1258: Ryan Holiday | Wisdom Takes Work

Summary

Podcast Summary—The Jordan Harbinger Show

Episode 1258: Ryan Holiday | Wisdom Takes Work
Date: December 16, 2025
Guest: Ryan Holiday
Host: Jordan Harbinger

---

Episode Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging, in-depth conversation between Jordan Harbinger and best-selling author and modern Stoic thinker Ryan Holiday. The main theme is Holiday's latest book, which examines the nature of wisdom as a virtue—emphasizing that wisdom isn’t static knowledge but an ongoing, active process. The discussion explores the difference between wisdom and knowledge, the value of consistency, deep work, the traps of ego and virtue signaling, criticism, humility, and how modern shortcuts (like speed reading or AI) can’t replace hard-earned insight.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of Wisdom: No Shortcuts, Only Hard Work

• Wisdom is earned, not innate:
  – “No one is born with [wisdom]… it’s the result of work, a process, a way of living and thinking.” (15:30 | RH)
• Virtues demand daily effort:
  – Jordan is struck by how “virtues are hard, man… cowardice is a lot easier, especially short term… wisdom sounds like a lot of work, Ryan.” (14:35 | JH) – Ryan affirms the point: “The point is that you don’t have to do it and you choose to do it—that’s the virtue of discipline.” (15:30 | RH)

2. Wisdom vs. Knowledge

• Application, not accumulation:
  – “Wisdom is not just having the knowledge of everything—it’s applying that and doing it when it’s hard, and doing it consistently, and just doing it every day until you die. And I’m like, man—no cheat codes.” (14:35 | JH)
• Consistency over time compounds:
  – Referencing Seneca and compound returns: “If you do this every day, at some point you will have a lot of these days stacked on top of each other… it’s not just cumulative, it’s compounding.” (25:39 | RH)

3. No Real 'Cheat Codes' for Wisdom

• Modern “hacks”:
  – Speed reading and AI as examples of fake shortcuts. – Ryan: “Speed reading is a scam… The people I know who are wise…spend a lot of time reading.” (18:51 | RH) – ChatGPT and AI can help generate prompts, but “you can’t learn something without earning it.” (18:01 | RH)
• Mentorship is not a button:
  – “Mentorship… you will get value from over 12, 30, or 40 years.” (23:27 | RH)

4. The Role of Reading and Deliberate Learning

• Reading as a superpower—and a “scam”
  – Jordan admits his podcast is “an elaborate scam to get free books and be able to ask questions of the people who wrote them” (31:51 | JH), drawing laughter and agreement from Ryan, who notes this is essentially what graduate school is.
• How to really extract value:
  – Both agree the retention and application come from “having to do something with it afterwards.” (33:03 | JH) – Wrestling with information, discussing and comparing different viewpoints, builds substance and depth. (34:23 | RH)

5. Focus, Silence, and Notetaking

• The value of deep work:
  – Citing Machiavelli and Jeff Bezos, focus and periods of uninterrupted thought are essential for true wisdom. (39:31 | RH; 43:38 | RH) – Most leaders fail here: “Meetings all day… when are you actually thinking about the things you’ll say?” (41:46 | RH)
• Silence & humility:
  – Smart people value silence and “never to be satisfied with just getting the gist of things.” (47:43 | RH)

6. Ego, Virtue Signaling, and Critics

• Ego’s traps:
  – “The most dangerous thing is if you love the sound of the applause… a more insidious form of ego/narcissism.” (05:22 | RH)
• Virtue signaling vs. living virtuously:
  – “[It’s] one thing to say ‘I believe in justice’… what matters is what are the decisions you make when it pertains to things in your control.” (78:10 | RH)
• Feedback, criticism, and thick skin:
  – “The ability to hear information you don’t want to hear is really important… but you also need a filter.” (75:21 | RH)
• Importance of humility:
  – Socrates’ wisdom is “knowing what you don’t know.” (59:18 | RH)

7. Changing Your Mind and Intellectual Flexibility

• Wisdom requires openness:
  – “Wisdom is going through life willing to change your mind.” (59:42 | JH) – Ryan: “Certainty does not age well.” (61:12 | RH)

8. History, Travel, and Perspective

• Study of history and exposure to other cultures teaches humility and relativism:
  – “Every society calls the other society barbarians.” (66:17 | RH) – Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals”: pointing out that “barbarity” is in the eye of the beholder; we judge things foreign to us while ignoring our own barbarities. (68:34 | RH)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Preparation & Standards:

  • “My wife told me… ‘You just have to decide what your job really is: do you want to make a really great show every time, or do you just want to have some shows that are okay?’ …I can’t really go back from this.” (10:47 | JH)

• On Consistency & Compounding:

  • “It’s not the cumulative result, it’s the compounding result… a small contribution every day adds up very quickly.” (25:39 | RH)

• On Modern 'Cheat Codes':

  • “People think AI or mentorship or speed reading are these ‘cheat codes’… but you can’t learn something without earning it. It never works, it never holds up over the long term.” (18:01 | RH)

• On Reading and Retention:

  • “When I read a really amazing book, I might mark ten percent of it—ten percent would be a lot… a lot of it is filtration.” (50:13 | RH)

• On Critical Feedback:

  • “The ability to hear information you don’t want to hear is really important… the art is knowing what to take and what to ignore.” (75:21 | RH)

• On Humility:

  • “Just because you’re humble doesn’t mean you’re wise, but you certainly are not wise if you are not humble.” (59:12 | RH)

• On Changing Your Mind:

  • “Certainty does not age well.” (61:12 | RH)

• On Virtue Signaling:

  • “Are you paying lip service… or are you actively learning and doing?” (78:10 | RH)

Humor & Memorable Moments

• Lincoln shitting in his own hat:
  “He waits for his friend to go to sleep and the prank—he’s going to climb down from where they’re camping and shit in his friend’s hat… the friend anticipating the prank has switched their hats and so [Lincoln] shits in his own hat.” (71:27 | RH)
• Jordan’s podcast as a scam for free books:
  “This podcast is like an elaborate scam to get free books and then be able to ask questions of the people who wrote them.” (31:51 | JH)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:34 | Universal quirks, “every country does this” | | 04:02 | Book launch, handling feedback and ego | | 12:59 | Raising the bar, preparation, Nick Saban quote | | 14:35 | Virtues are hard, wisdom in action not theory | | 18:51 | The myth of speed reading and other “cheat codes” | | 25:39 | Compounding benefit from small daily actions | | 31:51 | Jordan's “elaborate scam” to learn via the podcast | | 34:23 | Learning by wrestling with ideas, exposure to new perspectives | | 39:31 | Machiavelli and the importance of deep, focused work | | 41:46 | Modern work culture: meetings vs. deep work | | 47:43 | Silence, ego, and the art of taking notes and reflecting on ideas | | 50:13 | Filtration, selective retention when reading | | 59:18 | Socrates, humility, “knowing you don’t know” | | 61:12 | Changing beliefs over time, “Certainty does not age well” | | 66:17 | Universality of “barbarians,” history and cultural perspective | | 71:27 | Abraham Lincoln, humor, and shitting-in-the-hat anecdote | | 75:21 | Critics, filtering feedback, and the art of improvement | | 78:10 | Virtue signaling vs. actually living virtue | | 79:27 | “Learn as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die tomorrow” | | 80:18 | Upcoming books, future projects |

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers a vigorous, practical exploration of what it truly takes to become wise—eschewing hacks for daily, deliberate learning, humility, and honest self-reflection. Holiday and Harbinger’s rapport adds relatable texture, wry humor, and actionable encouragement for listeners determined to do the hard work of becoming better thinkers, creators, and, above all, doers.

Share this episode with anyone grasping for shortcuts on the path to wisdom—because as Holiday underscores, wisdom takes work.

---

Recommended For:
Anyone interested in self-improvement, philosophy, Stoicism, practical wisdom, writing, creativity, or simply becoming better at learning and leading. Also, fans of Ryan Holiday's previous books and anyone seeking depth in an era of shortcuts and surface-level knowledge.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is sponsored in part by one eight hundred contacts you know that last pair of contacts panic my wife jen knows it way too well she's had these mornings where she's out of contacts and stuck wearing these old glasses she's got to keep wiping clean with her sleeve but now she makes sure to load up ahead of time because her neck set is always on the way from one eight hundred contacts they're the only major retailer that lets you renew your prescription online so jen gets her same doctor prescribed contacts fast with free shipping without leaving the house one eight hundred contacts has been doing this for over thirty years they've got millions of lenses in stock award winning customer service and perks like free returns free exchanges even free torn lens replacement jen loves their express exam which lets you renew your prescription online in under ten minutes it's a vision exam not a full eye exam but it gives you a doctor issued prescription if you're seeing clearly with your current lenses no waiting rooms no dilation drops remember those things and with their best price guarantee if you find your contacts cheaper somewhere else they'll beat it getting contacts doesn't have to be a hassle let one eight hundred contacts get you the lenses you need right now order online at one eight hundred contacts com or download the free one eight hundred contacts app today.

[Ryan Holiday]

Hey this is sarah look i'm standing out front of am pm right now and well you're sweet and all but.

[AMPM Advertiser Voice]

I found something more fulfilling even kind of cheesy but i like it sure.

