YouTube Superstar Ali Abdaal on Productivity and Essentialism

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3:13hey it's ryan welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast we got a two-parter for you that i'm excited about i first met today's guest ali abdahl i guess in 2021 he interviewed me for a video he was doing or something like that. I know he was asking some advice about a book he was doing, and it's been really interesting to watch him on this journey. Ali is a doctor. There's not a lot of productivity gurus who are also trained medical doctors, but he learned where I think you got to learn on the job, juggling the demands of medical school, which he did at Cambridge, and then building this business and trying to just organize all the stuff life was throwing at him, which is, you know, what we're all doing.

4:02He's a doctor, an entrepreneur, one of the world's most followed productivity experts, and just a really nice guy. He has a new book out called Feel Good Productivity, How to Do More of What Matters to You. We actually recorded this interview when he was here in the late summer. So I have a very early copy of the book, which I liked, and I got to see this book develop. So I'm gonna bring you part one now, my interview with the one and only Ali Abdaal. You can follow him on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, at Ali Abdaal. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And this episode will also be released on his podcast, Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal.

4:43Check it out.

4:50We talked three years ago and now it's real. We talked three years ago. We talked on the 7th of October, 2023, three, which was like three years and a week ago. That's nuts. And I was saying to you in that interview that like, Hey Ryan, you know, I've just started writing my first book. Any tips? You gave some really good advice. Yeah. And what did I say? Do you remember? You said, you said so much stuff. You said, uh, the importance of structure, the importance of having your materials assembled and kind of knowing what you want to say before you begin to write. Sure. And the analogy you used was like, you're like, well, you know, it would be weird if you decided to settle from New York and try and get to San Francisco, but you were just like, you know what, I'm just going to walk and I'm just going to figure it out along the way, it would be sensible to have a map.

5:30Although even I would say the problem is people don't even know they're trying to head towards San Francisco, right? They just know they're trying to get somewhere. And figuring out where you're trying to go as you're doing it, it's a bad idea. That was a big part of my problem in that the destination changed radically every year in the three-year process. Sure. Well, the problem is you're trying to figure out When you're starting a book, you're trying to figure out the end results, but you haven't done all the thinking required to know the end result. Yeah. This is why I think the proposal was a bit of a scam.

6:05Because the proposal, when I compare the proposal to the final result, there's almost nothing in there that's the same. But that's how it is in a business plan. Very few businesses resemble the business plan. But there's an Eisenhower quote. He says, plans are worthless, but planning is everything. And so I think it's actually similar there in that if you don't do a proposal, this is why actually I think most self-published books don't work. It's that because there's no forcing function required to get approval to start. There's no deadline. There's no constraints as to how long it can be, what it can look like.

6:43You can basically do whatever you want, which you would think would be an artistic sort of creative dream. but it's actually like potentially a death sentence. Okay. So here's something I'm struggling with at the moment. So I've been making videos on YouTube for the last like six and a bit years, made like 700 something videos. And like a couple of weeks ago, I had a sort of family health crisis and that gave me a newfound appreciation of mortality and stuff as it tends to. And I started asking myself this question, you know, if money were no object, how would I be spending my time? Sure. And I realized I would still want to make YouTube videos and still write books, but I would want to do it on my own terms.

7:19I wouldn't want to stick to an upload schedule. I don't want to have stuff in the calendar. I liked the idea of an empty calendar, which is something that you also said three years ago. And I like the idea of being able to write a book and make a video and stuff when I feel like it rather than on a deadline. Sure. And so I'm kind of saying to my team, guys, like screw all the deadlines, let's throw the upload schedule out the window. But I'm kind of worried, will that turn me into some sort of waste man who's not actually doing the thing? yeah no it's it's tricky right because if you were to talk to let's say a professional athlete you'd be like okay you have this health scare what what would it teach you to be like it would really teach me how much i love football or how much i love basketball right and so they would still want it in their lives maybe they would change their relationship to it a little bit but just winging it on your own is not how you are elite at a thing right so they're they're there it's i agree you want to sort of do it on your own terms at the same time if you are literally doing it on your own terms you probably are not going to do it as well as you could do it or even do it in a way that is worth doing oh okay so it's like look you obviously the more YouTube videos you make, the more you realize that you should just be doing it for you, not for the audience.

8:44Right. But if you truly didn't give a shit about the audience, why would you make them at all? Exactly. Right. You would just not, you would make things, but it would never. So by publishing them, you are admitting that it is for other people at some level, right? And so it's, it's not as simple as it. So I do try to, I think less about sales, for instance, I'm doing it for me in that sense. And yet I benefit from the deadlines and I, I still, I can move the deadlines, but like to, to not have, to not have anyone pushing back on you is a look as a kid, you think you want to be able to do whatever you want and you want no rules.

9:27But if you actually got that, you would have a miserable childhood and you would turn out to be a miserable person. So you need constraints. You need guardrails. And what happens when people self-publish, I tend to find is that one, it just never happens. Or two, they end up ignoring conventions that are actually important for the consumer generally. So books should roughly be a certain length you know they should there's certain conceits or tropes that that if they're not it becomes needlessly transgressive sometimes you should transgress those things but you need you need it all comes down to you need some just because you can doesn't mean you should how so how how do you think about this balance because like you've already made it you can do whatever you want etc etc and yet you still write books on seemingly on a deadline because they come up fairly frequently.

10:24Like how do you, how do you balance these? Well, I do balance it. Uh, so I sold this four book series on the Cardinal virtues. So I've done two and then I finished the third and then I pushed it a year. So it's done. I'm taking more time to do it. Um, it's, it's now like in, in, in the deadlines or the releases the summer of next year, but, um, there's a tension. So on discipline, I felt like pushing it and it was actually the right thing to push through and the deadline forced me to get serious about it and do it right. And then on this book, I was actually more or less ahead of schedule and doing great.

11:04But then I decided for just family and lifestyle reasons to push it a year. So am I pushing it a year because I'm being lazy or am I pushing it because I want more time to do it well, or I want it to fit more in a more balanced way into my life? So I think I function well with deadlines. I function well with the sort of day-to-dayness of it. And I think, again, people think that the perk of success is being able to do whatever you want. And weirdly, you actually find that once you can do whatever you want, you need to self-impose constraints and boundaries if you want to keep doing it well and in a balanced way.

