Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 31: RYAN HOLIDAY on Ranch Life, Fostering Discipline, and the Loss of Reading Culture

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

In this episode of Deep Questions we try something a little different: our first guest!Bestselling author Ryan Holiday joins me to help answer reader questions, as well as more than a few queries from me. We cover a variety of topics, including his life as a writer living on a ranch, how he fosters discipline, the impact of our diminishing reading culture, and why everyone keeps trying to get me to move to Austin.Be sure to check out Ryan's new book: LIVES OF THE STOICS (https://dailystoic.com/preorder).To submit your own questions for the show, sign up for my mailing list at calnewport.com. You can submit audio questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/CalNewportThanks to listener Jay Kerstens for the intro music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions. The show where I answer queries from my readers about work, technology, and the deep life. So we're doing something special in today's episode of the Deep Questions podcast. I will be joined soon by our very first guest host, my friend and fabulously bestselling author, Ryan Holiday. And you might know Ryan for his books on Stoicism. The obstacle is the way. Ego is the enemy. Stillness is the key.

And his most recent book, Lives of the Stoics, which comes out on the 29th of September, which is just a day or two after this podcast is first released. So I've known Ryan for a long time. He lives a really interesting deep style life, where he has a ranch with 40 acres, and he goes for walks with his family to see the sun rise on his own land. He has this office in this small town outside of Austin in an old building that he goes to to do his thinking or do his writing or to do his podcasting.

He has more books than most small town libraries. He's also entirely autodidactic and self-taught. He didn't go to college and yet has built up this expert level understanding of stoicism that he makes tractable for those of people out there that are looking for a deeper philosophical foundation for constructing how they lived their life. Really interesting guy, known him for a long time. And given that his book was just coming out this week, I thought he would make an excellent guest host. So what we try to do is I ask him some questions,

but I also, as in a normal episode of this show, we do reader questions, except for instead of it's just me answering, we get Ryan to give his thoughts as well. So we get into that, we get into your questions, we get into his life on the ranch, we get into the state of the publishing industry. Interestingly, you'll notice sort of towards the end of the episode,

we get into this long back and forth discussion about current culture, why there's no young people writing nonfiction anymore, critical theory, how that's spreading, what its impact is going to be on culture, academics, academics' role in the public conversation, a lot of back and forth. I want to highlight this because I think it gives an interesting insight that's not always well understood into how nonfiction authors talk to each other.

So we know it's pretty common in popular culture that if you get a bunch of comedians together, they're going to riff back and forth. They're going to riff back and forth. They're going to try out jokes. They're going to try out bits. Well, nonfiction writers do the same thing. We try out theories.

So we cover a lot of ground in that back and forth. And you'll notice that we're very confident about everything we say. And we have all these frameworks. Well, it's two phases. No, it has to do with the typographic culture of Twitter. No, it has to do with the evolution of critical theories and the role of postmodernness. Everything we talk about, we talk about with confidence.

But what's really happening here is we're trying out theories. This is how nonfiction writers talk. You talk with great confidence because what you're trying to do is craft a coherent enough theoretical framework that you could maybe write an article about it or build a book on it. So anyways, I think it's just an interesting look at back and forth of what it's like when writers try to riff on ideas. Well, what about this take? No, no, let's try this take. Well, here's my take here.

It's like a much less funny version of what comedians do when they get together. But I thought it was kind of interesting that we captured that type of interaction, which is common among authors. So we captured it on tape. So hopefully you'll enjoy that as well. And also keep in mind that we're 50% serious and 50% just trying ideas on for size. Okay. So I want to get to the show without too much extra delay. So just really quickly, feedback can come to interesting at calnewport.com.

I can't respond to every message, but I do read them all, ratings, reviews, subscriptions. It's been really useful. We've been getting a lot of ratings. We've been getting a lot of reviews. We've been getting a lot of subscriptions. It is helping to spread the word. So I do appreciate that. And of course, if you want to contribute your questions to the show, sign up for my mailing list at calnewport.com.

