When Life Gets Hard: 12 Stoic Lessons To Change Your Life Before 2024

00:00:00.000 | It was a big show.

00:00:00.900 | So let's get started with our deep dive.

00:00:03.880 | Here's what I want to talk about today.

00:00:06.080 | I recently read through Marcus Aurelius is meditations.

00:00:10.980 | I want to go through the ideas from this classic stoic treatise and point

00:00:17.980 | out those that I think are most relevant to our goal here of trying to figure

00:00:23.120 | out the modern concern of building a deep life in a distracted world.

00:00:29.860 | So why stoicism?

00:00:31.540 | Well, let me tell you this, my, my own relationship with this philosophy is

00:00:35.000 | that it's something I've always had at the border of my radar, mainly because

00:00:40.060 | I've been friends with Ryan holiday for a long time, so I knew him throughout

00:00:44.300 | all of his career and all of his very successful efforts to popularize stoicism.

00:00:49.060 | So I knew about it, but I never really dived deeply into it because if I wanted

00:00:53.900 | to categorize the philosophical foundations for the deep life ideas that

00:00:59.660 | we talk about here, they tend to come much more out of the, the sort of

00:01:04.440 | ancient Hebrew Bible tradition that then gave rise to great world religions

00:01:09.260 | like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

00:01:11.240 | And then later acted as the foundation for secular enlightenment philosophy.

00:01:15.780 | These are these ideas that emerged in oral tradition in the late bronze age.

00:01:19.460 | About humans having a infinite value that human beings themselves were

00:01:26.500 | built in the image of the divine and therefore every human had value to be

00:01:32.280 | preserved, this was an affront when these philosophies first emerged in

00:01:36.460 | the early age of human civilization.

00:01:38.260 | This was an affront to the current order of absolute power by leaders who

00:01:43.660 | were ordained by God to be in charge.

00:01:45.840 | This was an affront to this idea of how we should organize the world.

00:01:49.300 | This idea that humans were infinitely valuable, of course, led to everything

00:01:55.300 | we now consider as modern justice movements, everything at the core of

00:01:59.700 | enlightenment, human rights, as we know it today, it all came from this idea

00:02:03.780 | that humans are infinitely valuable.

00:02:05.740 | And justice is about both respecting the indelible value of the individual and

00:02:10.120 | striving towards a more messianic future.

00:02:12.100 | So that's the more of the philosophical underpinnings of the deep life.

00:02:16.580 | And I didn't know a lot about Stoicism, but what I had heard about it, the

00:02:20.380 | reason why I had always kept it at somewhat of a remove is that Stoicism

00:02:24.580 | had this cooler aspect about it, where it really focused on this notion of,

00:02:29.740 | they used a Greek term, the logos, this idea that there was an order of things

00:02:33.980 | that suffused everything, all of nature.

00:02:36.980 | And the Stoics would say, just be chill with it.

00:02:41.140 | Why get worked up about things?

00:02:43.340 | Just go along with this natural ordained logos, this flow of things.

00:02:47.420 | And, you know, the concern with that is, okay, this natural flow of things

00:02:51.780 | could, depending on who's defining it, also involve strict hierarchies.

00:02:55.340 | It could be the natural flow of things that they're slaves.

00:02:57.340 | It could be the natural flow of things that different people are quite

00:03:00.820 | different in terms of what they can contribute to the world.

00:03:03.300 | So it was at odds with this, uh, the, this ancient concept

00:03:08.140 | coming out of the Hebrew Bible.

00:03:09.380 | So that's why I'd always sort of like, eh, well, Stoicism is different.

00:03:12.580 | But then I read meditations because, you know, people are really into Stoicism.

00:03:17.380 | And what I learned is that critique of Stoicism though has some

00:03:22.260 | validity is being dismissive because when you read Stoicism, you see the

00:03:27.900 | reason why it is resonating with people is because it has deep

00:03:33.300 | psychological truths embedded into it.

00:03:35.900 | It has a nuanced, subtle way of looking at the way the human mind

00:03:39.460 | operates that people today recognize.

00:03:43.380 | Yeah, they were, this is right.

00:03:44.820 | At least the, the critique of how we think and the way our mind creates

00:03:49.540 | problems and how we should deal with them.

00:03:51.180 | These are ideas that, uh, also got echoed in Eastern philosophy also got

00:03:55.380 | echoed in modern philosophical movements in particular, second

00:03:59.500 | and third wave psychotherapy.

00:04:00.780 | This is what I think people are keen into.

00:04:02.980 | Not the stability of the logos.

00:04:05.540 | And it's very important that we follow this, this logos structure, but the

00:04:10.820 | deep psychological truths that resonate because they seem like they work.

00:04:14.140 | This is why Stoicism spread so much through the Roman empire during the

00:04:18.420 | period where Rome conquered the rest of the Mediterranean basin, when Rome

00:04:23.500 | conquered, uh, in particular Greece and the, the, the near East and were

00:04:27.860 | exposed to these ideas of Stoicism.

00:04:29.740 | Why did that spread through the Roman empire?

00:04:31.660 | Why did it spread in Imperial Rome?

00:04:33.260 | Because they said, ah, this works.

00:04:34.620 | It's why in Rome, which is where Marcus Aurelius was, where he was emperor,

00:04:39.780 | where he wrote this book, it's why they stripped down Stoicism to get rid of a

00:04:44.060 | lot of that stuff I'm uncomfortable with and focus more on the practical.

00:04:47.980 | Psychologically realistic way of thinking about how to go through life.

00:04:52.940 | And so I'm re engaging with Stoicism now.

00:04:56.780 | Uh, there's some good ideas there.

00:04:58.940 | So what's the plan then?

00:05:00.740 | Well, I took this book.

00:05:02.220 | I read meditations the other day.

00:05:03.580 | It itself is divided into 12 books.

00:05:08.420 | These are actually probably somewhat arbitrary.

00:05:11.140 | I think the best scholarship now thinks most of the thing, ways we divide

00:05:14.540 | meditations in the books now is it just happens to be where scrolls

00:05:17.620 | ran out and a new scroll started.

00:05:19.100 | So most of the books are not intentional breaks put in place by Aurelius, but

00:05:24.580 | whatever it's, it's divided into 12 books.

00:05:26.220 | So what I did is I took one idea.

00:05:29.460 | From each of the 12 books and meditations that I thought was most relevant to the

00:05:35.780 | discussion of the deep life and the modern fight against distraction that we

00:05:40.860 | talk about on the show that are most relevant to what we talk about here.

00:05:43.340 | So we can find some useful points of connection with Stoicism.

00:05:47.460 | Uh, so that's what I want to go through and do.

00:05:50.900 | So I'm going to pull these quotes book by book up on the screen for those who

00:05:54.100 | are watching, instead of just listening, let's start with quote number one

00:05:57.460 | from book number one of meditations.

00:05:59.900 | This is from passage number six.

00:06:03.580 | And by the way, I should mention, all of these are coming from

00:06:05.900 | the Gregory Hayes translation.

00:06:07.940 | This is from, I think, 2003, 2004.

00:06:10.180 | Um, it's done in a modern English vernacular, so it's a much

00:06:13.940 | more approachable translation.

00:06:15.260 | This is a very popular translation.

00:06:16.700 | So just so you know, this is where my exact wording is coming from.

00:06:19.740 | All right.

00:06:20.020 | Quote number one from book one.

00:06:21.300 | It's not to waste time on nonsense, uh, not to be taken in

00:06:26.660 | by conjurers and who do artists.

00:06:28.940 | I should hold on a second.

00:06:30.540 | Uh,

00:06:33.420 | Oh, okay.

00:06:33.900 | I'm going to clarify this.

00:06:35.660 | So see at the bottom, this is a, uh, this is a little bit difficult.

00:06:40.100 | Book one is different than the other books.

00:06:42.020 | What's happening in book one.

00:06:43.620 | So excuse my, uh, my pause here, but this is a complicated book.

00:06:46.940 | What's happening in book one, which is different than the other 11 books of

00:06:50.900 | meditations is that book one, which is titled lessons in depths in book one.

00:06:55.980 | Aurelius is going through a list of people he knows in his life and listing

00:07:00.380 | out what influenced me from this person.

00:07:03.420 | What traits of this person do I want to remember as being important?

00:07:09.460 | So item number six that I'm quoting here are things he learned from

00:07:13.380 | Diognetus, who was, I believe a, uh, a tutor of Aurelius when he was in his

00:07:19.780 | teenage years as a Greek tutor, who probably was tutoring Aurelius in more

00:07:24.580 | of a Spartan approach to physical endurance.

00:07:27.980 | So here is the points that he said, this is what I learned from this

00:07:30.700 | particular tutor from early in my life.

00:07:32.460 | Not to waste time on nonsense, not to be taken in by conjurers and

00:07:37.220 | who do artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the

00:07:40.700 | rest of it, not to be obsessed with quail fighting or other crazes like that.

00:07:46.260 | So I think the specific quote is useful because there's an idea in here.

00:07:50.180 | He's basically saying work on what matters.

00:07:53.620 | Don't get sidetracked by shortcuts or secret systems that guarantee you

00:07:58.340 | success if you just watch this YouTube video on the 12 ways to become an

00:08:02.420 | influencer, you're going to be making a hundred thousand dollars a month.

00:08:05.260 | Don't get caught in by that.

00:08:07.140 | Don't get completely obsessed with lightweight distractions that do not

00:08:10.500 | help you fulfill your purpose or be useful to the world.

00:08:13.820 | Do what matters.

00:08:15.660 | I also want to point out that the, uh, the overarching idea of book one of

00:08:21.380 | going through people in your life and listing out what traits they

00:08:24.740 | have that resonates with you.

00:08:26.060 | That's another brilliant idea that dovetails nicely with our notion of

00:08:31.220 | lifestyle centric career planning, clearly identify what resonates with you.

00:08:36.180 | So you can use that as a guide to cultivating what you do going forward.

00:08:40.580 | All right, let's go to book two.

00:08:43.140 | This is line seven or passage seven from book two.

00:08:47.700 | Do external things distract you that make time for yourself

00:08:51.420 | to learn something worthwhile.

00:08:52.620 | Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.

00:08:57.140 | This obviously resonates with me because it's the core idea of

00:09:02.060 | my digital minimalism philosophy.

00:09:05.100 | When I was working on that book and I was interviewing people about their

00:09:09.980 | discomfort with their relationship with their phones, what they focused on was

00:09:15.700 | not the content they were seeing on their phone, their issue was not.

00:09:19.300 | My phone is showing me bad things.

00:09:21.180 | If we could just change what's on the phone.

00:09:23.020 | So it's good things.

00:09:23.940 | I would be happy instead by far the most common explanation for why their phones

00:09:28.900 | were upsetting them was that it was keeping them away from even better activity.

00:09:32.540 | It was fine.

00:09:34.300 | What they were seeing on Instagram or Twitter.

00:09:36.020 | The point was it was keeping them away from their kids.

00:09:38.420 | It was keeping them away from learning something useful.

00:09:41.100 | It was keeping them away from being a useful member of society, being a

00:09:44.700 | leader in their community, I think a really a sketch to this year.

00:09:48.060 | Hey, it's Cal here.

