Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 4

This is My Most Expensive Habit

I manage my finances pretty well. I don���t gamble, I don���t spend recklessly, and I don���t indulge in luxuries I can���t afford.

But I do have an expensive habit. And you probably have it, too.

Anxiety.

It���s cost me so much.

A lot of misery, a lot of frustration, countless hours of sleep. It’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things that are important to me.

It���s not flashy, it���s not thrilling, and it doesn���t even provide the fleeting pleasures that other vices might. And yet, anxiety is a vice. A habit. A relentless one that eats away at your time, your relationships, and your moments of joy.

How many family dinners have I ruined by letting my mind wander to what could go wrong? How many minutes of vacations have I missed out on because I was preoccupied, lost in spirals about things that hadn���t happened? How many opportunities have I passed up because I was too caught up in my own fears? How much sleep did I waste, lying awake at night, worrying about what might or might not happen?

It doesn���t just steal moments. It adds costs. You leave hours earlier for the airport than you need to, only to sit at the gate. You ruminate on the past or the future at the expense of the project you could be working on. You spend weeks dreading news that you know you could have actually been preparing for, instead of just thinking about.

What does anxiety really give us in return? Nothing but exhaustion and the tiniest sliver of relief when the thing you feared doesn���t happen. And even that relief is fleeting because another worry is always waiting to take its place.

Seneca tells us we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Anxiety turns the hypothetical into the actual. It drags us into a future that doesn���t yet exist and forces us to live out every worst-case scenario in vivid detail. The cost isn���t just mental. It���s physical. It���s emotional. It���s relational.

Take a moment to think about what anxiety has stolen from you.

The car ride that could have been fun, but you spent stressed because you thought you���d be late. The arguments it got you into, the relationships it strained. The way it hijacks your thoughts, like a runaway train, speeding further and further away from the present moment.

And for what?

How often does the thing you were worried about actually happen? Sure, occasionally there are issues that come up. Occasionally, you miss the connection or the package arrives late. But far more often, the imagined disaster dissolves into nothing. Meanwhile, the moments anxiety robbed you of are gone forever.

The Stoics understood this all too well. Anxiety feeds on itself. It���s like the ouroboros���a snake devouring its own tail.

Worry leads to more worry, until the cycle becomes self-sustaining. Marcus Aurelius, in ���Meditations���, put it succinctly: ���Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions���not outside.���

Work. Your kids. Politics. Flying. These things aren���t the source of your anxiety. You are. They���re just places. Just people. Just things happening in the world. We���re the ones getting upset about them. Certainly, the airport isn���t thinking about us!

The good news? If we���re the problem then we can also be the solution.

���I carry a small reminder with me������a medallion engraved with Epictetus��� phrase, ta eph���hemin, ta ouk eph���hemin (���What is up to us, what is not up to us���). On the back is a quote from Seneca: ���He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.��� These phrases are anchors. They remind me that anxiety doesn���t change the outcome���it only punishes me before anything has even happened.

But even with reminders, breaking free from anxiety is not easy. It traps you in a tunnel where emotions blur your thinking, and every exit seems further away than it really is. You start to feel like a prisoner of your own mind, held hostage by thoughts you can���t control.

Yet, there are tools to escape.

The Stoics offered timeless strategies: stay in the present moment, detach from the illusion of control, and gain perspective. Epictetus reminds us, ���It���s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.��� Anxiety thrives on those opinions. Letting go of them can be transformative.

Anxiety is expensive���not just in terms of the mental toll, but in the way it costs us our lives. Every minute spent consumed by worry is a minute lost.

Maybe we can���t get rid of it entirely, but like our finances, we can be more efficient. We can budget. We can eliminate unnecessary expenses and get rid of obvious waste.

Anxiety may never disappear entirely. But with practice, you can begin to discard it, as Marcus did. You can remind yourself that it���s within you, not outside. And slowly, you can reclaim the moments it���s stolen.

It���s not easy, but I���m working on it. Every day, I try to get a little better. And I hope you will, too.

The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2024

Another year and what do I have to show for it? A big stack of books read and ruminated on is not a bad answer. I know some people assiduously track how many books they read, but I do not (Do you count books you made halfway through? Re-reads? Books you read to your kids? Favorites you took off the shelf to find a favorite passage?) because I don���t think it���s a contest. Epictetus was right when he said it���s not that you read but what you read. So I do track my favorites. And boy, there were some books I loved this year. Books that I got a ton out of. Books that in some cases, have already changed my life.

Here, at the end of the year, I try to narrow down all the books I read and recommended ���in this email list��� to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I���d read that year, I���d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. You can check out the best of lists from ���2023���, ���2022���, ���2021���, ���2020���, ���2019���, ���2018���, ���2017���, ���2016���, ���2015���, ���2014���, ���2013���, ���2012��� and ���2011������ I can���t believe it���s been 14 years of these roundups!

My reading list is now ~315,000 people and between that and meeting folks who come into my bookstore every day, I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you���you can���t go wrong with any of these.

���Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall��� by Helena Merriman and ���Night of the Grizzlies��� by Jack Olsen It���s almost a problem how many amazing books my wife recommended to me this year. It���s not a problem that the books were good, it���s that I sat on them for too long. I���m pretty sure she didn���t even recommend ���Tunnel 29��� to me this year. What an idiot I am for taking my time getting around to reading this because it���s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time���I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It���s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin���and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours���at great risk to himself���digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here, but more than that, just a riveting story. I love narrative nonfiction, as you know, but this one is written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don���t think I���ve read anything like it before. Just LOVED it. I���m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened.

And yet���she���s guilty of it too. Because I have been raving about ���The Tiger��� for close to a decade and she read it���this year. Now is ���Night of the Grizzlies��� (one of my favorites this year) as good as ���The Tiger���? Of course not, because ���The Tiger��� is the greatest man vs animal (or animal vs man) book ever written. What I am saying is that ���this book is also great���. I found it mentioned in another book and tracked down a used copy. I���m glad I did because it’s a riveting story of how two grizzlies killed two women in two different areas of Glacier National Park after never having killed a person in the park���s 57-year existence. The book reminded me a lot of Erik Larson���s ���Dead Wake���, too (and I suppose Walter Lord���s ���A Night To Remember���) where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. ���This book��� deserves to be much more well-known. It was a lot of work, but we tracked down the publisher and got a bunch of new copies for The Painted Porch���which we have repeatedly sold out this year. Very excited that this amazing book is getting a second life. It deserves it. Also if you want another great story, ���The Revenant��� is not just a good movie but an even better book.

���James: A Novel��� by Percival Everett My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX for my birthday. What a wonderful idea for a novel���to tell ���the story of Huckleberry Finn��� and Jim from Jim���s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That���s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It���s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (���Twelve Years a Slave��� is one of the greatest memoirs ever written). I spent my birthday reading ���James��� and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: ���Wicked River��� by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and another book I read and loved this year, ���Life on the Mississippi��� by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled the river on his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). And of course, the other book I thought of when I read ���James��� was Wright Thompson���s ���The Barn��� (which I took in on a flight to Brazil and back this year), because ���The Barn��� is about Emmett Till and Emmett Till and Huck Finn were the same age. Both books are the story of America���its hope and its evil, its land and its people, its potential and its horrific past. Wright is one of my favorite writers and thinkers (���here���s his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast��� about the book) but ���this book��� is an essential contribution to American history. I think everyone needs to read ���James��� and ���The Barn��� this year.

���Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World��� by Irene Vallejo and ���The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper��� by Roland Allen I am in awe of artists who can make something you didn���t think would be interesting, just utterly fascinating. And oh my god, ���Papyrus��� is one of the most impressive examples of that I can recall (the invention and the impact of paper???). Last year, I swooned over Ann Wroe���s ���Pontius Pilate��� for similar reasons���it���s a beautiful and insightful study of ancient thought and how we���ve been shaped by it. I just love when you get to read an author who not only has complete mastery of their subject, but complete mastery of story and language, too. The only downside to this book was how many pages I folded for notes that I now need to transfer to my commonplace book���and that brings me to ���The Notebook���. My British publisher sent me this which I���m glad about because I haven���t heard anyone talking about Roland Allen’s lovely book about one of the most transformative pieces of technology ever invented. We don���t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are���there were dark days before such wonderful things existed. My life is built around my notebooks. I journal before bed (there���s ���even a Daily Stoic Journal���). I have kept a ������One Line a Day������ journal (my favorite) for the last 8 years. I have been keeping a ���commonplace book��� for even longer���none of my writing would be possible without it. (���I learned this from Robert Greene���). Have you heard the phrase ���keeping a second brain���? That���s what my notebooks are. Anyway, one of the things that struck me in ���this book��� is how late the invention of the notebook was. Of course, people were taking notes in Greece and Rome (ahem, Marcus Aurelius��� ���Meditations���), but the more modern notebook as we understand it today dates to roughly the 1400s in Florence. And who was one of the first great minds to see them for all their potential? Da Vinci! ���Here���s my pod with Roly���, which you might enjoy.