11:49Hmm. Yeah. I found that when the pandemic hit and that was when I took, you know, took time out of full-time medicine for the first time, suddenly my whole calendar was empty. Yeah. And I immediately realized that, oh, like I kind of need some constraints here. And so I signed up like art lessons and singing lessons and piano lessons and stuff to give some structure to the day and fit in the YouTube and then some of the latest, some of the writing stuff around that. and I found that that was really nice but it it always felt like a constant battle between kind of structuring myself and scheduling things in versus following my energy and like oh you know today I have a lot of energy therefore I want to film a video today versus I don't really feel like it today but like you know I said I said I would do it every day that whole thing yeah it it'd be wonderful if inspiration was sufficient, but it usually isn't.

12:40Um, and you have to build a structure or a system. Uh, I think that's really important anyway. What is your, like, I guess daily routine look like? What's, what's the structure you've built around your, um, I usually try to get up early. I'll give you an example though. I try to get up early. I try to take my kids for a walk. That's like the beginning of what we do. And this morning we got up i got up early i made their lunches i uh just sort of having quiet time in the morning and then my son got up and he got really into legos and it was also cold and so i was like do i want to rip him out of this thing that i'm all that's also good that's also i'm trying to encourage to have a fight over a thing that might spoil him and wanting to do the thing in future times, I'm going to say no.

13:31So I sort of ripped up the playbook and then I made them breakfast and then I was taking a shower. And then literally as I'm getting in the shower, they wanted to go on a walk. And so we ended up doing it. So I guess in the 40 laws of power, the final law, which I think a lot of people miss is assume formlessness. So there's all these laws is about do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this. But the last law is a kind of a strategic flexibility. And so to answer your question earlier about how I think about this stuff, I have found as I've gotten older and more successful that the rigidity that served me well early on has had to give way into a kind of flexibility.

14:18Now there's always a tension or a concern is that flexibility actually just complacency or laziness. And I have to question each time, what is my motivation here? But that rigidity has to become flexibility or one, you suck all the fun out of it. And two, it's not sustainable over a long period of time. And it's not, it's very susceptible to being disrupted or blown apart by the complexity of life. So I'm, I'm less, I have less of a routine and I have more practices that I try to do consistently and I move them around depending on what's happening. What are some of those practices? Well, I try to get up early.

15:08I try to walk. I try to do some form of hard exercise every day. I try to not eat until like I try to have kind of a fasting window. Um, and then I try to, I try to do writing before I do other things. Okay. So like I am flexible on a lot of stuff, but I don't write at three in the afternoon because that's not conducive to doing it well. So, so just, you kind of know what it's more of a, an intuition or a gut feel, as opposed to when I was younger, it was like, it was almost, it was almost a form of OCD. Like it has to happen at this time. If it doesn't happen at this time, then there is distress and, and that distress, you're almost doing the tasks to avoid the distress, which is not a good way to live.

16:04and how did having kids change your relationship with the work? Well, just blows your whole life up. Yeah. In a good way, but it blows your whole life up. I remember this New York Times reporter was doing this piece on me right as my son was being born. And she, she asked me like, how do you think, you know, like having kids is going to change your routine? And I said something like, I don't think it'll change it at all. And which was of course preposterous and, uh, and, uh, very naive, but, uh, it's just totally blown it apart, but it gives you important stuff that you center. your life around.

16:35So like, I think people are concerned that like having kids or getting married, it'll tie you down. And it does, it objectively does, but it ties you down to reality. Like it tethers you to the earth. There are school starts at a time and it ends at a time. Like there's nap time. There is eating time. There is activities that happen every week. You know, there's stuff right and so it prevents you from making it all about you uh and it forces you to sort of have non-negotiable things i mean i guess it doesn't force you you could be a bad parent if you want but if you want your kids to not be a nightmare and you realize like routine is very important structure is very important but then also rigidity is you know um impossible there's um uh uh lin-manuel miranda was talking about how he had a kid right as hamilton blew up and so he would do the play and then it's the hottest thing in the world and so every night celebrities attend and then they come backstage and they go we're going here after we're going here i'm just getting invited all this like incredible stuff and he had to say no to all of it because he had to get home.

17:57He had to get home, not just because he wanted to see his kid, but he knew that his sleep was already a precarious touch and go thing because he has an infant in his house. So if he stays out till like two in the morning and then he gets home and he's woken up five times in the middle of the night or whatever, he's just not going to be able to perform the night before the next night. And so his point was that having a kid actually saved him from spinning off the planet from this kind of stratospheric success that he has. And I have found that for sure, that like, again, we think these things are going to be baggage.

18:32It's more like ballast, like it balances you out in a way that thinking, Hey, I'm totally unencumbered. I can do whatever I want. I can fully enjoy all the fruits of all the cool stuff that's happening. You think that's what you want, but it's kind of a recipe for disaster. Oh, okay. That's so interesting to here because i guess i've been i've been feeling a bit burnt out from you know the whole like rush to finish the book and then all of the batch filming podcasts and youtube videos and the audiobook then and then like all of this book promo stuff that it is apparently sensible to do and all this kind of thing yeah and the conclusion i came to a few days ago like was screw it i just want an empty calendar a fully empty calendar yeah and i guess i'm sure if i experienced that for a few weeks i'd be like ah actually i probably want a bit more structure well i you want an empty calendar of the stuff that you, you want it emptied of the stuff that you don't want to do.

19:25So like when I have an empty calendar, that means I have as much time as I want to write and as much time as I want to spend time with my family. What I haven't scheduled is interruptions from those things. Even if those things are fun or interesting or whatever. by the way i was reading your your bio and it does you it does you no justice it says 4.5 million youtube subscribers and it says over 93 million total views yeah but it's way more than that yeah it's like 4.8 4.9 now no no you've done like hundreds of millions of youtube views have we yeah oh i don't even look at that number but you don't really i made it a point early in the journey i think uh thanks to all the stoicism kool-aid that i was drinking yeah only focus on the things that were within my control okay uh to the point that i almost never look at analytics and the only thing i can i even vaguely keep track of is like oh oh yeah i mean i was watching one of my own videos and it said 4.9 million rather than 4.8 million because it doesn't even give you the sure no as you get more the numbers get less precise because you it matters less and i can see it in youtube studio if i go on and and stuff and i'll occasionally do that just to look at comments and things but i don't know i really try like the more the more i look at the numbers the less happy i am with the creative output well so so tell me why stoicism taught you not to look at how your youtube videos are doing that's very interesting to me i realized that when i would look at how my youtube videos were doing in the back of my mind there would always be that sense of, you know, the whole like dichotomy of control thing, sort of like a number of views on a YouTube video is sort of in the, in the intersection where it's partly in my control, but partly outside of my control.

