236: Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday

All right, Mike, we're back and we are going to take on... Ryan Holiday's last book in the Stoic Virtue series today. But before we do that, we should talk about some follow-up items. Now, I had some follow-up items in here that were for the old, old section. And you took them out of here. And I don't know if you...

did that on purpose or not, but I still want to talk about one of them. I did, but I'm sorry. I didn't know you actually meant to revisit those. I meant to keep those in there, but that's okay. I just want to, and 90% of the reason why I wanted to keep him in there is because I want credit for him. So I did download Justin's resources. Okay. Check. Yay. I did. look into or we did the accountability thing primarily because you did it.

at the very end of the show last time. So thank you very much for doing that. I'm doing a terrible job staying accountable. But if you want to know more about that, feel free to go to the pro show. We talk about why I'm doing a terrible job or... why i might be doing a terrible job and how to overcome that mike basically coached me for the uh for the last 15 minutes if you all

don't know my theme for pro shows. My theme is to get Mike to coach me live on this episode. So I just ask him questions in ways that turn into a coaching session. But now let's go ahead and get to today's. My first follow-up item was make an accessible reference guide of the reference items that were in the back of Made to Stick.

So what I did is I pulled those out of there and then I told Gemini to format that and make it pretty and turn it into something that I could throw into my obsidian vault. And it did a great job and I feel really good about it. And now it's there for when I want to know and say, what exactly did that made to stick book say? I can quickly find it in Obsidian and there you go. Fantastic. So I'm feeling good about this one. I'm liking it. And what's yours?

So what's your first follow-up item or your only follow-up item? We didn't have very many follow-up items. Yeah. This is actually not something that you'll be able to hold me accountable to for quite a while because it has to do with the book that I'm writing. But I want to have that easy reference guide for the personal retreat book that I'm writing, just like Made to Stick, at the end of my book. So I haven't even started this yet, but I am.

Working on the writing, as you alluded to, we've got a fancy Google sheet, which charts all the words that people have written. And I'm not making as much progress on that as I would like either. I need to get serious about this.

Okay, just so everybody knows, not making much progress is light years ahead of the amount of progress Corey's making. So Mike is doing a great job, everybody. I'm just going to tell you that. He's doing a great job. Not if I'm going to get it done by the end of November.

I gotta pick up the pace. Yeah, that's valid. I get that. One more item of follow-up is, Mike, I have some disappointing news. I have some sad news that I'm going to break for you right now. Uh-oh. I think I know what this is. I don't think I can go to sponsor games. i looked at i looked at when the thing was and like you actually somewhat made this easier for me because at some point i get a text that basically says i'm in like done you know mike sends me the message

It's like I would miss like three or four days of class right before spring break, and I just can't do that. Well, just move your spring break. I can't do that either. But if it was school-related, I could do it. but because it's not school related at all it's just a completely personal thing i just don't feel right doing it so

the timing of things. I'm sorry, but I'm excited to hear what you're going to do and how you're going to grow from it and how amazing it's going to make the rest of your life. And then I'm going to be sad for months.

It will be fun, yeah. So I did buy the ticket. I got the flights. Don't have the hotel yet, but I will be at Sponsor Games. So, yeah, if you... want to come land sponsorship deals with me you should join you should join mike in san antonio uh in march of next year yeah all right cool on the river walk it'll be great Are you ready to get into our book for today?

As ready as I will be. Okay. All right. That's a little bit of foreshadowing there, everybody. So this is Wisdom Takes Work. Learn, apply, repeat. This is the fourth book.

in ryan holiday's stoic virtue series and as you can imagine from the title it is about wisdom and it is in Very, very fitting form to the rest of his books. There is an introduction to the book. There are three parts to the book. There's an afterword. or an epilogue, or I forget what he calls it in this book. And then there are a bunch of what I'm going to call tiny little chapters. And they're all the things that he wants to hit.

in the big themes of his part one part two and part three so without further ado I think we get into it unless you have something else that you want to talk about before the introduction uh just that as you mentioned this is the last one in the stoic virtue series there are four stoic virtues and um i couldn't recall them off the top of my head uh

I think that's okay. I'm looking at them. So the reason I know them is I'm looking at them. Courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. Okay. Yeah. So I would say at the beginning of this that even though they are stoic virtues, this is not... a, um, stoicism textbook per se. Like there definitely is a stoic vibe to it. And Ryan holiday has, I think, firmly established himself as.

the the stoic guy yeah for sure but i don't consider myself a stoic i'm not a huge fan of stoicism not a huge fan of meditations by marcus aurelius i still get a lot out of these types of books. So I do think even if you are not a stoic, that doesn't mean that you are removed from the ideal audience for this. Yeah. It's interesting to me that like... I mean, I don't even think about it as a Stoic series. I think more about it as wisdom.

or courage, or justice, or discipline. So I would go into it that way. It's not a short book. So this book's 400 pages. But at the same time, it also breaks down into those little chapters. So it doesn't... I don't know. I guess it doesn't feel like a 400 page wall to wall text type of a book. So just kind of know that going into it. Yeah, it does not. It reads. Much closer to, I would say, a normal 260-ish page book. Part of that, I think, is the pages are formatted.

Like the whole book is kind of short and squatty. It looks kind of weird. And so there's not as many words on the page. And then because the chapters are so short frequently, they end in the middle of a page. And so you buy back some pages that way. Okay, so let's get into the introduction. So the first thing Holiday is going to do is he's going to kind of remind us what the four virtues are. He's going to...

then introduced the idea that this book is all about the wisdom. And he makes a statement here, the book aims to explain the method of some of the wisest people to ever live. And the reason why I bring that up is because that's what he'll do. the entire book is he will basically pick a wise person, talk about them, pick a wise person, talk about them, pick a wise person, talk about them. And then kind of at the end of each section, when he wants to talk about that thing that, that he deems wise.

in whatever form it is, he's going to then do a wrap up or do like a summary of those things. So very story heavy in terms of the book. He's going to tell us a story and he's going to talk about it. He's going to tell us a story and he's going to talk about it. yep and uh it's kind of the same format the same playbook that he's been following for the other books in this uh series but this one feels a little bit thicker so maybe this is the longest one i didn't compare the page counts but

Okay, anything else with the introduction? I mean, he's really just telling us that wisdom is the mother of all virtues, that basically all of the other virtues rely on wisdom. It can't be delegated to somebody else. You have to earn it. That's where the wisdom takes work part comes from. We can get wiser, but never wise is an interesting way to frame that. And then, I mean, he's really just given us an overview of the idea of what he considers wisdom to be or what people consider wisdom to be.

Yeah, I think that's fine. I guess the other thing I'll share at the beginning of this is that in terms of the Stoic virtues, this one is... I think the most interesting to me. I don't think I've said that about the other books, but maybe, maybe I have, I don't know. Like courage is, is a appealing, but the, the whole idea of what actually is wisdom and how do you. apply it i feel like that is the one that is uh kind of custom fit for for me to uh to like the most

I mean, it's kind of the reason why we do this podcast, right? Is we read these books. We don't just read them to read them. We talk about the ideas, figure out what we're going to apply from them. That is essentially our version of... trying to build this uh this wisdom yep yep i would agree okay um then let's move into part one um now this episode is going to seem maybe a little bit different than than other ones because

Each of the three parts is actually quite long, so I didn't count them, but Mike, you might know more off the top of your head. I mean, there's probably 15 subsections within each. uh within each one of these parts you know i mean like there's a decent number of uh of pages in every one of the parts. So the part one, the first part is called the the agoge or your training ground. And it's going to come from either Greek or, you know, some ancient.

language latin i would assume i don't know my language is very well so i assume it's latin but he's basically talking about your training uh your training ground so and in this

He's going to unpack like a bunch of different concepts. So I'll read some of them. I won't read all of them because that would be boring. But a most unusual education. Talk to the dead. Be curious. Ask the question. Focus, focus, focus. Learn to listen. So like he's going to say this and basically he's getting into the idea. I guess the way I'll say it is like wisdom just doesn't come from nowhere.

Like we have to have like a background and wisdom. So that's where the training ground comes from. Just so you can get a structure of the book as we unpack the entire book. The next one is going to be called The Sirens, The Perilous Rocks You Must Beware. And the next one is called the apathesis or touching the divine. So basically it's like, train yourself, then be careful of these things, then...

to basically extend this idea of wisdom or try to achieve actual wisdom. Maybe, maybe not. We'll talk about that when we get there. But I think the best way to do this, Mike, is to just kind of look at it and say, hey. What do we want to talk about in here? What stood out to you? What makes sense as you went through the training ground portion of the book?