00:09:49.740 | I just wanted to mention.

00:09:50.940 | If you want to have help taking action on the type of ideas we talk about in this

00:09:55.900 | show, sign up for my email newsletter.

00:09:58.900 | The link is right here below in the description, two to four times a month.

00:10:03.220 | I send out detailed articles about the types of ideas we discuss here.

00:10:08.380 | It's the best way to stay connected.

00:10:10.860 | To me and my audience's quest to live a deeper life.

00:10:13.900 | So sign up below.

00:10:14.700 | All right, let's move on here to book three.

00:10:17.580 | The quote I want to give here is from passage nine, your ability to control

00:10:23.340 | your thoughts, treat with respect.

00:10:25.780 | It's all that protects your mind from false perceptions, false to your nature

00:10:29.260 | and that of all rational beings.

00:10:32.220 | Now, this is an idea that I've been thinking about as part of a background

00:10:36.860 | project I've been working on for a manifesto that I've been titling

00:10:40.260 | in defense of thinking.

00:10:44.140 | And one of the core ideas of this proto manifesto I've been contemplating is

00:10:48.700 | that in 21st century society, we don't give enough respect to thoughts.

00:10:54.460 | We don't give enough respect to how we think, what we think about, how we label

00:11:01.580 | things that happen to us or sensations that we're feeling our mind

00:11:05.900 | constructs our vision of reality.

00:11:09.060 | This was a key concept that in my book, deep work I borrowed from

00:11:13.860 | Winifred Gallagher and her great treatise wrapped our APT.

00:11:18.940 | Our mind makes our world.

00:11:21.700 | Our mind defines our experience of our world.

00:11:24.020 | Our mind defines the impact we have on the world.

00:11:27.660 | We don't care about it enough.

00:11:29.460 | So what do we do instead?

00:11:31.060 | When our, when our, we don't like what's happening or we don't like what's

00:11:34.900 | feeling, what we're feeling when we get, um, we feel anxious.

00:11:39.300 | Or ashamed or guilty.

00:11:40.500 | What do we do instead is we try to drown it out with pints or bites.

00:11:46.620 | What I mean by that is either, you know, substances, the drown out the, the,

00:11:51.420 | the negative sensations or digital distraction, pints or bites are really

00:11:57.420 | as to say, no, no treating yourself and your thoughts with respect.

00:12:00.940 | Be very careful how you label things, how you think about your world, what's

00:12:04.740 | going on around you, what matters can make a difference.

00:12:07.100 | That is the way that is the way to actually live true to your nature.

00:12:11.500 | All right.

00:12:13.260 | From book four, I pulled out passage number three, people try to get away

00:12:19.460 | from it all to the country, to the beach, to the mountains, you always wish you

00:12:23.380 | could to, which is idiotic, you can get away from it anytime you like by going

00:12:27.820 | within nowhere you can go is more peaceful, more free of interruptions.

00:12:31.540 | Then your own soul.

00:12:35.060 | So Marcus is talking about a fairy tale that I think a lot of people

00:12:38.340 | like to tell themselves today.

00:12:39.940 | Which is the solution to their anxiety and their overload and their boredom.

00:12:43.860 | They're on we, their, uh, shame with where they are in life and where they

00:12:49.060 | want to be is some sort of big radical locational change that just by radically

00:12:54.500 | changing the physical details of your situation can radically change your

00:12:59.580 | perception of yourself, your perception of the world.

00:13:02.420 | Now there's issues with this, Aurelius is pointing out one particular issue in

00:13:06.220 | this quote, which is you need to be able to find peace wherever you are.

00:13:11.780 | You do not need a grand change to find peace.

00:13:15.220 | This is something you need to cultivate the ability to do

00:13:17.700 | regardless of your circumstances.

00:13:20.300 | If you are really anxious from all your work, or you feel bad about your

00:13:24.500 | impact on the world, going to the beach is not going to change that.

00:13:28.300 | Your inbox will bother you in the Bahamas as easily as it can in the suburbs.

00:13:34.660 | Your discontent with your life does not disappear when you make

00:13:39.580 | it to the top of the mountain.

00:13:40.940 | It sits there just as it was when you were in your office in the city.

00:13:45.380 | So Aurelius is saying these fairy tales are going to keep you from solving the

00:13:48.940 | problem because you'll just say no.

00:13:50.340 | Uh, one day when I make the grand change, that's when things will get better.

00:13:54.780 | And either that day never comes.

00:13:58.020 | So you're constantly suffering from these things or, and I think this is worse,

00:14:02.380 | the change happens and it doesn't heal you and then people get quite despondent.

00:14:06.620 | We've seen that all the time.

00:14:07.540 | There's another problem with this fairy tale that I'm going to add.

00:14:10.180 | Um, which is the logistical details of what's overloading you

00:14:15.500 | are completely location independent.

00:14:17.980 | So let's just get practical and put aside the anxiety or the

00:14:21.540 | discontent with your place in life.

00:14:24.220 | The flip side of a world in which you can be more remote in your knowledge

00:14:29.780 | work is that remoteness does less to save you from what's making you

00:14:33.660 | unhappy about your knowledge work, right?

00:14:35.100 | This is a double edged sword.

00:14:36.180 | Yes, it is possible now for you to move to a cabin in Vermont.

00:14:39.860 | Because you can work on an internet connection, but it also makes it

00:14:43.020 | possible for everything that was making you distracted in your current

00:14:45.660 | location to follow you to Vermont.

00:14:47.700 | So again, these are problems, the practical problems you have to fix as well.

00:14:50.740 | So Aurelius is saying, figure out how to find peace with your mind.

00:14:54.220 | Where you are, don't think that'll be solved by a radical change.

00:14:58.060 | And I'm saying, figure out how to solve the logistical sources of your stress

00:15:01.660 | and anxiety in your current situation.

00:15:03.940 | Don't think simply changing where you live is going to fix that either.

00:15:07.540 | So he's really ahead of his time there.

00:15:10.300 | All right.

00:15:10.700 | Book number five.

00:15:11.620 | I want to quote passage number three.

00:15:15.460 | Uh, by the way, you'll see the terminology of this.

00:15:19.220 | Like, look, this, this passage starts not to feel exasperated or defeated.

00:15:23.300 | That's a weird start, right?

00:15:25.380 | There's no subject in the sentence.

00:15:27.620 | And that's because you have to keep in mind, Meditations was not written as a

00:15:31.100 | philosophical track to be read by other people.

00:15:33.980 | It was written almost certainly as reminders to Aurelius himself.

00:15:38.700 | He's writing down notes, the self that he is going to review again and again, to

00:15:44.820 | help try to keep him on the deep track.

00:15:47.740 | That's why you're going to see these unusual sentence constructions.

00:15:50.940 | They make perfect sense when you think of this as something you wrote down for you

00:15:55.380 | to read, as opposed to a philosophical tract that you wanted other people to read.

00:16:00.340 | So keep that in mind.

00:16:01.180 | All right, let's go to this quote.

00:16:02.060 | So this is a reminder to himself, not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent

00:16:08.140 | because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions, but to get back up when

00:16:11.740 | you fail to celebrate behavior like a human, however, imperfectly and fully

00:16:16.380 | embraced the pursuit that you've embarked on.

00:16:20.060 | So Aurelius is pointing out a truth here, doing good stuff, living in a way that

00:16:24.060 | lets you hit that pillow proud each night is hard work and you're

00:16:27.140 | not always going to succeed.

00:16:28.780 | What's important is getting back up and keep returning to the path

00:16:34.420 | that you know is just and right.

00:16:37.740 | There's a deep philosophical and psychological truth in that.

00:16:42.100 | I mean, coincidentally, we're recording this episode on the day after Yom Kippur,

00:16:49.860 | which of course is in large part, all about repentance or Teshuvah,

00:16:54.660 | if we're going to use the Hebrew word.

00:16:55.860 | Uh, it's a huge part of this most ancient of all the wisdom traditions.

00:17:00.380 | And then it carries through other wisdom traditions as well, have a

00:17:03.580 | really nuanced take on how to seek repentance as you fall away from the right path.

00:17:09.060 | They saw it like Aurelius does here as fundamental to the human nature.

00:17:13.300 | If you want to get some exposure to, uh, how nuanced we were in these early days

00:17:19.660 | of deep human thought and think about repentance, I would recommend read the

00:17:22.700 | book of Jonah surprisingly nuanced take on repentance.

00:17:26.860 | All right, let's move on book six.

00:17:28.260 | This is passage number 33 from book six.

00:17:33.580 | It's normal to feel pain in your hands and feet.

00:17:37.300 | If you're using your feet as feet in your hands, his hands, and for a human

00:17:41.500 | being to feel stress is normal.

00:17:42.900 | If he's living a normal human life and if it's normal, how can it be bad?

00:17:47.420 | So Aurelius is saying, if you're doing what is demanded of you as a human.

00:17:51.540 | So again, for the Stoics, I would be living out, you know, what logo says

00:17:55.300 | is necessary and right for you and your position in life, you're going to feel

00:17:59.140 | stress, there will be stressful things because you'll be doing some things

00:18:02.020 | that are hard, you'll be doing some things, um, that get you anxious or

00:18:05.900 | you're worried about how it's going to turn out, otherwise you're not trying

00:18:08.060 | anything big and he's saying that's okay.

00:18:10.060 | That's normal.

00:18:12.340 | So why label it as bad?

00:18:13.860 | It just, it's something that comes as part of what you do.

00:18:16.940 | It's part of your human nature.

00:18:18.340 | Now, of course, on the other hand, you have to caveat this by saying

00:18:23.220 | persistent stress can then have the opposite effect if you're overloaded

00:18:27.980 | or you've designed your life in such a way that stress is constant.

00:18:31.780 | If you're like the Adam Sandler character in uncut gems, where your

00:18:36.220 | entire life is your one step away from having your arm broken and

00:18:40.260 | a Dina Menzel yelling at you.

00:18:41.700 | Then that's going to hold you back from your true human nature.

00:18:46.140 | So you don't want to label stress when it comes as bad, but also you don't

00:18:49.540 | want to be stressed all the time.

00:18:50.500 | It's a hard balancing act, but writing all these years ago, I really

00:18:53.740 | just recognized it's important.

00:18:54.980 | And I'm just imagining he was an emperor of Rome.

00:18:56.900 | And there's a lot of stress that came with that job as there's difficult

00:19:01.060 | things he had to deal with, and he's reminding himself, this is me.

00:19:04.220 | Filling my human nature, my role as emperor, trying to

00:19:07.740 | take care of this country.

00:19:08.740 | That's part of what I'm supposed to do.

00:19:09.900 | So why is this bad?

00:19:10.700 | It's just a feeling.

00:19:11.420 | All right.

00:19:14.020 | Move on to book seven.

00:19:15.460 | I just watched a documentary about a Dina Menzel.

00:19:18.420 | Okay.

00:19:19.500 | Yeah.

00:19:19.740 | It's a hard, talented, hardworking person.

00:19:22.220 | I don't know why I watched that documentary, but talk

00:19:25.260 | about slow productivity.

00:19:26.300 | I mean, man, she a long, long career.

00:19:29.940 | Yeah.