And a few more��� Of course, I couldn���t just pick those few titles. I was blown away by Gary Will���s ���Lincoln at Gettysburg���. I read 3,000 or so pages on Lincoln this year���and many more before that���and this is probably the best. I���ve given something like 30 copies of Brent Underwood���s ���Ghost Town Living��� out to friends at the bookstore this year. And I sent another friend a copy of Cal Newport���s ���Slow Productivity��� (something I���m working to get better at). My in-laws are big Sharon McMahon fans (one of the only ���podcast guests��� they wanted to meet), as a family we all really liked her new book ���The Small and the Mighty���. It���s a book that’s even more important after this election. ���You can listen to my interview with her here���. You can ���also listen to my interview with Julia Baird���, who has two other important books for where the world is right now, ���Phosphorescence��� (about resilience and adversity) and her new one ���Bright Shining��� (about grace, which we could all use more of). Another recommendation my wife raved about was Charles Duhigg���s ���Supercommunicators��� (���our chat here���). I got to work on lacrosse great Paul Rabil���s ���The Way of the Champion���, which I think you���ll like, too (���and here���s our chat���). And lastly, I���ve been hoping for a good biography of Marcus Aurelius for a long time and we finally got one���a great one actually���in Donald Robertson���s book, ���Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor��� (���here���s our chat about that one���). Definitely read.

Kid books: My oldest became madly obsessed with Greek myths this year, mostly ���The Odyssey���. We���ve been reading ���Emily Wilson���s translation of The Odyssey��� together as well as ���this graphic novel���. My Spotify Wrapped tells me that we spent an almost alarming amount of hours listening to the ���Greeking Out podcast���, which I can���t recommend highly enough to parents with elementary school kids. There are also two great books, ���Greeking Out: Epic Retellings of Classic Greek Myths��� and ���Greeking Out Heroes and Olympians���. As a parent of two boys, I got a lot out of Richard Reeves��� ���Of Boys and Men��� (���here���s our chat���). We read Adam Rubin���s ���High Five��� book many times this year, so much so that our copy is starting to fall apart (the kids love reading it because they get to hit it as hard as they can). We had to put down our 16-year-old dachshund last year, so I loved reading Doug Salati���s ���Hot Dog���. It���s a very sweet book. My youngest is just learning to read and I���m proud to say that he read his first book by himself this year! It was ���Bob Books���. We���re very excited. We also loved Jon Klassen���s ���The Rock From The Sky��� and trolled each other around the house with lines from the book after reading it. ���Matthew McConaughey came out to the bookstore��� last week to do a live event and podcast (coming soon), and he signed a bunch of copies of his children���s book ���Just Because���.

This Is What (Stoic) Gratitude Actually Looks Like

Gratitude is one of those things that���s simple���but not easy.

Today is Thanksgiving in America. It���s a day that we���re supposed to center around gratitude. The usual candidates come to mind: family, health, and the food in front of us. And rightly so. These are the cornerstones of a fortunate life, and they deserve recognition and appreciation.

But what about all the other stuff? The obstacles. The frustrations. The wrong turns. The difficult people. The bad days.

Should we be grateful for those too?��

Yes���those especially.

Especially because they are hard to be grateful for.��

Epictetus was born into slavery and he spent the next thirty years in that institution. He wasn���t even given a name���Epictetus just means acquired one. He was tortured. And when he finally found freedom, he was almost immediately exiled by a tyrannical emperor.��

You know in Les Mis where she sings about how the dream she dreamed was so much different than the hell she was living? That was basically Epictetus��� real-life story. Yet what he came away with was not bitterness, but gratitude. The key to life, he said, was not to dream for things to be a certain way, but to dream for them to be the way they were. To be grateful that you had the fate you had. ���Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,��� was how Marcus Aurelius put it, ���that things are good and always will be.���

In the mornings when I sit down to journal, one of the notebooks I write in is a gratitude journal. When I first got it, I would fill the pages with the lineup I mentioned above���my family, my health, my career, the people and things and opportunities in my life that mean a lot to me. But after a time, this came to feel sort of pointless and rather repetitive. I needed a new approach.

What I began to do was try to find ways to express gratitude, not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard. I wanted to practice seeing everything as a gift from the gods, as Marcus Aurelius wrote. Because while it���s easy to count my blessings of the good things in life, it���s much more difficult to see the bad things as gifts, too. But with this practice, I���ve learned to see they can be.

That troublesome client���thank you, it���s helping me develop better boundaries.��

That traffic jam���thank you, it gave me time to call my wife and have a nice, meandering conversation.��

That rejection email���thank you, it forced me to reevaluate and improve my work.

The political realities of our time���thank you, it���s a chance to test myself, to really stick to what I believe in.��

That loss���thank you, for reminding me of what truly matters in life.��

And on and on.

When Epictetus talks about how every situation has two handles, this is what he means. You can decide to grab onto anger or appreciation, fear or fellowship. You can pick up the handle of resentment or of gratitude. You can look at the obstacle or get a little closer and see the opportunity. Which one will you grab?

It���s so easy to miss the fact that Marcus Aurelius could not have been Marcus Aurelius without that unending series of troubles. The difficulties that shaped him, refined him, called greatness out of him. It���s also easy to miss, when we focus on all the bad breaks the guy got, all the tragedies he experienced, that on the whole, Marcus was incredibly lucky. After all, this dude was chosen to be emperor. For next to no reason at all, Hadrian selected a young boy and gifted him unlimited power and wealth and fame. Marcus had a wonderful wife, a stepfather he adored, amazing teachers and he discovered Stoicism, which guided him when he most needed it. For everything that went wrong in his life, for everything that was taken from him, the Gods actually gave him an equal number of gifts.��

As Cicero pointed out, ���You may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player’s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.���

See, there���s a positive to every negative!��

In the chaos and dysfunction of the world, I try to notice where I have been gifted in the latter category than where I have been deprived in the former.

Besides, it���s already happened���what���s the use in getting upset?

So, as you gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving, appreciate the obvious gifts���the food, the health, the love in the room. But as the moment fades and life returns to its usual pace, challenge yourself to make gratitude a daily practice.

Not just for what is easy and joyful, but for what is hard.

For what tested you, stretched you, humbled you.

Whatever 2024 has been for you���however difficult, however painful���be grateful for it. Think about what it helped you miss. Think about how it shaped you. Think about how it could have been worse.��

Write this gratitude down. Say it out loud.

Thank you.

Until you believe it.

This Is The Most Important Thing For These Crazy Times

It���s the hardest thing.

Especially right now.��

Not making money in this economy. Not climbing a mountain. Not running a marathon or writing a book or building a business. Not dealing with the high interest rates or the technological disruption.��

No, right now and indeed for all time���the hardest thing in the world is to not be infected by what���s happening around you. To not lose your mind���or your decency���or your sense of what matters.��

Look around. You see it everywhere. People melting down on airplanes and in traffic. Social media turning into a cesspool of rage and conspiracy theories. Families estranged. The news cycle ping-ponging between crisis and catastrophe. Real awful things happening.��

I remember a couple of years ago, I interviewed Mike Duncan about his fascinating book The Storm Before the Storm and he was telling me about some Stoics who lived during the tumultuous years of 146-78 BC, a period that set the stage for the fall of Rome. Their attitude, he said, was this:

The winds may howl, but I will not be swept away.��

That may well be one of the best definitions of Stoicism I have ever heard.

The world seems to be going crazy… and it’s trying to take you with it.

But here’s the thing: You can’t let it.

I���m reminded of Marcus Aurelius, who faced what might have been even darker times than our own: A devastating plague killing millions. A coup attempt by one of his most trusted generals. The empire literally crumbling at its edges. Yet, in his private writings, we see him constantly reminding himself: Don���t let it infect you. Don���t lose your humanity. Don���t go crazy with the craziness.

���No matter what anyone says or does,��� he wrote, ���my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, ���No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.������

Think of Montaigne, retreating to his study. Think of Stefan Zweig (whose biography of Montaigne I have been giving out since 2016) discovering Montaigne in a cellar as a refugee from Germany in 1941. Think of Cicero and Cato having to get out of Rome for a while. Think of Chrysippus who liked to see that the whole point of being a philosopher was to not join in with the mob and the rabble.

It���s not that they were disengaged���they were very engaged. It���s that they strove, however, not to be consumed by the passions that had wrecked their society. Lincoln had to strike a very similar balance: He knew that slavery was wrong. He knew that a good chunk of people were hell-bent on destroying the country. He also understood that he could not afford anything other than calmness, foresight, clarity. He could not lose his humanity. He could not lose his mind.