[Ryan Holiday]

You met some of my dietary needs but they've just got it all so farewell oatmeal so long you strange soggy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Break up with bland breakfast and taste am pm's bacon egg and cheese biscuit made with cage free eggs smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit am p m too much good stuff coming up next on the jordan harbinger.

[Ryan Holiday]

Show you read a lot about america you spend a lot of time in america you're like americans do this you know americans this up this is the importance of both travel and the study of history is because you read about rome and sparta and athens and you go oh wait every country does this stuff every country is bad every country has shameful secrets every country has weird hilarious quirks every country has practices that make no sense.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to the show i'm jordan harbinger on the jordan harbinger show we decode the stories secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you our mission is to help you become a better informed more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to ceo's athletes authors thinkers and performers even the occasional rocket scientist war correspondent or real life pirate and if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show and i always appreciate it when you do that i suggest our episode starter packs these are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation psychology geopolitics disinformation china north korea social engineering crime and cults and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show just visit jordanharbinger dot com start or search for us in your spotify app app to get started today on the show we're diving into something that sounds simple but has ruined lives since people were wearing togas and debating geometry for virtue the four virtues actually according to our returning guest and resident stoic in chief ryan holiday virtue isn't something you have it is something you do which frankly sounds a little bit like a personal attack today we're focusing on wisdom hard won experience and no there are no cheat codes today we'll get into why wisdom isn't the same thing as knowledge it's the act of applying knowledge consistently not just once when somebody's watching we'll talk about reading books as a superpower and kind of a scam that i built my entire business around how the greats used silence note taking and systems instead of ego and why fools are seldom humble we'll talk montaigne machiavelli social skills why ancient education required both literacy and physical prowess and why ryan dropped out of college yet somehow cranked out a small library of best sellers while his parents waited patiently for him to get a real job all that and a whole lot more on this episode of the jordan harbinger show here with my good friend ryan holiday here we go how's the book doing is it out already yeah.

[Ryan Holiday]

It came out last tuesday yeah how's it doing i think good and i'm trying not to check are you able to do that they told me how it came out on the bestseller list which was good but i haven't like i can say this honestly i have not checked amazon a single time i have no idea what the rank is i have no idea what the reviews are it's actually weird like i've tried to get better at not paying attention to that stuff and it's generally made me happier and i think generally made me better at doing the important part which is the writing but there is something a little weird about it it's not that i don't know it just feels a bit anticlimactic like it's it did come out right like i'm just you know yeah i just want to make sure that like the copies arrived to people i'm not i don't need you to tell me how you liked it but i i just want to make sure that i'm not missing something that went horribly wrong and the reason the silence isn't because i'm keeping healthy boundaries the silence might be because they're all stuck in a factory somewhere for.

[Jordan Harbinger]

People who just chimed in on this and we're talking about the book release and the book ranking i feel like for me it would just be very hard to work on something for years release that thing and then be like i don't want to look at it i'm getting deja vu maybe we've talked about this before but this is how i think like johnny depp and some other actors they never watched a movie that they're in they just won't do.

[Ryan Holiday]

It so this is like a little different like i definitely don't like to watch videos of myself like on stage or i would never watch movies that i was in because i would be mortified i i don't like that kind of performance that's not my jam right i have no problem going over something i've written and i i look at the book proudly it's just to me when johnny depp's or you know and he's a problematic figure so but when you take any sort of performer and they're like i don't like to listen to what i do or i don't like to watch what i do that i understand that's like this weird uncomfortable thing to me though the more dangerous thing is if you love the sound of the applause whether you like to watch your work or not is secondary to i think a more insidious form of ego narcissism which is like you're sitting in the audience and you're just like soaking up the adoration like look how great i am so for me it's not that i'm like done with the book because it's out it's more like i tried to take all my winnings off the table before it came out in that like i enjoyed working on it and i think i did my best work and i think i said what i wanted to say and then i think i did everything that i can do from a marketing and promotion standpoint which is important too i'm not just some like pure creative who's just well i hope it comes out yeah i obviously i'm doing a podcast right now with you like i care about telling people about it and i want them to read it i think i've just learned that it's not healthy to spend this is the culmination of six years of work for me that i'm going to spend six years working on this series and then somebody who got a free copy from the publisher amazon writes some shitty review missing the entire point of the book and that's the first thing that pops up the day it comes out and because i'm frantically refreshing the whole experience is now tainted in some way and i've had that experience before because i was setting myself up to be exposed to it and i just decided hey like this is not the best use and then the weird quirk of publishing i guess this is most art there is a huge lag between finishing something and it coming out and so what i try to do is always be in the middle of the next thing and then what that does is it actually means that there's a real cost to getting obsessed with how the thing that just came out is doing because what it's taking away from is what i should be doing now i see yeah that's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Interesting i hadn't thought about that as someone who's never written a book i mean podcasts are different right because some people will like an episode and if people are like i hated that episode i don't really care i mean i care in that i want to create good things for my audience but any episode i create someone will hate it for some reason sometimes it's a good reason like wow jordan was sick and he just wasn't on his game and this isn't his best work other times it's like i hated the fact that this guest's voice sounded this way and i'm like who cares right i just but if it's a book there's just so much more work that goes into.

[Ryan Holiday]

It you also have another one coming.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Two days later yeah it's like a.

[Ryan Holiday]

Train you know it's like this is when it comes in and it comes out this is what it does so there is something yeah about a release or a launch that is different it's higher stakes but i do imagine that when you're looking at the spotify comments on the bottom of the episode very rarely are you getting constructive informative feedback from that like feedback is essential and criticism is important but like somebody firing off an email or posting a comment that's not what you let in if you're trying to get better that's what you let in if you either want to fill up your ego or you want to feel like a piece of.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Shit yeah that's interesting i have more questions about critics later but i want to jump into the content of the book because there's so much here i have to admit whenever i read your books i'm always like okay i'm probably going to understand like two thirds of it one third of it is going to go over my head or be like so in the weeds on something historical that i'm not going to really apply that or have many notes for it this book i really enjoyed it because i was like oh wisdom like this sounds deep i don't know if i'm in the mood for this but i plod through it in one sitting which is a good sign oh well thank you and you didn't invent wisdom but you wrote a good book about it so i'll give you that well.

[Ryan Holiday]

I will say one thing this is feedback one thing obviously i've done a lot of podcasts over the years you are one of the only shows that you can count on for sure to have actually read the thing as opposed to you know they're just riffing from the back cover having been briefed on who the guest is a few minutes before they go on yeah i appreciate.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That you know there was a time at which i probably told you this story five times because you've been on the show like seven or eight times by now but i was doing a show with robert green it was up in a couple weeks and i was like i really want to knock this one out of the park and i think maybe you'd even introduce me to him or something like that i don't remember it's been fifteen years since that first episode or something like that but i decided to read his entire book which at the time i think was it was either the forty eight laws of power or like the one after that i just it's gonna be a.

[Ryan Holiday]

Big book either way it was like.

[Jordan Harbinger]

A thousand pages right i mean maybe literally seven hundred pages or six hundred pages so i read the whole thing on paper took notes and he was like this is really good and i was like wow i got a compliment from a guy who's done like a zillion media hits and you know it was tired and still enjoyed it on skype of all media and so i was really stoked and i told my wife i go yeah i did a good job he really liked it sent me a note afterwards it was really nice and i was like it's just such a shame that i can't read the book for every guest and she goes this is like one of the best pieces of feedback my wife ever gave me she goes well you could you just have to decide if you want to spend the requisite amount of time and effort into every episode and i sat with that for a while because i was like my knee jerk reaction was of course i can't do that that takes days and she's like you just have to decide what your job really is do you want to make a really great show every time or do you just want to have some shows that are okay and some shows that are good where you spent the amount of time needed to make it great and i was like damn i can't really go back from this i can't go no i am satisfied with mediocrity thanks anyway jen yeah that was kind of what she was telling.

[Ryan Holiday]

Me that's totally right it's that nick saban line it's like how good do you want to be you know like and we all make these decisions it feels like a decision about you know hey do i have time or not when really it's a decision about what are the standards i set for myself.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Or not yeah and unfortunately sometimes people come by and they raise the bar a little bit or they remind you that you've raised the bar and you're just like well like i don't i don't want it and i don't mean like oh this book hit number one in the new york times so now every book has to hit it it's not about the accolades it's about it wasn't about the note robert greene sent me after that it was i just felt like i was so prepared for this because i read the whole book and i had a pages and pages of notes i don't think i could go back now i don't riffing without reading a book at this point is actually terrifying like if you were just here and i was like okay it's about wisdom i think it's part of his virtue series and go like that actually scares me now being underprepared whereas that was how i rolled fifteen years ago i was like read the book ugh i don't think so pal that sounds like a lot of work that.

