can check in with other fellow Stoics. We should remember what Mark's really said that, look, we could be good today, but instead we choose tomorrow. So it's up to you whether you're going to let those new year's resolutions dissolve into missed opportunities or whether you're going to keep doing those things that you've always done, or you're going to give yourself a 10-day sprint of improvement and some runway for true sustainable change.

6:18Challenge yourself to be the person that can spring forward this year, spring forward to be that person. And you can head over right now to dailystoic.com slash spring and join us. By the way, if you're thinking about joining Daily Stoic Life, now's a really good time because if you do that, you get this challenge and all the challenges that we do here over at Daily Stoic for free. We've got some other great ones coming up. Plus you get a bunch of other bonuses and really cool stuff. I'd love to see you at dailystoic.com slash spring or dailystoiclife.com.

6:53Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. My dad was a real estate agent growing up. I dabbled in real estate a bit myself. One of the perks of moving to Texas, moving to Austin 10 plus years ago when I moved here was this place that I knew was growing fast. And so anyways, this is really nothing to do with today's episode, except I've had the privilege of talking to a number of real estate agents, mortgage companies, all different types of groups over the years. A couple months back, I was at the Omni Barton Creek and talking to this group called The Agency.

7:32They're a global forum of real estate agents. And they specifically wanted to talk about ego and how that pertains to what they do and how stoicism could connect with what they do. As it happens, I mentioned this in the talk, which I may run at some point, but there's a great passage in one of the early Stokes, his name is Antipater. And he's talking about when you're selling a piece of real estate, what obligations do you have as far as disclosures go? If you're selling it because you hate it, it's making you miserable. There's a problem with the pipes in the bottom of the building. Do you have to disclose that?

8:05And there were less regulations then, less laws. You didn't have to get title insurance, all these things back then. But he was talking about what are we ethically obligated to do? And so I think these are all timeless things. And yeah, maybe you think, what does stoicism and real estate have to do with each other? Well, the point is 2 ,000 years ago, the Stoics were connecting those two things. That's not exactly what I get into in the Q &A. They asked me questions about mentors and process, talked to me about books and writer's block, a bunch of other questions. I think you'll like this quick Q &A.

8:36Thanks to the agency group for having me out. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

8:55the one I'm doing now. So I'm doing this series on the cardinal virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. I'm in the middle of the third one, which is about justice, doing the right thing, ethics, keeping your word. And so it's still, it's still an ongoing process. Yes. So that's probably the one that's taken me the longest. You get lost in them while you're doing them and then they come out and then it's all an unrecognizable blur, to be honest. Hi. Hi. So you talked about the process that you came from the corporate world and then you actually spend some time with somebody who coached you, your coach or your CEO.

9:39Yeah. Your board is what I always call it. What was that process like to really find the person that you can connect with and understand that it's somebody who's going to actually give you the hard talk when they need to give you the hard talk and the person who's going to actually push you off the ledge when they need to because you're, you know, you don't want to move forward. I'll tell you a funny story about Robert Greene because sometimes you need to have one of those people that pushes you off the ledge when it's time and sometimes they got to pull you back off the ledge. So I very much wanted to be a writer.

10:09So I sought out and looked, who's doing the kinds of books that I want to do? Who's writing the kinds of things that I want to write? And Robert Green is probably one of the greatest of all time. I call him the goat. He's just the greatest. And so I was his research assistant for many years. About halfway through my time with him, I got an offer. I got my first offer to do a book. I was maybe 23 or 24. It was way, no, 22. I was, it was much earlier than I thought it was going to be. And so I went to Robert. I said, it came, you know, I got the offer. What do you think? And he was like, you got to turn it down.

10:47And I was like, what? You know, this is what I wanted. And basically he was saying, look, first off, it's not a good offer. Second, he's like, I just don't think you're ready. He's like, every day you're getting better and you, I, he's like, I know you think you've been at this a long time, but you're actually just getting started. And in a few years, you'll be much better equipped. The book will be better. And he's like, I know it doesn't seem like it, but he's like, there'll be better offers in the future too. And that was a terrifying thing to do. That was felt like it was going against every, you know, bone in my body, but he was completely right.

11:24Um, and he had an ability to see where I was on a path because he himself had been on that path. And I was obviously there for the first time. And so one of the reasons you have to have mentors, advisors, a board of directors, as you're saying, is for the exact reason that board of directors exist. Board of directors is supposed to be made up of a diversity of perspectives, experiences, voices, ideally older, wiser people who are not as entrenched in the day-to-day of what you do, so they can see threats on the horizon, they can see common mistakes, they can advise the senior leadership, you know, how to make better, less egotistical, less emotional decisions.

12:09And Robert helped me do that. He helped me make the decision to not jump on that opportunity. And then a few years later when I left my corporate job I was the director of marketing at American Apparel and moved across the country and had this crazy book idea that I had and then my other subsequent books which to go from marketing books to books about an obscure school of ancient philosophy that was another you know leap he was he he helped me make those leaps also so you you really want to cultivate people who who are who are truly rooting for you and truly understand you not just telling you what you want to hear.

12:48And I wish I had, I was like, these are the five criteria or this is the directory where you find those people. It's tough, but you got to look for them. And when you find them, you got to hold on tight to them because it's a very, very special thing. I have a question. What do you do if you hit writer's block? I guess I ask that because it can be applicable to life in general. There's a fine line between being humble and losing some confidence. So what is the question about writer's block? And so here's what I do when I feel like I have writer's block. I remind myself that writer's block doesn't exist.