Neither can you.��

When you see that inflammatory post on social media? When someone cuts you off in traffic? When the news makes your blood boil?

Don���t let the crazies make you crazy.��

Again, this isn���t to say you���re indifferent to injustice���it���s that you can���t let it break you, you can���t let it make you despair, you can���t let it distract you from your own work for justice.��

Stay good. Stay focused. Keep your eyes on the prize.��

When tensions are high, when political dysfunction spills out into the street, when anger and frustration abound���When misinformation and extremism and utter nonsense pervade���When cruelty and meanness become acceptable���

���treat it not as disaster, but as opportunity.��

This is what Marcus was talking about in the line that inspired The Obstacle Is the Way: ���The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.��� Since the book came out a little over ten years ago (check out the new 10th anniversary edition), that line has inspired millions to do remarkable things���entrepreneurs pivoting during downturns to build thriving businesses, athletes turning injuries into remarkable comebacks, artists transforming hardship into their finest work, and so on.

But do you know what Marcus was really talking about when he wrote those words? It wasn���t success. He was talking about dealing with the world, seeing it as an opportunity for virtue���even the frustrating, disappointing, even disgusting things that happen.��

���In a sense,��� goes the full passage, ���people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them���Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.���

The conspiracy theorist in your Facebook feed. The politically radicalized family member. The angry stranger looking for an argument. Crazy people and crazy situations are opportunities to practice virtue. To show courage by standing firm in your principles. To demonstrate justice by treating them fairly despite their unfairness to you. To exercise temperance by controlling your emotions when they’re trying to provoke you.

To insist on what���s right. To fight for change where you can. To put your efforts where they make a positive difference.��

Is this easy? Of course not. That���s why I said it might be the hardest thing you���ll ever do.

We don’t control what other people do. We don���t control the news cycle or the political climate or the general level of sanity in the world.

What we control is ourselves. We control whether we let bad times turn us into bad people. We control whether we maintain our humanity when others are losing theirs. We control whether we carry the fire���as Cormac McCarthy would put it���or join in the darkness.

The winds may howl, but we must not be swept away.

The world may go mad, but we must remain sane.

This is our job. This is our proper occupation. This is the most important thing for these crazy times.

29 Lessons From 150 Million Podcast Downloads

In one of his most famous letters to Lucilius, Seneca gives a pretty simple prescription for the good life. ���Each day,��� he wrote, ���acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.���

One gain per day. That���s it. One quote, one prescription, one story.

George Washington���s favorite saying was ���many mickles make a muckle.��� It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Because, as the Stoics would say, it���s the little things that add up to wisdom and to virtue. What you read, who you study under, what you prioritize. Day to day, practiced over a lifetime, this is what creates greatness. This is what leads to a good life.

Obviously, that���s what I���m doing with my daily emails (���Daily Stoic,��� ���Daily Dad���), but it���s also just the way I try to live. Every time I listen to a podcast or record one myself, I try to walk away having grabbed at least one little thing.

Over the last several years, I���ve had the chance to spend thousands of hours interviewing people for The Daily Stoic Podcast (which ���you can subscribe to here��� and ���check out on YouTube here���). And with over 150 million downloads so far, the people I���ve gotten access to have been beyond my dreams. I am certainly better, smarter and wiser for the privilege.

So in today���s email, I wanted to share some of the absolute best things I have learned that I think are worth passing along���

This is the best way to grieve. During ���my conversation with Francis Ford Coppola���, he shared that he had just recently lost his wife of 60 years. In coping with her loss, he came across a Marcus Aurelius quote that lifted his spirits. If you lose a loved one, it said, honor them. ���My wife was very good,��� he explained. ���If someone was alone or sick or something, she’d call them up and be comforting to them. And I’m not like that, you know? So I started to do that. People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren, I call them up and say, Hey, how are you? And they are so pleased and so kind. And that���s how I keep my wife in my life.��� It was a wonderful conversation���seriously one of the best I���ve ever had���so ���if you haven���t checked it out, give it a listen here���.

Find your reps. Lacrosse legend Paul Rabil had a coach tell him that the key to making it in lacrosse was simple: take one hundred shots a day. The caveat? Holidays, bad weather, sickness���none of that can get in the way. ���You can���t miss a day,��� the coach said. And that���s what Paul did. Every single day from high school through his professional career���for twenty years. Everywhere he went, he found a wall to throw against, a goal to shoot on. One hundred shots a day, no exception.

I like that idea because it translates to almost everything in life. Whatever sport, business, or field you���re in: figure out what your reps are. Something you can commit to, every single day, that���s completely in your control. The key is: never miss a day. (���Listen to the full interview with Paul here���, and check out his book ���The Way of the Champion���.)

Be an ���everyday guy���. ���Buzz Williams���, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, brought up a similar point. He talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: ���Whatever it is that you���re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?��� he asks. ���If you���re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.���

Dress for success. Speaking of Buzz Williams���One of the benefits of being a writer is that I can dress how I want: tshirts, jeans, shorts, whatever. But when one of my favorite guests (Buzz) ���was coming out to record an episode���, I figured I���d dress up for him. Of course, Buzz showed up in basketball shorts and a tshirt. It made me laugh because in ���Discipline Is Destiny���, I have a chapter called ���Dress for Success���. In it, I wrote about General Zachary Taylor, a General who notoriously hated wearing a uniform. Yet when he met with a naval officer, Taylor dressed up to make his guest more comfortable. Meanwhile, the naval officer, in a gesture of respect for his peer’s humble style, came in civilian dress! It���s just a reminder that just because we don’t put much stock in superficial things doesn’t mean that other people’s impressions don’t matter. Presentation counts…and so do other people’s feelings. It���s good to keep this in mind in life. Anyway, you can see what I���m talking about by ���watching the interview on YouTube���.

Remind yourself what really matters. Grief and loss expert David Kessler has spent serious time with people on death���s door. One of the most impactful experiences he shared was when he was at the home of someone in the last few moments of their life. They were surrounded by friends and family and one of the friends asked if they wanted to see their new car, which was parked outside in the driveway. The dying person said no, they didn���t care to see the new car. ���How ridiculous was that concept all of a sudden?��� David Kessler said. ���You just realize everything that what we thought was going to make us happy and become how we identify ourselves just means nothing. It means nothing. What matters is the people, it���s the love, it���s everything else.��� ���This was a hard-hitting episode that everyone would benefit from listening to���.

Fall in love with the moment. Dr. Michael Gervais is the world���s leading performance psychologist. He says that the remedy to the anxieties of a new project, a growing to-do list, an uncertain future, is falling in love with the present moment. ������As opposed to being anxious, protective, trying to control stuff, can you just be in love with showing up and experiencing this moment?������ Too often, we refuse the gift of the moment in front of us. We dwell on what���s long behind us, or anxiously project ourselves into an imagined future���either yearning for it or dreading it. But if you care-take each moment, you���ll experience an instant lightness���a feeling you can have all the time if only you can get out of your head.

You���ll almost always be improved by this one thing. I wrote a whole book about slowing down (���Stillness Is The Key���), so when Cal Newport���s new book, ���Slow Productivity���, came out I was so excited to read it and talk with him about it ���(please read it, it���s so good���). One of the things ���we talked about in his episode��� is the importance of taking walks, not only for your mental and physical well-being, but because it actually stimulates productivity: ���The motor neurons involved in walking act as a dampener on neural noise (those distracting thoughts),��� he explains. ���When you���re sitting still, sometimes the problem is there���s not enough dampening going on in your brain so it becomes hard to sustain your focus. When you���re walking, it puts on some cognitive blinders and you���ll find it���s easier to hold your focus on an abstract idea.��� You can ���watch the whole clip of this part of our conversation here���.

Keep a physical practice. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to swim in some of the best pools in the world while on tour in Australia (by the way������I���ll be in London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver and Toronto in just a few weeks, so get tickets here���). I was reminded of ���a wonderful conversation I had with Bonnie Tsiu ���about her incredible book, ���Why We Swim���: ���We are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment���our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,��� she said. ���We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves���those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity���when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.��� It���s just another reminder that having a physical practice is essential to the creative life (���as I write about here���).