All right, without further ado, let's get on to today's episode of Deep Questions with a guest host, Ryan Holiday. Ryan, thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. You are the very first guest host on the Deep Questions podcast. So this will either be something that you will cherish or will be a moment of infamy in your career. So I'll either be the first or I should hear the feedback if I'm the last. Yeah, exactly, one way or the other. So, I mean, you know the format here is that I answer questions. And so the idea, the idea is you will help me answer my reader's questions. I've got a good batch here. But first, I have one for you. Okay. I, and this is real. I have had two people in the last two weeks, unrelated, both give me the hard sell to move to Austin. Okay. So what the hell's going on down there? Why is everyone going down there? Why is everyone trying to get me to boop there? Where are they moving from?

One is already moved from Ohio, California, and the other person is soon to move from here in Washington, D.C. So the California thing is much more common, and I say this as someone who moved to the south from California. I mean, California is both literally in flames on lockdown and reeling, you know, one of the worst states in the country as far as the pandemic goes. So California, plus then you add on that, you know, these insane housing prices. California is sort of both a liberal dream and nightmare, you know. So I think a lot of people are fleeing California because as they've, you know, become more successful in what they do and that comes with a corresponding amount of freedom or leverage, which you talk about in your books, they're sort of realizing like what the

hell am I paying for? So, like, you know, if you're paying a 10 to 13% state income tax in California and housing in Texas is roughly, or in housing is supposed to be 20% of your income, what you're essentially saying is that your house is half free in Texas. So I think a lot of people are just looking at where their dollars go. I sort of did a similar thing in New York where I was living. When I moved to Texas, it was what we were paying for a studio apartment. we got a mortgage on a 40-acre farm for. So, you know, it's just transformatively different. It's wonderful.

I love it. I can't recommend it highly enough. I live in a small town outside Austin. It's great. The only, I would say one of the reasons it's great, though, is that basically you just have a lot more freedom in Texas. You can do whatever you want. I would say the downside and the pandemic brought this clear is you can do whatever you

want, but also other people can do whatever they want. And sometimes you, you look back towards other states that maybe you sort of envy the competence of government, let's say. The flip side of freedom is that everyone else has freedom. But that's where the 40 acres come to play, right? You don't have to be near anybody if you don't want to. No, it's been, it's been great. certainly much worse places to be, to ride out a pandemic. Yeah. Now, coming from New York to land, I think a lot of us that are in more densely packed areas have these aspirational daydreams of what it's like to have vistas or to have, you know,

a pond to walk to or something like this. So, so sort of make us jealous here. I mean, is there really, was it what you hoped from a contemplative perspective to actually go from a city that? having your own land. Yeah, it's, it's been amazing. I mean, so every, every night we go for a walk as a family. You know, my son rides as a little bike on a dirt road. You know, sometimes we pick blackberries if they're in season or they play in puddles if it's rained. We see animals. I was on a, I was on a call yesterday and I had to tell the person to wait, wait. And I ran downstairs and I

And so my wife to take the kids out because there was this huge, like, herd of deer walking by, and they walked by. And then a coyote came and was chasing them. So, yeah, it's wonderful and beautiful and a nice reset for everything. I think, like, you could certainly also get that in the middle of South Dakota. I think one of the benefits of Austin or Texas is, you know, I'm 30 minutes from a major airport. I could drive to IKEA if I needed to or I can get groceries delivered, but I'm also have freedom. So I think you want this right mix of like, you know, the fantasy of Therose Walden is made a bit more realistic when you realize he was like walking into town for lunch every day.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and also it seems like what you figured out is the same thing. My friend who moved probably nearby. I mean, he's also in Bostrop County. I know exactly you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about. We've not yet gotten together, but his assistant sent me a note. He's like literally on the street over from mine. It's probably a 20-minute drive, but we are, let's put it this way. We're on the same next door, like, proximity.