Sure. Well, one that I really liked was Talk to the Dead because this is about books. So he mentions that books are conversations with the dead. He says that we all have time to read. And on page 26, there's a quote that says, there are many paths to wisdom, but nearly every one of them runs through books. And...

I have not heard Ryan Holiday talk about this topic, but I feel confident in saying that he would advocate for physical books. Would you think that? That seems very true to you. I think he would... I think he would advocate for reading, not necessarily physical books. Well, he has a bookstore where he sells physical books. Oh my gosh. And the way that he writes his books is with...

Analog note cards. I know. His book writing style is wild. I think you're absolutely right. He would 100% say physical, physical, physical all the way through because he picked up what's his name? His mentor. Goodness gracious. Oh, Robert green. Yeah. He picked up Robert green's note taking and index card thing. And cause he talks about at the end of the book about how he picked that up. So yes, you're right. Even though you and Ryan holiday are wrong. Yes, you're right.

I don't know that we are, but that's okay. He asked the question in this chapter, can you think of any truly wise person who doesn't read? I thought that was a pretty interesting question. Well, and this ties back into our book on Charlie Munger. where it talked about how, you know, voracious of a reader Charlie Munger was. And I think about this too, is like the idea of just everybody that you know, everybody that you know is...

that you consider wise, I would say is a very strong reader. You know, they're either a strong reader or they've got 60 years of experience in the thing that they're wise in. It's one of those two things. Well, it's probably both of those things. I was thinking about that because... Can I think of any truly wise person who doesn't read? And I really couldn't. And I was trying to think of a scenario where that would fail to be true.

And because on the surface, like initially I was kind of thinking there's got to be someone somewhere that I would consider. Yeah, they're wise, but I couldn't do it. Yeah. The other thing I want to hit on from this, by the way, the books are conversations with the dead idea. This is really interesting to me because I have long held the belief that books... are like the best investment that you can make for twenty dollars you can get

The best ideas from some of the most brilliant minds that have ever walked the earth, which is why when someone recommends a book, I open up the Amazon app and I buy it right on the spot. Because even if that just sits on my bookshelf. four years until i actually go pick it up to read it it's uh it's nothing yeah i mean we spend so much more on pumpkin spice lattes stuff that

makes no real difference in our lives. And when you think about what books actually have the potential to give you, it's kind of crazy that they are so cheap. Like these should be probably hundreds of dollars if they were going to, even the bad ones, if they were going to accurately reflect the value that they can provide to somebody's life.

And most people can't be troubled to go get a library card and get them for free. And this is why I am so for... libraries and i'm so for like access to information and knowledge in that way even to the point where and again mike you're you're gonna roll your eyes at me probably when i say this but it's like The idea of digitizing books and having a record of those things, that way they stay around long term. I think this is so valuable for us. Because...

There's so much information and so much knowledge contained. And one of the things, one of the points I think Holiday makes... Different places in here is the fact that if you want the wisdom out of those books, you can't just matrix style plug in and download the information. You have to work through it. And as Mike kind of said.

and you all know this from the fact that we do the show, this is the value of what we do here, right? Like, yes, we're making a product and hopefully you're benefiting from it and you're gaining something from it. But like... Us working through these books and then talking about them and like hashing these ideas out, that work that we put into that.

hopefully is slowly and slowly and slowly making us wiser as we think about life and as we think about how to apply it to life. So I couldn't agree more that I think like this conversation with the dead, I like that idea. I like the idea of books are... Like you said, books are cheap. They're a relatively cheap way to get access to a lot of different ideas and cool ideas. And I just think the work is a benefit.

You know, when I think about it compared to social media, the work is a benefit because social media takes no work. I just turn it on and the algorithm just pops stuff in front of my face all the time. This actually makes me go find the book. It makes me get the book. It makes me read the book. You know, I think that's a valuable thing in this situation. So on that topic, not to spend too much time on this first one here, but I just published a newsletter slash blog post about...

being a river, not a reservoir. And I was kind of responding to a newsletter that Ali Abdaal had shared a week or two ago as we record this about what he calls the creation to consumption ratio. Okay. So going back to the pro show about being a professional creator versus a side hustle creator, he actually advocates for...

as much time creating something of your own as time that you spend consuming things that other people have made. And he kind of advocates for the one-to-one ratio there. And I kind of think that's impossible. So as I was thinking about it, you know, my take on it is you don't worry about the ratio. You just have to have an output from all these ideas and things that you, you collect and consume. But I made the point as I was putting together that.

that newsletter that the argument could probably be made that you should consume way more than you create if you have high quality sources. And I think. I called out books specifically, but I'm guessing that Ali is not... I know he reads, he's got a whole book club section on his YouTube channel, but...

I think just the way that that is phrased, it kind of assumes that you're not going to wrestle through a 360-page book like we just did before sitting down to record an hour and a half podcast on it. Those two... don't match up one to one. So I think the, the more important thing is not now how much am I consuming, but really like, what are you consuming? What is in your information diet? That's another.

topic uh in uh one of these sections but not the one that we're in so yeah are you okay if i move us to a couple different ones that lump together yep Alright, so some of the ones that stood out here for this one is find your classroom, find your teacher, become an apprentice. So not surprising that I would call out those three. I want to talk about them as a package because I think they are a package. And what I really like is... his approach to being more open to classroom.

He calls out things like the military, an internship, an apprenticeship, starting a company, doing a thing. There are these ideas that can be your classroom. I think traditional classrooms are good. And I think they are useful. And I think that it's going to be very hard to become a wise person without at some point experiencing a traditional classroom. Like, I just think that's the case. I also think...

that it's going to be hard to become a wise person without experiencing a non-traditional classroom. So I think both of these things are very, very true. I think about some of the ways I've learned the most isn't in... classroom where there's been a lecturer or a teacher like actually talking to me it's been working with somebody and watching what they do and trying to figure out why did they think that way and how did they do that and this rolls us right into

that thing about like find your teacher. And I love what he, what he says here basically is like, avoid bad teachers. And I think this is so true. And like, this is where, you know, part of the educational system. I get kind of frustrated with it because I think about the educational system a lot. If your student, whether it be your child or your...

nephew or whatever it might be, if they get in with a bad teacher and you can't figure out a way to get them out of that bad teacher, that can ruin like the whole year for them. If they're in a traditional educational environment, that can ruin like the whole year. Not only the psychological impact it has, like, so it's a whole year of learning plus a psychological impact. Now, by no means am I saying don't have grit and you can't like help.

help your kid learn to deal with a struggling situation or that's the wrong way to put it, but help them deal with a difficult situation. But what I say is like, if you're in a situation where like somebody's clearly, they're just a bad teacher. It's okay. It's just like a bad book. We've talked about this on the show in the past. If there's a bad book, it's okay to put it down and just not finish it and be like, I don't like this book. This book is bad. I'm going to put this down.

The same thing I think is true with a teacher. We did an entire episode on apprenticeship and we read an entire book about apprenticeship. So I don't want to go too hard into the apprenticeship, but Mike, I think the more and more. I'm doing education, the more and more I'm thinking about learning.

the more of a fan I'm becoming for apprenticeships. And again, I don't think that you get rid of the traditional classroom, but I think if you combined classroom environment with an apprenticeship in the right way and at the right ratios, man, what an educational opportunity. you know we're strong on internships here and i've always been a fan of like co-ops and and those type of things

I just think there's a huge value in apprenticeship. So I really like the way he framed and he packaged these three things. And I also appreciate the way he put them in the order that he put them in. Classroom, teacher, apprenticeship, and kind of how he blended all that together. I found those to be. really valuable for me. Yeah. So my oldest is 18 and we're looking at schools and things like that. So we actually went and toured the technical college the other day.

learned about a lot of those, those programs. I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on stuff like that. Cause those seem pretty interesting. They obviously have the classroom element where you're learning what to do, but then you actually go do it. Like if you want to get into. I forget the name of the program, but there's literally a program where you spend a whole year building the house. If you want to learn how to build the house, they'll actually walk you through it.

And you get to apply all the learning. If you want to get into woodworking, they've got a $10 million lab with all this crazy equipment in it where you can actually do this stuff. And it just seemed like a really neat approach. At least the things that you would learn with the trades, you know, getting some experience before you would have to go start at the bottom if you want to become a plumber or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's an immense...

opportunity there, right? And if you look at the nation right now, there's a lot of skilled labor holes that we have right now. So I don't know them. I haven't kept up with the data very... recently like I haven't I haven't gone looked at it in the last week or two or whatever it is but I can tell you that like my brother is always looking for welders he's always looking for pipe fitters he's always looking for people who are in the skilled labor

Electricians I know, there was a period out here in Denver where fiber optic installers, I mean, you could not find enough of fiber optic installers. So I'm a huge fan of those things. I think what you have to encourage the student to... to think about and what the parents have to like help them think through is not necessarily the next five or 10 years, but think through like 25 years from now. It's like in 25 years.