Nobody can ���make you��� upset. ���A reminder from Timm Chiusano��� for the next time you open your inbox to a nasty email, or you���re passed over for a promotion, or your co-worker throws you under the bus at the meeting: ���You���re complicit when somebody else says something and you���re like, ���I take offense to that��� or ���I���m so annoyed right now.��� If you���re able to actually accept that that is true, that you���re complicit in those situations, do you know how much stress that you���d relieve for yourself in corporate America on a day-in and day-out basis? It���s nuts. That���s like 90 percent lift of weight off your shoulders.���

You just have to accept it. ���Former U.S. Senator Martha McSally��� (and first American woman to command a fighter squadron in combat) on overcoming obstacles: ���Stop resisting what is. We spend a lot of energy resisting what is, whether we don���t like our boss or the relationship we���re in, and we really want other people to change. If we can accept what is, then you can address what is, then you can address the things that are in your control to actually create the life you want, the relationship you want, the situation you want.���

Have fewer of these. I���m an adamant proponent of having less opinions. ���I���ve talked about it��� and written about it for ���Daily Stoic��� and ���Daily Dad���. I really liked the way ���Renee DiResta frames it��� in the context of getting angry at something online: ���You don���t actually have to do anything. You can let it go by. What an incredible experience it is to let someone be wrong on the internet without weighing in on it.���

Be YOU. ���Rainn Wilson shared a story��� of a painful period when he was trying to be someone he wasn���t. It was 1995 and he was cast in his first Broadway play. In his head, he had this preconceived notion of a Broadway actor: very professional, very serious, very matter-of-fact. Rainn tried to be that person. ���And guess what? I sucked,��� he said. Night after night, for the entirety of the six-month broadway run, ���I sucked. And it was a miserable six months. There���s nothing worse than knowing what you are doing is terrible���And when I finished the play, I said, Never again. Never again am I going to do that. I���m going to find my authentic voice as an actor. I���m quirky, I���m kind of weird���I���m going to embrace that. I���m not going to try to be something to please someone else. I gotta be me. And I really just changed how I was as an actor at that point.���

Not long after he made the decision to embrace being himself, Rainn landed not only the biggest role of his career, but what would prove to be one of the most iconic characters in the history of television: Dwight in The Office. ���I never would have gotten Dwight had I not gone through the suffering on that play. Because getting Dwight was embracing my nerdy weirdness. If I hadn���t totally embraced that, I wouldn���t have gotten the role of Dwight.���

When we are ourselves, we have value. ���Gary Vee said something similar to this���: ���The people that really lean into themselves, like really don’t try to put other things on a pedestal, other people, other opinions and just get really comfortable with the purest form of them? Yeah. Those are the people that have impact, because that’s where the uniqueness���the way you say things, the analogies, the stories, the interpretations, the subtle observations that are unique to you���come out.��� No one has ever been like you before. No one will ever be like you again. So why would you copy other people? Why would you try to be like someone else? That���s where the fun is (you don���t have to fake anything). That���s where the value is (when we are like everyone else, we are replaceable���by definition). You should be you. That’s your monopoly. That���s your edge.

Be careful who you admire. ���A good chunk of these people are just maniacs,��� ���Morgan Housel pointed out on the podcast���. ���They���re either fundamentally broken or wounded in some way, or their success is a byproduct of some profound dysfunction.��� The most glaring example, he says, is Elon Musk. ���He���s achieved some of the greatest success of any entrepreneur, but the same personality traits that got him there are the traits that lead him to do things people hate.��� Fighting with random trolls online, getting into spats with journalists and politicians, that���s the same person we glorify for his genius. ���Bill Gates was the same. Walt Disney was the same. Steve Jobs was the same. They’re all maniacs at their core. That’s why they were successful.���

You���re stronger than you think. I was thrilled to have Dr. Becky Kennedy on the podcast because her work has impacted me in innumerable ways. If you haven���t read her book, ���Good Inside���, yet���what are you doing?! ���We had an incredible conversation that every parent���or really just any human���needs to listen to���. In the episode, she says that anxiety is ���some amount of uncertainty coupled with our underestimation of our ability to cope.��� It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes: “Remind yourself what you’ve been through and what you’ve had the strength to endure.”

Get clear on what you want. ���Productivity expert Ali Adbaal��� consolidated 90% of the world���s productivity advice into three points: ���Number one is figure out where you actually want to go. Number two is to convert all of those goals into words. So if you’re trying to write a book, your goal could be to write 500 words a day. And three is to just put it into your calendar and hold yourself accountable.���

Amateurs love tools. To that note, ���we also talked about how amateurs are obsessed with tools���, but the only thing that���s actually going to get you anywhere is sitting down and doing the work. You can have the best software in the game, but if you���re not willing to do the thing you���re trying to do, day in and day out, you���re never going to get anything done.

More on thoughts of tech tools������I asked Robert Greene what he thought about Artificial Intelligence���. He said: ���I study a lot of languages. That was sort of my major in college. I think back to the moment when I was 19-years-old and at Berkeley. I remember they gave us a passage of Thucydides, the hardest writer of all to read in ancient Greek. So I had this one paragraph and I must have spent ten hours trying to translate it. Finally, I think I have the answer, so I turned it in to my professor and he said, ���Robert, you were almost there, but you missed it. You completely mistranslated this beautiful paragraph. But,��� he said, ���you were getting at something.��� And that had an incredible impact on me. Even to this day, it has developed character, patience, and discipline. You’ve got kids nowadays who are never going to have that experience. These incredible skills that the brain has are going to be atrophying, I fear. The brain is so much more interesting to me than any piece of technology. That’s what we should be worshiping, not these little toys that we create.���

Show, don���t tell. ���Austin Kleon��� on parenting���: ���You have to be the kind of man that you want them to be. You have to become the kind of human being that you want them to become.��� ���Marcus Aurelius��� was talking about being a human being: ���Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.���

Build the damn frog float. Early in his Seal training, ���Admiral McRaven��� was called to meet with his commanding officer. Thinking he was about to be sent on a mission, he rushed to the office. When he got there, the chief officer asked him to build a frog float for a local parade.

It was in his disappointment that he was given the best advice he���s ever received: ���I bet you thought you were going to be jumping out of airplanes, blowing things up and saving the world!��� Senior Seal Herschel Davis said to him later that day. ���Let me tell you something, I���ve been in this canoe for thirty years. If the skipper wants you to build the frog float, then you build the best damn frog float you can.���

���Ryan,��� ���McRaven said after retelling this story.��� ���We all get these jobs that we believe are beneath our status. But if you take the job on and you do it well, one: people will think you are good enough to do the bigger job. But I also think you have a responsibility when someone gives you a job, to do it the best you can. Throughout the course of my career, I had to build a lot of frog floats.���

The important thing is not to be afraid. I���ve talked to a couple professional baseball players on ���the podcast��� (���James Outman���, ������Ian Happ������, ������Scott Oberg���) as well as professional basketball players and coaches (������George Raveling���, ���Chris Bosh������, ������Cuttino Mobley������) and entrepreneurs (������Tim Ferriss������, ������Rob Dyrdek������). One thing they���ll all tell you is that a person who is afraid to strike out, afraid to miss, afraid to fail is a person who will not succeed.

Focus on the effort, not the outcome. Speaking of Ian Happ������he shared the story��� about the time he got sent back to the minor leagues after a great rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017. The reason? He was too worried about the things he couldn���t control: ���When you worry about the things that might get you put on the bench, the end result of that is always, you do the things that get you put on the bench,��� he explains. ���Instead of wondering why or trying really hard to impress a coach or the people who make the decisions, I said, ���you know what? I���m going to believe in myself, put in the work, and at some point, they���re not going to be able to keep me out of the lineup.��� This mindset got him back into the Cubs��� lineup with a breakout season, and ultimately landed him on first MLB All-Star team. It was only when he cared more about what he was doing (and less about what others were thinking) that he was able to really perfect his game.

Guard your time. ���The novelist Philipp Meyer��� (whose book ������The Son������ is an incredible read) ���said���, ���You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you���re giving the best part of your day.���

Tempus fugit (time flies). ���Professor Scott Galloway told me��� about the profound grief he felt looking at a picture of his 11-year-old, who was now a great 14-year-old. The 11-year-old, Galloway realized, was gone for good. Every parent���s deepest fear is losing their child. And the terrible, beautiful tragedy of parenthood is that, indeed, we are constantly losing our children. Day, by day, by day. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they are constantly growing, changing, becoming someone different. On a daily, if not an hourly, basis.

Forget about competition. One of the things that fascinates me about Tim Ferriss is his ability to spot something before anyone else. ���He explained this philosophy on the podcast���: ���When I find an area that is crowded or competitive, I look at that as an opportunity to find something that is uncrowded. Podcasting has become incredibly competitive, so instead of trying to fight for space, I���d start to look for what���s neglected.��� Not only does this help to limit comparison, it���s also a brilliant business strategy (there is a wonderful book on this called ���Blue Ocean Strategy���).