[Ryan Holiday]

Goes to kind of what we were just talking about though like i think it's good to be competitive it just matters what you're measuring against so if you're like hey i want to win a lot like this person or i want to hit the same spot on the new york times bestseller list or i want to sell as many copies or i want to win these prizes or get this kind of if what you're looking at is like what the stokes would call the externals the results and then you're trying to match that you're probably thinking about it wrong but if you read something good or watch something good or you see someone pull something off and you're like how did you do that how did you do the thing not how did you get the accolades or the reception or the recognition for the thing but physically how did you do it you're listening to an album and you're like that guitar tone is something that i'm interested in or the sound or you're looking at an athlete and you're like how are they hitting that shot how is tom brady releasing the ball that quickly those are the kinds of things that you want to look at and not just be competitive about but be curious about what is the technique you are using and can i try to learn that technique and add it to my game that's kind of what i think about like i read all the time and i'm just like wow okay i really like what this person did the book could have sold sixteen copies that's not what i'm jealous of what i'm jealous of is what is on the page and then jealous isn't the right word i'm curious slash inspired to see what it feels like to do something like that and that's the ingredient i'm trying.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To identify yeah i think once again the theme that this book comes around to again and again is that it's a lot of work i mean this is about the book's about wisdom it's a part of the virtues series as i mentioned before and this is going to be obvious to you but i think to me it was almost a little bit of an awakening which is the virtues are hard man courage wow okay that's tough cowardice is a lot easier especially short term like i would just rather cut and run from whatever problem i have in front of me right ignorance path of least resistance wisdom again sounds like a lot of work ryan like why oh man and you gotta do this all the time you know the virtues aren't something you i don't know believe in or whatever it's like something you do and it's something applied and that was one of the big takeaways from the beginning of the book was like wisdom is not just having the knowledge of everything it's applying that and doing it when it's hard and doing it consistently and just doing it every day until you die and i'm like man no cheat codes well.

[Ryan Holiday]

It'S not something you are or something you are given or something you're born with the definition of wisdom is a little tricky but i think one thing we can agree on is that no one is born with it right and i don't just mean because ego is something you get when you're older because no one just turns eighty and magically has it either it's the result of work it is a result of a process and a way of living and thinking and operating and i think that's true for of all of the virtues and if this does make sense like if they were easy if you naturally had them we probably wouldn't hold them up as admirable things to strive for like if you are born courageous or cowardly if you are born disciplined or not if you just have a good heart or not and that's all that counts i mean what good is justice or discipline or wisdom or courage like the whole point is that not just that it's hard it's that most people are allowing themselves to get away with not doing it and no one is making you do it either like the discipline of being in the marines as an enlisted marine where they are forcing you to do a bunch of stuff i mean obviously that's hard and it's nothing to dismiss but the whole point of the virtue is self discipline it's that you have the choice and you are choosing to do it that's the virtue not that if you eat this or don't eat that and you go for the workout or don't go for the workout you get fired or you get mocked or like the point is that you don't have to do it and you choose to do it that's the virtue of discipline and that's an.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Important distinction again there are no cheat codes you had this funny anecdote in the book about this guy i think he had this is ancient greece or something right he bought a bunch of slaves who were familiar with the greek classics and he'd go to these dinner parties and i don't know our slaves just like his slaves are hanging around and since they were educated they would feed him lines and he would say something smart which is kind of a funny thing to think about and then some dude tells him hey man you should take up wrestling and he's like look at me i'm one hundred pounds soaking wet or whatever you know i'm frail and the guy goes nah look at all these healthy slaves you got around and it's like that was him getting roasted i guess that's what passes for a sick burn in ancient rome or greece or whatever because it was like we all see that you don't know anything about these books you're talking about and whenever your guy leans over your shoulder with a plate of grapes and like says the line we can hear it happen you're not fooling anyone.

[Ryan Holiday]

It'S the idea that no one can do wisdom for you as you said there's no cheat code there's no hacks it's something you have to do you have to possess and to me i mean obviously the story's anachronistic in that you know he's this guy owning slaves it's hard to relate and then you go well i'll just ask chatgpt the timelessness of this idea that like oh i don't have to know it i don't have to figure it out it doesn't matter anymore because there's this new invention there's this thing i figured out that allows me to get something for nothing that allows me to get to skip ahead that is the human experience in a nutshell people thinking they can get knowledge that you can learn something without earning it it never works it never holds up over the long term.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What are some modern cheat codes you see people using that aren't working for them chatgpt is a really good example.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well i think speed reading is a scam oh interesting i don't think it exists i'll tell you this i have never met a very wise or well read person who has ever talked to me about their speed reading techniques interesting the people that i know that are wise and the people that i know that read a lot the one thing they all have in common is is that they spend a lot of time reading yeah right by the way they see this as time well spent and it's not something they're trying to rush through or get done faster the only way that you can read more quickly is to have read a lot and to have a basis of knowledge that allows you to not skim but to not have to stop and look a bunch of things up right like if you decide to sit down and read a book about the civil war you're like wait who are all these people again where are all these places and then when you're on your fourteenth book which i embarrassingly have read or when you take something you're really interested in you have a comfort and an advantage that allows you to go a little faster so i think speed reading is.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Definitely one that's a really good one because i listen to audiobooks and i listen at three x but i usually have to start at one and a half or something because i have to get used to the narrator and if it's a subject i'm not familiar with i'll start there but if it's like my one hundredth book on cybersecurity or geopolitical stuff current events iran whatever i mean i am flying through at three x because i might even go oh crap i was changing something in my car at the time that i heard this but oh that was just about the revolution in nineteen eighty like there's almost certainly nothing in there that i haven't heard a hundred times if there is i'll find out when i ask.

[Ryan Holiday]

The guests about this listening to audiobooks on various speeds to me is not if you took a speed reading course and they were like okay what you do is you download a book on amazon and then instead of listening to it at the one x speed you just press this little button and it's three x that's not the promise of speed reading the promise of speed reading is you can read this thousand page book in thirty minutes right we all read at different speeds that's i would say i'm a moderate to average speed person at the speed that i read i just read a lot i'm just saying this idea that that you can whip through long difficult texts without much effort is a scam right have you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Tried it i tried it and i was terrible at this it's like you you put your hand down the page and you get the words and i was like i'm picking up zero percent of this like none it's not only.

[Ryan Holiday]

Not real i would say that like when i'm reading what i'm actively doing is trying to slow down i'm working on a project now they sent me this pdf of stuff and i'm like okay now i have to print out this pdf i have to get a pen and i have to sit here and go through it extremely slowly so i understand every word of it most of the time you're trying to do the opposite of get it done quickly if what you're trying to do is learn and extract value if you're reading a novel and you're just trying to be entertained or enter another world crank up the audio speed however you want.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right that defeats the purpose so that's like going hey do you want to watch this movie yeah but i only have forty five minutes let's watch it at two point five yeah skip the.

[Ryan Holiday]

Middle it's not that good yeah skip.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The middle and like there's this whole side tangent that's supposed to be really funny but i don't need to i don't have time for that right now yeah it's like you just defeat the whole purpose there's an adam sandler movie which i'm sure is not on your top list but it was like he had this remote where he could skip things he got a bed bath and beyond in the beyond section of course and he would skip through like his kids stuff the kids play sex when he was tired and then they found out later like wait that i'm skipping through my whole life you know and the sort of the metaphor there is like all this hard stuff or this stuff that seems hard in the moment is actually this is the gift that you have so you're you're doing the worst thing that you can do with.

[Ryan Holiday]

It yeah it's not just that it's valuable stuff you're skipping over i just this is a very stoic idea but it's like what are you fast forwarding towards it's death like you know how the movie ends right every movie ends with you dying for all of us so like what are you rushing towards i like reading why am i trying to get this over faster so that's definitely one i mean look another one people think mentorship is this like hack now it is right in the sense that there's a bunch of lessons that you don't have to learn necessarily by painful trial and error and you can have someone teach you and you see this people are like will you be my mentor i don't get as many.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Of those as i used to i don't know if that's a me thing or if the moment of mentorship is.

[Ryan Holiday]

Kind of passed but i do think people thought it's this like button that you press a mentorship is something that you will get value in over the course of twelve years or thirty years or forty years right like it's like you're out doing stuff and having experiences and then you're bouncing it off this person and you're also watching them and they're asking you it's this symbiotic relationship that for the most part evolves over a long period of time it's not like you're pulling your dead battery up to another car and then the jumper cables get yours going again like it's a much more involved thing yeah i.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Think when people do that when people write in they're usually like can you mentor me on this and it's like will you give me a download of all of the things that i should do right now so that i can kickstart my business or like i started a podcast and i need a mentor and it's like why well i want to ten x the size of my show and it's like well i'm not going to be able to do that for you like all of the knowledge in my head is not going to do that for you and there's the kind of the also like why would i do that kind of thing like.

[Ryan Holiday]

If you had the power to magically ten x things you'd just be ten x in your own stuff all the.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Time yeah or like i'd start another show and i would ten x that one and i have ten of those and i we'd be having this conversation on my yacht about why i don't have time to do this for you right person who's a stranger in my email inbox back to the concept of wisdom here you wrote and i'm paraphrasing here wisdom is the byproduct of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time not once but consistently over the course of a life and that kind of consistency i think is what i don't know if it's always been hard for people i guess it has because this is something that's even the ancients wrote about but it just seems like that's the obvious key to being successful like everybody i know who's successful with things has just been incredibly ridiculously consistent over kind of an insane period of time like the kid who played the guitar and practiced the guitar from age seven up to age twenty seven where they are now or the guy who decided to write a book and wrote one in third grade and then in fourth grade and they you know they were kid books and then suddenly in college he's like really doing it it's pretty incredible to watch just the really simple compound returns on a drop of water dripping on a stone over a thousand years or whatever right the proverbial stone this is where.