21:13Um, and I knew that if I like looking at those, I wasn't able to look at them purely dispassionately and I would always get a sense of, Oh, that one did so well. Sure. That one did, or that one didn't. Um, and I found that, you know, if I, if I keep a general eye on the trend of, uh, sort of a period of several months that gives me all the data i need to be like oh that sort of topic is really resonating with the audience that sort of video got like a thousand comments compared to 300 that helps me figure out okay maybe what like i should do more of this and less of that yeah but i try not to take it too far because you know you get the whole audience capture thing where you become a caricature of um of the person that your audience initially initially enjoyed yeah and i I very much fell into this trap during the pandemic, actually.

22:02So the word productivity in my videos was like really taking off. Any video with the word productivity or productive in it, I was like immediately like doing super well. And so I was thinking, well, you know, this does really well. Let me just say, put productive in everything. My productive day in the life, my productive desk setup, my productive dating habits, my productive sleeping routine and all this kind of stuff. And after a few videos of it, like people in the comments started to be like, okay, this is getting a bit much. And I started feeling icky about the content because I was putting productive in it to try and get the views.

22:32Because videos with the word productive in it were getting more views. I don't know. Whenever I have this sort of weird relationship with numbers versus what's in my control. Well, it's interesting too because it's somewhat in your control as you're making it. But then once it's out, it's done. But that's when we spend the most time refreshing. You've flung it to the public. You've put it out. and now you're like well do they like me do they like me do they like me how much do they like me give me all the likes right um when if there was any time to think about how something was going to do it maybe could have been as you were making it right but now that's over so now you're really just emoting about what you would like to happen and the ship has sailed yeah man that's so true like the the way we do use analytics is in idea generation and titles and thumbnails yeah and that's the thing thankfully one of my team members does because i don't i i don't get joy out of trying to package up a video with the perfect title and thumbnail to make it clickbaity enough but not so clickbaity that it feels clickbaity right so i come up with the concept that hey i'd love to do a video about i don't know ryan's new book yeah and we were like okay cool we can't call it discipline is destiny because that would be a bit weird we okay we've got to find an angle of like the one habit that's changing your law, like the discipline expert or like how do we, you know, all that kind of stuff.

23:55I outsource that to the team and then they tell me, okay, we've, we've tested this with the audience. We think the best title is this book made me more disciplined. And I'm like, great. I can make a video based on that title. Sure.

24:09You hear that? That's not just a Toyota truck. That's the sound of no crowds, no alerts. No distractions. And no telling what you'll find next. You know, like a detour. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks. You 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.

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25:36And 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. To 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.

26:11yeah and it's also it's not just one of the ways i've found it to be dangerous is actually when it works so um i don't know an article comes out about you and it's positive or a video comes out and it's doing well um your book is out whatever you're doing the thing and then you lose you lose a day or more than a day just kind of basking in it you're just like refreshing and watching like so it's not even like you're torturing yourself you feel crappy that nobody likes you but you're it's like your reward for succeeding is a loss in productivity because you're just soaking in this thing that's really not in your control that if it had gone the other way you would be trying to work your mind around not taking it seriously do you know what i mean yeah you'd be like that's not why i made it when matters is that I like it.

27:06What matters is how it does in the long term. You'd be trying to think through logically why you shouldn't be devastated by this bad news. But then when the positive happens, you don't do any of that. And you just kind of sit there and soak it in. And really the punishment though, is that you're not spending your energy where it matters or where it makes the difference, which is like making the next thing or just taking the day off. Like if you're going to waste a day go waste a day don't waste a day refreshing your twitter feed i think it's that like zen proverb or something which is you know before enlightenment after enlightenment before enlightenment chop wood carry water after enlightenment chop wood carry water sure and i i often think of that when it comes to videos and i i also suspect with the book because i think currently i have an unhealthy attachment to the new york times bestseller list as a lot of writers do.

27:57Um, but I just really try and remind myself of whether or not the video does well, you know, learn stuff, write about it, make a video. It's like, that's, that's the thing. And it's like getting back to the process rather than thinking at all about the outcome. You asked me about self-publishing earlier. One, I've experienced this unintentionally and intentionally when the obstacle is the way it came out, uh, I'd already sold the sequel. And so in one respect that probably cost me a lot of money because the obstacles away did over the next year or two start to do really well. So if I had waited, I probably could have sold what became Ego is the Enemy for a lot of money, a lot more money.

28:36But I'd actually sold a proposal version of it while I was still figuring the book out. So I was still doing the work of figuring the book out, but I was under contract. So I really didn't care that the book kind of was doing okay. And then I really didn't care that much when it started to do well. Like that right there is the first time that book hit the bestseller list, which is five years after it came out. So I had not only written the next book, but I'd written several more books. Like I, by having contracts for the next projects, I was just focused on doing the next projects, not on how each one did.

29:15And then with this four book series, it's kind of in the same thing. Like in 2019, I sold, I basically locked myself in till 2024, 2025. So basically like the next four or five years of my thing were locked in. So again, the downside is courage came out. It did okay. Discipline came out. It did spectacular. So maybe I could have been selling, I could have sold justice for more, but all of that was irrelevant because I was just in the middle of writing the book. And I think it's better to be chopping wood and carrying water than going, constantly renegotiating your rate for what you are going to chop wood and carry water for or whatever.

30:00You know what I mean? Like to just have the next thing. So, you know, if your thing is I make a video every week, you are already making the next video before one comes out. A comedian comes up with an hour, records the hour, then there is time before that hour comes out. And it's in that interim period that they're already working on the next hour. So if the special comes out and it's a huge hit, they're working on the next hour. If the special comes out and it's not a huge hit, they're working on the next special. And you want to be in a rhythm like that because it insulates you from the thing that's not in your control, which is whether other people say you're amazing or whether other people say you suck.

30:44Yeah, I feel like all of this stuff comes back down to the process. Yes. A big part of what we talk about in that book is trying to find a way to make the process enjoyable and energizing. um and yeah i find that when i have that in at the front of my mind when it comes to the videos or even even writing the book you know like there were periods in the book journey where i sort of forgot to enjoy the process because the seriousness of writing a book was like weighing on me and then i would read like i don't know one of your like your newsletter or one of your books or like drive by dan pink and i'm like oh it's so good this stuff is so good and i'd be comparing it to my first draft and be like, why am I, why is my writing so shit?