00:19:30.900 | Um, not mentioned specifically in meditations though.

00:19:34.660 | So let's move on book number seven.

00:19:36.100 | I'm going to quote passage number 56.

00:19:38.340 | Think of yourself as dead.

00:19:40.540 | You have lived your life.

00:19:42.580 | Now what's left and live it properly.

00:19:44.620 | This is classic stoicism.

00:19:47.740 | That's why I included it here.

00:19:49.420 | This is one of these classic stoic exercises.

00:19:52.460 | You imagine your death so that you have more appreciation for the life you have

00:19:58.100 | left and will resolve not to waste it again, an ancient idea, not to keep

00:20:03.900 | harping on the fact that this is the day after Yom Kippur, but as all of the,

00:20:07.260 | uh, uh, Jewish individuals in my audience know, this is sort of a whole point of

00:20:12.100 | Yom Kippur is you're essentially simulating death through fasting and wearing the

00:20:18.100 | white that traditionally was a part of the shroud you would wear and in depth.

00:20:23.020 | Um, you're, you're simulating death as a way to try to motivate repentance and,

00:20:29.660 | and, uh, recommitment to live the life you have left.

00:20:32.220 | So this is an ancient idea, classic stoic idea, but far from the

00:20:36.500 | only people that think of this.

00:20:37.740 | All right.

00:20:39.500 | We're making good progress here.

00:20:40.540 | Book number eight, this is from passage 19.

00:20:44.740 | Everything is here for a purpose from horses to vine shoots.

00:20:49.500 | What's surprising about that?

00:20:50.620 | Even the sun will tell you I have a purpose and the other gods as well.

00:20:54.180 | And why were you born for pleasure?

00:20:56.540 | See if that answer will stand up to questioning.

00:20:59.820 | Right?

00:21:00.860 | So I'm going to release the same.

00:21:02.020 | What is your purpose here?

00:21:04.500 | What is your purpose during the time you have on earth?

00:21:07.180 | You need to actually confront that question because when you do, you're

00:21:10.660 | going to see the answer is almost certainly not to be on email all day at

00:21:14.660 | work and on my phone and video games all night when I'm, when work is done.

00:21:17.860 | That can't possibly be your purpose.

00:21:21.180 | And so it's a push to sit back and say, why am I here?

00:21:25.380 | What good can I do?

00:21:27.580 | And here, I think this is where the logos concept is, is, is useful because it's

00:21:31.220 | saying this could be different for different people, but where you're going

00:21:35.140 | to find strife and unhappiness and discord is when you get separated from

00:21:40.180 | this purpose and try to distract yourself.

00:21:42.220 | Like perhaps the Epicureans might've done, try to distract

00:21:45.500 | yourself from what's necessary.

00:21:47.940 | Maybe just focus on what's fine or what's pleasure or to fall into despair and

00:21:52.180 | despondency about everything you don't like, find your purpose, pursue it.

00:21:56.140 | All right.

00:21:58.580 | We're making good progress here.

00:21:59.500 | Book number nine.

00:22:00.460 | We'll read passage 13.

00:22:02.740 | "Today I escaped from anxiety or no, I discarded it because it was within me

00:22:07.940 | in my own perceptions, not outside."

00:22:11.140 | So in this particular translation, Aurelius predated acceptance, commitment

00:22:17.580 | therapy, otherwise known as third wave psychotherapy by 2000 years.

00:22:20.820 | I mean, this is actually at the core of modern evidence-based treatment for

00:22:26.300 | anxiety, separating the physical sensations of anxiety, which let's think about it.

00:22:32.020 | What is it?

00:22:32.420 | It's a, a feeling of pressure constriction right here, somewhat

00:22:37.100 | of a shallowness of breath.

00:22:38.100 | That's it.

00:22:38.580 | Isolating that from the mind's interpretation of the anxiety.

00:22:42.780 | Uh, this is untenable.

00:22:44.860 | We have to make this go away.

00:22:46.460 | We have to remove the stimulus for this feeling.

00:22:49.980 | Aurelius was on this 2000 years ago.

00:22:52.300 | Anxiety is a perception.

00:22:54.300 | It's the way you label some otherwise unremarkable physical sensations.

00:23:00.260 | Anxiety is something I definitely have experience with.

00:23:03.420 | That's a story for another time, but Aurelius is right.

00:23:05.540 | He's onto something there.

00:23:06.460 | All right.

00:23:08.100 | Here's my quote from book 10.

00:23:09.060 | Here's a long one.

00:23:09.660 | This is passage 35, but it's an interesting analogy he makes here.

00:23:13.340 | "A healthy pair of eyes should see everything that can be seen and not say

00:23:18.020 | no, too bright, which is a symptom of ophthalmalia.

00:23:21.300 | A healthy sense of hearing or smell should be prepared for any sound or scent.

00:23:25.460 | A healthy stomach should have the same reaction to all foods

00:23:28.180 | as a mill to what it grinds.

00:23:30.380 | So too, a healthy mind should be prepared for anything.

00:23:33.060 | The one that keeps saying, are my children all right?

00:23:35.700 | Or everyone must approve of me is like eyes that can only stand pale colors

00:23:39.820 | or teeth that can only handle mush."

00:23:42.460 | Once again, this is a really a saying.

00:23:44.940 | The human condition, when you are pursuing your purpose here

00:23:48.620 | on earth has ups and downs.

00:23:50.340 | Bad thing, bad events will happen.

00:23:52.900 | There'll be bad sensations and perceptions that you'll have.

00:23:55.660 | That's part of what you're supposed to go through.

00:23:59.060 | That's part of life.

00:24:00.220 | So to, to, to be able to not handle that, to say, I have to focus on

00:24:04.700 | avoiding bad events obsessively.

00:24:06.620 | Or when bad perceptions happen, fixate on them, is to alienate yourself

00:24:12.300 | from your fundamental human nature.

00:24:13.780 | It's like an eye that can't see things unless it's just the perfect conditions.

00:24:16.860 | You don't need the perfect conditions to live deeply.

00:24:19.780 | You don't need the perfect conditions to thrive.

00:24:22.140 | Trust me, in the ancient world, they had all sorts of terrible conditions.

00:24:26.660 | Aurelius lost most of his children at a young age, went through all sorts of

00:24:32.300 | turmoil in his term as emperor, a really bad plague came through.

00:24:36.060 | He had a share of hardships.

00:24:37.700 | So the idea that you need just the perfect conditions to function as a human,

00:24:41.140 | he is saying nonsense, whoever has perfect conditions, it just doesn't happen.

00:24:44.460 | Two more books left.

00:24:47.420 | Let's do book number 11, passage seven.

00:24:50.780 | It stares you in the face.

00:24:53.140 | No role is so, uh, no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one

00:24:57.260 | you happen to be in right now.

00:24:59.260 | This comes back in some sense to my notion of the deep life stack.

00:25:03.340 | You have to actually have a vision for your life, what you value and how

00:25:09.260 | systematically you're going to cultivate your life around it.

00:25:11.620 | This is what he means by philosophy and intentional approach to your life.

00:25:15.140 | He is saying philosophy is not abstract.

00:25:18.780 | He's rejecting a lot of the concerns of the Greek Stoics that predated him.

00:25:23.540 | Who were trying to infuse a more abstract philosophy through many

00:25:27.100 | different aspects of the world.

00:25:28.660 | Uh, natural sciences, thinking about logic, also thinking about how to live.

00:25:33.860 | And he said, how to live is what I mean by philosophy.

00:25:35.580 | You have to think about it.

00:25:36.740 | You have to have a philosophy or you're going to flail.

00:25:39.820 | A smaller example of this in my own work is my book, digital minimalism, where I

00:25:44.620 | said, when it comes to technology in particular, your relationship to modern

00:25:49.980 | technology, there's two groups of people.

00:25:51.620 | Those who have a value-based philosophy about how they engage with

00:25:56.300 | technology and those who don't.

00:25:57.500 | The philosophy group can have a healthy relationship and thrive.

00:26:01.100 | The other group is going to have a hard time with philosophy, do a lot of crash

00:26:04.700 | digital detox and make their screen, you know, gray scale and ultimately

00:26:09.060 | be stressed out and not succeed.

00:26:10.300 | You need philosophy.

00:26:13.820 | All right.

00:26:14.060 | Final quote from meditations from book 12, passage number 33, how

00:26:19.220 | the mind conducts itself.

00:26:20.260 | It all depends on that.

00:26:21.380 | All the rest is within its power or beyond its control, corpses and smoke.

00:26:26.460 | Again, this wraps up a lot of a really assist psychological realism.

00:26:31.820 | What matters is how your mind perceives the world, how your mind

00:26:35.780 | reacts to events and perceptions.

00:26:37.340 | That's what matters.

00:26:38.380 | Not the events themselves, not the perceptions themselves.

00:26:41.660 | So a sophisticated psychological awareness that a really is, is pushing.

00:26:46.780 | You need to treat your mind and how it thinks with respect

00:26:50.180 | and care and intention.

00:26:52.180 | All right.

00:26:53.820 | Well, to summarize clearly the ideas from stoicism are hitting a chord.

00:26:58.580 | You know, my friend Ryan holiday is a very successful, very impactful writer.

00:27:04.820 | This book, I was telling Jesse about this right before we recorded this

00:27:08.540 | translation of meditations, which is, it's a great translation, but it's 10 years old.

00:27:13.860 | When I bought this book the other day, it was number 61 on Amazon.

00:27:18.660 | So these ideas are thousands of years old.

00:27:22.020 | This particular translation is over 10 years old.

00:27:24.660 | It's from like 2003, 2004, I believe.

00:27:27.340 | And it's one of the best-selling books in the world right now.

00:27:30.380 | So clearly there's ideas that are powerful.

00:27:32.500 | So again, there are some general reservations.

00:27:35.780 | If we consider stoicism as a philosophy writ large, if we consider stoicism,

00:27:40.420 | if you say this is going to be my sole foundation on which I'm going to build my life.

00:27:45.580 | There are maybe some danger in there and just maybe some things missing.

00:27:49.700 | Right.

00:27:50.780 | Cause it doesn't get to that.

00:27:51.940 | I would say spiritual realism of the more Judaic Christian tradition of the

00:27:58.660 | human of having infinite divineness.

00:28:00.220 | But there's huge psychological realism.

00:28:03.500 | This 2000 years ahead of its time, especially the Roman version of stoicism

00:28:07.540 | that really focuses on pragmatic approaches to life.

00:28:10.700 | So I am not surprised this is doing well.

00:28:12.540 | There's clearly some good connections to the deep life concept that

00:28:16.500 | we talk about here on the show.

00:28:18.860 | So I enjoyed having a chance to read this.

00:28:20.300 | Should pick it up.

00:28:21.580 | All right, Jesse, there we go.

00:28:24.460 | Stoicism.

00:28:25.180 | Yeah.

00:28:25.820 | Good summary.

00:28:26.540 | So I like the quotes.

00:28:27.660 | Summarize.

00:28:28.620 | Yeah.

00:28:28.860 | I mean, they're very, I was reading another translation of meditations.

00:28:33.060 | A lot of the translations cause Greek is a Latin.

00:28:35.900 | It could be a very formal language and a lot of the translations.