[Ryan Holiday]

The virtues are related right so if wisdom is this idea of like wanting to learn as much as possible and be exposed to as many things as possible and to get as much experience as possible and to reflect as much as possible and to read as much as possible wisdom has to be fused with discipline because it's not a button you press there is no shortcut there is no magic it's this thing that you do and the longer you do it the more you get or the more profound and holistic it becomes and so you know it's not like hey i read a lot when i was in college it's that i read a lot it's not oh i had this formative mentor it's that i'm always looking for mentors and teachers and i'm not saying i mean generally a person right it's the day to dayness of it and you're right it doesn't have to actually be that much seneca's famous book which we call his letters is him writing to his friend lucilius who's a politician in the roman empire and in one of the interesting essays he says basically wisdom is this idea of like getting one thing a day their exchange is he's like seneca's giving him a quote or a thing to chew on or something they're just trading one thing back and forth each day and he's like this is the path to wisdom if you do this every day at some point in the future you will have a lot of these days stacked on top of each other and the cumulative result of that will be a lot it's actually not the cumulative result it's the compounding result of that right so it's like you're reading something and then you're experiencing something and then you're reading more and then you're experiencing and all of that is building on itself and if you're just making a small contribution each day it might not seem like much but but not only are you you compare this with people who are doing none of this right and then you also compare it to who you were then before you did all this work and you realize it does it adds up very quickly speaking of.

[Jordan Harbinger]

People looking for shortcuts virtue has no cheat codes but you can cheat your way into some amazing deals on the fine products and services that support this show we'll be right back this episode is sponsored in part by caldera lab caldera lab is my actual go to skincare i know that sounds goofy but whatever guys have dry skin too my absolute favorite is the base layer this moisturizer is packed with plant stem cells snow mushroom extract basically deep hydration without the shine it absorbs fast it feels clean lightly scented every time i put it on my skin looks a lot better can't be ashy anymore these days y' all smoother i'm more awake jen said my face looks less tired that's high praise they've also got something called the good this award winning serum with twenty seven active botanicals and something like three point four million antioxidant units per drop i don't know what that means i don't know how you measure that it's a lot it protects your skin from all the environmental nonsense we pretend is not aging us they have eye serum that's your definitely i did not get eight hours of sleep insurance it helps with dark circles puffiness erases the evidence of last night's bad choices what i love about caldera lab is that everything is developed by legit cosmetic chemists it takes years of r and d it's non cosmetogenic it won't clog pores it is cruelty free and plastic neutral high quality simple looks premium and makes.

[Sponsor Voice]

A great gift whether you're starting fresh or upgrading your routine caldera lab makes skincare simple and effective don't settle for drugstore junk or steal your partner's products elevate your routine with skincare made for you head to calderalab dot com jordan and use jordan at checkout for twenty percent off your first order this episode.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Is also sponsored by cookunity the holidays are here which means amazing food as long as i am not the one making it so my whole life philosophy is let experts do the thing that they are good at i don't fix my own car i don't cut my own hair i definitely don't cook holiday meals that's why cookunity is perfect they've got actual award winning chefs doing the cooking i can stick to what i am good at which is eating and their holiday dishes sound next level old fashioned glazed holiday ham ultimate holiday turkey dinner maple whipped sweet potatoes candied yam cake the last meal i had was this citrus herb salmon from chef esther choi you've seen her on food network if you watch food network fresh ingredients bold flavors perfectly cooked every cookunity chef hand picks their ingredients so you're getting seasonal restaurant quality meals the chefs are james beard award winners food network alums legit restaurateurs all creating small batch meals delivered fresh not frozen ready in about five minutes with three hundred plus rotating meals new menus every week and subscriptions starting at eleven bucks a meal cookunity makes it insanely easy taste comfort and.

[Sponsor Voice]

Craftsmanship in every bite from the award winning chefs behind cookunity go to cookunity dot com jordan or enter code jordan before checkout to get fifty percent off your first order that's fifty percent off your first order by using code jordan or going to cookunity dot com jordan.

[Jordan Harbinger]

If you're wondering how i managed to book all these great authors and thinkers every single week it is because of my network the circle of people i know like and trust i'm teaching you how to build your network your stable of greats for free over at six minutenetworking dot com this is a free course i'm never charging for it at least i have no plans to do so it is non cringy down to earth not awkward it'll make you a better colleague connector peer and friend in just a few minutes a day and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course come on and join us they'll be in smart company where you belong you can find the course again all free and no shenanigans over at six minute networking dot com i know that some people will either think this sounds really obvious or they need to hear this but it's interesting in the book you said something like can you think of anyone wise who doesn't read anyone who reads and doesn't wish they read even more and for me i always wanted to read but i didn't want it enough to actually do it and i kind of needed a does that make sense like i needed a forcing function to read so i basically designed my life in this business this podcast around reading and then i built the show this is so funny to think about now i built the show as kind of a gimmick to get access to authors because i was like i want books but i'm poor because i'm in college and there's libraries but they don't have the new stuff right they have like old stuff and i want new books on things or books that libraries don't buy so i wanted to get the books for free and then i wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge by talking to the authors and most authors are not interested in talking to one random reader for two hours like it's not scalable and so basically this podcast is like an elaborate scam to get free books and then be able to ask questions of the people who wrote them so thank you for participating in this elaborate scam what you.

[Ryan Holiday]

Basically just described is graduate school right like yeah you get assigned a text and then you have discussion sections and you have to write papers or produce a distillation of what you read right and you do that for a long enough time you build up a pretty big base of knowledge very quickly like same with me i mean i dropped out of college at the end of my sophomore year but my education really began then when i started reading not because i was assigned reading but because i was genuinely curious about things and then i was reading about things that pertained to what i was being paid to work on and that's really where the when you can combine study and research with the ability to put things into practice and get real world feedback and that can be a tight reinforcing loop that is a really really powerful.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Process yeah that's a good point for me i needed a forcing function to read the ability to fill in the gaps and also a reason to do something with it afterwards because if i read and i don't have to do anything with it it's pleasurable but i mean i probably retain like one percent sure right but if i'm reading your book and i'm like i find myself looking out the window or something it's like no no no you got to you're going to have to talk to this person in front of hundreds of thousands of people and you're going to look like a real idiot if you don't remember the core idea that you're snoozing through right now or whatever but.

[Ryan Holiday]

Also add into the fact that you might have somebody who has one point of view one day and then three weeks later have a different expert who feels very differently and now you are taking these two ideas and you're pitting them against each other or you're asking them questions and so it's not just this process of i'm learning about stuff but that it's actually a somewhat rigorous or challenging environment i think is really important too like if you're just reading about stuff that you like or you're just reading about stuff that you're comfortable with or watching videos or listening to podcasts i mean obviously again this is better than nothing but it's in the wrestling with and the having to think over and weigh and contrast these related but also unrelated potentially contradictory ideas that i think you really get some real insights you know i didn't realize you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Dropped out of college i guess i didn't either forgot about that or didn't know that are your parents still waiting for you to make something of yourself after dropping out of college you know.

[Ryan Holiday]

They took it very hard when it happened and it hasn't come up since i gave a talk at the college that i dropped out of earlier this year and i was like at some point does fifteen books qualify me for any way of wrapping up these additional units and they were like we'll look into it in some ways i'm like i'm jealous of people who just get to go in a classroom all day like it's funny i was so excited and desperate to get out and now i'm like that seems like the life.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Law school was like that i remember one of the professors we were talking with him and like i just want to get a job we have so much debt and he goes calm down man you got three years all you have to do is hang out and talk to smart people for three years he's like you should enjoy this while you can because once you get to wall street it's going to be a different game man yes that's exactly right you'd think they would give you like an honorary degree that you could hold up for your parents at this point i mean what do you have like bestsellers and after i dropped this podcast sixteen bestsellers i mean do you think they could give you one of those.

[Ryan Holiday]

I would take an honorary degree of course but i'm just like what would i be doing in a classroom that's not what i'm doing out here like you know you used to be able to become a lawyer you could study on your own as long as you could pass the bar you got the.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Degree i think you can still do that in california or there's a few states where they'll let you do that.

[Ryan Holiday]

But i feel like i should be able to do that for a college degree like just give me the test tell me to write the papers and let's see if i can do i'm pretty sure i could or i would figure out how to do it i.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Want that do academic departments that talk about stoicism are they like this ryan holiday guy is repopularizing our field or are they like he's wrong about everything and i hate him because he's making money in this field where i should be the one who's like stoicism guy.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well this is how it usually goes if they're being interviewed for an article because like it's an article about the rise or the resurgence of stoicism they're usually kind of snarky and negative and you know say something about it and then when they put out a book they email me to ask for a blurb yes you know or if they can come on my podcast so that's how it tends to work which is that in the abstract they talk shit about you and then when they want something they are shameless in asking for it and this is not just academics but you find this anywhere right it's like the college student will talk a lot of shit about insert industry but then when they have to get a job and they're being interviewed at said company they're all very nice oh yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No many of the guys i worked with on wall street were the guys in law school who were like yes screw the man dude don't work for the man i'm like this is the man yes this is the man on top of the like you think the government's the man wall street is the one pulling the strings so how's that spreadsheet coming there andrew and it's like yeah i'll be done with it in six hours you sell out real fast when you see that you have three hundred thousand dollars in student loans of course not much of a choice this is a complete tangent but i'm curious if you know this guy montaigne you write about you say that he asked rome if he could be made an honorary citizen after he retired and was traveling what does that mean because it's probably not the same thing as like hey i'm traveling can i be canadian now there's gotta be something more to it like what benefits are involved in.