What do you think about still going out and managing job sites and welding and getting into all those crazy positions and being an electrician versus are you setting yourself up to where... as you naturally like get older, right? And you don't want to do those manual labor type jobs anymore. Have you set yourself up in a way that it allows you to then manage the people that are doing that work or.

apprentice the people that are doing that work and mentor the people that are doing that work. And I think there's a, there's a both sides of that conversation because. I think that there are certain individuals where those jobs fit much better with them, especially at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old.

Like, I mean, just without a doubt, like that's what they need to be doing right now. Just like, I think there are certain people who come out and they're like, I need to go to the military. Like that is the education I need right now. It is not a formal education. It is the military. Like that's what, that's the education I need.

And, and I think there's, there's a lot of value in that. And then my, my question is, okay, what do you do after that? Like what, what happens after that? Or are you okay with doing that thing forever? Like for the rest of your, your career? And if you can answer those, those honestly, I think, you know.

that's a completely completely okay thing i also find i have to say this because i'm a university faculty member right like i also think there's a whole nother set of the world that when you graduate under when you graduate high school going into undergrad

Like going the traditional four-year undergrad program is the absolute right thing for them to do. That's exactly what they need to do. And they know why they need to do it. And then there's a whole group of people that have no clue what they want to do. And they're in the murky middle.

And they come out and they say, well, what do I need? I need a couple years to figure stuff out. And that could look like gap years. That could look like actually enrolling in a university and using the university to explore. those opportunities. It could look like apprenticing under somebody meant, you know, being, getting mentored. So there's my overly long winded answer of, I think they're all viable options and you gotta, the hard work is figuring out.

which one's best for you. Sure. One other thing I wanted to talk about in this section, there's actually a little chapter called create a second brain, which I got to admit when I, when I read that title, I was like,

Huh. Because I knew that he creates his books on the analog note cards, as he mentioned, the system he picked up from Robert Greene. So that was... curious that that was here really what this is is an admonition to keep a commonplace book exactly i was going to say that too yeah yeah so He mentions engage in the practice of capturing information and recording it so it can be drawn on later. And then later on.

I think it was the Acquire Experience section. He talked about Da Vinci, who was methodical about processing and recording information he came across inside of his commonplace books. He talks a lot about Da Vinci. And his notebooks and things like that actually come up later in a different section. But there's one other quote from this Create a Second Brain section that I think is absolutely great advice.

Study all systems, but make your own one you'll actually use. So this is essentially why I have taken the approach with practical PKM that I have. I've struggled a little bit with LifeHQ because I don't want it to be a done for you system that you just start using and then you never think about it again. Turns out that's what people say they want, but I feel like the most successful version of any PKM system is one where you take the foundation and then you apply your own tweaks to it.

Which is why I have written over 60,000 words in documentation for LifeHQ. I literally have a whole book written already just inside of LifeHQ with all the how-tos and things.

But regardless of whether you lose LifeHQ or not, I just want to call out that this is great advice about not just copying somebody else's system. I kind of... recoil a little bit when people are like oh i use para or i use you know whatever sort of organizational structure because those systems are kind of built to force your brain down

predetermined paths and if those paths work for you great but they're probably not a perfect match and so you you do have to figure out you know what is the path of least resistance for how you work and then build the structure to support the way that you work. And just using a prebuilt thing out of the box, I feel like is just not the right.

way to do it, but I've also not heard anybody describe why, or not why, but really what I consider to be the correct approach so succinctly. Yeah, I think... I think he does a good job here. I also want to say that I don't think your life HQ is meant to do that.

I don't think you ever sell it like that. You sell it as like a, well, I see it as a get over the hurdle, right? Like, so, okay, here's a preceded thing to get over the hurdle. And then you got to tweak it. You got to make it your own. Like, that's the way I think you've done there. So I'll stop there.

I agree. Like, I think you have to have some sort of a system or wisdom will take longer to develop. Because I think if you don't have some sort of a system, a commonplace book, a digital commonplace book, some sort of, you know, life HQ type of a thing. you're just going to lose too much because of especially how fast information hits us these days and how much information hits us and how busy we run our lives. You know, like we all run our lives entirely too busy, I think.

But what are you going to do? That's just kind of how life is right now unless you make an active choice to not do that. I have one more out of here that I want to talk about and then we can move from my perspective. The join a scene.

section the join a scene chapter i really like the join a scene chapter right so like this is where i get my first action item out of the book and my first action item out of the book is what scene makes sense for me so I will freely tell you that like one of the reasons why when Mike asked me to go host Bookworm with him, I was like, yes, because like the scene around people who take in information and process it critically.

is a very valuable scene for me it's one of the reasons why I like universities it's one of the reasons why I like academia I think you can go too far I think it can get you know you're you're you take yourself too serious in certain environments but i like those scenes where people take in information and they think critically about them like so that's a good scene for me

i also get jealous of things like he mentions the inklings and like different music scenes and the paypal mafia and there's everything and i get i get jealous because i'm here i am i'm 40 something years old and i don't have that scene and i want it like i want that scene right like so mike i'll freely admit to you like i get jealous of your i don't know what you call it your creator group yeah yeah it's like i get it's like i want a group like that but then i'll tell you it's like

Well, if you pushed me hard and you said, and you said, well, which one do you want? Like, what do you want? Like create it, Corey, like go make that scene. And I would go, Oh, you know what I mean? Like, so it's a double. Yeah. So. I actually would generally advise not to go make the scene, but to join the scene, especially at the beginning, because...

You kind of don't know what the scene should look like. Your ideal scene. He does bring up the Junto, which is Benjamin Franklin's club of 12 friends devoted to mutual improvement. But I feel like if you just grab 12 random friends and be like, Hey guys, let's get together and mutually improve each other. The first version of that is terrible. The second version of that is a little bit better. Third version of that. Okay. Now we're onto something.

And by then your 12 people has dwindled down to six, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you're better off just trying a bunch of different scenes, especially with the... The internet, I think it's more accessible than ever to join that sort of thing. That being said, the Creator Business Accelerator, I mean, I've told you before that we'd love to have you in there. And then I'm doing it currently as like a 10-week sprint.

for people. But I fully intend to make this just like a biweekly group coaching thing that's added on to the library in the long term. I feel like... occasionally doing the sprints to kind of give people the positive peer pressure, the accountability to actually do the thing can be useful. But really the scene that he's talking about isn't like a cohort. style where you show up for a short period of time and you do something it's a place that you show up consistently because

You join the conversation and then you walk away and then your brain continues to turn things over. And it's like, oh, well, here's a question I have. And then you come back and you ask that. And so that's where the really good stuff happens, I feel like, is the regular. meeting of the minds, so to speak. And this is an area where I believe the virtual medium has hurt us. Before the virtual medium had a possibility of existing...

that scene had to be done in person and we had to agree to meet somewhere and we met somewhere and then we established it. And I just think there's a stickiness to that. that I think that stickiness is harder to get virtually. Now, I'm not saying that the virtual hasn't brought other pros to it. I just think the virtualness is less sticky than it is.

you know, when you're in person and you're going to the local, you know, coffee shop or brew, brew house or whatever it is, you know, like, like the stories he describes. So, okay, Mike, do you have any more from this first section? Cause I'm ready to go to the second one. No, let's go to the second one.

Okay, second one. So part two, the sirens, the perilous rocks you must beware. So as you can obviously tell where he's getting this from is the idea that, you know, the sirens would call you in. And then what would they want you to do?

want you to run aground onto the rocks. So when we're thinking about wisdom, what are these sirens that we must be aware of? I'll give you some of the things he talks about here. Empty the cup, right to think, assemble your board of directors, think for yourself, don't break your brain, grow up, don't be a snowflake, those kind of things. So this is a very interesting section to me because...

in some of these chapters, he like latches on to individuals and just, I mean, Mike, I texted you about this throughout the week. He kind of just goes off, right? Like, I mean, he just goes off and it's like, I'm like, did he just start ranting? Like, and just go crazy on this rant about somebody that he sees doing this wrong?