31:27Um, and it would take my editor to remind me that, you know, the whole, the whole message of the book is find a way to make it enjoyable and energizing. So, you know, well, it's hard if people say trust the process, right. But it's hard to trust a process that you have not been through before. And so, um, once you've done it one time, you have a sense of the full scope of the process or what you think is a full scope of the process. Then you do it again and again and again, and you start to go, oh yeah, this is the part where you start to doubt yourself. This is the part where you get excited.

31:58But like in Texas, we have this season, it's called false fall. So it's cool and awesome right here. It'll probably get hot again, right? Like we think, we think the summer's finally broken, but there's actually like several more hot days coming. Projects are like that too. You think you're over the hump. You think you've done it and then, oh wait, no, it's going to get hard again. But you start to get a sense of the rhythms of it. And then you can trust the process. And then you can also enjoy the process because it's like the first time you go on a roller coaster, that specific roller coaster, you have no idea.

32:33Is this going to be one of the ones where it's like this? Or is it going to be the ones that... But then once you've done it before, then you can kind of anticipate it and you know when to hold on tight and when you can just go with it. And you can kind of watch the other people that have never been on it before. how much scary it is for them. And so I think it's not quite sufficient to just say trust the process because it's hard to trust a process that you have not been through. Yeah, that's so true. So I realized this very sort of tangibly. So I've made like 700 plus YouTube videos in my time and I know that recording it always feels like a total shit show where I'm making so many mistakes and there's so much like crap in it.

33:18Sure. But I've done it enough times. I know the final product is going to be good because our editor is amazing. Sure. Chop out all the crap and we'll make it look amazing. But then when beginner YouTubers see the final result and then they see themselves recording and suddenly they're spluttering and swearing all the time. And you never see that raw uncut version of a YouTuber's first take. You only see the final product. And so now that I've been through the process once with the book, knowing how crap the first draft was and then seeing the magic of editing over several months to trim it down and make it good.

33:47I'm like, oh, okay. I don't mind so much about having a crappy first draft now. Well, yeah, you have your crappy first drafts. I actually have a shirt that says, there's a Hemingway quote and he says, I have a print of it in my office and I have a shirt too, but he says, you know, the first draft of everything is shit. And the conceit is that it's sort of showing how even that sentence probably didn't write it perfectly the first time. But the idea is that every first draft sucks and you want to get comfortable with that. You have to get comfortable with the messiness of the process. But weirdly, as you get better, I do think your first drafts get less shitty or less wasteful, right?

34:29So like you with your videos, and certainly I found this with my books, is that there is less and less leftover at the end because you start to be able to shoot only what you know you're going to use. Or you write less. You go down less blind alleys as a writer or you overwrite less. Because again, you know what isn't going to be possible, what's going to be extraneous. You have a sense of what you actually need, right? So you're trusting the process, but also you understand the process better. And so, yeah, you tend to be overdoing whatever it is you're doing the first time. And then one of the signs of mastery or I guess a trait of mastery is the conservation of energy.

35:22Like you know when and what to apply at any given moment. Whereas when you're just starting or doing it for the first time, there's a lot of just kind of sheer force of will and enthusiasm. enthusiasm which is important but often inefficient yeah i imagine a video three years ago maybe you shot an hour of footage for a 10 minute video and hopefully now you could shoot 20 minutes of footage for a 10 minute video yeah it is a little bit tighter now than it was before um but even like yes especially on the writing front initially my my worry was i don't have enough material and then after the first draft i was like oh my god i have way too much material yeah Yeah.

36:08You find that I think writing becomes a process much more of tightening as you go, because you realize you just needed to get it all down. And then you're realizing, oh, I've said this twice now and actually here covers it over here so I can cancel each other out or I can get rid of one. So it's a process of understanding that. So I have a question about productivity for you, because I feel like people are obsessed with productivity and I'm not always sure why. Like I said this thing once, maybe you agree with it, but it's like that amateurs are obsessed with tools, right? Like what's the best software to do this?

36:47What is the best way? Like people will go like, what kind of pen do you journal with? Like this fucking matters at all, right? What program do you write with? And if I was to rank the things that contribute the most to what I do, tools are like not even in the top 10. Yeah, that was kind of, I was, as you were saying that I was thinking, yeah, the tool is maybe the extra 1 % left over at the end, potentially, if like writing in Scrivener is just a little bit nicer than writing in a Google Doc. Sure. But like, this is the thing, like, as I've basically tried to read basically every productivity book on the market, and then some, it all fundamentally comes down to really the way to be productive is to figure out where you're trying to go, figure out what habits and what daily slash weekly routines you need to get there and just sitting down and doing the thing and then finding a way to make the thing fun so that you don't get distracted with other shit and then just doing the thing for a long time.

37:47And if having a slightly, I mean, I have a really crappy pen that I stole from my brother now because my fountain pen ran out of ink and it was such a nice fountain pen, but like I can write just as well with like crappy ballpoint, the 1 % tweaks. But it's so much more, it's almost like you know i'm i'm trying to trying to get into fitness now and i just love researching you know on running shoes should i get this padding versus that padding been for a run maybe once in the last six months but i love the idea of researching running gear because it's great procrastination from actually doing the thing which is put on anything and just go for a run yes or like just go to the gym and do anything with progressive overload yeah it's like people are optimizing a they're not doing, which is never going to be the way to get there.

38:30There was a great moment. My girlfriend called me out on this the other day. You know, the whole sauna, ice plunge, everyone in Austin seems to be doing it. I was saying to her, hey, what if I join a gym? And it's like, depending on how busy the sauna is, Huberman says four times versus five times and 24 minute protocol versus 12 minute protocol. And she was like, you've been to the sauna once in the last six months. Let's just go to the sauna first and then we can worry about optimizing it later sure i was like yeah so true but i think this obsession with productivity it often feels productive to be reading productivity books ironically and researching the tools as a distraction from just sitting down and doing the thing well the irony that obsessing about productivity is a form of procrastination right it's giving you the the sense that you are serious, that your heart's in the right place, that you are trying or making progress, but in fact, you're not.

39:29And you're avoiding the hard thing, which is doing the thing. Doing the thing. There is one aspect of productivity that I think is valuable to obsess over, and that is kind of journaling prompts. And just asking yourself serious questions about why you're doing the thing that you think you want to do, where you're actually trying to go, I spend a lot of time comparatively thinking, is the direction I'm currently going in actually the direction that I want to be going in? Sure. And I find that there's almost no amount of too much journaling that can happen there because in an hour of journaling, I might land on one insight, which would, if it nudges my course even like 0.1%, that compounds over the long term.