13:32And what I'm actually dealing with is a deficiency of preparation. And so what I do is I go do more research or more thinking and then I come back to it, right? If, if, if my understanding is that, um, writing is expressing the ideas and I don't have the ideas to express, that's a pretty, instead of sitting there and hoping it magically happens, I try to go further upstream, right? I try to go, you know, uh, do the research that I need to, to generate the material. So I, I find that when writing is going well, it's, it's because I have a surplus. I have all these things that I want to say, all these things that I'm excited about that I need to communicate that I've gathered up and, and it takes a while to accumulate those things.

14:24So I, I try to go backwards. Now there is that sense of imposter syndrome. Sometimes it's there. I get that. I have a little note card next to my desk. It's a, it's a quote from the, the choreographer, Martha Graham. She says, never be frightened of material. The material knows when you are afraid and it does not help. And the point is like that imposter syndrome, that fear that you don't have what it takes, you're not good enough, that it's too hard of a thing you signed up for. That may be true, but sitting there worried about it, letting it know that you're afraid of it is only going to make it harder.

15:04So I try to push that out and go, okay, well, what's a concrete, a constructive thing I can do here? I can go read more. I can go interview more. I can study more. I can prepare more. And that'll put me in a position to succeed when I'm actually typing up words. Look, I think he's asking, do I have this passion for the sort of figures I'm researching ancient history, whether it's philosophers or military figures or whatever. Yeah. I feel like there is this enormous amount of experience and lessons and accumulated wisdom in the past. And the idea that you're just going to bump along and try to figure things out by yourself as you go is to do it the hard way.

15:51And so I love studying biographies, life stories, memoirs, you know cautionary tales I just love to read and learn about how people who are not that different from us went through things not that different than what we're going through and then I try to I obviously I try to incorporate that into my writing but I'm also incorporating it into my life it's helping me understand crazy scary things that are happening in the world uh it's helped me understand why people do the things that they do you know I I want to understand what it means to be a person, why people, societies, cultures, countries, economies do the things that they do.

16:29And those answers are there if we avail ourselves of them. So yeah, it's just what I love to read. I mean, obviously there's all sorts of books that are great, but I have a bias for stuff that's really old. And I find that it's the most informative, it's the calmest, it's the least political and partisan. And it gives me ironically the most clarity about the present moment. I was actually just going to ask you a few of your favorite books that have profoundly affected you. Can you give me topics? I have so many. I know that's that's a deep, deep reservoir. I guess a few that have maybe really changed the way you see the world.

17:10Sure. I mean, Mark Surrealis' Meditations is an incredible book that I recommend to everyone because there's really no book like it. You have the most powerful person in the world writing, not even as I write, which is for an audience. He's writing to himself about what he's struggling with. And that makes such a, that makes such a, for such a unique perspective on, on light. Right. And so I, I just love that book. I recommend it all the time. Uh, and, and, uh, and I think it's just great. I'd recommend Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, about sort of focus. We talked about stillness here. How do you sort of lock in to what's in front of you?

17:56How do you tune out social media? I think Deep Work's a great book. And then there's a book I try to read every day by Tolstoy called A Calendar of Wisdom. And it's one page a day of sort of like quotes that this great, wise novelist accumulated over the course of his life. And I try to read a page of that every day. And then one of my other favorites is Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, which I think is important whether you're an artist or not. But that's a book I try to read on a regular basis as well. So there's maybe four quick ones. What would be the takeaways from your time at American Apparel of what not to do?

18:38Like how did they get so big and then just fuck that up? Yeah. A CEO should not have physical relationships with their employees. That's, that's not okay. It's also illegal. And, uh, you know, was at the, at the root of so much of what ultimately went wrong there. But look, uh, actually the, the, the bigger cautionary tale of American apparel is, I think a very relatable one. So the idea of that company is insane in many ways, right? He's like, I'm going to manufacture clothes in America. I'm not going to use sweatshops. I'm going to pay fair wages. I'm going to not use professional models. I'm going to design my own clothes.

19:20I'm going to own my own stores. He's going to do all this stuff that everyone said, it's never going to work, which were all the reasons that it did work, right? It worked in violation of all the conventional wisdom of fashion, retail, the current expertise, right? Like all ideas do pretty much everything that has ever worked. Most people said that's not going to work, right? That's what being an entrepreneur is. If everyone thought it would work, they would have done it already. So as an entrepreneur, it's this very dangerous, tricky thing where you become successful by not listening to critics, feedback, doubt, warnings, et cetera.

20:01And then now you have that success and to maintain it and to continue to be successful, you have to become a person who can collaborate, who can listen, can hear, who has to follow standard and best business practices, all of that. So Dove does fatal flaw in a lot of ways was that the Maverick who ignored all this stuff is also the Maverick who's ignoring, you know, Wall Street's advice to hire a competent CFO or to, you know, not do things that are illegal and, you know, to not over, you know, to not open 80 stores in the middle of the financial crisis or, you know, they're saying not to do things, not because they're haters or they're small-minded, but that there are established best practices that you have to follow.

20:51And so by ignoring all of that wisdom, by thinking he was special, it was different, the rules don't apply, he was hurtling towards the cliff, which he eventually ran right off. And so that is something that I think we all have to be worried about. You have to have that maverick streak in you. It also can't calcify into ego and entitlement and a sense that the rules don't apply to you.

21:35Thanks 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.

21:57My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner. And honestly, it's my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Around town, it's smooth and reliable. But where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded up with gear and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for. Off-road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer.

22:27From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks, they're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. That's toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. The world is full of tours. But you don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places in between.

23:07The detours, where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns turn out right. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota Trucks.