“He dropped out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert Green, author of the 48 Laws of Power”
Books mentioned in Ryan Holiday Returns (Full Episode) | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)
From The Tim Ferriss Show · 2016-07-12
All matched books in this episode
“Ryan himself has written four books, most recently The Obstacle is the Way.”
“And actually, his brand new book is Ego is the enemy.”
“And then there is also Small Giants. I always want I always forget if it's small or little giants by Bo Burlingham”
“you've written an article separately about uh I guess it was, help me out here, Fahrenheit 451”
“So one of the things that helps keep me accountable with some of my, you know, my my problems getting distracted and overwhelmed is if that's not if that tally isn't 3 or 4 hours, like I didn't spend three or four hours really working on like my actual creative important projects, then I know I overcommitted to phone calls, meetings, you know, running errands. I'm not managing my life really well. And so for being writing these things down has helped me keep me really accountable. The other thing is actually writing and talking about these ideas like ironically you know you write a book about stoicism then you write a book about ego. It's very people are going to not be very forgiving with me if I complain about stuff or I you know I I blame other people for my problems or if I like I even have to think as I'm marketing this book like you know if I say something that sounds very egotistical like somebody's going to call me out about it on Twitter. Like I I think being somewhat public with what you care about and what you're working on is are two other ways I think to to attack some of these well doing anything with social accountability right I mean you can have sure the you have to have consequences or I should say incentives right like economics is the study of incentives I mean in its simplest form and in that case I mean the same uh li I mean personally I can also say like the 4-hour body or the 4-hour work week right I I mean, blessings and a curse, but it's like if I'm in a coffee shop on a laptop for more than like 3 minutes, somebody's going to walk by, take a photo of me, make a 4hour joke, and like put it on the internet, right? It's like I have to be like, Yeah. Or if you got in horrible No, it's like I can't be fat. I cannot be fat. So, that's great. I'm not allowed to be fat. It's It's just I would never live it down. Now, you don't need to write books to have this type of social accountability. You can create a betting pool. You can, for instance, for weight loss. So you could have four or five people put in $100 each and the person who loses the most body fat key, not just scale. So you can use DEXA scans for this or uh any number of different tools then wins the entire pool, right? And what's cool about that is you will actually work harder to not lose your $100 and to beat the other people than you will to earn the 500 or 600, whatever it might be, right? So that could be one example. Another would be using a site like coach.mme or stick s t i ck kk.com. Dietbet is another. Just going to rattle off a few. Uh, another would be uh simply making generally subconscious responses more conscious. And so for instance, I think something that is very helpful for both implementing stoic practices in a very kind of proactive operating system type sense where you it's a it's a system for making better decisions. uh and in a way to address ego in in quite a few different manifestations is to do a no complaint experiment where you have say and this is from Will Bower who's a reverend I believe or preacher at the very least has a large congregation and he puts a a rubber band effectively or a bracelet on one arm and you you're not allowed to complain for 21 days and every time you complain you snap it on your wrist you put it on the other wrist and the clock starts over 21 days without complaining. Um, and people can search 21day no complaint experiment in my name if you want more on that. But the point being I think that it's it's quite one thing to read about these things which is very important. I think you need to have like the owner's manual and to uh deductively or inductively right whether you're going from concepts to examples or examples to concepts ingrain this and have a firm understanding of it. Then it when the rubber hits the road, you have to actually condition yourself and practice this just like you would go running, just like you would meditate in the morning, use an app like Headspace, just like you would uh commit to scheduling anything else. You need to make this a practice, I think. And that's where a lot of people fail is with any type of non-fiction or how-to, and I've certainly done this myself, is read the book, you're like, great, so happy I checked that off. and then you put it down like six months later you're like, "Oh yeah, that book. Wow, I haven't done anything that was in that book." So what what advice would you give to people who want to make the leap from the written page to real life? Any other any other thoughts? Um yeah, look, I I think that that's the tough part. How does um how does how does knowledge become experience? There's a there's a quote I think I use it in the book, but it's from Plutarch. He was talking about uh I actually I forget what he's talking about but basically he's saying it was not so much from the the words that I got the knowledge. It was from my experience of the words. I'm I'm butchering this quote. It's horrible. But basically he was saying look it wasn't my it wasn't the words that helped me with my experiences. It was the experiences that I brought to the words that helped me understand them in a new way. And I think um so it's got to be this mix. Like if you're not if you're not leaving a book or uh you know um something you've read, if you're not leaving it with a okay, now I'm going to do X because of this, then um you know you're you're just pursuing it um for its own sake. I don't want to say it's it's masturbation, but it's close, right? Like um you're not you're not uh you're not you're not achieving anything. you just spent a year reading a, you know, a week reading a self-improvement book, but tell it's like, tell me what you're going to do with this information. And so, you know, I I think that's what you're that's what you've constantly got to do. Whatever you're reading, whatever you're thinking is, okay, I'm now going to put this thing into practice. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. It can be the smallest possible thing, but if you don't leave with some sort of actionable thing, um, you're really just diluting yourself. And and I think like it's like look, you can read a book about uh Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That doesn't make you that doesn't make you any better at it. Uh it it's only if you you know you you try that out on the mat um and against another human being that's going to lead to any sort of real improvement. It's got to become it's got to become muscle memory, especially if you intend, you know, with stoicism. um if if you're not applying these things in a small way in insignificant situations, what are the chances that you're going to be able to do it in an extremely adverse, stressful, overwhelming situation? It's very it's very slim. Uh slim to none. Yeah. So the the Plutarch quote, I think this is it for it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words. That is a tough one to remember. Uh he uh but to your point then this is one of my favorite quotes. I think it's archallocus is how you would say it. But we we do not rise to the level of our hopes. We fall to the levels of our training. And so in my experience with training, let's just use the athletic example. You have planning right or programming, right? You have planning, then you have then you have practice and then you have reflection or review. And that review piece is very important. And so I want to underscore something you said about journaling. Uh there's a there's a there's a book called the 5-minute journal which you can use. I use pretty much every morning and every evening. 