40:13Well, yeah, I would say being intentional about what you're doing and then clear with yourself about why and what you are doing is really important. Whereas like productivity, a lot of productivity advice seems to me is like optimized, optimizing for how you're going to pack your suitcase or what your suitcases is, is, or what brand it is or whatever. and you really haven't questioned why you're going, where you're going, or if you should be going there, if it's the right time to be going there. Any of the actually important questions that are going to determine whether this thing is a success or not.

40:54Yeah. I think the other unfortunate thing is, you know, we did a video recently that was something like, I read 107 productivity books, here's what actually works. And all of it was basically like pick some goals, figure out the method. It was like the basic stuff. And then we made another video that was like 12 productivity tools I can't live without. And that video did so much better. And I'm like, oh, it's so annoying that like the thing that had the meat versus the thing that had the candy, the candy performs better. And so writ large, you know, the incentives are there for people who write or make videos or whatever about this stuff is to lean into the tools because the tools are the thing that, you know, is the candy that people want.

41:30Well, I don't even know if it's candy. It's just, it's, it's concrete, right? So you can go So here's this sort of ephemeral metaphysical question about why you're doing it, what success is, why does it matter? You're asking these big picture questions. And by the time you get to the end of it, there actually isn't an answer because it's about the question. And that's a lot less clear than these are the three best pens. This is the number one bit of software. Or here's a really interesting, complicated system that a successful person uses whose work you are a fan of. One is very concrete and the other is essentially ineffable.

42:25And so you naturally, especially at the early stages, one's much more digestible and understandable. Do you know what I mean? Like you're, you're also contemplating questions that someone, if they're a, an aspiring high school insert, you know, um, is not even going to understand as a question. Do you know what I mean? Like, like Tom Brady talking about whether, you know, how much is enough or, you know, where to find deep motivation or whatever. That's a lot for someone who's not even competed at an elite level to think about. So it's easier to start with, well, what do you have for breakfast, right?

43:19Or like, what kind of gloves do you wear? Do you know what I mean? Like one is much more relatable and accessible, but ultimately much more inconsequential yeah i do i do find that there are some tools that certainly when i was more of a beginner in the space helped develop the habit which was the thing that actually mattered so for example uh reading about uh how different people do a weekly review is quite helpful and i you know i downloaded like the initially the pdf template and then the Google Docs template, and now Notion templates are all the rage. But the point is, the weekly review journaling prompt slash questions helped me actually do a weekly review.

44:02And a weekly review is just a very useful habit to figure out, like, how did I do this week? What are my top three things I want to do next week? Great, let's just do those things. So there are some instances in which a tool helps build the habit, wherein the habit is the thing that matters. MARK MANDELAVICIUSSKI - Sure. MARK MANDELAVICIUSSKI - But it's easy to take it too far. I find whenever I rewatch your video about your note card system, I know I'm just procrastinating because the thing you actually do is you write every day. But even in the car on the way here, I was like, you know, what if I had an analog note card system?

44:33And then I'm like, no, but I'm traveling. It's like, oh, well, dang it. Like, let me look at the Zettelkasten system or let me find another app. And it's so easy for the mind to go in those directions because it's like Ryan Holiday has a note card system. I also find it's like, you know, like people who believe one conspiracy theory tend to believe all the conspiracy theories. Right. Even though it actually becomes less likely that they're all true. Right. Like it's like if you pick one and that's your thing, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. But if you believe all of them simultaneously, well, they contradict each other.

45:00So it doesn't really work. Right. But it's like I tend to find people who are really into productivity systems. The problem isn't that this system is not as good as this system. It's that they're missing the point that a lot of it is a placebo, which is like pick a fucking system. and stick with that system, that's the hat. Like you're supposed to pick a thing and then that's your thing, right? And then you stop thinking about it. The problem is they're like, first they're over here and then they hear this one's a little bit better and then they switch to the, so it's actually, it's not the system that's the problem.

45:29It's not the tools that's actually the amateur quality. The amateur quality is the constantly moving and abandoning, moving and abandoning because that's what's profoundly inefficient, right? Like you've found the system and it was working for you. Like I know actually at this point, there's probably something better than the no card system, but is it transformatively better? Probably not, right? So am I going to uproot the thing that I'm comfortable with that works for me, that my old stuff is in for something that's 9 % better? Like if I want a 9 % productivity increase, that's pretty easy to find.

46:11You know what I mean? As opposed to relearning how I do everything. Yeah. So back in the day, I used to be a close-up magician and I would perform at like balls and parties at university and stuff. And there was a phrase that was often, you know, in the world of magic, the amateur magician is the person who performs a hundred tricks to, you know, the amateur magician is the person who performs a hundred tricks to the same audience. Whereas the professional magician is the one who performs the same tricks to a hundred different audiences. Yes. or worse to that effect. And in the world of magic as well, there was this constant thing, constant like battle between, you know, on the forums, there are the professionals who are actually doing the thing.

46:49And then there are all the amateurs being like, what are the best tricks? And the professionals are like, it doesn't matter. Just pick three to six of them and just do them at nauseam and you will guaranteed be a professional magician. And the amateurs are like, oh, but like I've got$1 ,000. I want to spend it on like this trick versus that trick versus that trick. It doesn't matter. Just pick a few and just stick with them and do them repeatedly over a long enough time. and that is how you get good at the thing. But that's a lot less sexy sounding advice than this one trick will change your life.

47:16Yeah, like I've been to conferences that have changed my life, but I'm always interested when I notice people are going to lots of them. Like the chances that every single one is gonna have that same effect is very low, right? And so it's like, you beat the casino, leave. You know what I mean? Like there's this tendency to sort of chase more and more when you've already gotten most of the gains. I've got some friends who attended like a sort of$85 ,000 mastermind week-long retreat type thing. And after day one, they were like, damn, we know what we have to do. We kind of want to leave and just do it.

47:55But like we've paid$85 ,000. So we've got to kind of stay for the next five days, knowing full well that like all of this is going straight over their head because they just know what they got the one thing and they just need to execute on the one thing. And then two years later, maybe the thing number two or three will become relevant. but by then you've forgotten about it and you'll need to go to another event. So back to procrastination, one of my favorite quotes from Senegas, he says, the one thing all fools have in common is that they're always getting ready to start. So they're going to do it tomorrow or they're going to do it later.