So he does rant a lot. Now, I'm curious, are you wanting to actually talk about the afterword as part of this? Or are we just keeping it to the three sections? No, we can talk about the afterword. Yeah, we can talk about the afterword. Well, I will save it then. Okay, we'll save it for the afterword.

he does like he kind of goes off off on a rant now he's he ties it back into wisdom so it's not that he just goes off on a rant and says like i'm going to use this as my my platform to rant about a thing he does tie it back into wisdom and he makes connections you know

to the title of the chapter and back to it. So I just thought that was strange. Like that was caught me off guard after the first chapter where the stories were all like, kind of look at this thing and let's aspire to be like this. And then this one, it was all like,

here we, here we go. You know, he's going to, he's going to go off again. So, yeah. And, and let's just, let's say the quiet part out loud here, you know, the person that he's talking about in this first chapter, the storm within us is Elon Musk. Yeah. And, uh, Again, we can talk more about this in the afterward because I think that gives a lot of context. But at this point in the book, it's kind of like, you're being kind of brutal here, buddy. And my big thing is like, it's...

Like, regardless of how I feel about the individual, I'm just thinking, holy cow, like, here we go. You know, and he just, he goes for it. Okay, so what are some of the things that stood out to me in this? This is where you get the what's your information diet, which we've talked about before and I think is very valuable. I really like the assemble your board of directors and the idea of if you have the wrong...

board of directors, they're going to lead you in the wrong way. If you have the wrong advisors, they're going to lead you in the wrong way. I like that he calls out the fact that we fill ourselves with... So this is empty the cup, but we fill ourselves with distracting information and we kind of allow that to arise to an importance level that it shouldn't.

have or it doesn't deserve and we need to empty the cup that's what he's talking about is get rid of that distracting things this ties into a chapter that he talked about in the last section which is focus focus focus so it's like if you put those two together they're a nice pair that we you know we

Getting rid of the distracting things will allow us to focus more. I'll stop there on those. There's a lot of stuff in here that I think is really, really wise and well done, but those are a couple that I called out first. Yeah. So let's talk about the watch your information diet, because that was another one that I liked. So he frames this.

by saying that what we put in our minds is just as important as what we put in our bodies. Now, I don't know if you follow Ryan Holiday on social media or not. He's actually a pretty good Instagram follow.

sharing little clips from the podcast that he records in his bookstore. The latest thing he's been doing, which I really love is... some famous person will walk in and he'll make like personal recommendations so there's a video of like him walking around grabbing books off the shelves this is why this one's really good that sort of thing um but he also is a big time runner He'll post screenshots of, I just ran 20 miles at a 7 minute 30 second pace. He's way faster than I am. He's not quite...

It's the level of Sahil Bloom in terms of, like Sahil is just... such a specimen that it feels like every time he shares that stuff he's kind of showing off a little bit okay okay you know i don't get that vibe with with ryan holiday at all but he he's another one of those guys who he obviously takes care of his body right Um, he's very, very much in shape. So watching your information diet for me hits a little bit different than somebody else who's sharing this, who isn't a big time.

athlete because you could look at somebody who's like in decent shape and they say yeah watch your information diet what you put in your mind just as important as what you put in your body and you're like okay yeah I guess so. So you kind of believe it's important because I'm looking at your body and I can see you don't really, you're not all in with that aspect, right? But when Ryan Holiday says it, it has more...

Wait, it feels more extreme. It's like, okay, this is really important. You better pay attention to this. He says you can consume too much applies to both food and facts. 100% agree. Yep, I agree. Which is the kind of inspiration behind the newsletter I mentioned. You know, at some point you got to quit consuming and you just got to create something out of it. But then also the...

Kind of not necessarily action item for me associated with this, but the thing to think about is that a fool here is only what they want to hear. So consider your information sources. In fact, he explicitly says in this section to seek out the things that challenge you. That's sort of a theme throughout. There are a couple different places where he talks about finding people who disagree with you, people who have...

different points of view than you do. I think it was the last chapter, actually, he talked about how no matter where you go in the world, they think that their norms are normal. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Right. And so you kind of, it's sort of a systemic way of pushing back against that, I think, which is pretty good advice. Yeah. There's a section in here where he talks about thinking for yourself and he uses Churchill.

as an example, and he uses some other examples or other people as examples that I didn't, um, didn't write down, but this idea that like tradition for the sake of tradition should be, you know, like, thought of as poor like like we don't just do things because that's how everybody's done them but at the same time we don't just change things just because we want like we want to change things for the for no reason and i like this idea of coming out and

analyzing a situation and not just doing what everybody else is doing for the sake of their doing it, but saying like, is this the best way to do that? And I think my engineer brain likes this because. I'm very utilitarian. Like, Mike, if you tell me this is the way to do XYZ and I look at it and I go, Mike, no, it's not.

There's a much better way to do this. And just because you and your 100 million other people are doing this, that doesn't mean that's the way I have to do it. So I like this idea of thinking for yourself. And essentially, this chapter is... kind of like overcoming groupthink. Don't just fall for groupthink because that's what the group thinks and that's what you want. And again, I said this before, I think the order in which he writes these chapters...

is very wise. Like, I think he does it in a good way where he flows you through it, not in a... Like not in like a direct or an overbearing way, but in like a subtle way, you know? So he'll talk about, you know, watch your diet and then he'll talk about think for yourself right afterwards. And then right after that, he's going to talk about another one that I like. It's called don't break your brain. So, okay.

just told you you're taking too much stuff in. I just told you don't fall for groupthink. Now I'm going to tell you, Hey, every once in a while, just take a break. Like take some time off. Like don't, don't. Just constantly be letting things into your mind. And what makes me, what makes this valid, I think is the way I'll say it, is what makes this valid for me is I see this happen to people.

Like I see them not control their information diet. I see them not think for themselves. And then I see them just constantly.

watching you know whatever it might be like watching the news or watching you know whatever it might be that's that's really wrecking their brain so i like the way he flows all this together which is a byproduct of the way that he writes his books in my opinion because he's he's gotta have note cards for each one of these chapters and he's flipping through them all and oh this one goes here this one goes here and the

actually using the tangible objects to create the order is way different than organizing the folders and the file hierarchy on the screen. Well, and I'll agree with you here, Mike. So I'll give you an attaboy. Scrivener is essentially the version of this. It's like the note card version of writing with his index card system, his physical index card system. But I'll tell you, I've used Scrivener before and I've played around with it and it just...

it doesn't feel the same like i've done the note card version where you have the physical thing and i've done the digital version which where you have scrivener in the app and you can move the note cards essentially the exact same way and it doesn't feel the same like it it's does not it's more

Tangible is the right word. There's another word there, but it's like, it's more clarity producing to do it with the physical thing than it is to do it with the digital, the digital. Yep. A hundred percent. Yeah. Um, there was another thing in here. I wanted to mention, oh, don't be a snowflake. He says, people have been banning and burning books they don't like for centuries.

And then he says something very profound. He says, people are allowed to be stupid. Yeah, exactly. And then he says, we have a choice between truth and repose. So we can basically either just like... take the easy route or we can try to get to truth and live right. But that's going to take a lot of work. Yeah.

And then this is where he talks about how we have to seek out disagreement and exposure to those conflicting and challenging ideas. That's what makes us stronger. So I think that's really powerful and something that everyone should... should seek to embrace, which is not the natural. Like you kind of mentioned the news sources. I don't care what side you're on.

If you watch the news, it's not the journalistic presentation of facts that it used to be. It's very opinionated, and I'm sure it's all based off of the ratings, like the shows where... They call the other side stupid. And can you believe what this person has done now? You know, get more people watch that. So that's kind of just what what it gravitates towards. But that is having an effect on you. And it's not. Not a good thing. So it may be human nature to just...

be drawn to that sort of stuff, but recognize the effect that it's having on you and push back against it. It's kind of a good way to summarize the book, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to...

I'm going to lump three together again because I think he does such a good job. I guess this one I would lump four is he's got grow up and then don't be a snowflake, seek criticism and make mistakes. And Mike, if you wanted me to make... a very strong claim for why it is worth it to go to a university.

If you put those four together, if the university is good, if they're doing what they should do. Now, I'm not going to tell you that all universities are good and they're doing what they should do. They should help you grow up. They should help you not.

be a snowflake right and understand that there are these other ideas out there and by no means like do you have to agree with all of them or are we trying to get you to agree with on but you should be exposed to a lot of them right and you should think through those in an environment where

the stakes are lower. And I would say the classroom environment is where the stakes are lower. You should see criticism. That's essentially 95% of my job is to criticize people. Not in a mean way, but in like you submitted a thing, hey, this isn't good enough.

Hey, you could have tweaked this. You could have changed that, right? You could have done this thing and then make mistakes. And I'll go back to the idea of where do you want to make mistakes? You want to make mistakes in low stakes environments. The educational system is a low stake environment. What's the worst that happens? You fail my class and you take it over again.

oh my gosh, everything's going to be okay. You know what I'm like? If I make a mistake in business, there's a real good chance that I have to fire people or there's a real good chance that I don't have money to eat and I have to do different things. So I like the way...