[Ryan Holiday]

This obviously in the sixteenth century the fifteenth and sixteenth century citizenship was a little bit different and borders were a little bit different i think what he was saying is that you know he's french but when he grew up montaigne had this fascinatingly unique education his father wanted him to learn latin so no one was allowed to speak anything but latin at home right so like he grew up as if he lived in ancient rome where they still spoke latin wow and so i think he just had this lifelong fascination with rome and i think he asked the pope or you know whoever the mayor of rome was if he i think he just wanted some sort of honorary certification that he was adopted by the tribe that he so identified with this is like.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Your honorary college degree that you don't have this is exactly same thing exactly i just want to identify as a graduate of a reputable academic institution we'll look into it you could offer your next keynote you could waive your fee in exchange for that piece of paper i don't know what you're charging but it's probably cheaper for them to print out a diploma i don't know that's actually a good point almost certainly cheaper for them actually to print out one.

[Ryan Holiday]

Of those things yeah it's like hey i will teach a class if at the end of it you allow me to graduate from said vincent university that's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Funny that's a good idea man to put that seed in there and see how that shakes out i shall you also write about machiavelli which i read that in high school and i remember being like damn this guy's ice cold but you focus more on his hours of focus and how you build this into your life and i'd love to hear how you do that because i think the hours of focus thing i mean it's challenge this is like the cliche is like we have all this technology and it rips us away from focusing and it you know it's harder than it ever was but i don't know man history's rife with people that if they'd focus more they would have been able to build something better well.

[Ryan Holiday]

Machiavelli is fascinating because obviously yeah he has the reputation for being what we would now call machiavellian you know he writes the prince so obviously he's about tyranny and power and control i mean he was a literal republican in that he wanted florence to be a republic so much so that he was taken prisoner by the medici family and tortured for being a radical and that's why he dedicates to the prince to them as a way to restore himself to their graces but it's actually a very subversive work that's sort of in some ways criticizing what a prince is none of that has to do with what i talk about him in the book so after his torture he's basically exiled he's thrown out of politics and so he lives in the country and he writes beautifully of what his life was when he was not in the sort of hustle and bustle of things he would work on his farm and then he would change into his nicest clothes and he would spend literally hours three to four hours a day conversing with the ancients when cal newport talks about deep work he's talking about like extended periods of deep work which is a beautiful i think even kind of sacred thing my schedule's been pretty busy because of the book launch so you know i was on the west coast for a week and then i was on the east coast for a week and then i had a bunch of stuff and then the latter half of this week is the first week i've gotten to go back into my routine basically from eight fifteen to eleven thirty i was like just in with my ideas and my writing and the book that i'm working on now and that's like that's my life that's what i love that's the thing that keeps me going is like that period i mean it's hard work and it's exhausting and tiring and my brain hurts sometimes but it's also deeply restorative and peaceful and stimulating people think this is something you can do while you're doing twenty other things right they're multi yeah and like what is the job of a leader or a creative or basically insert profession that's not built around periods of that and you look at people's calendars and it's like so you just have meetings all day when are you thinking about the things that you would say in the.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Meeting in the shower at night when you're supposed to be sleeping when are.

[Ryan Holiday]

You doing the work that makes having those meetings worthwhile the actual decision making and forecasting and understanding and reflect all the things you have to do that's the job and then the meeting is talking about it but people's lives are built around the managing side of things and not the making thinking big picture side of things yeah that's funny my.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Friend who was in the c suite at amazon showed me his calendar once and i was like at what point in the day do you work and he's like i either come in on weekends or i stay late because nine to five was meeting meeting meeting meeting call meeting and i remember my friend who used to work at twitter this is like ten years ago maybe even more he had a meeting pop up and i was like oh do you have to go cause your phone notified you have a meeting i don't mean to be all and he goes no every meeting for us is optional because we're and i thought that was so interesting and so telling right so corporate meeting all day meeting all day but the salespeople who actually earn all of the money to keep the company afloat if they have a meeting it's completely optional and he was like hanging out with me in his office and we're gonna go eat something he was not busy per se and he's just like i'd never go to these and i'm like but you don't miss anything he's like nope nothing if it's important it comes in a company wide email and i'll read it eventually or somebody will tell me he's like no i'm supposed to be selling ads on twitter and i just thought that was so damn telling right like when the rubber meets the road and you really need those people to do something that's not a meeting suddenly the meeting's not important but meanwhile you're paying this other guy three million dollars a year to be the head of whatever i don't want to out my boy but like the head of whatever at amazon in the c suite and it's like nope meetings for eight hours a day minus your lunch hour it's just absolute insanity well at.

[Ryan Holiday]

Some point in amazon the meeting culture got out of control and they sort of switched things i talk about this in the book there's a famous shareholder letter where jeff bezos talks about this policy where basically like if you wanted to call a meeting you had to spend the preceding couple of days writing a two to three page memo about what the meeting was about yeah yeah and what we were supposed to be thinking about and the idea was like you start the meeting everyone sits down reads the memo and then the meeting's pretty short because all the arguments have been laid out on the page and now we're just deciding right yeah smart that's wisdom right wisdom is sitting down learning about the problem or the issue laying out all the options and then making a cogent argument about what should or shouldn't be done but that's not what most meetings are or what most people do like what people want to do is sit down extemporaneously and bullshit about it and then act like what is happening is in any way educational or informative i've been riffing about this a little bit you might appreciate this i think this is a fundamental problem with podcasting as a medium you were just talking about how you do you read the thing you do prep you know what you're trying to get it's not that you have a script but you're like these are the things i want to talk about these are the directions we can go these are things i want to learn so that is very different than you know when you're pulling up these two comedians or this comedian who's interviewing this public health expert or whatever who knows nothing about the thing and then the two people are just pulling out of their ass their knee jerk opinions and then that feels to you because they're smart they're good at talking that feels to you like you're learning and really you're just watching a meeting you know like you're you're.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That'S so funny i had not thought of that but you're absolutely right you're absolutely right i don't want to hear a comedian talk to a virologist who knows a lot about a subject and the virologist gets one percent into the meat of the book because the comedian has not read that book at all and you're right that's just i'm wasting my audience's time if i don't come with like receipts prep eight pages of notes about stuff that i think they want to learn so not even just stuff i want to learn like there's stuff in here that i'm like i probably know the answer to this already because i've read about it a million times but i don't think i've talked about on the show i'll still put it in there because i know that like a non trivial percentage of my audience is going to find that interesting or educational sure you have to do that otherwise you're wasting like think about it you waste your an hour of your time you read a book you don't like for an hour and you're like and you put it down imagine wasting hundreds of thousands of other people's hours in one week if you add that up over the course of a podcasting career that is a nobel prize cure for cancer amount of time that you have wasted listening to yourself talk and make jokes about a book about vaccines or something like that that nobody.

[Ryan Holiday]

Needed to hear no no i think that's exactly right and to me a bit of evidence of wisdom is knowing the value of time your own and other people's i just think sometimes we just get distracted by things that look or feel like thinking or look and feel like they have some kind of intellectual rigor to them and actually they're bullshit like one of the things i talk a lot about in the book is just how easy it is to fall prey to cognitive biases how easy it is to get led down the garden path as they say or just to sort of mistake something because it appeals to you emotionally with fact or information and obviously in a world of ai and slop and unending amounts of opinion tied to algorithmic valence it's just really easy to go like well i'm reading but you're reading something you shouldn't be reading because it's nonsense so people think that they're thinking or think that they're becoming informed and actually they're going in the wrong direction yeah that's interesting.

[Jordan Harbinger]

There'S a part of your book where you talk about how smart people value silence and learn from others and how the ego often wants us to talk and contribute and it's really you have to resist that to really learn from other people and to absorb the right kinds of things the greats write things down and use a system to remember and access it and i'm wondering what sort of systems you have for remembering important concepts and accessing them later i know when you write your books you have those cards you know you and robert greene you got the cards but how do you access things like in your brain or do you just reread books that you find really compelling i.