48:24They're going to do it once they get all the materials or tools that they needed. So I did give you the advice that to start a book, you want to do all your research first, which is true. And yet, really the important thing is that at some point you start doing it. Yeah. Right. And cause it can go on forever to sort of preparing and analyzing and gathering and, you know, I just need this other thing first. I just, but really what you need to be doing is the thing. Yeah. It always just comes down to this. It comes, comes back to this. Um, and I've, I don't know if you've played around with this, but I've, I've experimented with so many different ways of doing the thing some you know when it comes to videos for example some day some some weeks i'm like okay the way i'm going to keep doing the thing is i'm just going to make a video every single day and then i'll do that for a bit and then i'll be like okay but that's like too rigid and it's like more flexibility it's like okay cool tim ferris says batching is good so i'm going to batch it and thursday's gonna be my filming day and it's like i'll do that for a bit i'll be like oh no but like i missed that thursday and i'll be like you know tim ferris said batching is good so why don't i batch in a whole week and film 15 videos in that week and then i can chill for six weeks and then this was supposed to be a batch filming week in austin and i felt nothing because i was like i'm actually not feeling it so there's almost this constant search at least in my life for like this magical consistent system that will cover me 100 of the time um thankfully we have still been publishing like two videos a week for the last six years so it's like it's not hopefully you're not going to take too much away from actually actually doing the thing but i wonder for you like you've been doing this a lot this sort of stuff a lot longer than i have how how often has your system for doing the thing actually changed well i do a handful of different things right so like but the main thing and i think that's important you have to know what your main thing is right we live in a world where there's all these other kind of supporting things they're necessary yeah not absolutely necessary but i think they're important and but still you have to know what the main driver of everything is and so for me that's writing like writing the books is the main thing that the other things are supporting the writing of the books yeah and the writing of the books is creating the ideas and the platform and the brand and all that make the other things necessary to begin with so the writing routine is essentially unchanged.

50:55There's little tweaks here and there, but the main thing is like just sitting down and doing that thing. And it's not a thing that can be outsourced. It's not a thing that can be batched. It's the day-to-dayness of doing it on a consistent basis. To what extent do you enjoy writing? Well, there's an expression I like that says, painters like painting, writers like having written so at the end of the writing day i feel good do i feel good the entire time not always sometimes when it's fucking working it's nothing better yeah but if you that's the only thing that fuels you you're gonna you're not gonna be in a good spot because some days some of the most important things come it's one sentence in the midst of two otherwise unproductive pointless hours you know so i enjoy showing up and then i enjoy finishing and sometimes that middle period can be torturous so i was going to ask you that when you say feel good productivity does it actually have to feel good uh there there's one school of thought that says it's all about finding the torture that you can tolerate and it's actually the ability to put up with the grind of it that separates kind of the winners from the losers yeah that's the thing so i think it my my thesis in the book is that it doesn't have to feel good but it is generally more energizing when it does generally like positive emotions feel feel energy feel creativity feel like really stressed all that fun stuff and so the question that the question that led to the book in the first place was you know when i was trying to juggle working full-time as a doctor and also building the youtube channel and the business on the side it just felt like a huge amount of grind in the day job and then a huge amount of grind afterwards to do the videos and it seemed like you know everyone talks about how, you know, journey before destination.

53:07And I realized that I wasn't enjoying my day to day because of this sort of grind approach. And so I tried to find any tweak that I could to make it feel just a little bit better. And that's not to say that it was fun all the time or that it objectively felt good all the time, but I found a series of strategies that meant that almost anything I could make feel even just a bit better. And if it felt a bit better, it generates more energy. And it meant I had more energy at the end of the day to give to my my other hobbies and friends and family and stuff and it also made me more productive so i think it's like you know when it comes to writing for example there are some some basic things that i found was you know the first chapter in the book is about play and about trying to approach things in the spirit of play now play you know a lot of people have talked about how comes about as a result of um often a result of the stakes being lower so like roger federer probably isn't feeling play when he's in the Wimbledon final because the stakes are too high and I found that for example with with with writing the book when I when I was thinking about the stakes being high like this is my first book and it's traditionally published and it's a big deal that would suck the joy out of it yeah whereas when I tried to lower the stakes to be like that's okay I'm just writing because I enjoy it and the goal is for me to write a book I'm proud of suddenly it became more enjoyable so it's the same thing but like just a different framing that makes it feel the problem is you're not in the Wimbledon finals but you're fooling yourself into thinking you are that's So where ego comes in and anxiety comes in.

54:37You're just like, you're making it much more than it is. And then you're actually ironically making yourself worse at it. Yes, exactly. And the other big one is, you know, the idea of power. So we talked about it in chapter two. Play power and people are like the three main energizers that I found. If you shoehorn a bit. And this idea that we get to choose what we're doing. Like it's, you could be doing the same thing, but if you think of it as I have to do this versus I choose to do this makes a huge difference to how we personally feel about the thing. I really found this a lot when I was, when I was working in medicine where, you know, there was one day where I'd finished the end of like a 13 hour shift and I was just about to go home to be like, yes, I'm going to go home.

55:24And then the nurse was like, Hey, Ali, can you put an IV, a cannula in this lady in bay number four or whatever it was? I was like oh shit like this is gonna be another half an hour job it's like the nurse has tried and she couldn't do it and said this is gonna be really hard I was just about to go home with 13 freaking hours I haven't eaten and then I overheard that and some other patient talking about like oh it's so nice being in hospital the doctor's been so nice to me and things I kind of realized that I'd been falling into that trap of thinking I have to do this thing and I think Seth Godin has a blog post about this that I remembered at the time which was you can just reframe that to I get to do the thing.

55:56I was like, huh, I get to do this kind of, I get to make this person's morning sickness better so that, you know, her baby's better and that she's better because I was working on OBGYN. And it was just like this huge wave of relief that came over me purely as a result of a simple mindset shift of like, have to becomes get to. I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do and then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it this holiday season whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner whole foods market has what you need to delight everyone at your table they even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department you can make whole foods your one-stop shop everything follows whole foods markets strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you you can also order online for pickup and even delivery in select zip codes to skip the crowds shop everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters.

56:57Thanks 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 in 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.

57:42We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

58:22Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Well, also, I think one of the things I had to that is like important things are hard, right? And so if you are good at something, if you have some sort of calling, I feel like each of us has kind of a unique potential or we get sort of certain opportunities. Yeah. And with those opportunities comes a kind of an obligation. So like when I hear about someone who is really talented and really good, and then I get the sense that they're just kind of half-assing it or they're stuck or whatever. It's not that I'm judgmental, but I find it to be sad.