00:28:39.540 | There's a lot of these and dies.

00:28:41.260 | I think that's why this translation is doing well.

00:28:42.980 | It's it's fantastically vernacular.

00:28:44.700 | You know, it feels modern and that's really Greg Hayes.

00:28:48.220 | I think his skill.

00:28:49.580 | All right.

00:28:50.500 | So in honor of that deep dive, the questions we're going to tackle

00:28:54.140 | today from you, my listeners.

00:28:55.540 | Are more philosophical in nature about finding meaning in life.

00:28:59.260 | So that should be fun.

00:29:00.660 | Before we get there though, let me take a brief break to mention one of the

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00:29:05.860 | A longtime sponsor of this show.

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00:31:10.460 | As long as we're talking about technology, let's talk about

00:31:13.660 | our friends at ExpressVPN.

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00:31:18.580 | Why?

00:31:19.100 | Because people can monitor what websites and services you use.

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00:31:28.900 | antenna can see what websites or services you're talking to.

00:31:31.780 | If you're at home, your internet service provider sees exactly what

00:31:36.420 | websites or services you're talking to.

00:31:38.340 | So even if you have an encrypted connection, that just encrypts

00:31:41.140 | what you're saying to those sites.

00:31:42.660 | It doesn't encrypt who you're talking to.

00:31:45.420 | And so people can get that information and they do.

00:31:49.020 | It's been revealed, for example, that many internet service providers

00:31:53.140 | sell information about what sites and services you use to data merchants.

00:31:57.220 | So they can target you better with advertising.

00:32:00.260 | This is why you need a VPN.

00:32:02.980 | So what happens with a VPN?

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00:32:07.020 | instead connect to a VPN server.

00:32:09.500 | And then you tell that VPN server with an encrypted message, this

00:32:13.700 | is who I really want to talk to.

00:32:15.140 | And that server talks to the site or service on your behalf, encrypts the

00:32:19.340 | answer, and then sends it back to you.

00:32:21.660 | So all the guy with the antenna in the coffee shop or your internet

00:32:24.380 | service provider sees is that you're talking to a VPN and they learn nothing

00:32:28.100 | about what you're actually using.

00:32:29.860 | So if you're going to use a VPN, I suggest using the one that I personally

00:32:34.420 | recommend, which is ExpressVPN.

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00:33:08.340 | All right.

00:33:09.940 | Speaking of deep, Jesse, let's do some deep questions from our listeners.

00:33:13.300 | We've got some good ones today.

00:33:14.660 | Yeah, we do.

00:33:15.620 | A real first philosophical, you know, thread, which I love.

00:33:19.660 | Let's get deep here.

00:33:20.540 | All right.

00:33:20.900 | Who do we have first?

00:33:21.940 | I were up first with John.

00:33:24.380 | I'm a 31 year old English teacher.

00:33:26.660 | I'm very good at what I do and I'm well respected in the community.

00:33:29.740 | That said, I have a nagging feeling that I have the potential for more impact.

00:33:33.780 | I fear that as long as I stay in schools, I don't have the same level of autonomy

00:33:38.500 | to build my perfect life for my family, as well as fulfill all the aspirations

00:33:43.260 | I have for myself.

00:33:44.140 | What should I do?

00:33:46.380 | So I'm thinking in honor of stoicism, I'm going to, I'm going to answer

00:33:50.420 | every question by saying, imagine your own death.

00:33:53.620 | And then I want you to play a sort of, you know, what kind of like funeral dirge.

00:33:59.860 | Yeah.

00:34:00.300 | Uh, and then let's have the graphics people turn my face into a skull back to my face.

00:34:07.100 | 10 seconds.

00:34:08.780 | I contact with camera silence.

00:34:10.580 | Next question.

00:34:14.060 | That's, that's my idea of a stoic pod.

00:34:16.740 | This is why I don't podcast about stoicism because I would, I would love

00:34:20.300 | face turning the skull graphics.

00:34:22.300 | I just would want to do that all the time.

00:34:23.820 | You should use express VPN because tomorrow you could die.

00:34:29.220 | And then a skull comes across my face and come back.

00:34:31.820 | I mean, I don't know.

00:34:32.420 | Ryan does well with his stuff.

00:34:34.540 | So maybe, maybe we'd be more successful.

00:34:36.540 | All right.

00:34:38.100 | Now, sorry, John, you have a serious question.

00:34:39.740 | You have a serious question.

00:34:41.100 | Um, I have not concerns, but I want to, I want to give you a, uh, let's think of this

00:34:47.420 | as a safe path forward because you're feeling, um, you say here nagging feeling

00:34:52.380 | you have the potential for more impact.

00:34:54.020 | You're also talking about building the perfect life for your family.

00:34:57.540 | What I don't want you to do here.

00:34:59.340 | It's just make a radical change with the hope that the radical

00:35:04.140 | change itself is going to heal you.

00:35:05.420 | We saw this in Marcus Aurelius, right?

00:35:07.900 | He said, Oh, everyone dreams about going to the beach or the mountains.

00:35:10.900 | Uh, and you'll be fine.

00:35:11.860 | And he said, this is quote unquote idiotic.

00:35:13.740 | I don't know what the Latin term for idiotic is.

00:35:15.460 | I'm sure it's very fancy, but he was cutting to the trace.

00:35:18.100 | That's not going to solve the problem by itself.

00:35:20.580 | So what I want you to do instead here.

00:35:22.740 | Is really embrace lifestyle centric career planning.

00:35:26.220 | So I want you to, uh, be more specific about this vision of

00:35:30.900 | your perfect life for your family.

00:35:32.220 | Be more specific about your aspirations and what it looks like to

00:35:35.220 | be fulfilling your aspirations.

00:35:37.700 | We want this specificity because then you can get more specific in your

00:35:42.260 | responses to this otherwise vague, but insistent urge that you feel.

00:35:47.140 | And there's a lot of ways this might go.

00:35:49.740 | Like you might realize.

00:35:50.740 | Actually, there's a way to work with your existing job as a teacher and be very

00:35:55.780 | high impact and get great fulfillment out of that.

00:35:57.940 | Maybe sand off some of the rough edges of it.

00:36:00.540 | You know, okay.

00:36:01.020 | I need to find a way to do this where, um, I can have more freedom in the summer

00:36:04.780 | and that's going to require a little bit more financial, whatever.

00:36:07.580 | Um, and I don't want to do teach this class, but move here and not

00:36:10.180 | do the department chair position.

00:36:11.220 | Like there's some finagling maybe.

00:36:12.580 | And again, I'm just doing thought experiment, maybe some finagling to make

00:36:14.860 | it work, but then also lean into what you value out of it, the sort of Robin

00:36:18.860 | Williams, that poet society core to it.

00:36:21.180 | And you might find that really most of the things you want for this perfect

00:36:24.500 | life for your family are sort of orthogonal to your job and about how

00:36:27.500 | you're, you're, what you're doing in the rest of your life and how you're

00:36:30.180 | structuring the rest of your life and what you pursue, or you might find,

00:36:34.180 | Oh, I have this clear aspiration and, uh, being an English teacher

00:36:38.620 | doesn't get me there, but this would, this other option that makes sense.

00:36:44.620 | And here's how I'd get to that other option.

00:36:45.860 | And this combined with moving here clearly gets me closer to my vision.

00:36:49.740 | So maybe there's going to be a change there, but specificity is what I want

00:36:53.700 | to underline here, because otherwise you're going to quit and, you know,

00:36:57.260 | have some idea about doing YouTube videos on Shakespeare and you're like, it's,

00:37:01.860 | I, Mr. Beast makes a million dollars a video.

00:37:04.260 | Like I can, I just have to do 1% of that and I'd be fine.

00:37:08.740 | And yeah, so you get these ideas and then you, you want them to be true.

00:37:12.900 | Uh, and then you move to the, you know, um, I don't know.

00:37:16.620 | You're an English teacher.

00:37:17.580 | I imagine you live in England, which makes no sense.

00:37:19.940 | I was about to say you move the Cornwall to the coast because

00:37:23.500 | I was trying to be very British.

00:37:24.580 | But, um, English teacher, this course, it's crazy.

00:37:28.220 | That's just, you could, you could live anywhere, so whatever,

00:37:30.340 | but you know what I'm saying?

00:37:31.660 | You, you, you're going to end up like moving somewhere dramatic.

00:37:33.940 | You can't afford and thinking your YouTube videos are going to make money.

00:37:37.300 | And then your wife gets really mad at you and then everything's worse.

00:37:39.780 | So lifestyle, center, career planning, specificity, and, uh, Vision leads

00:37:46.700 | to specificity and action, which leads to a much higher probability of good return.

00:37:51.740 | All right, let's keep rolling.

00:37:54.140 | Who do we have next?

00:37:54.860 | All right.

00:37:55.900 | Next question's from Mike.

00:37:57.140 | I'm a 51 year old professional screenwriter in Hollywood.

00:38:01.180 | I've been doing that for the last 23 years.

00:38:03.340 | I write mostly movies and some TV.

00:38:05.700 | I've had a lot of success in the business along with a few disappointments, but I

00:38:09.300 | was spent the last five or six years growing increasingly frustrated with my job.

00:38:13.940 | In short, I would love nothing more than to find a new career.

00:38:17.300 | However, I'm married with two high school children and I want to find something

00:38:22.940 | that's stable and sustainable for possibly the next 10 to 15 years.

00:38:26.740 | And I want to live in the same area that I'm living now, which

00:38:29.420 | is in Southern California.

00:38:31.100 | I'm creative.

00:38:31.900 | I have excellent written and verbal skills.

00:38:34.060 | I'm great with pressure and deadlines, but I have no experience in any other

00:38:37.460 | business.

00:38:38.100 | I feel like a recent liberal arts graduate entering the job market for the first

00:38:42.620 | time with no tangible skills, no business knowledge, no understanding of any other

00:38:47.140 | industry.

00:38:47.740 | Can I switch jobs?

00:38:49.300 | And if so, how?

00:38:50.620 | Well, Mike, my number one piece of advice, imagine your own death goal graphic.

00:38:57.900 | Every time I'm going to do it every time.

00:39:01.060 | You're not going to stop me.

00:39:02.020 | Uh, Jesse, I actually looked up.

00:39:03.900 | We have more information on Mike than we, we said on air and I won't give, I won't

00:39:07.940 | give any more identifying information, but I did look them up and I have seen three

00:39:13.060 | movies that he has written.

00:39:14.020 | That's pretty cool.

00:39:15.140 | Yeah.

00:39:15.340 | These are successful, successful screenings.

00:39:16.940 | And he's right in the middle of the strike and which is about to end.

00:39:19.940 | Yeah.

00:39:20.580 | Hopefully.

00:39:20.980 | Yeah.

00:39:21.380 | Right.

00:39:21.740 | Right now he's not doing a lot of writing at all because of the WGA

00:39:24.980 | strike that's going on.

00:39:25.820 | Um, so there's a couple, there's like a dose of realism.

00:39:30.540 | I suppose I want to throw in here.

00:39:32.220 | Uh, it's hard to, it's hard to get people to give you money and you found a way to

00:39:38.220 | get people to give you money.