We tie it back to wisdom, right? Like these four ideas really lump together really well for if I can figure out a mechanism for these or a way to get better at these, I will become more wise. And I think that's really valuable for us.

yeah agreed okay um anything else on this one before we move to part three i don't know i guess the other one that um i like is well there's a couple i like right to think right is uh one that i like for obvious reasons because this is talking about how writing is a form of contemplation he defines writing as thinking with your fingers i think that's really cool i had not heard this

story at least the details of this previously but you talked about the amazon executives who got so tired of pointless meetings that they banned powerpoint and required a six-page structured memo days before the meeting about the subject i love that i Wish I could do that. Guarantee it's not going to work, but that's pretty cool. And then Don't Fall For It is also kind of interesting because this is really about why people get duped.

uh into joining cults or whatever he he says we drink the kool-aid because we want it to be true talks about how charisma is a powerful weapon and uh no one wants to admit when they've They've been fooled. So I think he does a good job, though. I don't remember specifically from this chapter or not, but this isn't all just like hot takes, real pointed statements. He does a good job of.

tempering this with, this could happen to anybody. So kind of like when it happens to you, be willing to change your mind and make things right again. That's not exactly how he said it, but that's kind of the takeaway. think about what he says here good good good so for those of you listening like this is a hard book to talk about in in just in general because There's a reason why these things have made it into this book.

And I think they're valuable. Like, I don't think there's any section of this book that I would have just completely said, you didn't need to put this in there. Or this is a waste of my time. Like, I really don't think there's anything like that. And I don't want to get the style rating too far. But what it means is like...

Mike and I can't talk about all of them. So like we're, we're glossing over like big chunks of this book, not because it's bad, just because we can't talk about all of them. So we're really trying to hit the highlights for you.

Just keep that in mind as you're looking through. Like, why didn't you talk about this section? I read the book and I think this is the most important section. Yep, I agree that that's an important section. It's just we can't talk about everything. Okay, so let's go into part three. Part three is called...

The apathesis or touching the divine, right? So the apathesis or touching the divine. And in this one, I struggle with trying to understand exactly what... Ryan was trying to get at in this last one it's essentially like I don't know Mike is this the wrong way to say it be wise Like, I mean, is he basically like in part three, like, hey, I told you how to try to get wise. And then I told you how to not make mistakes as you're trying to get wise. And now I'm telling you, just go be wise.

Like, just go be a wise person, even though you'll never achieve wisdom, like pure wisdom. Go do the thing. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I don't know if you have a thought on that or not. But I had trouble wrapping my head around part three. I think if you look at the two-page spread he's got for the different sections, as I look at this, it's really talking about discipline. So I feel like...

Kind of inherent with that is practice. So yeah, I think you're on the right track when you're saying, okay, now go, go do it. It's like enough understanding. Now let's. actually apply it. Yeah. Let's apply it. Yeah. Maybe, maybe applied. Maybe that might be another one to say there. Okay. So our chapters in this one, our sub chapters in this one, shrewd, sensible, sound strong, practice empathy.

embrace the mystery, be self-aware, suffer into truth, laugh, and he's just got a lot of them. One of the things that we didn't really do all that well up until now in talking about this, the first part... The anchor individual, so Mike, correct me if you think I'm wrong here. The anchor individual is Montaigne. So he talks a lot about... michelle de montaigne right for so uh that's the first part or part one part two is i would say the anchor is musk

And then in part three, the anchor is Lincoln. So he'll have this one anchor person, and then he'll bring in other stories throughout that. But I think Lincoln is our anchor in part three. Probably, though Churchill shows up in a lot of them. Oh, yeah, he does. In fact, I was reading the book last night, and there's a quote.

from Churchill on page 323 and 324 under the laugh section that I literally laughed out loud. And Toby's like, what's so funny? So I'll read this to you. This is really about self-deprecating humor is what he's... talking about at this point, being willing to laugh at yourself. So it says, ask for a blood sample. Churchill told his doctor. You can use my finger or my ear. And of course, I have an almost infinite expanse of arse. Yep. Yep. Oh my.

So I cracked up and Toby's like, what's so funny? I'm like, want to hear a really funny quote from Winston Churchill? Did he think it was funny? He did. He did. That's good. That's good. All right. So I think one of the ones that stands out to me is this embrace the mystery idea.

that the more we learn, the more we don't realize we know anything. I wish that I had a prepared way to show you what we were taught in grad school about getting your doctorate and getting your PhD. And like they drew this curve. uh so i'm gonna try to draw a curve like the outside of a circle and then they drew a little bump on it right

And then they drew a little dot on the bump and they were like, okay, like here's the world's knowledge. And that's the big curve. And then the bump is the thing you decide to study, right? When you're in grad school. And then the little dot is what you're expected to do in order to get a doctorate. It's like, you're expected to. make that tiny little dot on the outside of that bump.

And it just makes me think about this because the more you learn about an area, the more you realize you come out and you're just like, man, there's just so much I don't know about. Like there are seven other people studying the exact same thing I'm studying from slightly different angles. Like you think about you with the PKM stuff. There's a bunch of people doing PKM stuff and you're all able to survive in your own.

areas because you're all thinking about it a little bit differently and you're you're experiencing the the different aspects of it and i mean how much more does that get with biology or engineering or whatever it might be. So I really like this embrace the mystery chapter of essentially the wise person.

There's a section here where he talks about the wise person steel mans the other person's position. So what do you try to do? You try to take the other person's position instead of knock it down. You try to say, like, how is this the absolute right answer and why am I wrong? And can I convince myself that your idea is the absolute right answer and that I'm wrong? And if you can do that, okay, you got better for it. And if you can't do that.

you still got better for it. And I really like the way he frames that Embrace the Mystery chapter. Yeah, that kind of complements some of the other things that he mentioned in this book that stood out to me. And I can't find the specific place, which means he probably talked about it kind of all over the place. But when you think... You know it all. That's really when you know nothing. So maybe it's kind of tying to this be humble idea because mentions that.

Fools are rarely humble. Brilliant people often are. And experience should reduce your ego, not enlarge it. I think that is a really powerful phrase. So the more that you learn, the more... you understand, the more wisdom you collect, the more you realize how much you don't know, essentially. So it's kind of like... At the beginning, maybe when you don't have that context, that understanding, I've totally mastered this topic.

And then you take the same amount of knowledge, you multiply it by 10. And once you have that understanding, you're like, yeah, I really don't. I don't know that much. Yeah, absolutely. Which I think is, I mean, obviously the ideal approach, but. is something that I've tried to apply to my own life. So there are a couple chapters here. Always stay a student and be a teacher that I really liked. Always stay a student. He mentions that you should continue to learn your entire life.

We don't know what the future holds or what we'll be asked to learn. So we got to stay curious. I have a different way of saying this, which is keep going and keep growing. And to me, that means that you've never arrived. There's always more to understand. And it really doesn't... It doesn't matter how quickly you get something. It doesn't matter how much you actually collect in terms of notes, ideas, wisdom.

The process is the thing that is important and you should constantly be engaged with that. Kind of another way to say this, for me, one of my personal core values is permanent beta. Essentially. the application never gets shipped yeah yeah you never hit 1.0 you're always tweaking you're always making improvements and if you don't that's when that's when you should be uh

be concerned. There's a different idea here with be a teacher that I like, but anything else you want to talk about with the always stay a student idea? I see you nodding your head. I just think it, we call it lifelong learning in my world. The goal is always to be lifelong learning. And I think that's...

I think that can be why as people get old and in their old age, I don't know if you've ever met these people. You meet the person and you're just like, oh my gosh, they're 75, 80 years old and they just are so alive. They're just so alive. And then you meet the other 75, 80, 85-year-old person and you're just like, goodness gracious, how do they do it every day? They're so down and they're just so depressed kind of a thing.

I don't know if this would be my only answer, but I think one of the reasons why is because I think a lot of those people that still feel alive are trying to learn. They're trying to do stuff. They're out there. They're learning. They're growing. They're taking that random...

art class at the local community college they're you know meeting with their friends to talk about whatever they're talking about like and they're still trying to learn about the world and i just think that is so huge and i i don't think it ever ends and i think Once we allow ourselves to get lazy and stop learning, I think all this other stuff starts to seep in. So now we let...

that information diet go to crud. And we let movies and entertainment to fill our life. But I think if we keep learning and we stay the focus of like, okay, I'm out of school. that's okay. I can still learn. Like there's still a ton of stuff to learn, you know, like there's learning all over the place. So I really love that idea. Yeah. And then so coupled with that is the idea of be a teacher, which wait a minute, that doesn't.

makes sense that it's linked. But one of the things that he mentions in the section of Be a Teacher is that we learn as we teach, which I think is absolutely true. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah, he mentions in here that wisdom cares about progress, not itself. And he admonishes us to teach everything that we know. And that...

is interesting to me. The timing of me coming across that statement is interesting to me. I have a t-shirt that says teach everything, you know, because for a while kit previously convert kit had this merch store with some of their. values, their, you know, sayings. One is create every day. Default to generosity is another one. Teach everything you know is another one. And one of the people that I respect a lot is Matt Ragland.