There���s no such thing as being ���self-made���. On the surface, Arnold Schwarzenegger���s life story is a classic example of that idea of the ���self-made man.��� Born and raised in a small village in Austria, seemingly on his own sheer will and determination, Arnold achieved extraordinary success in the worlds of bodybuilding, acting, business and politics, ultimately becoming a global icon. ���But, he told me,��� he didn���t do it on his own. ���I have been a creation of hundreds of people,��� he said. ���Thousands of people. It���s unbelievable the amount of people that helped me and pushed me,��� he said. This is true for all of us, we are all the sum of our surroundings, the products of our influences, our environments, our family and friends. Success is a collaborative effort. Doesn���t that make it more wonderful? ���This was one of the craziest episodes I���ve ever filmed (I flew to LA to record it). If you���re going to tune into this episode, definitely watch the video here���.

The Obstacle Is the Way. After running 100 miles in less than 24 hours, ���Nate Boyer told me���, ���the worst part was the expansive flat portions without the ups and downs ��� there might be a life lesson in that.���

Exercise this muscle. The mental performance coach ���Greg Harden������ worked with Tom Brady and Michael Phelps, (among countless other top performers) had a great line: in the way that the ability to quickly recover after a workout is an indicator of physical fitness, ���People who are mentally fit recover faster than the average person.���

This is life. In 2017, ���I interviewed the writer and Southern Stoic, Peter Lawler���. He passed away a short while after. We had the great ���Paul Woodruff on the podcast to talk about his love of Marcus Aurelius���, and we didn���t even know that he was dying of bronchiectasis. Just last year, ���we interviewed the indelible Dr. Sue Johnson���, who wrote the must-read ���Hold Me Tight���, and she sadly passed away this April. ���Greg Harden came out to the podcast last year, too���. Just a little over one week ago, he passed away.

���The Daily Stoic Podcast��� hasn���t been around that long, but guests whose work has had an enormous impact are gone, already receding into memory. This is a great Stoic reminder. None of us last forever, none of us are invincible, none of us are exempt from death.

We have to notice this. We have to think about this. Because we can���t stop death from happening. We���re all marked souls, living on borrowed time. Let���s not waste what time we have left.

Everything I Learned From Iron Maiden About Life

What does Iron Maiden have to do with Stoic philosophy?

Nothing really, but this is my newsletter and it���s what I want to talk about.

I���ve been an Iron Maiden fan since I was a kid (more about how I found them below). I���ve seen them live in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Austin and San Antonio (2x). If you���ve ever seen me on a podcast or in a ���Daily Stoic video���, if you’ve come to ���one of my talks��� or bumped into me in person���there���s a very good chance you saw me in an ���Iron Maiden t-shirt���. I even wrote about them in my book ���Perennial Seller���.

But mostly, what inspired this piece is that I am taking my 8-year-old to see them later this month���exactly twenty years after I went to my first Iron Maiden concert.

So what have I learned in two decades of an unhealthy fandom of a British heavy metal band?

A lot.

Let me tell you.

Know what business you���re in. There is a story about the manager of Iron Maiden, Rod Smallwood, who has worked with the band since 1979. He is at a dinner honoring the group. A young agent comes up to him and says how much he admires his skillful work in the industry. The manager looks at him and says, ���HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I���m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.��� The publishing industry? The retail business? These are not the businesses I am in���just like you���re not in the coffee industry or B2B. No, you���re in the business of you. You���re in the business of serving your customers in your city with your unique offering. The trends of the bull or bear market? It doesn���t matter, just as the trendiness (or lack of trendiness) of heavy metal hasn���t mattered to Iron Maiden. What matters is their relationship with their fans. That���s who they are in service of. That���s the job. And so it goes for all of us, whatever we do.

Develop range. Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has incredible range. I don���t mean his voice (though it���s very impressive). I mean that he has done more than just sing in a band that���s sold millions of records. He���s done more than have a decent solo career. He wrote a couple of popular children���s novels. He became an Olympic-level fencer (seriously, nearly making the British Olympic team). Oh, and then he learned how to fly planes���like really big ones. Here���s a picture of the Iron Maiden plane���which he flies after the band performs, taking the group to their next gig.

That is preposterous! The only thing more ridiculous is that for many years he also worked for Astraeus Airlines and ���once airlifted British tourists stranded in Egypt���. It���s one thing to master one skill, but to master a couple different domains? That’s hard. But it pays off. Because we learn skills and are introduced to new ideas that we can bring back to our main thing (a bunch of the best Iron Maiden songs are about flying���and swords). A book recommendation in this regard is David Epstein���s book, ���Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World���.

Create spectacles. The ���Ed Force One,��� as they call the Iron Maiden plane, is not just a mode of transportation���it’s a flying billboard, a conversation starter, a part of the Maiden mythology. Wherever it lands, it captures attention, sparks curiosity, and draws people into their world. Are there cheaper, more efficient ways to travel on tour? Probably. But that���s not the point.

I always think about spectacles (albeit on a much smaller scale). When we were setting up ���The Painted Porch���, that blend of function and spectacle inspired one of the best decisions we made���making ���our book tower���. It���s 20 feet tall and made of some 2,000 books, 4,000 nails, and 40 gallons of glue. It was not cheap to do. It was not easy. It took forever. We had to solve all sorts of logistical problems to make it work. But it���s also probably one of the single best marketing and business decisions we made in the whole store. Because it���s the number one thing people come into the store to take pictures of.

Focus on what���s in your control. Ok, maybe there is one Stoic lesson. As you know, the core of Stoic philosophy is focusing on what���s in your control. It���s about ignoring what other people do and say and putting that energy into what you do and say. Bruce Dickinson explained Iron Maiden���s philosophy: ���We have our field and we���ve got to plough it and that���s it. What���s going on in the next field is of no interest to us; we can only plough one field at a time.��� Do you���you���re the only one who can. It hasn���t always been easy, but I���ve tried to remind myself that it doesn���t matter how many books other people sell. It doesn���t matter what anyone else is doing. I���m writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. It has its own ceiling and its own floor. I���m comfortable with that.

Success and fame are byproducts. It���s fair to say that Iron Maiden is a cult act rather than a mainstream act. And yet, it���s a very big cult. They���ve sold millions of records. ���Here���s a video of them performing in front of 250,000 people���. The point is: The band is famous. But what is fame? Marcus Aurelius would say that it���s nothing���the clapping of hands and the clacking of tongues. Actually, Bruce Dickinson has a better quote, I think, because unlike an emperor, their fame was slightly more meritocratic. ���Fame is the excrement of creativity,��� Dickinson once said, ���it���s the shit that comes out the back end, it���s a by-product of it.��� So yeah, chasing fame is not only not really worth it, but you don���t get it by chasing it either. An audience, a reputation, fame, these are ���lagging indicators��� of years of making stuff that people like and get to know you through. It���s the byproduct of doing the work.

Build a resilient career. As a British heavy metal act, there���s naturally a bunch of Churchill cameos in their work. It���s fitting because Maiden���s career bears some resemblance to Churchill���s approach to building a resilient career. In ���Perennial Seller���, I tell the story of how Churchill maintained influence even when exiled from politics in 1931. Unlike an ordinary politician, who would have been powerless when voted out of office, Churchill had something more valuable than office���a platform. Between 1931 and 1939, during his so-called political wilderness, he published 11 books, 400+ articles, and delivered more than 350 speeches. The result of this was an enormous worldwide platform that allowed him not only to survive financially but wield influence that kept him relevant and guided policy and opinion across the globe. This is not unlike Iron Maiden, whose platform transcends the typical constraints of the music industry. Instead of relying on album sales or radio play, they created a multi-faceted empire: elaborate stage shows, their iconic mascot Eddie, comic books, video games, and even their own beer. It���s what���s solidified them as a perennial force in the music industry, enabling them to endure fads and technological shifts. Of course, it���s meant financial success, but what���s even more impressive is that their platform frees them to communicate to their fans without interference from intermediaries and allows them to create work on their own terms.

Respect the boundaries. What���s interesting is that despite all Bruce���s range and all the decades Iron Maiden has made music, there���s not a huge difference between their first album and their most recent, Senjutsu. Basically���and this includes the different lead singers���Iron Maiden has been following the same formula on all their albums for the last 49 years. I don���t think that���s an insulting thing to say���it���s no small feat. It���s also something they���ve done on purpose. As Bruce has explained,

���There is an unspoken contract between the band and the audience. If you���re David Bowie and your fans want you to change every album then that’s his style. With Maiden, that���s not our style, fans like us to play something that’s identifiable; they want to see nuances of change but they���re happy with Maiden. Maiden���s music appeals to a certain person and in every generation there’s a certain amount of those people born, that’s why Maiden’s appeal is finite in terms of the number of records we sell in the short term.���

I know what my audience expects from me. I don���t find that constraining, it���s actually liberating. One of the Stoics, Cleanthes, would talk about how the ���fetters��� of poetry actually unlock creativity���I think that���s true. You establish a contract with your audience, an expectation of the medium, and you have to deliver on that. The freedom is in the how.