00:39:39.500 | Uh, that requires a huge amount of hard one skill, which is give me money for

00:39:43.900 | writing screenplays.

00:39:46.020 | 99.9% of people who do this don't get anywhere near being able to make a living

00:39:51.100 | off of it.

00:39:51.460 | So you have the borrow a term for my book.

00:39:53.300 | So good.

00:39:53.900 | They can't ignore you.

00:39:54.940 | This core foundation of career capital that was incredibly hard one.

00:39:59.100 | Uh, and it does give you some big advantages, right?

00:40:02.220 | Uh, creative work done entirely autonomously.

00:40:05.140 | That is so winner take all that the financial rewards of it can actually

00:40:09.340 | help you sustain your livelihood.

00:40:12.420 | Uh, you know, most people have to be essentially trading their hours

00:40:16.500 | almost directly for work.

00:40:17.500 | Screenwriters don't.

00:40:18.420 | So we want to be very wary about discarding that career capital completely

00:40:23.100 | because as, again, it's very difficult to say, look, I'm, I can write well.

00:40:27.060 | I want to make a good living.

00:40:28.780 | People are reluctant to, uh, to give other people money.

00:40:32.260 | So I want to be cautious about it.

00:40:33.540 | So I think career capital is our first thing we want to keep in mind here.

00:40:37.580 | When considering other careers, you want to maximize as much of the existing

00:40:44.940 | career capital you can in these ideas.

00:40:46.860 | So there's a difference between going to some sort of, I don't know, media startup.

00:40:53.140 | That, uh, directly will value your ability to write movie and

00:40:58.740 | film screenplays at a high level.

00:40:59.980 | Even if you're not doing that particular activity, the fact that you can

00:41:02.740 | recognize that you can recognize good film and movie screenplays, you know,

00:41:06.380 | moving to a company that would respect and is looking for that talent.

00:41:09.260 | You're going to have a lot more reward options and autonomy than if, say you

00:41:14.300 | said, I'm just going to become a full-time nonfiction writer, right.

00:41:19.420 | Or you're going into a different career, or I just want to go work in advertising.

00:41:22.540 | They look for good, you know, communication skills.

00:41:24.980 | You don't have any particular skills in those fields yet.

00:41:26.780 | So unless you get really lucky, you can't necessarily expect someone

00:41:30.260 | is going to give you a lot of money and or autonomy.

00:41:32.420 | So career capital is important here.

00:41:34.180 | The other thing that's important here, another concept from my

00:41:36.780 | book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:41:38.180 | Use money as a neutral indicator of value.

00:41:43.220 | In other words, what that means is when you're considering another option,

00:41:47.620 | you need to start almost certainly that other option on the side in a way where

00:41:51.980 | you can actually put it out there in a marketplace and see how much money people

00:41:55.660 | will give it for you, will give you for it.

00:41:57.900 | Will they give you money for your startup concept?

00:42:01.820 | Will they hire you to do the service that you're offering?

00:42:05.540 | Will they buy the product or view the media that you're producing?

00:42:09.260 | You need to use that people giving you hard won money as a neutral indicator

00:42:13.300 | about the value of what it is that you want to build your next career on top of.

00:42:17.140 | You can't just ask people, is this a good idea?

00:42:19.420 | They'll tell you, yes.

00:42:20.540 | You can't just ask yourself, do I think this is a good idea?

00:42:23.140 | Because your mind will tell yourself the story it wants to be true.

00:42:26.620 | You need to see, do people actually give me money for this?

00:42:29.180 | And that's a big idea from So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:42:32.220 | And then once the money from this becomes substantial, that you can then

00:42:35.660 | confidently extrapolate it to where you need it to be, if and only then do you

00:42:40.180 | say, OK, now I'm leaving the main thing I'm doing.

00:42:42.020 | I get the advantage of being a screenwriter is that you have a lot

00:42:45.580 | of autonomy to do this.

00:42:47.300 | You're not checking into an office where there's a Lumberg style boss looking

00:42:51.380 | over your shoulder, where it's very difficult to work on something on the side.

00:42:54.180 | You can experiment with this quite easily.

00:42:56.580 | In your particular role.

00:42:58.780 | So I want to encourage you, yes, if you really are ready for a change and this

00:43:04.420 | is becoming dispiriting and there's a bit of a drag going on on your soul here,

00:43:07.780 | think about making a change, but keep your capital in mind.

00:43:10.740 | You probably want to use money as a neutral indicator value.

00:43:13.500 | This might slow down the change.

00:43:15.740 | It might slow down the radical dramaticness of the change when it happens.

00:43:18.740 | But it's going to be insurance against career vision disaster.

00:43:23.700 | OK, let's keep rolling.

00:43:27.020 | Who we got next?

00:43:27.700 | All right, next question is from Margo.

00:43:29.660 | How do I cultivate personal ambition or a competitive drive?

00:43:34.140 | I am reasonably talented.

00:43:36.140 | I went to a top graduate program and I'm recently tenured professor at an R1

00:43:40.620 | university in a STEM field.

00:43:43.060 | I've recently been interested in trying to get a job at a different university,

00:43:46.380 | but I feel like right now I'm not an attractive candidate for a senior hire.

00:43:49.780 | I'm on sabbatical next year and think it would be great to try my time to build up

00:43:55.140 | my build, build back up my profile, but I don't feel any inclination anymore to

00:44:00.260 | push myself and I feel like I sort of lack ambition or motivation.

00:44:03.940 | Is there a research on a build on how to build ambition or competitive drive?

00:44:08.860 | Or do you have any advice on how I can pursue this goal?

00:44:13.100 | First of all, and I'm resisting saying think about death, so be glad about that.

00:44:18.180 | I just want to point out this is such a reality of me and Margo sort of very

00:44:23.060 | narrow field being, you know, tenure track professors at R1 universities.

00:44:27.740 | Look up front, she says, I think I'm reasonably talented.

00:44:32.980 | You know how hard it is to be a tenured professor at an R1 university?

00:44:36.580 | That means she or he, I don't know, this is a French spelling here, so I'm just

00:44:40.660 | going to say, I think it's a she, it's a she.

00:44:42.780 | Okay.

00:44:42.940 | I'm going to say she, um, you know how hard you have to be the top.

00:44:46.220 | 001% of anyone studying that topic in the world to be a tenured professor, but it's

00:44:51.860 | the way the system works.

00:44:53.300 | As soon as you're tenured, you look around like, well, I'm

00:44:55.220 | tenured professors better.

00:44:56.300 | And that one got full professor quicker.

00:44:59.020 | Like there's nowhere you can go.

00:45:00.980 | There's nowhere you can go in academia where you don't think, man, I wish I was

00:45:06.740 | good as that person over there.

00:45:09.060 | I mean, I could have Richard Feynman standing on stage in the 1960s with his

00:45:13.140 | Nobel prize, I can guarantee you was thinking something at some point around

00:45:18.340 | that event along the lines of, yeah, I'm no Einstein.

00:45:22.380 | And I can guarantee you that Einstein is saying, uh, at some point, well, you know,

00:45:28.900 | I, uh, I revised Newtonian mechanics, but I'm no Newton, you know, so there's the,

00:45:35.060 | the bars are impossible.

00:45:36.620 | There is no, there's no top to those bars.

00:45:38.300 | So I just wanted to point that out.

00:45:39.500 | Margo, you're top 0.001% of anyone who's ever thought about that topic and is in

00:45:44.140 | the job market right now.

00:45:45.380 | So, um, you're more than reasonably talented.

00:45:48.060 | All right.

00:45:49.540 | So you lack a competitive drive right now.

00:45:51.020 | I think what's going on is, um, two things.

00:45:53.740 | One, your mind's not particularly jazzed by your vision.

00:45:57.300 | So we got more detail that we didn't read on air, but one of the elements from your

00:46:02.380 | extended question is that you're leaving more because there's stuff you don't like

00:46:06.700 | about your current university, uh, than it is that there's a specific positive

00:46:11.260 | vision that you're pursuing.

00:46:12.300 | It's hard to get really geared up for very difficult work when really it's just about,

00:46:19.580 | I don't like what's happening here.

00:46:21.260 | Maybe it'll be better somewhere else also.

00:46:23.420 | And again, I'm drawing from your, the, the longer version of your question.

00:46:27.020 | You're tired.

00:46:28.140 | You had a baby recently.

00:46:30.060 | So you're tired and you have other things.

00:46:32.220 | Your mind very correctly is saying this is really important because it is because you

00:46:37.900 | have a baby and human babies are born in a way that makes them much more helpless than

00:46:42.060 | other mammals at that same age.

00:46:43.820 | And every instinct in your body is saying this should be a priority right now.

00:46:48.780 | This is why you should be, I would say, be happy.

00:46:51.980 | You're a tenured professor.

00:46:52.780 | Great.

00:46:53.020 | Downshift.

00:46:54.460 | Let's focus on this a little bit more for a moment.

00:46:57.100 | Downshift.

00:46:57.740 | Let's focus on this a little bit more for now.

00:47:00.220 | The gear shifter goes up as easily as down later when the time comes.

00:47:03.900 | So I think those two things are going on.

00:47:06.300 | So yeah, you're not just, this is not, you're not, uh, it's not a problem that you're

00:47:10.460 | lacking a quote unquote competitive drive, uh, right now for this vision of, I want to

00:47:15.500 | move from this university to that.

00:47:16.700 | I think it's a plan that looks good on paper, but your mind is not really excited about

00:47:20.620 | it.

00:47:20.780 | And this is a really hard thing.

00:47:21.980 | It's like, if you said, uh, if you're an alpinist, alpinist, you're like, I want to

00:47:26.220 | climb K2, but your heart's not really in it because you have a lot of other things going

00:47:29.580 | on.

00:47:29.740 | You're not going to get motivation to go do that because it's incredibly difficult and

00:47:33.740 | it's deadly and dangerous.

00:47:34.860 | And it has to be, you have to be all in on it.

00:47:36.540 | And until you're ready to do that, you're not going to want to try it.

00:47:38.860 | So what should you do instead?

00:47:41.500 | I don't know.

00:47:41.980 | I would recommend first of all, keeping in mind life is long.

00:47:47.660 | I often think that days are short, life is long.

00:47:50.380 | So, you know, I've had three different kids while being a professor on both sides of

00:47:55.420 | tenure.

00:47:56.220 | And when you're on the other side of them being young, you see this as a very short

00:47:59.020 | period, but when you're in the middle of it, you see it as, oh my God, I guess I'm no

00:48:02.140 | longer an academic.

00:48:02.940 | So just keep that in mind.

00:48:03.980 | Life is long.

00:48:04.700 | Days are short.

00:48:05.340 | I would also say, keep in mind, maybe it's a good time to go back to the deep life stack

00:48:10.540 | and work it a bit because most of the deep life stack is non-professional.

00:48:14.220 | And this might be where you're going to get some gas back in the tank is thinking about

00:48:19.260 | the other things that are important in your life, going back and re-engaging with discipline

00:48:23.420 | and getting the control and all the different things, clarifying your values, having a code

00:48:27.180 | and rituals that support it, becoming a leader in the communities that matter from your family

00:48:31.900 | to your town, to the wider university or global communities.