59:19You know, like, what do you mean you only wrote one book in 10 years? Like, you're not Robert Caro. You weren't slaving away on some amazing masterpiece. You were just ill-disciplined and you took the obligations that I think your talent came with. You didn't take them seriously. So I agree. You should mostly be doing what you want to do. But I also think there's something kind of sad and maybe even pathetic about people who are just like, not unproductive, but maybe only partially fulfill their potential. Yeah, I was going to ask you about this. So you said earlier that, you know, you sometimes ask yourself, am I pushing this book out of laziness or complacency versus like out of a genuine need for balance or something like that?

1:00:17I was kind of thinking in my mind, like, why does it matter? Like, why does it matter to you if you're being lazy or complacent? I've written like a book a year for the last like 10 years or something. I've said like that, like two, two K's at this point. Well, I think like you have, I would argue that we sort of have a higher self and a lower self, right? And, you know, the lower self says, just like eat whatever you want. Work only when you want. I don't know say whatever you want don't think about consequence like there's this the sort of immediate gratification sort of short term impulses that we all have right that if indulged repeatedly tend to get us in a place that we actually don't want to be right the person they don't have any friends because they say mean things right they're they feel gross they look gross they're not in good health because they don't take good care of themselves you know they look back and they go oh i wish you know i wish that hadn't taken like if i'd gotten serious about that earlier i'd have been done sooner it would have could have done more could have helped more people whatever right so so there's this kind of tension between like our higher self and the lower self steven pressfield says in between is the resistance right and so to me the question is is whether i'm am I am I doing this because it's the well-adjusted mature responsible you know right thing to do or am I just doing it because the other thing is harder you know what I mean the other thing is gonna take more out of me and I'm scared or intimidated by that so it's not like I feel like oh I have to write these certain number of books so then I'll be remembered forever it's just um so i just took today off but what did i get out like what for what reason do you know what i mean like so i watched tv all day i sat around all day i have if if if i decided not to work because i'm gonna hang out with my family or i'm gonna take a long walk on the beach i'm gonna read or i'm gonna take care of myself that's perfectly fine.

1:02:38That's a part of a great life doing it. Cause I want to watch TV. Yeah. That doesn't, I don't think that gets you where you want to go. Some people might argue that watching TV is self-care. And so it's like, Oh, I didn't work today because I felt, I don't know, stressed or burned out and I needed to watch TV. No, I think if you're doing that, because if that's actually what it is, more power to you, but is, is that it? Or are you lying to yourself? so for you when it comes to like writing more books i'll put it this way recovery is important right like if you work out recovery is important you have to have a certain number of days where you recover you let the body rest and recuperate yeah is that what you're doing or are you just not doing it because it's hard to do it's always hard to do right so and the whole point is that it's hard to do if it was easy to do there wouldn't be any benefits to it right so are you stopping because you're sensitive to an injury or are you stopping because pretending that you're being sensitive to an injury is an excuse to stop yeah hmm so i was rereading um bertrand russell's essay in praise of idleness um where he's basically talking about how this you know this attitude that the modern world inculcates within us which is that kind of work is inherently meaningful is like bad and problematic and all that jazz i'm like i'm curious for you like you're presumably planning to write more books because you're fairly young in the grand scheme of things um but like why what is the if if not like i want to be remembered i want a legacy then what's what's it all in service of no he has a great line he says uh the first sign of an impending nervous collapse is the belief that your work is terribly, terribly important.

1:04:32And I think he's totally right. If you had this sense like, I'm building this monument, or the world has to experience my genius, this is going to last for a thousand years. That's not only delusional, but like it's kind of a miserable place to be. And it usually feeds on itself and eventually wears you down. At this point, I write books that I am interested in writing, like that I find myself better for having done. This book that I just did in the Virtue series, so I did Courage and I did Discipline and now I'm doing Justice. i'm almost certain this will be the worst selling book in the series the justice one because it's the least you talked about certain terms you know will perform well discipline is good yeah discipline obviously i knew if i did a good job it would be a home run yeah this one even if i do the greatest job i possibly can be possibly can do you know it probably has a ceiling on it in some way, but like I was better for having done it.

1:05:47I learned something. I articulated something to myself in writing about it. If my kids are the only two people that read it, you know, like I try to find standards of success or motivations that have become more self-sufficient as I've gone. So at this point, I write things because creatively I find them interesting and I love the process of being in the middle of it, even when it's really hard. And the same thing is true with running. Like I love and I hate running. Obviously not doing it is easier than doing it. But when I don't do it, I feel worse. Like I feel not in an addictive way, but I feel when I do it, I feel proud of myself.

1:06:44I feel physically good. I, my mind gets it. Like it, it's better that I do it than not do it. And they're the feeling of being in the middle of a book, both the momentum of it and the frustratingness of it it all kind of combines into it just an overall

1:07:13rewarding immersive experience there's that's what a flow state is yeah so it sounds like for you writing is the thing that your higher self does and wants to do and therefore is almost a good in its in its own right regardless of how the outcome turns out to be i think so and so you push yourself to write on days even when you don't feel like it it's like going for a run like going to the gym it's like the thing that you know is good for you that you know is aligned with your own personal values and you don't want to be the sort of guy that's like you know what i'm gonna skip writing for the next year so i can play more video games kind of vibe yeah one of the stoics his name was moussonius rufus he says when you do something shameful for pleasure the pleasure passes quickly but the shame endures and then he says but when you do something hard for good, the effort passes quickly, but the good endures.

1:08:12Oh, nice. And I think - That's good. You find whether it's pushing yourself physically, like exercise, that's throwing yourself into a big project, whether it's sacrificing for someone or something, you know you quickly forget all that it took out of you and all that went into it and you think about the impact that you had or you just think about the plane you temporarily ascended to to get there and then when you think about i don't know the cake that you ate yeah or you know the the off day that you took or the urge that you submitted to afterwards there's that period where you go, that's what I did all that for, you know, that, that, that five seconds, you know, um, or not even the five seconds.

1:09:03Right. And that's the higher, lower self.