And he shared a post this last week as we record this, basically saying, teach everything you know is dead. And I was like, hard disagree, Matt. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he's got a little bit different.

point with it because he's attacking it from or approaching it from a newsletter marketing perspective and basically his point is that if you're if you give away everything that you know with the free stuff no one's gonna buy your your product you have to like get them interested but you have to hold back some of the really good stuff and i still disagree with that okay okay um i think if you're trying to sell

a knowledge product as a historical artifact that you don't ever want to touch that makes sense like you never want to have to update it

It's just, this is the thing that is insanely valuable, and I'm not going to give you access to it until you cross the paywall. The case can be made. However... uh the world is changing so fast and new information is coming out all the time i feel like if you take that approach you've got approximately 12 minutes before people don't care and they're just going to ask the llm and they're going to give them everything anyways yeah yeah so

What people are wanting is not an information product. What they're wanting is connection. They're wanting coaching. They're wanting curation. They want to connect with a real human who's going to. help them sort through all the the noise and find the the good stuff um and i don't think you can just do that by saying oh yeah just pay me money trust me i got the goods like

It changes too fast. This might be a little bit different, but in light of this same be a teacher. Physics. I never learned physics as well as when I had to teach physics. I mean, I tried, like it was never that I didn't want to learn it. It was just, okay, now I'm in front of a bunch of people and I need to teach them physics. Man, I got to learn the subject. Like I really got to learn the, it gets to another point that we'll, I'll jump into here.

grasp the essence man there's a big difference between understanding the procedure or the surface level thing and then understanding the essence of a thing and um i didn't realize i was gonna I was going to reference Munger twice in this one, but you get into Munger's book and he would talk about the same thing, right? Like these scaffolded lattices and how they would come together. And this is where I think his commonplace books...

make so much sense or linking, you know, thoughts in a tool like Obsidian. This is where I think you're able to actually distill things down and get to the essence of the idea and having that. coordinated or realized or realized not realized but like have an artifact of that something you can look at something that's tangible really helps you get to the essence of of something so i again i like the way i like the way he

brings things together to make you think a little bit differently about them, or I should say, to give you the opportunity to think a little bit differently about them. That's what I really like about this. Yeah. That Shepard chapter on a grasp of the essence, this is Ryan holiday in a nutshell.

for me because this is where he brings up the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, obviously. Only 271 words. Historically, very short. And that example has been used so many times. What I didn't know... was that Abraham Lincoln was not like, that was kind of a surprise. He wasn't even supposed to have spoken there that day. There was another guy, Edward.

Everett who had been speaking for two hours and everybody's getting ready to go home. And then Lincoln pops up and he delivers the Gettysburg address and is like, that's what people remember. That was, that's. historical context that is fascinating to me that I had no idea was there. And Ryan Holiday does an awesome job doing all the research and telling those stories. But what's...

To emphasize his point about grasping the essence, apparently Edward Everett talked to Abraham Lincoln afterwards and he said, I hope that I could communicate as much quality. words about the idea in two hours as you did in those 271 words or something like that but like basically just saying you know i used all these words i took all this time and i don't think i said as much as you said

In your short little thing. So yeah, that is the job is to distill it down. And it's hard to do. It's why when I transfer my book notes to Obsidian, I force myself to write a three-sentence summary. It's hard to summarize a book, especially a book like this. Yeah, I know. Good luck, Mike. Yeah. But that is a valuable exercise. And it's not just...

the collection of information. Like it's the human critical thinking process. He talks a little bit about AI and the LLMs and the... the afterwards so we don't have to go there just just yet but this is the application of that in my opinion this is like a exhibit a for why you need to do that kind of stuff the only other one i want to talk about here

There's like three or four more that I could talk about. The only other one I really want to talk about is Don't Lose the Wonder. Because I think this happens to a lot of us. We stop that sense of... Just trying to find new things or being curious about things.

There's a bunch of different philosophies on why that's the case. We beat it out of kids in school or we've been told just play by the rules so many times or we're not trying to look for innovation here. We're just trying to get the job done kind of a thing. So it's like I agree with all that stuff.

I just really like this idea of how can we continue to be... driven by this why does that work why does that do the thing it does why are we doing it that way like asking the question why so this would tie to another concept that i've been exposed to a lot and it's like the five whys you know in any situation you ask yourself why

Why? Why? And you have to get down to like level five. And then really you start to get to the essence of a thing when you start to get to the fifth why and you start to actually understand what's going on. So I just like this idea of this reminder, I should say, of keep keep wondering.

Keep being curious about a thing. And he ties it to wisdom. I'm not as worried about tying it to wisdom as I am. Just, I think it's a good approach to life is keep asking those questions. Yep. A couple other that. I want to touch on real briefly. First, be happy. He talks about how for many people, happiness is conditional. And then he talks about peace.

And peace like education, he says, is something you must give yourself. I completely agree with this. If you wait for the external circumstances to align. And then you'll be happy. You will never be happy. And then the other one, which I think is really important, maybe the most important. chapter in this section is the one on practicing empathy because there's a line in here which makes this something that is not just conditional

for the people that I like or the people that I agree with. He says you can empathize without accepting or excusing. So what happens when we don't... Curate our information sources and we create this tribalism. By the way, there's a great Cal Newport deep life podcast episode where he talks a little bit about this in terms of.

What does he call it? The slope of terribleness, I think. I'll try to dig up the link for the show notes, but it just kind of... pushes you more and more towards the extreme and it dehumanizes the other side and well those crazy people believe this how can anybody believe that you know i'm not even going to engage with them

And I feel like the practice empathy section here is like, no, they are humans who have their own issues and they're struggling with things. And you should maybe just chill out a little bit, dude, and try to understand where they're coming from. Just because you understand them.

doesn't mean you have to agree with them. Case in point, Ryan Holiday and Elon Musk. I'm really actually looking forward to talking about the afterword because there's some really important context in there, I think. But he obviously disagrees with certain people in this book. vehemently but i also feel like he practices what he preaches in terms of at least understanding where they're they're coming from um

it is a little bit weird the way that he talks about some of this stuff at the, at the beginning. It's almost like that context should be there before you say some of this stuff. But yeah, I, yeah, getting into sound rating now. So I'll, I'll. Wrap it up there. But yes, empathy opens us up to everything and everyone is what he says in that section. And I think that is very important and missing in the world today. Yep, I agree.

I agree. He ends this part three with wisdom is virtue, virtue is wisdom. It's a chapter that I think is kind of like a, it's a pre-afterward. Like in my mind, like I actually think it belongs more in the pre-afterward than it does in the part three. But like, you know, wisdom is about action. Wisdom precedes other virtues. It's the mother of all virtues. It doesn't just happen to you, but you get it. But once you get it, it stays with you. It takes work.

And he just does a good job, I think, wrapping it up and kind of reminding you what his point was, why he wrote this book and why this book matters. Now we can get into the afterward.

Okay. And, and in the afterward, he kind of gives a personal story about, you know, him dropping out of college and then, you know, kind of having a bad experience in his first working things but he was successful and he learned a lot from watching other people now he talks about some of the reasons why he is so um well he wrote so many words i guess is the way i'll describe it

And he calls out Musk so many times in this, which, Mike, I'll let you take that on. And then he talks about the fact that... you're better off for writing a thing. Like, I just, I think he does a good job at kind of helping us understand a little bit more about him and a little bit more about what he, kind of what he did in this book.

I wouldn't have said it until you just said it, Mike, but I completely agree with you. I wish he'd have done that at the beginning of the book. Like, I really wish he'd have done it at the beginning of the book. I think it would have made the rest of the book make a lot more sense. But I didn't think about that. So that's a good thought. So what do you have on the afterward? Yeah, I didn't jot down the specifics here. Oh, wait, I think I found it in the afterward where he talks about...

Elon Musk. But basically, what he says, trying to find it. Let me buy you a little time. I just want to make sure. I'll speak for me. I don't know if Mike wants to comment on this either.