00:48:35.260 | These things that make humans human, get to the top level of the stack where you plan

00:48:39.340 | for the remarkable and maybe change an aspect of your life that's not professional into

00:48:44.220 | something more remarkable.

00:48:45.340 | You change where you live or your house or you start some sort of program that's like

00:48:50.700 | really exciting and off the wall.

00:48:52.460 | Work the stack for a bit.

00:48:53.740 | Re-find some mojo because, look, you've been focused on this since grad school.

00:48:58.380 | You got the tenure.

00:48:59.020 | Your mind's like, we've done this.

00:49:00.460 | I really don't want to gear up again for a new academic push, and I'm tired.

00:49:04.060 | So get the other parts of your life in order and then step back and do some lifestyle career

00:49:08.220 | planning.

00:49:08.860 | And there, when you're feeling like you've got your arm around your life, you have that

00:49:14.060 | you're in the driver's seat of intention again.

00:49:16.300 | You trust your efficacy, that your self-discipline is there.

00:49:18.780 | And you can say, OK, what do we want to do with this professional thing?

00:49:21.820 | Do I want to reconfigure my situation here at my university?

00:49:24.700 | Do I want to move?

00:49:25.340 | OK, now how am I going to move?

00:49:26.700 | This, I'm going to focus on this to go over here.

00:49:29.980 | You start to get creative.

00:49:30.940 | You start to see avenues.

00:49:32.060 | But I think what's happening now, again, is that you're just on paper.

00:49:35.260 | I should go somewhere else.

00:49:36.140 | It's just like myopic academic focus we all get in this career.

00:49:39.740 | Let me go to a better school.

00:49:41.020 | It's going to be better.

00:49:41.820 | Oh, my God, I got to get these grants and these publications.

00:49:44.380 | And, oh, my God, it's going to be so hard.

00:49:45.820 | And I've been up all night with the baby.

00:49:47.340 | That's just not going to fly.

00:49:48.460 | The dog's not going to hunt there.

00:49:51.020 | All right, so be chill with the idea that you're downshifted right now.

00:49:55.180 | Work the full deep life stack.

00:49:56.620 | And then we'll return to this question with wind behind us pushing the proverbial sail.

00:50:02.220 | Say, now what do I really want to do with this professional aspect of my life?

00:50:06.060 | You'll be ready to answer that question then.

00:50:07.740 | Yeah, I agree with you.

00:50:09.580 | You could even introduce some of the competitiveness into our non-professional life.

00:50:15.340 | For instance, like for me, it would be like golf or tennis match or something like that.

00:50:19.580 | Yeah, like something athletic or a hobby.

00:50:21.980 | Yeah, yeah.

00:50:22.780 | Get your spirit in order.

00:50:25.420 | There's a good book about this I'll recommend.

00:50:28.300 | And I don't know exactly.

00:50:30.780 | I'm going to get the name wrong.

00:50:31.900 | I think it's an MIT philosophy professor.

00:50:34.140 | There's like two of those, right?

00:50:36.140 | Because everyone at MIT is a STEM person, except they have like one philosopher and

00:50:40.060 | one humanities professor.

00:50:41.820 | But I believe his name is Kieran Sieta, C-E-I-T-Y-A.

00:50:46.220 | Jesse will check this out.

00:50:48.540 | But the book he wrote is called Midlife.

00:50:51.180 | I've talked about it on the program before.

00:50:53.420 | And in it, Margot, he talks about reaching tenure at MIT and exactly this drop in competitive

00:50:59.820 | drive, a sort of midlife crisis, so to speak.

00:51:03.580 | It comes early for academics because tenure typically happens in your 30s.

00:51:08.060 | He was in your exact same situation.

00:51:09.420 | And he gets into his subsequent-- he embraced Aristotle in particular and the Nicomachean

00:51:15.500 | ethics, and he pulled from philosophy to sort of engage with this question of refinding

00:51:20.460 | meaning in midlife.

00:51:21.500 | And again, I know you might be at an age where you say, I'm not quite midlife yet.

00:51:27.100 | But academic years are like dog years.

00:51:29.580 | So you can be 33, and it's like the normal person equivalent of being 47.

00:51:34.460 | So check that book out.

00:51:36.700 | Also check out perhaps The Second Mountain by David Brooks, which is, again, all about

00:51:42.620 | his similar thing.

00:51:44.860 | Second half of life, so the first mountain is your initial professional ambition to become

00:51:49.900 | a tenured professor, to become a columnist in The New York Times, what you do with the

00:51:53.260 | second half of your life.

00:51:54.380 | What's the second mountain that you pursue?

00:51:56.700 | That book, I think you're going to find-- you'll find a lot of value in that as well.

00:52:01.020 | So it's an exciting time you're actually at, Margot.

00:52:03.820 | This is not a problem that your mind is no longer completely geared up for, let's write

00:52:08.860 | 17 papers this year.

00:52:10.300 | Actually, you're at the precipice of something potentially transformative, and you have tenure.

00:52:16.540 | So you have some flexibility to actually pursue it.

00:52:18.540 | So this would be my Marcus Aurelius advice would be change your analysis of this current

00:52:23.980 | moment to be a very positive thing and not a negative thing.

00:52:26.300 | All right, let's do another one.

00:52:30.220 | What do we got?

00:52:31.020 | All right, next question's from Raphael.

00:52:33.180 | I'm a lawyer, and in 2001, I decided I wanted to live a more meaningful life.

00:52:37.500 | I learned to code and use this career capital to launch a bootstrap startup in my field.

00:52:42.780 | I've been pretty successful with consistent revenue growth, and currently, I have a team

00:52:47.980 | of 15 people.

00:52:49.260 | The journey was a joy in the beginning, but things have been really stressful for the

00:52:52.460 | last five years.

00:52:53.740 | It seems that even though I'm the CEO, I can't find time to deal with the important stuff,

00:52:57.980 | and I'm always dwelling on what's urgent.

00:52:59.820 | How can I go about organizing my life differently so that I can deliver work that really matters

00:53:05.100 | and I stop being so on edge?

00:53:07.740 | There must be a way as I'm the CEO.

00:53:09.820 | Well, I'm going to give you, Raphael, I'm going to give you the tactical short-term

00:53:16.060 | answer, and then I'm going to give you a bigger sort of philosophical answer to this question

00:53:19.820 | as well.

00:53:20.300 | So starting with the more practical answer, there are some things you can do.

00:53:24.380 | You should think about bringing on an accomplished chief of staff.

00:53:29.100 | This is a useful position.

00:53:31.740 | Tim Ferriss actually talked about this in a recent episode of his podcast with Sam Karakos

00:53:38.700 | from Level Up.

00:53:39.660 | They talk about what a chief of staff does versus an assistant.

00:53:43.100 | You could probably use this.

00:53:45.260 | A chief of staff can take a lot off your plate.

00:53:48.220 | They can implement, come up with ideas and implement.

00:53:50.540 | They can be the buffer between you and a lot of other types of information flows.

00:53:54.620 | That might be really important for you.

00:53:57.180 | You can take a lesson from George C. Marshall, chief of staff during World War II, ran the

00:54:01.180 | military for America during World War II.

00:54:03.100 | In my book, A World Without E-mail, I talk about a report of his management style that

00:54:10.300 | was commissioned after World War II.

00:54:13.020 | This was someone out of Service Academy, I believe, wrote this report.

00:54:16.140 | Because here's the cool thing about Marshall.

00:54:18.300 | He was running the US Armed Forces during the largest military buildup in the history

00:54:23.820 | of our country, if not the world.

00:54:25.420 | And he would work till five and would not work past five.

00:54:29.900 | He had a heart condition, his doctor said, don't work past five.

00:54:32.300 | He's a disciplined guy.

00:54:33.500 | He said, I'll make that happen.

00:54:34.860 | And this paper that I talk about in A World Without E-mail gets into how did Marshall

00:54:39.020 | pull this off.

00:54:40.220 | There's a lot of good ideas in there.

00:54:41.740 | Two ideas I'll mention in particular is one, he completely reorganized the War Department.

00:54:47.340 | There was too many people that could report directly to him.

00:54:50.940 | He's like, this is inefficient.

00:54:52.460 | He reworked the org chart.

00:54:54.300 | So there was many fewer people who reported directly to him.

00:54:57.580 | Most people directed to someone who was below him.

00:55:00.300 | So there's less people who could directly get his attention.

00:55:03.420 | And then two, he had big demands for how you talk to him.

00:55:06.300 | And it's a big problem that leaders have today where they say, communication is

00:55:11.340 | communication.

00:55:11.900 | I want to be available.

00:55:12.860 | That means I'm agile.

00:55:14.380 | That means I have my finger on the pulse of the company.

00:55:16.700 | This was like the original idea pitched when e-mail was new.

00:55:20.300 | This famous Wired article about Bill Gates getting e-mail and how he answered every

00:55:25.420 | e-mail and it was considered this revolutionary thing.

00:55:27.900 | It doesn't work.

00:55:28.540 | So Marshall was very careful about how you communicated to him.

00:55:32.620 | You had to know, this is my purpose in talking to you before you would get into

00:55:37.180 | Marshall's office.

00:55:38.300 | You had to give him a quick briefing.

00:55:40.140 | You had to get right to the nub of this is where a decision needs to be made that we

00:55:43.900 | need your input.

00:55:44.780 | Here is all the relevant information.

00:55:46.460 | And if you weren't prepared, he would kick you right out.

00:55:48.460 | So he made other people do more work before they communicated with him.

00:55:53.100 | This is not asymmetry.

00:55:54.380 | This is about maximizing his potential impact at the head of the organization is not

00:55:58.860 | maximized if he has to sit there while you're trying to figure out while you're

00:56:02.700 | talking to him.

00:56:03.340 | A couple of things I'll suggest have a new e-mail policy.

00:56:07.340 | This was also suggested in a world without e-mail.

00:56:09.660 | E-mail can be used for questions that can be answered with a single line or two.

00:56:13.820 | No back and forth.

00:56:15.100 | E-mail can be used to deliver files, right?

00:56:18.220 | It's better than printing it out.

00:56:20.620 | E-mail can be used for notifications or FYI.

00:56:23.660 | It cannot be used for back and forth interactions that has to be synchronous.

00:56:27.980 | And how do you prevent this from being a million meetings?

00:56:29.900 | Will you have office hours every day?

00:56:31.660 | Come to my office hours.

00:56:32.700 | My door is open.

00:56:33.340 | My phone is on.

00:56:34.300 | There's someone here.

00:56:34.860 | Wait till they're gone.

00:56:35.900 | Then we'll talk about it.

00:56:36.860 | We're not going to do back and forth.

00:56:38.700 | I'm not going to be in an inbox all day.

00:56:40.460 | Your chief of staff can also get into loop here and keep a lot of things off of your

00:56:43.740 | plate.

00:56:44.380 | Finally, no meetings for the first two hours of the day.

00:56:46.860 | That's when you think through strategy and get the important work done.

00:56:49.740 | As you said, and I'm going to quote your full message here.

00:56:52.460 | You described yourself as the freaking CEO.

00:56:54.700 | You can make that happen as the freaking CEO.

00:56:58.060 | There's a broader philosophical answer here.