1:09:11How, so you've recently done a bit of a, well, I wouldn't say pivot, like side hustle on the whole daily dad stuff, which is interesting. Um, a lot of, um, I've, I, I've been just found, i found myself reading a lot of like parenting advice recently uh i'm not even close to becoming a dad but i was just curious uh and i'm part of your daily newsletter on on that as well because it's just it's just interesting but there seems to be this really common thing of like uh people working hard uh in their career sometimes at the expense of their family um and you know you'll hear people say that like i thought i was doing my kids a favor by working and doing this thing and like focusing on my career and stuff but actually what i maybe should have done in hindsight is to spend less time on my career and more time on the kid stuff yeah how do you think about that balance between like working hard at the thing but also like being there for the the small ones what's very insidious because you say i'm doing it all for them and so you are doing something very selfish but you are cloaking it in selflessness like that's why I'm getting on this airplane.

1:10:22That's why I'm staying this late at the office. That's why I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you asked your kids, you know, what do they want? Like more money would be nowhere in that list. Right. Or if, if it, if it was on the list, it would be such a preposterously and refreshingly childlike understanding of money, you know, that it would, I think it would humble you. So you're, you're saying you're doing it for them, but you're not, you're doing it for you. You're doing it for you. Um, and the tragedy of, of, and the irony of I'm doing it, I'm doing all this for the people I never see is a very sad fucked up place that a lot of sort of high powered accomplished people find themselves in.

1:11:12And I heard something great when someone said like, success is your kids wanting to be with you when you're an adult. And so like, how will you measure your life at the end? Right. It won't be like the size of the inheritance that you leave them. It will be, you know, are you still in each other's lives now? So how do you invest in, that's not something you can do later. You know what I mean? So you have to make those decisions now. And they're costly and uncertain. and um the worst part is you don't even know how much it's costing i mean this is obviously much scarier and sort of systemically imposed on women right so like you're going to take three years out of your you know cumulatively three years out of your working life in your 20s and 30s which has this enormous cumulative compounding effect on the trajectory that you're going to end up on, you know, that's a very scary thing.

1:12:15And it's, it's, it's unfair in a lot of ways, but at the end of your life, you know, it's probably going to be something you're glad that you did. And so I think a lot of men just sort of unthinkingly don't do it at all, but I've, I've tried to sort of go, yeah, what is it that you want to do and who do you want to be? There's this great term in art monster. I forget this female writer. She was saying like, my dream was to be an art monster. Basically just me and my work and no family, no baggage, no impositions, just me. And there are a lot of art monsters and they've written great stuff. But when you read their biographies, you just sort of go, what?

1:13:03You know, was that worth it? You know, and it kind of it kind of taints all of the stuff that they did. It makes it much more bittersweet and not so great. How did you decide to, you know, go into the dad stuff rather than stay in your lane as the stoic guy? I don't know if I really decided it. I mean, so writing The Daily Dad, I mean, the reason I decided to do The Daily Dad was that writing The Daily Stoic made me better as a person. You can't every single day sit down and try to take insights from the wisest people who ever lived and distill them down into a couple hundred words over and over and over again and not emerge somewhat bonded to those ideas.

1:13:54it. It gets in your bloodstream. That's what stoicism is. What Marcus Aurelius is doing in his meditations was writing down things. A lot of it comes from other stoic texts. He's just writing it down, rephrasing it and writing it down and writing it down and rephrasing it and looking at it this way. He's having this philosophical discussion with himself. And that's how Marcus Aurelius becomes Marcus Aurelius. So the process of writing the Daily Stoic book and then writing the Daily Stoic every day now for seven years. It's almost a million words that I published for free to, I think we've done 3 ,000 Daily Stoic emails.

1:14:33That's like seven or eight books worth of content. I have benefited from that. It's built a business around it, but like if I had made precisely zero dollars, that would have been the bargain of a lifetime, right? Like I've gotten so much better from having done that. And so I just decided that I would do the same thing about parenting. And if it helps other people, great. If it sells books, great. But the process of having to intentionally sit down and think about and then write about and then publish, you know, how I want to think about these things has made me better. Hmm. And that's how, that's how you should think about it.

1:15:20I was, I was talking to my wife last night. We were talking about this book that we were reading and, you know, you get all the way to the end and you're like, ah, that was good. But actually you needed, you needed to read it over like six months, like a couple pages a day. Like I just read this great book by this parenting expert named Dr. Becky Kennedy. And so I read it, but then because I'm going to write about it for Daily Dad, I went through it page by page after and took out all the stuff that I liked. And it was the second part was where I got stuff out of it, not the reading at once from cover to cover.

1:15:56And so there's something about the page a day format that's worked in Daily Stoic and Daily dad. Like if you're trying to absorb a philosophy or a new way of thinking or transform yourself from here to there, it's not 300 pages that you read from October 1st to November 17th, that takes you a month and a half to read. It's much better if you're layering it like a page a day for a year or two years or three years and you're coming back. The process of that sort of over and over and over and over again, that's where the stuff gets absorbed. What are some of the key, I guess, from here to there, through the course of writing Daily Dad and being a parent, what are some of the key lessons that have really separated the Rhine today from the Rhine maybe three years ago?

1:16:53I think patience. If I'm thinking the things I've struggled with most as a parent, but that have also made the most difference. uh, number one, like the greatest thing you can give your gift, your, your, your kids is presence, like not gifts, but presence, like just actually being there, not doing something else. So, you know, in a digital world, that's extremely difficult to do. Um, so I struggled that patience, of course, um, you know, it doesn't happen. It doesn't have to happen quickly. It just has to happen, um, to take your time with it, to let them take their time, to not rush things. Um, Um, every time you think you can't go on like this, that's when you get some sort of breakthrough.

1:17:34Every time you think they're never going to figure it out, that's when they figure it out. So I think patience has been a big one. Um, I've, I've read a lot and thought about like, sort of how do you just like, just root for this person? Like not, not attach any conditions, not attach any judgments, not attach any expectations, but just be an unconditional supporter of them and who they are for who they are and what they are. Which I think ties into another idea I've been thinking a lot about, which is like, your job is to help your kids become that person, not to make them a person that you want them to be.

1:18:16So to just sort of help them become who they are, that's something I've thought a lot about and worked on a lot. and then the one I've been thinking a lot about which I heard about in Dr. Becky's book obviously I knew about it but it made sense but she talks about like don't try to be a perfect parent try to be a parent who's really good at repair like at fixing it when you mess up fixing it when things didn't go the way that you wanted them to go you know reconnecting when you know there is conflict or when people go in separate directions, but repair. So I'd say those are sort of the perennial ones that I struggle with and I'm thinking about.

1:18:57That's very cool.

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