2 and 1/2 minutes in the morning, 2 and 1/2 minutes at night to accomplish two things. All right. To to have clarity on this kind of prep and review portion of the day. Practice being the rest of the day in between. also to cultivate the practice of gratitude and actually writing down even three things that you're grateful for each day, including one that is very small. Uh not anything necessarily all-encompassing like the the health of my friends and family, right? That's fantastic. But you can very quickly go on autopilot and just list that off every day. Um, and I've talked this about this before in my morning routine, so I won't bel labor it here, but the the point being that when I've spent time with, say, Tony Robbins, for instance, who is one of the most, I think, effective is certainly impressive interventionists when it comes to personal crises that I've ever seen in my life. It's really phen. It's just mind-blowing what this guy can accomplish in the in a handful of minutes with someone he's never met before. And he he has uh said before and it it really made sense when I started reflecting on this that most of our suffering and misery comes from a focus on me. It's just a self focus and I think that this gratitude helps to relieve that pressure and that compulsion somewhat. Um so that that journaling I think is particularly uh important. Well Ryan, I know we're we're probably coming up on time here. Is there anything that you would like to uh leave people with? Anything for them to think about or uh to consider, to take with them? Yeah. I mean, I liked what you were just saying about Tony. I think that's really interesting. It's this idea that it's it's one, it's when you make something all about you, um it you you stop seeing it rationally. And I think the other thing I I found um that that that was helpful for me, it's this idea of like this thing like however many copies my book sells or however much money I make or whoever I know, none of the it's like if you can if you could start to realize that none of these things say anything about you as a person, right? And I think that's why we get so caught up. It's like we're like the kind of car I drive says something about me as a person, you know, like uh the number of Twitter followers I have says something about me as a person. So then we're like so possessive and aggressive and ambitious and controlling about them because like we've we've wrapped our identity up in them. When I was first writing the book, the original title is based on a a quote from Paul Graham where he says, "Keep your identity small because the smaller your identity, the more able you're the the more you're able to be flexible and adaptive and creative and and you know see changes and disruption coming in the world." And so I think this idea of wrapping our identity up in our work or you know in in material things what what things that the Stoics would put in the category of um you know what we don't control. That's where we start to get in serious trouble because now you know something can always threaten that thing. someone can repossess your car or you know you're some someone can give you a negative review on your book and now all of a sudden you're reacting super negatively and emotionally and angry and and that's when you do things that you're not proud of here here right training yourself to value most the things that cannot be taken away totally and and I think that's that's a it's a scary idea for people but it's it's ultimately very freeing right because you're you're immune to the fluctu situations of events. That doesn't mean that you can't live in a nice house and, you know, you can't have fun and you can't be you can't have things that you're trying to accomplish, but you want, I think, cultivate that resilience that like, hey, you know, if I had to start over tomorrow, I would still be me and I would have all the skills that I bring to the table and I'd be I'd be pretty good. That to me, that's much better than like, you know, being Richard Nixon ranting on the White House tapes about all these people who are trying to screw him over, you know, and stay out of politics. would be this the correlary. But uh yeah, unless uh well yeah, unless you're unless you're perhaps a Sherman who in the first place doesn't want to be in politics, but would probably do the best job uh the irony of the age in which we live. But uh Ryan, this is always a pleasure. I love being reminded always of the the first principles in some ways of living the good life whether that's choosing to use certain things as tools uh that make terrible masters whether that's money possessions otherwise uh and really keeping in mind I suppose in in many ways just the serenity prayer and uh this the the the two very separate buckets of things that you can control and things you can't control and then working methodically, dispassionately very often on the things that you can control. Um because I mean these these little actions cumulatively are the big actions. And I suppose on that note, I will thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's always good. And for everyone who is wondering about show notes, links to everything that we have discussed, uh, of course, uh, ego is the enemy and many other things, different, uh, figures and so on. You can find those all in the show notes at 4hourweek.com/mpodcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So, if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourweek.com. That's 4hourweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Freshbooks is used by a ton of the startups that I work with or advise, many of the fastest growing. It is used by almost all of the contractors that I work with. It is the easiest way online to send invoices, get paid, track your time for invoicing, track your clients so they get to the point of paying you, all that stuff that you could possibly find. And right now, you can get a free month of complete unrestricted use. And you do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month, just go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter tim in the how did you hear about us section. You can, of course, customize it to fit your brand with your own logo and color. And FreshBooks shows you whether or not, for instance, a client has looked at the invoice. They can send late payment reminders to your clients automatically, so you do not have to think about it or chase them down. And you can track your hours. You can do all sorts of things. Their mobile app lets you take pictures of your receipts, and Fresh Books will organize them for you later. It is a great piece of software and if you are in a small business or maybe a fast growing business that is feeling growing pains and you need to streamline then this is a place to look because certainly for me this has been a headache in the past and it doesn't have to be a headache for you. So check out freshbooks.com/tim and try it out and see what you think. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So, the question is why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2 to 5 minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint. And little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible right off the bat. You never pay commissions or account fees for everything. They charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So, I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But, I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh, in the team and the company itself. So, I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferrris Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take 2 minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. [Applause]”