00:57:00.860 | However, this is more of the road not taken.

00:57:03.500 | If you read a book I like called a company of one in this book, the key idea that's being

00:57:14.940 | pitched is that as you're exactly your situation, as you're growing a company and is doing well,

00:57:21.820 | the thing you're doing is in demand.

00:57:24.140 | You have two options.

00:57:27.340 | One, grow.

00:57:28.060 | Great.

00:57:28.860 | It's in demand.

00:57:30.140 | So let's keep hiring people so we can bring in more revenue and we could become a bigger

00:57:34.700 | company.

00:57:35.820 | And as what's argued in this book, and I don't know why, Jesse, maybe we can look it up.

00:57:40.220 | The author's name is escaping me.

00:57:42.140 | Talk about midlife at the moment.

00:57:43.980 | Paul is involved, something.

00:57:45.900 | I'm not sure why I can't remember his name.

00:57:48.700 | We'll look that up.

00:57:49.260 | But the book is called a company of one.

00:57:50.700 | Jesse will look up the name of the author.

00:57:52.860 | - It might be Graham.

00:57:53.820 | - I'll look it up.

00:57:56.300 | - Yeah.

00:57:56.620 | So there's, but what the, the- - Jarvis.

00:57:59.100 | - Paul Jarvis.

00:58:00.140 | So I was right with Paul.

00:58:01.260 | - Yep.

00:58:01.500 | - There we go.

00:58:02.540 | I actually write about him in my new book coming out in March.

00:58:04.860 | So I'm really forgetting things.

00:58:06.380 | Jarvis says there's two options as your company gets successful.

00:58:08.620 | You can grow, which means you hire more people.

00:58:10.540 | And then you can service more clients and your revenue, the overall revenue to the company

00:58:15.500 | can increase.

00:58:16.300 | And this has the advantage, like, why do you do this?

00:58:18.620 | So that your company's value goes up.

00:58:20.380 | And it gives you the possibility of now we can sell this company maybe for $20 million

00:58:24.220 | 10 years down the line.

00:58:25.580 | The other option he says is use the leverage of your company being successful and in demand

00:58:32.300 | to make your life easier.

00:58:34.140 | Great.

00:58:35.100 | I'm going to charge more.

00:58:35.900 | I'm going to do less.

00:58:37.580 | Great.

00:58:39.100 | Now on half of the time I'm working, I can be matching my salary that I had before.

00:58:43.900 | So you can, otherwise you can extract the value of what you're doing to make your life

00:58:47.980 | easier, or you can extract the value of what you're doing to make your company grow more.

00:58:52.460 | But as Jarvis says, and it's borne out in your example, if you go the grow route, your

00:58:56.620 | life's going to get busier.

00:58:57.660 | And so you have to ask, is this potential buyout in the future more valuable to me than

00:59:05.020 | the fact that I could be making a really good living with a much easier, more autonomous,

00:59:08.700 | flexible job than I had before?

00:59:11.020 | And it almost becomes a knowledge work version of that parable you hear again and again of

00:59:16.780 | the American business executive who goes on vacation in Mexico and he comes across a Mexican

00:59:23.500 | fisherman in a small village in Mexico.

00:59:27.100 | And he says, "Hey, let me tell you, there's a lot of good fish out here.

00:59:30.540 | You have a good fishing spot.

00:59:31.500 | With my help, I could really help you grow."

00:59:35.100 | Right?

00:59:35.340 | Like we could hire some people and you could have multiple boats go out.

00:59:39.260 | As that gets more successful, you could level up to a really large commercial boat and start

00:59:44.780 | selling to commercial contracts all around the world.

00:59:47.980 | Like, "This is a great fishing spot.

00:59:49.180 | You have great expertise.

00:59:50.060 | I could help this become big."

00:59:51.260 | And this parable, the fisherman says, "Well, why would I want to do that?"

00:59:56.860 | And he's like, "Well, it's actually like if you do this, you could eventually sell the

00:59:59.340 | company and have all this money.

01:00:00.780 | And it would allow you to live in like a beautiful small town by the coast and just go out and

01:00:05.260 | fish each day."

01:00:05.900 | It's kind of similar, right?

01:00:08.620 | I mean, why do you want your $7 million share of the $20 million sale?

01:00:13.660 | As you imagine, like, it'd be great.

01:00:15.100 | I would have more control over my time and do some work with my money and have flexibility.

01:00:19.820 | But you could probably get that within six months by instead just saying, "Hey, I'm in

01:00:23.100 | a lot of demand, tripling my prices, cutting my hours in half, and going to learn to fish."

01:00:28.380 | So keep that in mind more broadly, the audience out there more broadly.

01:00:32.540 | Paul Jarvis, Company of One, gives you an alternative response to success in a small

01:00:38.380 | company, small startup, or in your freelance skills.

01:00:41.660 | All right, let's do one more question, Jesse, I feel it.

01:00:45.500 | Last question is from Sean.

01:00:46.700 | "How can I better handle a work setback?

01:00:51.500 | I'm an engineer and I've been processing a recent setback from a feature launch that

01:00:56.780 | didn't meet expectations.

01:00:58.060 | The combination of already being mildly burnt out in this long delivery journey and the

01:01:02.380 | disappointing outcome have knocked me out of balance.

01:01:06.220 | There's a sense of, "Meh," to both work and leisure activities that I usually engage in

01:01:10.780 | with much more zeal.

01:01:11.900 | What have you done in your experiences and how can I bounce back?"

01:01:16.300 | Well, Sean, I would say you don't have to bounce back right away.

01:01:20.620 | So there's this core idea that's part of my broader philosophy of slow productivity that

01:01:28.140 | I've been thinking about a lot because in March, I have this book, eponymous book, coming

01:01:32.060 | out on that topic.

01:01:33.660 | Principle number two of slow productivity is work at a natural pace.

01:01:37.740 | When you dive into that, what that means is, among other things, there should be, if you

01:01:43.180 | want to embrace human nature, and again, we're getting a bit of a Marcus Aurelius Meditations

01:01:48.460 | vibe here, the embrace logos, there should be more of a seasonality to your work.

01:01:53.500 | There's periods where you're really locked in and going after something and there are

01:01:56.860 | periods where you're downshifted because you know what, you're exhausted and something

01:01:59.980 | didn't go well and your brain is burnt out and it needs a couple months.

01:02:03.100 | I don't think that's a bad thing.

01:02:07.260 | This notion of we should always be at some sort of consistent high level of execution

01:02:13.820 | is not realistic.

01:02:14.700 | The people who say they're doing that are either lying or they're drugging themselves

01:02:19.580 | up to try to make it happen, but human beings were not evolved this way.

01:02:22.940 | Life in the Paleolithic was not at a consistent eight.

01:02:26.140 | It was nines followed by lots of twos with the occasional fives.

01:02:29.900 | It was up and down.

01:02:31.260 | Early Neolithic was the same thing.

01:02:33.020 | My God, we're in the fields all day in October and in January, we have nothing to do.

01:02:36.940 | We're used to energy output being up and down.

01:02:41.180 | We're used to the periods of extreme work versus periods of recharge.

01:02:46.220 | So I say just do some of that, Sean.

01:02:48.300 | Lean into like, yeah, I don't need a plan right now to recharge or bounce back in two

01:02:54.380 | days.

01:02:54.700 | I'm just doing a little bit more of the bare minimum work, being a little bit more clever

01:02:59.660 | about my emails.

01:03:00.700 | Let me take a month or two and be careful about when I take on the next project.

01:03:04.380 | I'm going to take a couple of days off, see if anyone notices, send a couple of emails

01:03:07.580 | from the movie theater.

01:03:08.380 | You know you've done that before.

01:03:09.900 | And I would say don't worry about that.

01:03:12.380 | Rest and recharge.

01:03:13.260 | And then a month or two down the line, say, OK, what are we going to work on next?

01:03:18.140 | And then you cycle back up again.

01:03:19.260 | I actually have a New Yorker piece about that, Jesse.

01:03:22.540 | I don't remember the actual title.

01:03:25.260 | It came out last year.

01:03:26.300 | But basically, it's a piece.

01:03:27.900 | You can find that if you just go to my New Yorker archive, calnewport.com.

01:03:31.980 | You'll see there's a link to my New Yorker archive.

01:03:33.900 | Or just search Cal Newport New Yorker.

01:03:35.580 | From last spring or last winter, I had a piece where I looked at everything we know about

01:03:41.900 | how early humans worked.

01:03:43.340 | So we're talking about the hunter-gatherer period.

01:03:46.300 | So what do we spend 300,000 years doing as a species with respect to work?

01:03:50.860 | And then I said, what can we learn about that for modern knowledge work?

01:03:54.860 | And this idea that we should have much more seasonality and intense periods followed by

01:03:59.900 | rest periods was one of the key ideas that came out of that article.

01:04:02.540 | I elaborated on this a lot more in my new book as well.

01:04:04.780 | All right, well, that's good.

01:04:07.340 | Those are good questions.

01:04:08.140 | I want to move on to a final segment here in a second, where as I do each month, I want

01:04:13.420 | to talk about the books I read last month.

01:04:14.940 | First, let me briefly mention another longtime sponsor of this show.

01:04:19.180 | And that's our friends at Blinkist.

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01:04:28.380 | books and podcasts by consuming 15-minute summaries called Blinks that you can either

01:04:34.780 | read or listen to straight from their app.

01:04:38.540 | The way that Jesse and I use Blinkist and what we suggest is as a triage tool for your

01:04:46.220 | reading habit.

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01:05:54.060 | Let's also talk about life insurance.

01:05:58.860 | I mean, when else are you going to think about life insurance more than after reading

01:06:03.820 | Meditations by Marcus Aurelius?

01:06:05.580 | Throughout this whole book, he says, "Think about your death."

01:06:09.580 | So if you read this book, as I just did, you come out of it thinking, "My God, I'm

01:06:13.340 | going to die.

01:06:13.900 | I need more life insurance."

01:06:16.620 | I'm convinced that Aurelius probably had a policy genius account that he worked for

01:06:25.180 | policy genius, because this whole book makes you think about life insurance.

01:06:28.300 | So why don't you have more life insurance?

01:06:29.900 | Aurelius told you to think about death.

01:06:31.580 | What's going to happen to your loved ones, the people who depend on you?

01:06:34.060 | Why don't you have more life insurance?

01:06:35.340 | Because you don't know how to do it.

01:06:37.580 | It's a task that's ambiguous, and that means it's a task you're going to procrastinate

01:06:41.660 | on.

01:06:42.780 | This is where policy genius enters the scene because it makes the process of finding and

01:06:49.180 | obtaining good quality life insurance, affordable life insurance easy.

01:06:53.020 | All right.

01:06:54.780 | So even if you have a policy to work, you probably don't have enough.

01:06:57.900 | So you want to go to policy genius, because with policy genius, you can find life insurance

01:07:02.220 | policies that start at just $292 per year for a million dollars of coverage.

01:07:08.780 | Some of the options have same day approval and avoid unnecessary medical exams.

01:07:13.660 | Policy geniuses technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes for America's

01:07:18.700 | top insurers.

01:07:19.340 | You just need a few clicks to find your lowest price.