I really don't have like... any strong feelings about elon musk like i really don't like so i'm not i'm not trying to be a defender of it what we're like i think what we're trying to call out and might correct me if i'm wrong what we're trying to call out is it seemed strange like it just seemed like very aggressive

Massively strange for someone to do that in a book with somebody who's still alive. I mean, it was just weird. So go ahead, Mike. For somebody who is not an active political figure. Now, you could make the argument that Elon Musk is... dipping his toes into politics and places where maybe it doesn't belong. But a large part of the original criticism of Elon Musk was really with the acquisition of

Twitter or X. And he talks about Elon Musk's algorithm in part two, which is basically break stuff, cut stuff. So you can kind of see his thought process when... He moved in and he let a whole bunch of people go. That's what Elon Musk does. And as much as people who want to complain about, well, X is a husk of what Twitter was and how are they even keeping the lights on, it's actually... Technically, he's maintaining it...

pretty well given, you know, he basically cut a whole bunch of unnecessary labor to support this, this bloated thing and dialed it down to the essence. You know, you may not like the methods. You may not like the public stories. That's Elon Musk. the personality, but in terms of the running the business, what he did was you could argue successful. However, I personally don't like what has happened to X or Twitter. It used to be my favorite social media.

platform. I'm not there anymore. And that's kind of sad, but I don't care. Social media. I really shouldn't be hanging out there anyways. But that whole narrative. kind of feels like it's anchored in a bit of resentment or bitterness towards Elon Musk as a person. And I found the section here in the afterword. he knows Elon Musk. Okay. So I knew this previously, but his bookshop, The Painted Porch is actually in, I think it's Bastrop, Texas. That's where Tesla's headquartered. And he says,

On page 367, we have many mutual friends. I've been invited to his house. I'm a fan. It would have been much easier and safer to write about almost anyone else. I'm sure a significant portion of my readers will disagree with my take entirely. So that is important context that I kind of wish you had. prior to telling the stories about the active person, right? And I'm sure if Elon has read this, he's not.

excited about what ryan said and he's not being invited back anytime soon agreed but also uh you kind of have to tip your hat to ryan holiday for you know i know this was difficult to write I know you have this history with this person, but you did it anyways because you thought it was the right thing to do. Like props to you for that. In context of the message of the book.

When he says it, just because it is someone who is currently living, and it's not a historical anecdote like many of the other figures that he chooses to talk about. It does feel a little bit like a cheap shot in a sense. But then like the way he wraps this, this up, I kind of feel it redeems it a little bit. The whole.

The whole afterward, I feel like that's maybe my favorite section of the book, to be honest. I feel like you get a whole bunch of context there that you didn't have before. This is where he brings up. how uh how he learned so much from robert green and how he picked up that crazy note card idea from him He shares a lot of the mistakes that he made as a younger person. I'm not sure if you've read any of his older books about the internet marketing stuff, but... I haven't read those, no.

I have them. I haven't read them yet, but everyone that I know who has read them is like, oh yeah, these are really good. And so when he says he could have been really successful in that world, I believe him. Yep, me too. I don't know. I feel like switching from that to talk about stoic virtues feels like that was a risk. And I didn't view it like that.

before it kind of I don't know that I ever really thought about it but just ryan holiday is the stoic guy right so just maybe in subconsciously you're like well it was easy for him to just talk about those things and he's making all this money off of this no he could have made way more money continuing to talk about internet marketing, and he chose not to. Like, that's kind of cool. And then the whole thing about, you know, his history with Elon, the whole tone of the afterword.

is very self-deprecating maybe. Like he's sharing a lot of his flaws. Yes. I feel like it's possible you read all four of the Stoic Virtue series. You have no idea who Ryan Holiday is. And right before you get to the afterword of this one, you're like, wow, this guy, he's the next Socrates. He's the next Seneca. Marcus Aurelius 2.0. You know, he's really got it all together. And then he's basically like, no.

I am a worm. Not exactly what he says, but I actually really appreciated that perspective at the end. And I don't know how you interject that prior to the end, but... It is kind of weird that it happens at the very back of the book, but I'm glad that it's there. Yeah. I would say it a little bit differently than you said it in terms of it almost felt like, hey, there's one more thing I got to tell you.

Like I just kind of taught you for a bunch of hundred pages. There's one more thing I got to tell you. And it's a little bit about my life and it's a little bit about, you know, these other things. And it just. Yeah, I mean, it adds a lot of context that I wish we'd have had prior to reading the book, but I'm glad we got it.

Regardless, like I'm glad we got it at the at the end. Blake in the chat said it almost felt like he was just so disappointed in how Elon has changed. And I think Mike and I both agree with that. The reason I say Mike agreed is he wrote agreed. But but like I.

that makes sense like that actually makes a lot of sense it's like here you are you're doing these things you're out there putting people trying to put people on mars and you're building new reusable rockets and you're changing the auto industry and all that stuff And then like you let me down, you know, kind of a thing. Like I'm just so bummed at that. Okay, let's move on. One other thing I should call out with this. It's not just Elon that he picks on. He also talks about Trump.

Oh, yeah. He does pick on Trump, too. So but what I appreciate about this is not. This guy is just such a moron, which is sort of the narrative. Whenever I hear anybody talk about him publicly, they're either MAGA or how can anybody... possibly listen to a word that this guy has to say. What he does in this book... is he talks about like the information diet and he talks to Trump's aides and he basically is raising red flags for not the person, but the process.

So he's letting you draw your own conclusions about the person, but he's basically saying, you know, how people used to have to wrestle with the information. And yeah, they presented the brief, but...

For Trump, that's not good enough. It's got to be even more condensed. What he wants is something that's like this social media stuff where it's a quick hit. Oh, and by the way, that's really dangerous. And he's letting you kind of draw your own conclusions there. But he's not. If you're understanding the whole mess.

of this book. There is something important about Ryan Holiday's commentary on this that is missing from everybody else who publicly disparages Trump as president, I think. And that is that... He's not an evil person. He is the product of the choices that he's made, but he would say that applies to all of us. And the tone of the... End call to action to all of this is not watch out or you're going to end up like these losers. Exactly.

We're trying to become wise. We're never going to get there. So let's all agree we're going to become a little bit wiser. And here is a data point and a story to help you become wiser. I agree with you completely. I think you're absolutely right. Okay.

Let's go to action items. I'll start. It's my book. So my only action item of this is what scene makes sense for me to join. That's really the only action item I have coming out of this book. I liked, you know, the... the wisdom that was in this book. Like I liked what, you know, Ryan holiday talks about. I just didn't get a lot of tangible things that I could, I could do coming out of this. So Mike, what are your action items? I don't have any.

I guess the argument could be made that I liked a lot of the writing and the distilling things down. So if there is like an action item for me from this, I think it is to more consistently codify my thoughts on things.

by writing more regularly. And that's not just writing words for the personal retreat book. That's really just like the opinion stuff. I didn't, again, I didn't have an action item, but kind of the thing I was thinking about as I wrapped this up was I have all these notes from all these books. And I am trying to take those seeds and create new things out of them. But really, it was just kind of an encouragement to work with the notes that I have.

in obsidian more regularly and more uh effectively and again i'm not thinking that there's a problem there i'm having trouble creating things i've got the creativity flywheel going stuff like that but just how do i get a little bit more juice out of the orange. Yep. Yeah, that makes total sense. And I already think you get a lot out of it. So good job. Good job for wanting to think more about that. So that's great. All right, let's go to Style and Rating. It's my book. I will start.

Well, Mike, I had an interesting thing happen as we went through this book or as we went through this conversation. So this book was a three and like I struggled to get it to a three for me. There are a bunch of reasons why it was a three for me prior to our conversation. Again, I'll say prior to our conversation is I don't know. I think some of the examples that he used. I didn't resonate with me. Some of his statements that were.

As aggressive as they were, I just disagreed with, like there are parts in this book where in my notes, I'm like, I completely disagree. I completely disagree. There weren't any chapters that I completely disagreed with, but they were like the sub points that he would make. I completely disagreed with.

So there were a couple different things there, which in my mind, when I start to get that kind of stuff, and then you add the kind of sour taste I had in my mouth at him attacking, I was just kind of like, man, I just didn't like this book. This just wasn't that great.

of a book. I have to admit that I don't get a fascination with the Stoics, so you already don't have me. When you're coming there, do I think courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom are great? Absolutely. I think they're fantastic. Do I... think that they, you know, this idea of stoicism is like, you know, this panacea that we should all strive for. Not really. So long story short, I was at a three.

As you and I talked about this book and I'm reviewing the chapters again, I'm reviewing my notes and we're talking about this. There's a lot more valuable in here than I originally like. upon finishing the book gave it credit for. So I really do have to bump it up to a four. Like I have to bump this book up to a four. There's a lot of good stuff in this book. There's just a couple things in here that are going to knock it down to a four for me. So my...