What matters is that it���s interesting to you. On some level, Iron Maiden���s songs are absurd. Music is supposed to be about stuff that people relate to���falling in love, growing up, partying, having fun. Iron Maiden writes 10-minute songs about literature and history. They have songs inspired by Coleridge poems, science fiction novels, historical figures like Genghis Khan and Alexander The Great. They���ve got a song about Passchendaele (one of the most horrific battles of the First World War) songs about D-Day and the Crimean War. Steve Harris, who writes most of the band���s songs, clearly loves to read. Which is the point���he finds these things very interesting. And as a result, they become very interesting to the audience. Again, on the surface, an obscure school of ancient philosophy should be pretty boring. My publisher and most of my friends suspected it would be���but my passion for it was contagious.

Build on greatness. They don���t just write songs about ancient history. They���ve got songs based on lines from Shakespeare, the ���epic novels of Frank Herbert��� and the myth of Icarus. It���s very hard to do better than Tennyson or Coleridge (a poem of whose Iron Maiden has a 14-minute song about), so don���t fight it. Or what about Aces High, for which the music video opens with Churchill���s greatest speech? Iron Maiden is very good at incorporating great works of art into their art. Never underestimate the power of repackaging something timeless and old. In my teens, I discovered so much stuff through Iron Maiden. None of my teachers read us ���The Charge of the Light Brigade������I heard it from Iron Maiden (my son can recite a big chunk of the poem now). I read ���Brave New World��� because they have an album based on the book. I���ve taken a lot of joy out of paying that process forward in my own books, finding stuff that I love, that I think is great and introducing people to it.

Make it a universe of true fans. There is a theory put forward by Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine. He calls it 1,000 True Fans: ���A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author���in other words, anyone producing works of art���needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.��� Iron Maiden is this idea on a massive scale. Somebody once joked that Iron Maiden has sold more t-shirts than albums. If that���s true, it���s no small feat (the band has sold over 130 million albums) and not exactly a bad thing (you make more money on merch than music). But I think that���s why I���ve always liked the band. It���s not just music but a whole universe of art and imagery and themes. There���s even a phrase that the fans say to let each other know their identity: Up the Irons! This is something I thought a lot about with ���Daily Stoic���. I don���t just ���write books���, but I have ���designed��� and ���made things��� that continue that experience in many ���different mediums���. It can���t be, as Lady Gaga warned, ���Thanks for buying my record, fuck you.��� It should be, ���Oh, you liked what I did? Here���s a bunch of other cool stuff that I designed for people just like you.��� Don���t stop at the surface with what you���re building���make it a world. Better yet, make it a universe of hard-core, true fans.

Backstage of the Tamron Hall Show

Find ways to spread. When I was on ���Jocko���s podcast last year���, he asked me how I became an Iron Maiden fan. ���As I explained���, I was trying to illegally download a Metallica album and ended up with an Iron Maiden album. But then again, how else was I going to discover them? It had been years since they were on regular rotation on MTV and unlike Metallica, rarely got radio play. Solving the problem of discovery is the thing all arts and companies have to figure out. Sometimes traditional avenues are open, but often they are not���or they are very clogged. When Iron Maiden sells out a stadium in Brazil or Colombia or India, how do you think most of those fans heard about them? In a lot of cases, it was via bootlegs. It was YouTube. The same is true for writers. Obviously, piracy is not ideal. It would be better if everything was legitimate and affordable. But that���s not the case. If you want to maintain relevance and sustain an audience, you have to embrace these other channels. You can���t sweat every YouTube upload or every time someone rips you off. In fact, you can appreciate that what it���s doing is adding to the universe you���ve created. There���s a reason I give away the vast majority of stuff that I make���I want to find its way to people, I want the barriers of entry, of discovery, to be as low as possible. You never know what kind of journey you might kick off for someone who comes across your stuff.

Play the long game. Iron Maiden has been at it for nearly 50 years and counting! They���re playing the long game, defying every stereotype in the music business. 17 studio albums, 14 live albums, 2,000 concerts in 59 countries, over 130 million albums sold. They performed for 250,000 people as the headliners of the Rock in Rio festival���26 years after the band formed. This empire wasn’t built on one hit album or a viral single. It���s the result of applying a perennial seller mindset to everything they do. It���s easy to chase quick wins, but Maiden reminds us that real magic happens when you zoom out. When I first started listening to Iron Maiden, I remember reading that they had sold something like 50 million albums. That was a lot then, but what���s amazing is that twenty years later, that number has almost tripled. Do you know how insane it is to sell that many records these days? But that���s the thing���time and momentum are incredibly powerful forces. In the beginning, small efforts might seem insignificant. But they accumulate and compound over time. Whether it’s a decades-spanning discography, a business, a career or an anthill, impressive outcomes start with humble beginnings.

The more the merrier. In 1990, Adrian Smith, one of the band’s best guitarists, left the band. He was ably replaced by Janick Gers for 9 years, until Adrian asked to rejoin the band. There is something special about original lineups so you might expect that Gers left the band, but nope. The band just switched to having three guitarists! And why not? It just means more guitar solos for everyone! Is there an applicable lesson here? I dunno, I���ve just always liked it.

My Iron Maiden Christmas sweater

Just keep going. How has Iron Maiden lasted through the years? It wasn���t just by making great work���it was by making a lot of it over and over again. Some of Iron Maiden���s greatest songs are on ���Brave New World��� (released 25 years after the band was formed) or ���Dance of Death��� (released 28 years in). It���s easy to be intimidated by success, or to be made complacent by it or to give in to the fan���s reverence for the past. But it���s better for you and your art to put those feelings aside, to keep trucking along, to keep making stuff. When I first heard Iron Maiden in 2001, they had already been going for 26 years at that point. And they���re still going! Every time I see tour dates, I get nervous and tell myself, I should probably catch them one more time. That���s what I did on this tour and then you know what I saw? They announced another tour for 2025. But that���s the thing when you make great, perennial work���it creates momentum for you to keep going. Not only that, it means it will live on well after you stop.

I���m nearly two decades into my career. Sometimes I get tired, but that���s when I remind myself that I have a lot further to go, that I���ve got a lot more in me. Just keep going. Maiden taught me that.

Iron Maiden shoes backstage of The Daily Show

This Is Why I Don’t Have Goals (And What To Do Instead)

I don’t have goals.

I know that might seem a little crazy, but it’s true. I don’t.

There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to write. There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to sell. I don’t have a “number” that I’m trying to hit financially. There’s not a certain number of downloads I’m trying to get ​my podcast​ to or followers I want to reach.

I run every day, but I’m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (​as we talked about recently​) and bike, too, but it’s not because I want to do an Iron Man.

That’s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write—to me that is the win.

I don’t fault other people for having goals—if that’s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team—this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them.

They’re just not for me.

I’m much more focused on process.

That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing.

Why?

It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics.

Most goals are rooted in an external result that’s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That’s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That’s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That’s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world—these depend on what your competitors do.

The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down.

Over the years, I’ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ‘success’ might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like “Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List” or “Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]” or “Success is selling one million copies,” I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen “two million books” as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He’d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do).

Second, I am struck by what they didn’t say. They didn’t say “Success is making something amazing that really helps people” or “Success is creating something that I’m deeply proud of”. All they’re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they’re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you’re capable of—you definitely should. It’s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what’s working for someone else. Not in setting a “big hairy audacious goal” as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven.

It comes from loving the process, not from thirst.

When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (​listen here​), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: “Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?” he asks. “If you’re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.”

I’d say when you remove goals, that’s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day?

In ​Discipline Is Destiny​, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,” Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, “so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.”

I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. “Strive to be internally driven,” Altman said. “Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if you ‘win’, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is be the best possible version you can—there’s no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.”

And Sam has done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he?

In a way, I think getting rid of goals is actually more ambitious.

Goals, by their nature, are finite and fleeting. Once you achieve them, what then? You might experience a brief moment of pleasure and satisfaction, but soon, you’re left with two choices: either stop doing the thing altogether, having reached your destination, or realize that there is no destination, that you keep going and going and going.

You just keep looking for new ways to challenge yourself, new ways to do things, going towards the harder way, as ​we talked about a couple of weeks ago​. You just keep showing up and getting better, wherever that leads.

This not only keeps things interesting, but it insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes, ego, self-doubt, and misfortune. It’s not that you don’t care about results—it’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your successes don’t go to your head because you know you’re capable of more. Your failures don’t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

You don’t control what happens to you, what adversity gets placed in your path, but you always control whether you show up every day and give your best or not. No one can stop you from that.