[Ryan Holiday]

Do reread books and i think that is important it's not just like oh i'd like to read more but there are definitely books that you need to read more than one time to wrap your head around but i'm always reading i'm always taking notes and then i'm trying to write that stuff down and organize it in some way i do that obviously professionally as a writer but i do it personally too i write down i read books about parenting and i try to write those things down or i read books about money and i try to write those things down as i'm reading and learning it's not just enough to be like oh yeah i think i get it one of the things marcus aurelius thanks his philosophy teacher for at the beginning of meditations is he thanks him for teaching him never to be satisfied with just getting the gist of things which i think is kind of where a lot of people live right people are not like actively ignorant or disinterested in knowing it's that they think they know they're like yeah yeah yeah i got it right and to me it's like i hear something interesting or i learn something or i read something to me that has to be the start of a process not the end of a process so i want to go read and learn and watch one of the things i do where i do think ai can be interesting in is like you can go like hey i heard about this tell me everything about this or point me to five articles that i can read about this or are there good documentaries to watch you can use it to help you go down the rabbit hole which i think is really important but then when you're doing that how are you capturing and synthesizing this information is i think a lot of times it just kind of goes in one ear and out the other for people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That'S my problem even when i look i read a book and i'll take notes and put them into google docs which i use for the podcast but man even then it's like people write in and go how do you apply all the things you learn on your show and i just honestly have to say that i don't of course i don't are you kidding me i'm reading two books a week i can't apply everything from all of those that's a superhuman feat to be able to even apply half of that stuff i think.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well all is an interesting word how do you apply all that you read well part of wisdom is reading a book and knowing that eighty percent of this doesn't pertain to you at all or is not worth retaining right that is no small feat either when i read a really really amazing book i might mark ten percent of it ten percent would be a lot right that would be like the greatest book i've ever read i marked up ten percent of so a lot of it is kind of filtration and then another part of it is putting things to go like i never knew this word before i need to look it up i've never heard of that i want to know more about this so i think it's not like i read this book and then today i'm going to change everything that's the other part is like a lot of what you're learning and the reason you want to capture the information or put it somewhere is learning you read something and then twenty years later you're like isn't there something in that book about this you read books about parenting when you first have kids and then it's like okay well this will be relevant when i have a sixteen year old but i currently have a sixteen day old so i gotta squirrel this away somewhere abraham lincoln used.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To defend his friends after they were caught having sex with livestock that's not actually relevant right now but it sure is icky and i wanted to highlight it once again we'll be right back this episode is sponsored in part by quints cold mornings and holiday plans always sneak up on me and this is when i need my wardrobe to just work no fuss no thinking that's why we are all about quints they make it easy to look sharp feel good grab gifts that actually last from mongolian cashmere sweaters to italian wool coats everything is premium quality without the luxury markup quince makes all the essentials every guy needs cashmere sweaters for fifty bucks italian wool coats that look designer denim and chinos that actually fit and their outerwear lineup is legit they've got down jackets wool topcoats leather jackets all built to last the down jacket i picked up from quints is getting me through this cold winter here cold in air quotes because i live in california i recently picked up a quince suitcase to use on an international trip everything is made from top tier materials in trusted factories with high standards for craftsmanship and ethical production and because quints cuts out the middleman you're getting the same quality as luxury brands at a fraction of the price plus their home bath and travel items make holiday gifting really easy i grabbed a few for gifts and definitely kept a few things for myself get.

[Sponsor Voice]

Your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with quince go to quince dot com jordan for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty five day returns that's q u i n c e dot com jordan free shipping and three sixty five day returns quince dot com jorphdan this episode is sponsored in.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Part by airbnb as much as i love what i do and putting out content for you all i've definitely been feeling a little bit of burnout creeping in the only thing that truly resets me is not another productivity hacking it's travel getting out of my routine landing somewhere totally new that does more for my brain than anything else by the time you're hearing this i'll be somewhere in patagonia meeting new people eating food i can't pronounce taken in landscapes i've only seen in documentaries those are the moments that actually stay with you and that's the magic of travel the connections you make the conversations the random experiences you couldn't plan if you tried those end up being worth way more than whatever you spent on the trip but it also made me realize when you're out collecting those moments your home is just sitting there emptying so instead of letting it gather dust you could be hosting it on airbnb and actually making your time away pay for itself and if you're thinking hosting sounds great but i don't have time to deal with everything that's where airbnb's co host network comes into play you can hire a local co host to handle all the moving parts creating your listing messaging guests on site support so hosting stays stress free and manageable so while you're away recharging wherever that is your home can be earning you some extra income with a local expert there to ensure everything is running smoothly if you've been curious about hosting but want a little help find a co host at airbnb dot com host this episode is also sponsored in part by ag one mornings can be chaotic with two kids needing to get ready for school i am grateful to ag one for making it one of the simplest things i can do for myself every day ag one is a daily health drink that combines your multivitamin pre and probiotic superfoods antioxidants into one very green scoop it keeps us consistent even when the rest of our day is a whirlwind you drink it first thing in the morning usually when you're negotiating with your kids about why pants are necessary the original is the favorite there's now citrus berry tropical what i like is that ag one next gen has more vitamins and minerals than before clinically shown to help fill common nutrient gaps the pre and probiotics also give you solid digestive support which is extremely helpful when your diet becomes aspirational during the holidays travel days long days family stuff ag one will keep you steady and their new sleep supplement agz has been great for winding down at night try it out as well ag.

[Sponsor Voice]

One has their best offer ever head to drinkag one dot com jordan and you'll get the welcome kit a morning person hat a bottle of vitamin d three k two an ag one flavor sampler and you'll get to try agz for free that's drinkag one dot com jordan for one twenty six dollars in free gifts for new subscribers if you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like this episode of the show i invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do which is take a moment support the sponsors who make the show possible all of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger dot com deals if you can't remember the name of a sponsor and you can't find the code email me i am happy to surface codes for you it is that important that you support those who support the show now for the rest of my conversation with ryan holiday another concept i love from the book is you say never confuse gathering information with doing something with that information and in another life i used to teach guys how to meet women and stuff like that teach the dating stuff the social stuff it's almost embarrassing to talk about it but you know let's not hide the ball but one of the problems that i had that many people in that industry had is they would spend hours guys would come into our programs and they would they'd be like i've read all these books i've read everything i'm on the forums and i'm like oh this guy must be really good at this because he's spent hundreds of hours learning and then you realize oh man they have confused reading books about being social talking with other dudes about what to do and how to make things work and good date ideas whatever they've confused that with actual social experience and they're actually so far behind the curve now because they've got all this information in their head they've never applied it's actually just complete.

[Ryan Holiday]

Confusion well and sometimes the gathering of information is actually a form of procrastination.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes exactly they were scared to go out and talk to people because they were shy so they're like ah i'll stay in every weekend for the next year and read the forum posts going back to two thousand seven not the.

[Ryan Holiday]

Same thing you know you need both if you're like oh no no experience is the best teacher sure but it's also a very inefficient teacher it takes hundreds thousands of hours to learn every lesson by trial and error and the idea then is like you want to read about the best practices and the best insights and the things that other people not just one person but people plural have learned in their experiences you want to start there and then you want to apply it in the real world getting reps in whatever the thing you're doing is and then from these reps you're able to layer on top of the academic knowledge that you have an understanding of what's still true and what isn't true anymore what makes the most sense for you what you're best at you know what makes sense in the environment you're in again it's the fusing of these two that's really important like to just learn how to write by writing i mean you can do that you're just gonna have to write a lot of shitty things for a long time but when you read the greats and then you read what the greats wrote about writing you're able to not skip all of that but you're able to skip some of it and that's the fusing of study and application.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I thought it was interesting you must have written something about this i don't have the quote from the book but i thought it was interesting back then that people thought you were uneducated not only if you didn't know the classics but you also couldn't swim or you were out of shape they were like oh he's uneducated and it's kind of like wow pe class was not just recess with softball skills thrown into it people were maybe more well rounded back then like you had if you couldn't swim it was like je do you know that guy can't swim and it's the equivalent of almost like not being.

[Ryan Holiday]

Able to read crazy yeah the physical component there's a latin saying but basically just like you need a strong mind and a strong body and certainly for the greeks and the romans the school included not just pe but wrestling and fighting and hunting and it was an active thing as opposed to a passive thing i do think that's important and i also think there are multiple forms of intelligence knowing what the body can do specifically what your body can do and what it's capable of is a kind of self awareness and self discovery it strikes me as strange that you wouldn't want to explore fools are seldom.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Humble wise people often are it's not that you're always wrong it's that you realize you could be it's funny right.

[Ryan Holiday]

Socrates is wise because he knows what he doesn't know some people don't know anything like they just don't know anything and i guess knowing that you know literally nothing means you know one thing that's a little bit of some self awareness and that's great just because you're humble doesn't mean you're wise but i certainly think you are not wise if you are not humble wisdom is going.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Through life being willing to change your mind what's something that you have really changed your mind about in the last.

[Ryan Holiday]

Five years dude i have never had a good answer to that question do you have a good answer to that question i mean i change my mind all the time i don't feel like hey i had this opinion and i was extremely vocal about that opinion and now i admit i was a huge idiot and i'm totally wrong about it i've definitely evolved on things but so i guess my point is i do see it more as an evolution my beliefs are changing and evolving and i'm layering new understanding on them i haven't had those same conversion moments that some people have had which i do talk.

[Jordan Harbinger]

About in the book yeah i haven't had like opinions epiphany level oh my gosh everything i knew about this was wrong but i before when i was this is a fraught example and not the best one but i remember being like oh covid is obviously from bat at a wet market and now i'm like eh yeah very possible to form a lab that we're just not talking about it i don't know if that's like a life changing thing it's just a current events related thing the other one is immigration i used to really think that people who were against immigration were like just purely racist yes after talking with a lot of people about it i'm like oh actually that's not really the perspective of most of the people i talked to they were much more worried about a whole lot of other things and they weren't as black and white on the issue as i thought that was actually like a nice realization because i was like wow so many people in this country are just purely racist and it was like no actually i really am worried about being able to keep a job because of the economic concerns and i would say.