Overall rating is a four. Mike, where did you end up on this one? Well, first, let me share some of the previous rankings. for the other ryan holiday books all right so 201 right thing right now uh i believe we both rated that one a five discipline is destiny this maybe was before You joined the show. It was, yep. Okay, so I get rated at four and a half. Joe rated it five. Courage is calling. This was 130, the first one. This was a double five star.

book i was very nervous about this one to be honest i will be uh fully transparent i was not looking forward to reading this one okay I enjoyed it much more than I thought I did. I thought I would. As I shared, there were literally points where I was laughing out loud reading this. That doesn't happen very often. True. It was in a chapter titled laugh, but still Ryan holiday tends to be a very, um, I'll say heavy reader. Oh yeah. Or writer like.

The ideas that he tackles, the things that he writes about, just feel like they are really important. And sometimes that translates into you feel like. reading the book is a bit of a slog just not because the writing is bad or the stories aren't interesting just I really got to wrap my head around this topic and I don't want to mess it up

sort of a thing. It's a philosophy book, right? So in my mind, I equate that directly to being a philosophy book. I've never read a philosophy book that isn't like that. Okay, sure. That is a good way to describe it. I didn't feel that way about... about this one and maybe it was just the expectations going into it like i'm probably not gonna like this and then he sort of changed my mind as uh as we went um

Blake mentioned in the chat that he thought that this was his favorite of the four books. And I think it's my favorite. as well okay okay and that doesn't mean that i agree with everything that he said in here so when you were saying that there were parts of this that you very much disagreed with i think that's actually good writing

Good writing will make you either agree or disagree. That's the natural conclusion, but it should force you to decide for yourself, what are you going to do with this?

Going all the way back to How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, I feel like there are so many books where the message is watered down so that it's palatable and it's not going to take anybody off in... a broad range of of disciplines but the ones that are valuable are the ones where you know all that stuff is is garbage this is what really matters and then you can either agree or disagree

with that. I think there's actually a lot more in this book that I agree with than I disagree with. And I do agree with you. I have zero interest in stoicism. The more I study about it, the more I know about it. I'm like, nope, I'm good with my Christian value system. You know, I remember we were talking to Donald J. Robertson for the Focus podcast. Remind me to grab this link and put it in the... the show notes um i don't know

if it was the deep focus section or if it was part of that episode, but Donald J. Robertson was talking about how there are large sections of stoic philosophy where it's like, we don't know what this person actually wrote or actually thought or actually said. So we're filling in the gap. when it comes to this stuff. And I remember taking a class in Bible college about all of the validation behind what was actually included in canonical scripture.

And it's like, it's crazy. The, the, the rigidness of the, the scrutiny that stuff was under before it could be included. And then like stoicism and this philosophy, there's a. There's large questions as to what exactly they thought about this, but we think that based on what other people have said. So it's like secondhand records passed down through generations. I guess we'll build a philosophy off of that.

It's bonkers to me. So all that to say, I think there's actually probably a lot of overlap if you compare them side by side. Which is probably why I like these books so much. All that to say, I am going to rate this five stars. I did not think I was going to. Okay. I expected to rate it three or below, to be honest. Do me a favor. Give me a recap. What are your ratings on?

uh, holidays books. Do you remember? I think, I think it was five, five, 4.5. And then this one, which I'm going to rate as, as five. Wow. Holiday. I mean, man, he is up there on your, uh, high ranking author list. That being said, I'm done with the stoic virtues. Can we talk about something else now? So the funny thing is I get done reading this book and I think, should I go back and read? Courage is calling and discipline is destiny. And the answer is no.

I don't think I'm going to do that. I think I would get something out of them, but I don't know if it's worth me going back and reading them at this point in my life. Maybe at some point in the future. That is fair. So Blake called this out. He mentioned that... So probably one of my favorite of the four books, though, it made me want to read and write more instead of running through a wall like Courage. That's what Courage did. It absolutely had that effect on me.

I don't know. Maybe it's just the stoic packaging that I am done with. Because... Almost every single one of Ryan Holiday's books I have really liked. Victor in the library mentioned that he went and read The Obstacles, The Way, which I remember rating five stars back in the day. And he's like, I can't believe you rated this a five-star book. I don't even really remember it. It was like book number two that we did for Bookworm or something. I would have to go back and look at it again. But my...

My thought on every single Ryan Holiday book that we've read, Stillness is the Key was another one. I think the only one I haven't read is Ego is the Enemy, which... It sounds like actually in the afterword, he talks about that one. I actually want to go back and read that one now because it's sort of, you know, how he got into the bad situation that he found himself in sort of a warning tale.

I guess just the packaging of the Stoic virtues is the thing that sort of rubs me the wrong way. But the content in terms of the books that he's written has been fantastic. I don't know where he goes from here. I know he's got like the daily stoic and all that kind of stuff. I don't know. Maybe this is where Ryan Holiday and I part ways. Yeah. But.

i wondered that too though i wondered i was like well i wonder where he goes from here like i wonder what's next for for him so and he's he's probably just riding the train he's probably not worried about the next one yet although i would be if i was him i'd be thinking about the next one because how can you not Yeah, I don't know. Well, that's the thing that the reason that wisdom takes work, I feel like is a five star book is like Blake mentioned. It makes me want to.

want to write more. I feel like you can get to the end of this, feel like I've shared everything that I want to share about this. I don't know what's coming next, but if you are. pursuing wisdom, you will figure it out because the pen is not going to stop moving across the page. So I'm actually kind of excited to see where this goes. But like I said, I do feel this is a potential fork in the road here where Ryan Holiday and I part ways, which...

Other people probably felt the same way when he decided he was done talking about internet marketing. He's like, oh, he's sharing such good stuff. He's going to talk about stoic philosophy. Come on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right, Mike, it's time to do it. We got to put wisdom takes work on the shelf. What is our next book, Mike? Next book is now for something completely different.

Toxic Grit by Amanda Goetz. I heard Amanda speak at Crafted Commerce. And as I shared last time, a little bit nervous about this one because it feels like, well, I do agree 100% with the overall. theme you know maybe you shouldn't just push through and keep doing things that really shouldn't be done but the description makes it sound like it is written towards women and uh

I think on one hand, that's good because that's a voice that's needed in this space. A little bit nervous to talk about it because who are you and I, non-women, to... read and rate this book but well we'll give it the old college try and we'll learn a lot i guarantee we'll learn a lot from it so yeah yeah all right and then after that i'm going to pick sketch your mind by zolt

And he is the maker of the Excalibur plugin for Obsidian. So we're going to, Mike said it best when we were talking about this book before the show. It seems like the. Bob Dotto's a system for writing only for like sketching. So that's a good way to put it. And I'm excited to see what it's all about. So Sketch Your Mind will be after that, after Toxic Grit.

Mike, do you have any gap books between now and next time? Not currently. We will see. But I still feel like I'm trying to get caught up after our trip. to tennessee yep i i get that completely oh mike i have a gap book that is very very very very long The very, very, very long. It is a book about, it's a Bible book basically for that seminary thing I'm doing. And for the life of me right now, I can't remember the name of it. It's like...

the King in something. Uh, but it's, it's basically like one of those ones that you read for seminary. That's like that big. And it's, you know, multiple hundreds of pages, uh, long, but I have to read the first four parts of it. So I wish I remembered the name of it right now, but I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go.

find it. So that's my gap book. It's not really relevant. I'm going to be reading it for the next like month and a half. So it'll be fine. Everything's going to be great with that one. For those of you listening along, thanks so much. We are so glad you're here. For those who are pro members, thanks for being a pro member and helping support the show, helping support the buying of books and hosting and all of those things. If you're interested in becoming a pro...

member this week we talked about being a independent creator and having to do creation versus being a non-independent creator and getting to do uh creation of things for the internet so that was our conversation mike and i were both laughing kind of smiling at the same time while we say that But you can go back and hear that. There's a longer ad-free pro show. You get the bootleg. It's released right after the recording, which is typically about one or two weeks early.

There's a wallpaper. It's $7 a month. And you can go to patreon.com slash bookwormfm if you're interested in supporting the show. And thanks again to those who do. All right. So I'm going to add one more perk. To the Bookworm Pro membership. This is news. This is news. Okay, I'm intrigued. This was the thing that at the beginning I was like, ah, we'll talk about this later. But I had this thought and it just seems to fit here.

Last summer I did a almost three hour reading masterclass. Um, I'm going to add the replay to Patreon for, uh, for, uh, bookworm pro subscribers so i sold that master class for 50 bucks but uh if i mean if you're supporting a podcast called bookworm that master class is perfect for you so We'll add that to the perks as well. If you are reading along with us, pick up Toxic Grit by Amanda Goetz, and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.