You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, winning is not particularly important. What matters is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.

Immerse yourself in the work, in the process, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life.

Forget goals.

Be process-oriented.

Be internally driven.

Be Every Day.

This Is Why I Don���t Have Goals (And What To Do Instead)

I don���t have goals.

I know that might seem a little crazy, but it���s true. I don���t.

There���s not a certain amount of books I���m trying to write. There���s not a certain amount of books I���m trying to sell. I don���t have a ���number��� that I���m trying to hit financially. There���s not a certain number of downloads I���m trying to get ���my podcast��� to or followers I want to reach.

I run every day, but I���m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (���as we talked about recently���) and bike, too, but it���s not because I want to do an Iron Man.

That���s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write���to me that is the win.

I don���t fault other people for having goals���if that���s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team���this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them.

They���re just not for me.

I���m much more focused on process.

That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing.

Why?

It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics.

Most goals are rooted in an external result that���s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That���s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That���s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That���s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world���these depend on what your competitors do.

The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down.

Over the years, I���ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ���success��� might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like ���Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List��� or ���Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]��� or ���Success is selling one million copies,��� I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen ���two million books��� as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He���d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do).

Second, I am struck by what they didn���t say. They didn���t say ���Success is making something amazing that really helps people��� or ���Success is creating something that I���m deeply proud of���. All they���re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they���re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities.

I���m not saying you shouldn���t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you���re capable of���you definitely should. It���s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what���s working for someone else. Not in setting a ���big hairy audacious goal��� as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven.

It comes from loving the process, not from thirst.

When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (���listen here���), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: ���Whatever it is that you���re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?��� he asks. ���If you���re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.���

I���d say when you remove goals, that���s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day?

In ���Discipline Is Destiny���, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. ���Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,��� Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, ���so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.���

I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. ���Strive to be internally driven,��� Altman said. ���Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if you ���win���, you lose. But if you���re competing with yourself, and all you���re trying to do is be the best possible version you can���there���s no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.���

And Sam has done pretty well for himself, hasn���t he?

In a way, I think getting rid of goals is actually more ambitious.

Goals, by their nature, are finite and fleeting. Once you achieve them, what then? You might experience a brief moment of pleasure and satisfaction, but soon, you���re left with two choices: either stop doing the thing altogether, having reached your destination, or realize that there is no destination, that you keep going and going and going.

You just keep looking for new ways to challenge yourself, new ways to do things, going towards the harder way, as ���we talked about a couple of weeks ago���. You just keep showing up and getting better, wherever that leads.

This not only keeps things interesting, but it insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes, ego, self-doubt, and misfortune. It’s not that you don’t care about results���it’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your successes don���t go to your head because you know you���re capable of more. Your failures don���t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

You don���t control what happens to you, what adversity gets placed in your path, but you always control whether you show up every day and give your best or not. No one can stop you from that.

You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, winning is not particularly important. What matters is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.

Immerse yourself in the work, in the process, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life.

Forget goals.

Be process-oriented.

Be internally driven.

Be Every Day.

The Hobby That Changed My Life

Some people travel for the food.

Others for the nightlife.

Some travel for work.

Others travel to get away.

I travel for the swimming.

I mean that���s not really why I travel���I���m usually on the road because I���m giving a talk or I have a meeting���but if I am on the road, what I am looking for is somewhere to swim.

Believe it or not, I actually planned the ���Stillness Is The Key��� book tour around cities that had cool athletic club pools. In 2019, I swam at the ���Olympic Club in San Francisco���, the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, the basement pool at the University Club in DC (I prefer the William H. Rumsey Natatorium near the Library of Congress), the New York Athletic Club overlooking Central Park and the Denver Athletic Club, too.

I once accepted an offer from my Dutch publisher to speak in Amsterdam on the condition that they show me a good time while I was there. And by that I meant, to their surprise, that they’d find me a cool swimming pool. (I am in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Dublin and Rotterdam in November. ���You can get tickets here������or give me some swimming recommendations).

It was Robert Greene who first got me hooked in 2007. I grew up on swim teams but had fallen out of the habit in favor of running. When I started working in Downtown Los Angeles for American Apparel, he told me to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club because it has one of the greatest swimming pools in the country. It���s one of the oldest athletic clubs in the country (1888!) and the pool they built in 1912 is an engineering marvel���8 feet deep, six stories off the streets below, beneath a glass atrium and chandelier you���ve seen in a million movies and never known where it was from.

But the real secret, he told me, was their reciprocal benefits. I will never in my life be able to afford (let alone be invited) to join the New York Athletic Club���but for like $100 a month, my membership to the Los Angeles Athletic Club got me in the door. (To be clear, it���s a back door���they make us plebes use a special staircase so as not to touch the regular members).

Swimming laps at the Los Angeles Athletic Club

It was also Robert who told me that the ocean rock pools in Sydney were bucket-list-level good more than 10 years ago. I was blown away on my first trip there in 2013���I think I accepted the speaking gig just to have an excuse to go. This summer, I brought my family for my two talks in Sydney and Melbourne and crossed a bunch off my list.

I���d already done Icebergs and Bronte and Clovelly but this time I also squeezed in South Curl and North Curl, Manly, as well as a short swim at Cook and Philip Park and the Melbourne Public Baths.

Over the years and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, I���ve seen some amazing pools and ponds and swimming holes and lakes. Hampstead Heath. Balmorhea. Yrj��nkatu in Helsinki (where you have to swim naked). The Biltmore in Downtown LA. Gellert in Budapest. Sydney���s Olympic Pool. Badeschiff (a pool floating in the River Spree). The saltwater pool at the New Orleans Athletic Club. The Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Swimming against the current and the billowing Texas rice plants in the San Marcos River. ���Slide Rock in Sedona���. ���Lake Tahoe���. ���The Blue Hole in New Mexico���. Jacob���s Well. And countless streams and oceans and bays and hotel pools and public parks.

But why? What���s so special about swimming?

Sure, it���s low-impact whole-body exercise and it���s good for you to be active, but I consider all that as a bonus.

What I love about swimming is that it���s one of the few places on Earth where screens can���t reach you. My phone doesn���t ring. My eyes can���t wander to the big TV playing CNN or CNBC the way they do at the gym. My eyes can���t wander at all actually, they stay locked at the bottom of the pool or the pond, ���prisoner of the black line��� to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. It���s just the rhythm of kick, stroke, breath over and over ahead in a kind of wonderful, active meditation.

I forget whether it was at the 24 Hour Fitness off 35th or the YMCA off Town Lake in Austin, but someone came up to me once and said they were reading my book ���Ego is the Enemy���. I said thank you and laughed, telling them that I���d written a good chunk of the book in that very pool. They were surprised but it���s true, just like when I run, I���m amazed at the words that pop into my head when I have gotten up and left the computer to do something other than writing. And because I can���t immediately write it down, I have to run the phrases or the idea through over and over again���often forgetting my lap count in the process.

Oh well, I guess I���ll just have to keep swimming.

It���s not the only problem I���ve solved in the pool. I���ve had investment ideas. I���ve planned difficult conversations. I���ve gotten over grudges. I���ve calmed down. I���ve gotten much-needed space.

I remember waking up early one morning in Los Angeles, while on the book tour for ���Stillness Is The Key���. It was the day I was supposed to find out whether I���d hit the bestseller lists���or not. Glancing at the home screen of my phone, I could see there were texts from my agent and from my editor. I knew they could either be congratulations or condolences, but instead of checking, I took the elevator down to the 6th floor and swam for a mile. It was just another ordinary, rewarding swim.

I came back to the room and found out that not only had I hit the New York Times Bestseller list for the first time, but I���d debuted at #1. It was wonderful news but I was prouder of that little act of discipline that preceded it���ignoring the phone, insisting on that stillness. And if I hadn���t hit the list? I���d have been glad for the wonderful morning swim all the same, glad that I hadn���t ruined it.

It���s fitting, too, because I wrote in ���Stillness Is The Key��� that there are few better ways to settle yourself in the present moment���to wash away the distractions and the noise and the troubles of everyday life���than through being in or around water. More specifically, natural water. There���s just something about it. The sight of it contrasted against the environment it���s in. The sound of it. The feel of it closing in on you once you finally take the plunge.

Sometimes I think that half the victory of swimming is just that���the initial jump or dive in. The payoff is different depending on the season. In the summer, Barton Springs in Austin is a welcome relief against the heat. But in the winter���Robert and I once went on a snowy Austin morning a few hours before I got married���the reward is different. The aliveness creeps back into your body as you shiver to get warm, invigorated by doing something so crazy.