[Ryan Holiday]

My opinion on both those things have evolved as well to me the problem is the certainty right you're like this is true because x or i think this is true and therefore the people who disagree are x i tend to find that those opinions don't hold up well especially if you decide to keep learning i'll give you one i grew up religious oh you did i think i knew that i was confirmed catholic we went to church every weekend so i didn't necessarily believe like i just came out of the womb thinking this way but i remember going to church often enough that i felt compelled to do the work to figure out how to believe in this thing everyone was telling me to believe in right i see and then when i got to college i read sam harris and richard dawkins i read all those this was right in this sort of boom of those atheist books it was like okay obviously god does not exist right i read those books and i was quite certain i went from not so much certain but i was like i was of one view and then i had another view and now people ask me what i am i say very confidently that i'm agnostic which people think means atheist but what it means is i don't know because how would you know i've definitely found myself evolving on a number of issues where i don't know exactly what the answer is or i don't know exactly what the right thing is i just know that this is wrong and this is wrong and it's probably some complicated combination in the middle and again this sort of intellectual humility i've had the distinct pleasure and by pleasure i mean torture experience of updating a couple of books that i did a long time ago like i've done a ten year anniversary edition of one book i'm about to do a fifteen year anniversary of one book i will tell you that the most difficult part of that is when you read a sentence that you wrote at twenty three or whatever twenty five or whatever your age was oh man and you're just like where the fuck did this person get off you know how dare i the certainty does not age well yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That'S interesting how do you teach that sort of mental flexibility to your kids your kids might even be too young.

[Ryan Holiday]

For this i don't know we do tend to come down really hard on people who change their minds as if that's not the whole point i feel.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like we need to do the opposite i will say that thing that i said earlier about immigration i will get notes that are like aha i always knew you were a fraud and it's like you're mad at me for agreeing.

[Ryan Holiday]

With you now yes yes where were.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You before when i disagreed with you it's like be mad at the person who has all the evidence in front of their face and is like well i'm not going to admit that i'm wrong so you know you're still wrong and be mad at that person with a totally unwavering ridiculously inaccurate perspective why are you mad at me for being flexible and changing my mind when new evidence is presented come on and this.

[Ryan Holiday]

Is something that socrates talks about he says you know it's important that the socratic method is built around this obviously but he says remember that nobody's wrong on purpose you think back to all the things that you now admit you were wrong about you did not know you were wrong at the time like you thought you were right of course it took time and it took patience and it took little things here or there to eventually get you to understand or moderate or change your position that's obviously also how you're going to change.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Other people's minds once again a small non related tangent but it's wild hearing travel stories from back in ancient rome surely you've read a lot of detail about this do you have any idea or concept of what that was like because i'm like oh man when i traveled in the nineties we didn't have the internet you could maybe email and people would check it occasionally and then i think like cold war travel must have been wild you had this iron curtain you really couldn't get past it and maybe you were adventurous and you figured out like you could go to east berlin with a little temporary thing and then maybe you try to drive to poland or something or you had family there i can hardly imagine traveling without banks or mail service or like roads everywhere that you want to go.

[Ryan Holiday]

That are paved obviously yeah i mean you could just die of the plague or be attacked by pirates or road bandits or you know you could get dysentery or whatever it was it was rough have you ever read herodotus no.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I have not i read your books that's as close as i get to that kind of stuff i think herodotus.

[Ryan Holiday]

Is both the first historian and the first travel writer because like you think about it like to write the first history book he couldn't go read other history books because they didn't exist he had to go to the place and go like so you were here when it happened tell me what happened or what does your country believe where did you come from this book the histories by herodotus is this fascinating history book and actually many of the stories that we have come to us from like he's one of the first ones to tell us the story of the three hundred spartans for instance he would travel all over the world and thousands of miles as you said over dusty roads and via ship into foreign countries the fascinating thing he picks up is that every society refers to the other society.

[Jordan Harbinger]

As barbarians i've noticed that i have noticed that even in i learned languages so often and the word in basically every slavic or yugoslav language for germans is the enemy yes it's just like any germanic people and it's like oh it didn't refer to just modern day germany it was like any germanic people were the enemy that's just the word.

[Ryan Holiday]

For it this is the importance of both travel and the study of history you read a lot about america you spend a lot of time in america you're like americans do this americans this up and then you you read about rome and sparta and athens and as you said germany and you go oh wait every country does this stuff every country is bad yeah every country has shameful secrets every country has weird hilarious quirks every country has practices that make no sense one of herodotus famous stories is he talks about these two different it's like the meeting of these people from india versus these people from greece i forget what it was exactly but he's basically like one of them is describing how they treat their dead and the other is like disgusted and appalled and then they go well what do you do and they say and then they're disgusted and appalled like one of them burns their dead which if you think the body is sacred is like the worst thing you could do and then the other one you know like ate a piece of the dead and then if you think the body is putrid and disgusting that's the worst thing you could possibly do and his point is everyone thinks what other people do is crazy because they think going into it that there's only one way to do things and that wisdom is again part of the reason for the humility that comes along with wisdom is that you learn there's a lot of ways to do things there's something i read.

[Jordan Harbinger]

About recently i think it might be zoroastrian i could be wrong about this they take their dead up this mountain i think in india and they leave them there and there's just this huge gaggle of birds that eat the dead bodies it's called a sky burial and that to me is just like creepy and crazy to me imagine you go up there with your dead relative and there's just thousands of bodies and bones and they're just being devoured by these birds for some reason that reminded me because i feel like you tell that to anybody but someone from that culture and they're like wait back up what are you talking about well this is.

[Ryan Holiday]

The fascinating thing about montaigne and i talk about this in the book like while montaigne is living in reformation and counter reformation france the new world is discovered so there's these reports coming back of these cannibalistic tribes and these primitive savages on the other side of the ocean and he writes this famous essay called on cannibals which you'd think is going to be sort of racist and closed minded and he's like do they draw and quarter their enemies do they burn people at the stake that's what we're doing right now in this religious we're arguing over whether god wants you to do this or that and if you don't agree we burn you at the stake as a heretic or we tie ropes to your arms and legs and pull you in different directions by horse until you come apart while you're still alive i'm not sure they're the barbarians yeah and so part of what study and being open minded and then of course travel what it does is it allows you to see your own practices from a new perspective or through the reflection of somebody else's practices and then it should ideally open you up and get you to question well why are we doing it this way and is this the best way to do things and that's the exchange of cultures.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Some of the stuff you include in your books i'm always like why did he include this there was one here where you're talking about abraham lincoln and his thirst for learning and his character and you're like abraham lincoln the man who freed the slaves and then you explain that he represented many of his clients and friends against charges of bestiality which if people don't know what that is that is having sexual intercourse with an animal and i had to reread that because i was like wait a minute hang on that's not what he.

[Ryan Holiday]

Said he represents multiple cases of people like pigs and cows and stuff and i think it's like he tries five thousand cases as a lawyer like we tend to think of abraham again we think of these people as like coming out fully formed or like abraham lincoln read a lot of books as a kid and that's how he became wise no he spent twenty five years as a lawyer on the circuit back then like there wasn't enough people and resources in each town to have like a functioning legal system so i didn't know that oh wow the judges and the lawyers would travel to little town to little town and then for like three weeks handle all the cases they have until they would come back in the old days even the supreme court justices traveled it's called riding the circuit and you would have to sit on lower courts there wasn't just hey you work in this courthouse and enough cases come to you and so his understanding of human nature and how to resolve conflicts came from yeah representing cases that involved some weird twisted shit right my favorite lincoln story in the book just to let you know that he's not this saintly figure he loved practical jokes right and he was funny and he tells this story about he's riding the circuit with another lawyer and they're having to camp outside you know they're sleeping up on this rock or something he waits for his friend to go to sleep and the prank he's going to climb down from where they're camping and he's going to shit in his friend's hat that's going to be the friend's going to wake up and find that someone took a dump in their hat and and so lincoln does this and they wake up in the morning and the friend anticipating the prank has switched their hats and so he shits in his own hat and again you think of him as this black and white photograph the man whose face is wrinkled and worn by this horrible civil war which it was and the loss of his children and the pain and the heartbreak and he's also a guy with a sense of humor he's a human being and he learns by the way that humor is how you deal with what must have been a dark disturbing look into humanity as he traveled to these towns and he had to represent slaves and slave owners and wife beaters and people who stole the savings of little old ladies and he was a funny dude and i love that story that's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

A great story i mean like future president united states like you just think oh the country's falling apart you did a trial where someone went to prison for having sex with a pig this other person killed his neighbor what's your plan for the evening well first of all i'm going to get some food and then i'm going to shit in my friend's hat go to bed and wake up and watch him put it on and you're like okay everyone deals with stress in their own way i suppose i'm going to go for a.