01:07:22.780 | It's for parents and caregivers and anyone else has people depend on them.

01:07:27.260 | They simplify the process of getting life insurance.

01:07:29.180 | You can protect the people you love.

01:07:31.260 | Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net.

01:07:34.620 | You deserve a smarter way to find and buy it.

01:07:36.540 | Head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description below to get your free

01:07:41.660 | life insurance quotes and see how much you could save.

01:07:44.620 | Did you see the part in the Isaacson book about Musk with the life insurance and like

01:07:50.700 | the PayPal and how Theo was like saying, "Oh, we could have used that money."

01:07:55.900 | Yeah.

01:07:56.060 | For people who don't know in the Musk biography, tell if I got this right, Jesse.

01:07:59.420 | At some point during PayPal, very young, 25 year old Elon Musk takes out like a massive

01:08:06.380 | life insurance.

01:08:06.620 | I think it was a hundred million.

01:08:07.340 | Like a hundred million dollar life insurance policy on his life as a way to just signal,

01:08:12.060 | "I'm very, very important to this company even though we're merged now and I'm not the

01:08:16.540 | sole founder."

01:08:17.820 | It's a classic move.

01:08:19.340 | Jesse just took out $50 million in life insurance on himself.

01:08:23.100 | Well, the thing was in the part of that book, he almost died because of malaria.

01:08:28.380 | If I guess if you went in like a day later, he would have been dead.

01:08:29.980 | It's true.

01:08:30.700 | And then it turned out.

01:08:31.660 | So then Peter Thiel saw that and he's like, "Oh my God."

01:08:34.940 | He was like, "Maybe it wasn't the best."

01:08:35.900 | He might have needed that money.

01:08:37.340 | Yeah.

01:08:37.660 | Well, I don't want to say Peter Thiel-

01:08:39.580 | They're friends now, I think, or at least they're friends after that part.

01:08:42.620 | I don't want to say he gave malaria to Elon Musk.

01:08:44.620 | Just saying.

01:08:45.980 | I'm just saying, if you get a really expensive life insurance policy on yourself and then

01:08:51.740 | someone who would benefit from that, you get a really weird viral disease, look towards

01:08:57.820 | the people who would benefit from that policy.

01:09:01.260 | All right.

01:09:01.500 | Let's say a final segment.

01:09:02.460 | I want to talk about the books I read in September.

01:09:04.700 | As always, I aim to read five books per month.

01:09:09.340 | So what did I read in September?

01:09:11.340 | First book, this was something I started early in my summer at Dartmouth because I was alone,

01:09:16.940 | living near a pine forest, and then I didn't finish it till later.

01:09:19.820 | And that was Lincoln Child's latest thriller, Full Wolf Moon.

01:09:24.540 | Yes, it is a book about werewolves.

01:09:27.980 | It takes place in the Adirondacks.

01:09:29.740 | The main character who studies cryptic beast ideas is at this Adirondacks writers retreat,

01:09:38.460 | and there are some grisly killings, and it looks like a werewolf is doing it.

01:09:44.220 | Child always brings things back to naturalistic explanations, so you have to sort of piece

01:09:47.420 | together what's going on.

01:09:48.380 | It was pretty good.

01:09:48.940 | Next I read, it's probably my favorite book of the month, The Underworld by Susan Casey.

01:09:55.260 | I'm a huge Susan Casey fan, both of her writing and of the way that she left the incredibly

01:10:01.660 | busy corporate magazine chief editor roles that she had to move to Maui and just write

01:10:07.420 | these narrative nonfiction books that all have to do with the ocean.

01:10:11.420 | It started slow.

01:10:12.780 | The first chapter is historical.

01:10:15.100 | I'm like, "Ah, maybe Susan lost her step."

01:10:17.340 | It's talking about these early missions, like the Challenger.

01:10:23.340 | We're talking about 18th century expeditions, sailing ships to dredge the deeps and figure

01:10:28.300 | out how deep is the ocean and what's down there.

01:10:30.460 | It's like, "Eh, historical nonfiction.

01:10:32.460 | It's okay."

01:10:32.940 | Then she does what she does best, which is it comes to present tense, and she goes on

01:10:39.660 | adventures where she meets these interesting characters and lets you into their life and

01:10:45.020 | adventures with them.

01:10:46.540 | She starts hanging out with, for example, this eccentric millionaire who had a custom

01:10:52.380 | submarine built to go to the deepest parts of all of the ocean.

01:10:56.140 | She goes onto the ship and goes down in that submarine.

01:10:59.180 | She hangs out with the Triton submarine people, and they go on these dives.

01:11:03.980 | Once she's meeting interesting people and doing interesting things, it just becomes

01:11:08.060 | fantastically readable.

01:11:09.180 | Great book.

01:11:10.380 | Susan does it again.

01:11:12.460 | Book number three, I went back and reread a book that I had first read years and years

01:11:17.660 | ago, which was Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks.

01:11:22.060 | I originally read that in galley form because I blurbed that book.

01:11:25.180 | This would have been years ago.

01:11:26.380 | But I didn't remember a lot of it, so I went to reread it because I thought it would be

01:11:31.020 | relevant to a new book idea I'm working on, and it held up.

01:11:34.860 | I remembered having enjoyed it the first time, and I enjoyed it the second time as well.

01:11:40.300 | Berkman brings a great, somewhat cynical British detachment to the ways we think about

01:11:48.140 | productivity and accomplishment that really struck a chord when it came out.

01:11:51.980 | So I definitely recommend that.

01:11:54.540 | Tim Ferriss, I think, either interviewed Berkman.

01:11:57.260 | Actually, I think Ferriss actually read one of the chapters of the book or played one

01:12:02.540 | of the chapters of the book, the audio book, on his podcast.

01:12:05.980 | I think you told him about the book.

01:12:07.740 | I did, yeah.

01:12:08.300 | So I told him about 4,000 Weeks, and then Tim really got into it.

01:12:12.140 | And then I think he either had Oliver on or played a chapter of the book on his podcast.

01:12:16.860 | If you want to get a little deeper on it, you can check out that Ferriss podcast.

01:12:20.620 | That would have been, I don't know, last year or the year before.

01:12:22.380 | Then I read Rethinking Fandom by Craig Calcaterra.

01:12:28.220 | So this is for my sports book book club that I'm in, just a bunch of dudes to get together

01:12:34.300 | and read books about sports.

01:12:35.660 | Rethinking Fandom is interesting.

01:12:39.020 | Short.

01:12:41.660 | It's about all sports.

01:12:43.020 | It's all sports.

01:12:44.380 | I mean, it's a little bit, you know, it has some interesting ideas.

01:12:49.100 | I mean, it's basically like he's a sports writer, he's a baseball writer, and he's like,

01:12:52.940 | I don't know, I think sports are kind of problematic.

01:12:55.260 | And so we should be careful of being sports fans.

01:12:57.340 | They're owned by rich people and like these rich people kind of suck.

01:13:00.220 | And they're, and, you know, should we really be cheering for these billionaires and helping

01:13:08.940 | out their teams?

01:13:09.500 | And we should just be kind of like less excited fans.

01:13:12.060 | That's basically the gist of it.

01:13:13.340 | And there's some really good points in there.

01:13:14.620 | Obviously, it's well-researched.

01:13:15.660 | I mean, the arguments about the one that really resonated with me as a Washington Nationals

01:13:20.380 | fan was, do we really just have to accept tanking?

01:13:23.420 | Like fans like, yeah, we have to tank to rebuild the team, even though, of course, it's possible

01:13:28.780 | to go through a rebuild without tanking so hard if you just spent more money.

01:13:33.100 | So who really benefits from this?

01:13:35.740 | Two aspects to tanking, the rebuilding of the farm system and getting talent up and

01:13:41.100 | doing worse matters for that.

01:13:43.420 | But also there's the element of like, let's keep our expenses low during the rebuild period.

01:13:48.540 | That's only helping the owners.

01:13:49.820 | So there's this argument of like, you know, we just tolerate that.

01:13:52.620 | Like, yeah, of course, like the, the learner should not spend money on this baseball team

01:13:56.620 | because they're rebuilding.

01:13:57.740 | So I give him, it's like, that's good for them.

01:13:59.740 | Does it really good for Washington DC?

01:14:01.260 | You know, they have a team last year that went to 60 wins or less.

01:14:05.260 | So that's interesting.

01:14:06.860 | Sports book, final book, a thriller, great thriller, Alistair McClain.

01:14:12.380 | This is 1963 ice station, zebra, a meteorological station on the ice pack near the North pole

01:14:20.780 | as this terrible fire and they're seeing out this distress call and they're sending a nuclear

01:14:24.700 | submarine.

01:14:25.180 | The only way to get to it is to go under the ice and then break up the ice near it.

01:14:30.700 | And so it's, they're going out there and there's more to this fire than was at first people

01:14:37.020 | suspected.

01:14:38.220 | One of the cool things about this book, other than just like classic McClain, he helped

01:14:42.060 | invent the modern thriller and just it's, it's, you know, six thriller moments, three

01:14:48.060 | major, three minor.

01:14:49.340 | He has the whole formula down.

01:14:50.860 | What's cool about it is nuclear submarines were new.

01:14:53.820 | So he's talking about all of these innovations that were new to nuclear submarines that wouldn't

01:14:58.940 | be surprising to us today.

01:15:00.700 | But in 1963, no one had ever designed a boat before that spent more than a handful of hours

01:15:06.780 | underwater.

01:15:07.580 | Some Marines pre nuclear power were on the surface that you would only go underwater

01:15:12.780 | temporarily to approach the ship and fire.

01:15:15.420 | And he was talking about how different it is to have a, how do you have a boat that

01:15:19.580 | stays underwater?

01:15:20.460 | How does it navigate?

01:15:21.420 | How do you throw out the garbage?

01:15:22.780 | Also how big these boats were because they had to fit nuclear reactors.

01:15:26.940 | So it was, it was cool.

01:15:28.140 | I mean, I liked that part of stuff we take for granted was very new.

01:15:32.140 | So it was like a techno thriller of the time.

01:15:33.820 | So there you go.

01:15:35.340 | Those were the five books, Jesse, that I read in September.

01:15:38.460 | And that's all the time we have for today's episode.

01:15:43.660 | I'd like to give a final note at the end of every episode.

01:15:46.060 | Now, if you're listening and you like it, do a review on iTunes or subscribe.

01:15:52.060 | That does matter.

01:15:53.420 | Somehow they use that to figure out whether they show the show to someone else.

01:15:57.020 | If you're listening and you want to watch again, it's the deep life.com/listen episode

01:16:01.740 | 268, the videos will be right there.

01:16:04.460 | All right.

01:16:04.940 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:16:07.020 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:16:10.620 | Hey, so if you enjoyed today's episode and our discussion of stoicism and the deep life,

01:16:15.660 | I think you'll also like episode 215 in which I interview master of stoicism, Ryan Holiday.

01:16:24.940 | Check it out.

01:16:25.900 | I think this goes to the question that you talk about in your books, which is like,

01:16:30.140 | I want to do something great, but I don't know what that is.

When Life Gets Hard: 12 Stoic Lessons To Change Your Life Before 2024 | Cal Newport

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