It was actually that abrupt entrance into a cold body of water that drew Seneca back to the Tiber River year after year. A self-proclaimed ���cold-water enthusiast���, Seneca ���celebrated each new year by taking a plunge into the canal.” Seneca couldn���t have known any of the since-proven health benefits of a cold plunge. He wasn���t competing or on a swim team. He wasn���t going down to the canal to literally clean himself, but he was starting the year clean. Even better, he was starting it with a challenge.

Water played a big role in Marcus Aurelius��� life, too. He liked to spend time in the many bath houses across the Roman Empire, where he���d wash off the dust of everyday life. In Budapest, you can still sit in baths that draw from the same thermal pools that Marcus would have used.

In her incredible book, ���Why We Swim���, Bonnie Tsui discusses the human inclination toward water and uncovers the deeper instincts that pull us to it. When Bonnie came on The Daily Stoic Podcast (it���s one of my favorite episodes, ���you should definitely give it a listen���), I asked her to share a discovery she made while writing the book that stood out to her, even as a lifelong swimmer and water enthusiast. ���I loved learning about how we are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment���that our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,��� she said. ���We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves���those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity���when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.���

For all of these reasons, swimming has been a predominantly solitary practice for most of my life. But as I���ve gotten older and have a family of my own, it���s become something we all do together. In the last month alone, we���ve done the Blue Hole in Georgetown, Landa Park in New Braunfels, Barton Springs, Deep Eddy, and Krause Springs. At first, the kids are hesitant to jump in, maybe a little intimidated by a rope swing or a diving board. The same goes for us as parents, only the night before. How will the day go? Will it be a disaster? Isn���t there a bunch to pack up?

But after they, after we, work up the courage and do it? Well, you���re always glad you did.

I guess that���s the real message of this post���to pass along the wonderful habit that Robert Greene gave to me all those years ago. It made my life better and I bet it will make yours better, too.

Please Don’t Do This To Yourself

It wasn���t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.

Around the time I was finishing ���Ego is the Enemy���, I ran into a wall.

I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I had started at went bust, too.

These people who said they ���saw themselves in me��� turned out to be people they didn���t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something ���I wrote about recently���). To say I was burned out was an understatement.

I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn���t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.

I ended up telling this story at the beginning of ���Ego is the Enemy���, but it���s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Some not-so-fun conversations with my future wife (I���m sure they were not fun for her either, but anyway, I was the one on the receiving end of the hard truths).

Basically, like a lot of people, I had worked myself pretty close to the edge. I���m lucky in that I didn���t quite go over the side.

This is why I don���t like a lot of the hustle porn and grind culture that entrepreneurs and influencers try to sell young people. It���s not healthy. In private, it���s not glamorous. It doesn���t lead to anyone���s best work. In fact, it usually prevents people from doing their best work.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, brought much-needed order and routine to the life of his queen. He streamlined processes and took up a share of the burdens that had previously fallen on Victoria alone. Indeed, many of the so-called Victorian traits of the era originated with him. He was disciplined, fastidious, ambitious, old school.

Under his pressing, their schedule became one meeting, dispatch, and social obligation after another. Albert was almost constantly busy, working so much that he occasionally vomited from stress. Never shirking a responsibility or an opportunity, he took on every bit of power his wife was willing to share. In turn, they seized every formal and informal bit of influence the monarchy had in the British Empire at that time. They were a pair of workaholics and proud of it.

As Albert wrote to an advisor, he spent hours a day reading newspapers in German, French, and English. ���One can let nothing pass,��� he said, ���without losing the connection and coming in consequence to wrong conclusions.��� He was right, the stakes were certainly high. His expert understanding of the international situation helped Britain avoid being drawn into the U.S. Civil War.

But the truth was, Albert threw himself equally hard into projects of much less importance. Organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, a nearly six-month-long carnival that showed off the wonders of the British Empire, consumed years of his life. A few days before it opened, he wrote to his stepmother, ���I am more dead than alive from overwork.��� It was, to be certain, a beautiful and memorable event, but his health never recovered.

He and his wife knew no moderation and had little fun. ���I go on working at my treadmill, as life seems to me,��� Albert said in 1861. It���s not a bad description of the exhausting and repetitive life he and Victoria led. Starting in 1840, Victoria bore nine children in seventeen years, four of whom were born in consecutive years. In a time when women still regularly died during childbirth (anesthesia���chloroform���only became available for her eighth pregnancy), Victoria, who was a mere five feet tall, was constantly pregnant. Even with the benefits of limitless household help, she bore an enormous physical burden on top of her duties as queen. Upon her death, it was found that she was suffering from a prolapsed uterus and a hernia that must have caused her incredible pain without end.

There���s nothing wrong with having a large family���the throne did need heirs���but it never seemed to have occurred to the couple that they had any say in the matter. ���Man is a beast of burden,��� Albert wrote to his brother, ���and he is only happy if he has to drag his burden and if he has little free will. My experience teaches me every day to understand the truth of this more and more.��� As a result, his and Victoria���s existence was hardly one of privilege or relaxation or freedom. It was instead an endless cycle of obligation after obligation, done at a breakneck pace that the two of them inflicted on themselves.

It is a testament to their affection for each other that their marriage survived. Victoria was at least aware of the deleterious effects all this work had on Albert. She wrote of the consequences of his ���over-love of business��� on their relationship, and she also noticed that his health was flagging. His racing mind kept him awake at night, his stomach cramped, and his skin drooped.

Instead of listening to these warning signs, he soldiered on for years, working harder and harder, forcing his body to comply. And then, suddenly, it quit on him. His strength failed. He drifted into incoherency, and at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861, Albert took his three final breaths and died. The cause? Crohn���s disease, exacerbated by extreme stress. He had literally worked his guts out.

Is that what you want to be? A workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies, still shod and in the harness? Is that what you were put on this planet for?

Remember, the main cause of injury for elite athletes is not tripping and falling. It���s not collisions. It���s overuse. Pitchers and quarterbacks throw out their arms. Basketball players blow out their knees. Others just get tired of the grinding hours and the pressure. Michael Phelps prematurely ended his swimming career for this reason���despite all the gold medals, he never wanted to get in a pool again. It���s hard to blame him. He put everything, including his own sanity and health, second to shaving seconds off his times.

We think that to be great at what you do requires complete and total dedication. That there���s no time for anything else.

Nonsense.

After the implosion of my personal and professional life in 2014/2015, I moved to a ranch in Texas. I started a family. I started keeping more regular hours. I put less into my work. And you know what? My work has gotten better. (Cal Newport would call this ������Slow Productivity��� in his book���, which you should take a break from your work and ���go read���).

In fact, some of my biggest creative breakthroughs came to me when I was doing anything but working. The idea for ���Ego Is The Enemy��� came to me while I was doing laps in a pool in Austin (which I talk about ���here���). The idea for the Stoic Virtues series struck me while on a hike in the Lost Pines forest in Bastrop with my family. A few weeks later on vacation in Florida, the idea for ���The Daily Dad��� came to me as I built a sandcastle with my son.

I���ve been repeatedly gifted with ideas���from the muses, from my own subconscious, I don���t know���when I least expect it. In Zen, they talk about the problem of ���too much willful will,��� basically, trying too hard, being too intentional. Real breakthroughs come when you���re not so controlling, when you let go. I find this to be true in my own life. By not putting my work first, by not taking it all so seriously, I���ve been able to reach for and hold on to more than I was with a very tight grasp.

Don���t get me wrong, executing projects at a high level requires an immense amount of work and uninterrupted focus. It requires being at the office. It requires trying very hard to get it right. But the point is that none of that would have been possible without first letting go a little, without deciding to take a hike or go to the beach.

The best of the best know this.

In ���Stillness Is The Key���, I tell the story of Eilud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live. Kipchoge is known for actively working to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity on occasion to 90 percent���to maintain and preserve his longevity and sanity as an athlete. Runners know this is called threshold training, but it has major lifestyle implications too. When Michael Phelps came back to swimming after his breakdown in 2012, it was possible because he was willing to reimagine his approach to training with more balance.

You are not a beast of burden. You are not meant to be ridden into the ground, shot and then replaced by the next horse.

Yes, we have important duties to provide for our families and to be a reliable coworker, boss, employee. Many of us have talents and gifts so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.

It���s important to remind ourselves that life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?

The email you think you need so desperately to respond to can wait. Your screenplay does not need to be hurried, and you can even take a break between it and the next one. The only person truly requiring you to spend the night at the office is yourself. It’s okay to say no. Your interior life will thank you. You���ll be much more clear-headed and equipped to do a good job when you���re not weak from complete and utter overwork.

It’s human being, not human doing, for a reason.

The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery. To push yourself too hard, too fast. To overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork.

To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. After all, it���s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity, balance and the discipline of your discipline.