[Ryan Holiday]

Swim i tell this story it's like christmas day or new year's day in the depths of the civil war and lincoln calls his cabinet in for this emergency meeting they have to discuss something and they come in and he's reading this book and he's laughing and they're like what are you doing and he's like let me read you this and he sits down and he reads them there's this humorist named artemus ward and he reads them a chapter from this thing which he finds hilarious and they clearly had a sense of humor that not everyone appreciated most of his cabinets like dude it's christmas what are we doing here he said if i don't laugh i think i would die all of us are greatly strained and we need to have something to lighten the mood and they're like okay yeah yeah yeah and he's like okay anyways the reason i called you here is let's talk about the emancipation proclamation so like one of the greatest most elevated moments in american history is preceded by this humorous silly distracted moment of american history but they're inseparable from each other and i do think very often the wisest people are i would say as a general rule every wise person i have met has a pretty good sense of humor certainly being stupid makes it hard for you to find things people think humor is low and base i actually find that real humor is based in your ability to perceive and understand the absurdity of the human experience plus shitting in people's hats i was going to.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Say and also shitting in people's hats exactly yes doesn't have to be elevated to be funny what's funny about that is the juxtaposition of the person who did it right i mean if some degenerate shits in a hat especially his own you're just like serves you right it's less funny than when it's the president of the united states one of the most important the guy on the dollar five bill got a story about this guy oh is it going to be a historical lecture not exactly not.

[Ryan Holiday]

Exactly it's so good it's so good.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The book has some wisdom on critics you touched on that at the top of the show listening to your critics is important and you need thick skin but if it's too thick you never get the information that you need to improve and i'm wondering how you balance this i mean you kind of talked about it we hinted at it in the beginning when you're like look don't read the amazon review the first one from a pre what are they called galley that some guy got for free didn't want to read it had to do it as part of his job that's not the guy's feedback that you want i'm wondering how you balance this and if you have any wisdom from historical figures that's fine too but not.

[Ryan Holiday]

Mandatory no i was actually thinking about this with someone i know recently who's kind of struggling at what they do what they need to do is very clear the changes they have to make are very clear but they just cannot hear it i'm sure you've had people that have worked for you that are like this where it's like i'm not trying to hurt your feelings but if this feedback or information this thing i'm trying to teach you does not get through you cannot work here anymore that person's ego or their sense of self or whatever it is they would rather get fired than change yeah interesting right or they would rather not improve and get fired than go through the discomfort of having to try to do things a different way and so the ability to hear information that you don't want to hear is really important again this is very different than like random people hurling things at you on the internet but it is when i send in a draft i'm going to get a lot of notes back some of those notes are going to be wrong and i have to ignore them and a lot of those notes are going to be good and then a lot of those notes are going to be somewhere in between and the ability to filter and sift through this criticism and know what to take and what to ignore like that is the art of taking and receiving feedback like you said it's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

An art it's not something that would come naturally to me i think even now i probably take unfortunately i pay attention to the peanut gallery far more maybe than i pay attention to the person i'll get a three paragraph email about somebody who does something is like it's really nice you this changed my life this set me on this path i got a job because of this and then i'm like but look this guy left me a one star review because he doesn't like my haircut sure and my producer's like you read the thing i put in the slack right the three paragraph letter did you read that and i'm like yeah but this guy he said something mean about the shirt i was wearing and it's just like i'm exaggerating a little bit but it's sadly not that much unfortunately the.

[Ryan Holiday]

Unsolicited feedback is one thing but it's more like what's the team you're building around you whether it's the president has the cabinet and then the kitchen cabinet like they're formal and they're informal advisors you have your producer you have your peers you have your advertisers you have your friends and then you have your spouse these are all the people you want to be what can i do better what are you liking what are you not liking what do you think i should do differently that's where you get the criticism and feedback i think that actually matters at the end of.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The book you have this interesting aside about how the virtues are something we aspire to but you also can't signal them you can only do them you can only be them this might even be a silly question but tell me the difference between virtue signaling and actually exhibiting virtuous behavior because while it seems obvious on its face most people are actually just virtue signaling instead and obviously.

[Ryan Holiday]

Look there's this backlash today against virtue signaling which some political junkies and super online people have started to take as well actually saying anything nice or caring about anyone is actually something to be mocked and like it's actually better to be an asshole which now we do this sort of vice signaling it's like are you paying lip service to the idea that wisdom is important or are you actively learning a great example would be in the virtue of justice which is probably when people are talking about virtue signaling so someone might go hey i think minimum wage should be x right but when i have the opportunity to set the salary of someone who works for me i choose to pay them as little as possible what you think or how you would like the world to be is one thing i do think there is something in obviously saying nice and believing nice things but what really matters is like what are the decisions you are making when it pertains to things that are in your.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Control another quote i loved learn as if you're going to live forever live as though you're going to die tomorrow is that going on your next coin is that going on a coin anytime soon it should it's a good one.

[Ryan Holiday]

That'S a famous latin expression yeah okay live as if life is short but learn as if life is going to be very long which is to say always be learning always be curious always be asking questions always be trying to get better and i think when you fuse those two things together you're set up ideally for a good life i don't regret anything i've learned do you know what i mean like there's nothing i'm like it was so dumb that i studied that thing even if i don't use it even if some of it turned out to be wrong i'm glad that i took the time to.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Do it ryan holiday thanks for coming back on the show you might actually have the record for the most appearances on this podcast i have to go count actually not sure well that's a.

[Ryan Holiday]

Record i'd be very proud of you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Keep writing them i'll keep reading them my friend deal what is the next book are you out of virtues now do you have to switch gears the.

[Ryan Holiday]

Virtues was a four book series because the virtues are courage discipline justice and wisdom i'm working on the next book.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now can you say what it is or it's a secret still no no.

[Ryan Holiday]

It'S not a secret i'm doing a biography of admiral stockdale so i'm trying to write a very different book than.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'Ve done before yeah that is different that is different who is that i don't even know who that is i guess i'll find out when i read.

[Ryan Holiday]

It but i'm curious no no i'll tell you all about it sometime ryan.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Holiday thank you very much man i really appreciate you what if the biggest threat to your career isn't your workload it's the jerk sitting two desks over tessa west breaks down the seven types of toxic co workers and how to handle them without losing your cool or your credibility so jerk i think is.

[AMPM Advertiser Voice]

Really just kind of a loose word to describe you're doing something to piss somebody off and you might not even mean to be doing that you might actually be hurting someone while helping another person even people who are actually motivated to do good can turn into jerks to other people if they're not paying attention i think we underestimate how awful day to day stresses even little small things like hearing someone's footsteps walking down the hall or knowing that if you're going to go heat up your coffee there's a thirty percent chance you're going to run into that you know that jerking will just make you drink your coffee cold those little things really add up and they really affect us in ways that we often underestimate it's not that you are a jerk it's that someone sees you as a jerk so for solving these problems for coming up with strategy learning conflict management that's essential and ninety percent of these problems you cannot go alone and social connections are really critical to kind of getting those new positions we learn technical skills we don't learn people management we get promoted because we're good at old jobs not because we know how to actually talk to people or give feedback or do any of these things yeah i think a lot of us think of ourselves as unique snowflakes that have special contributions but at the end of the day most of us are replaceable and i think we just have to get more comfortable with having relationships with people who aren't our best friends and seeing them as such and i think that's okay you're gonna need those social connections so i hope people feel like after reading this they can handle these difficult people in a kind of more manageable way.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To hear more with tessa west on what makes these office saboteurs tick and how to make sure you're not accidentally becoming one of them check out episode seven hundred six of the jordan harbinger.

[Ryan Holiday]

Show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thanks so much to ryan holiday for joining us once again at this point he may actually hold the record for most repeat appearances on the show and honestly i'm not mad at that ryan you keep writing them i'll keep reading them and yes i will happily continue this elaborate years long con where i built a podcast empire just to get free books and force brilliant people to answer my questions in fact doing so has been one of the greatest joys of my entire life sharing this stuff with you guys so i hope you enjoy it as well and remember virtue can't be signaled only practiced learn like you'll live forever live like you'll die tomorrow love that all things ryan holiday in the show notes on the website advertisers deals discount codes ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger dot com deals please consider supporting those who support this show also our newsletter we bit wiser speaking of writing i love writing this y' all love reading this you can hit reply and reach me anytime the idea is to give you something specific and practical that will have an immediate impact on your decisions psychology relationships it is a two minute read or less every wednesday if you haven't signed up yet i invite you to come check it out it really is a good companion to the show jordanharbinger dot com news is where you can find it don't forget about six minute networking as well over at six minutenetworking dot com i'm jordan harbinger on twitter and instagram you can also connect with me on linkedin in this show it's created in association with podcast one my team is jen harbinger jace sanderson robert fogarty tata sidlowskis ian baird and gabriel mizrahi remember we rise by lifting others the fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting in fact the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about if you know somebody who's interested in philosophy stoicism virtue or just a big ryan holiday fan definitely share this episode with them in the meantime i hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.

[AMPM Advertiser Voice]

What do you think makes the perfect snack hmm it's gotta be.

[Jordan Harbinger]

When i'm really craving it and it's.

[AMPM Advertiser Voice]

Convenient could you be more specific when.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It'S cravinient okay like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at am pm or a savory breakfast sandwich i can grab in just a second at am pm.

[Ryan Holiday]

I'M seeing a pattern here well yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We'Re talking about what i crave which.

[AMPM Advertiser Voice]

Is anything from am pm what more.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Could you want stop by am pm where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient that's cravenience am pm too much good stuff.