I love that. Your neighbors and you're 20 minutes away. I think that encapsulates. But he also, like you, now has an office in the town of all. You know, you go there for the good internet and then you're out on your land for the rest of the day. That seems to be this great balance where you have your land, but then, you know, you have the small town you go to and work out. And so, you know, I actually have to blame you for the deep work HQ that I'm recording

from now that I talked to my listeners a lot about. It was basically you sending me that text of the office space you had in the town of boss drop. You sent to me that text at the beginning of the pandemic and seeing that you had a place to go. it did not take long after that until I was, you know, spending way too much money on on office space of myself. So I blame you for that, but also celebrate you. I actually, I just, I just pull it up because someone emailed it to me. There's this quote from this Texas author, Larry King. I think he wrote like the littlest whorehouse in Texas or whatever that book is, but he was saying that his dream was to have outdoors and cattle and land.

And he says, and all, this is the quote, all this will occur about one easy hour out of Austin. my favorite Texas city, and exactly six miles from a tiny unnamed town looking remarkably like what Walt Disney would have built for a cheery, heart-tugging Texas-based story happening about 1940. So that is basically the dream. Like I'm literally on Main Street before the pandemic. I could walk across the street to a diner, and I was taking my son to a school down the street. I think the ultimate, I don't think the purpose of a sort of a digital life is to live, one of isolation and, you know, indoors, I think it's to get a little bit closer to that

sort of idyllic American dream of old, but with a lot of the modern conveniences. Yeah, until enough of us author types move to Boss Drop and then the whole thing is full of sweet greens and crossfits. All right, let's get into the reader's questions. Let's get some Orion's wisdom here. So our first question comes from Amber. Amber, asks, how should we look at material possessions in the framework of deep work? I am currently organizing my house in order to make more room and mental space for creative endeavors. So what's your philosophy, Ryan? What is the stuff in your house or your office?

How does that affect what happens between your ears? So one of the, we were just talking about the office thing. One of the really great things about the office is I moved everything out of my house. So I have no books except for the books that I'm reading, like on my, bedside table. I have no books in the house. I have no, you know, you get like framed things sent to you or you frame, you know, an award or something. I have like, I just live. It's like my wife's house now and I have this office that has all my stuff. And so our marriage is better. I feel. Can I ask? Can I something? Was it traumatic to move the books? I just did that. The movers last weekend brought all my

books over to the office. It was a little traumatic for me. Was it hard for you to see those shelves in the your house at first? So the last time I'd moved them was in 2013 when we moved to Texas for the first time. And I had them. It was sort of the perfect setup. It was all along one wall. It was this sort of beautiful thing. And so that was like heartbreaking to have taken apart because now in my office they're sort of in different rooms. There wasn't like one epic wall to have them on. But so it was a little bit traumatic. I had someone else do it so I didn't have to feel the, you know, the pain of it. I think the other thing for me, though, was realizing just how many books that I never wanted that I didn't like that I'd been carting around basically since college. So the big

part of it for me was to go to the reader's question was just, I think the benefit of moving or doing a clean is you just, you realize just how little of this stuff you need and you can get rid of a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah. What about signaling? Like one thing I've been working on, because I have one of the the spaces in my office here is like a larger common space. And I'm setting that up to be my place for writing and for working on proofs. And to get towards Amber's question, what I'm finding is that I'm focused less on how much stuff is in there than I am on being not radical,

but a little bit over the top on how I set it up to sort of signal to myself, oh, this is a place where thinking happens. I mean, it seems to me if you look at historical, like let's say 19th century houses where from people with means that, used to put a lot of work into their libraries, kind of like a signaling, like, okay, this is a place where I go to think. And I'm actually setting up a fake library basically in this common space. But do you do anything like that where you think about maybe I'll go a little bit over the top and how I set this up? I mean, your bookcases were basically that. That was my memory, right?

I mean, that was also signaling like, okay, this is something I take unusually seriously thinking in writing. Well, I think unfortunately that word signaling now has this negative content. because it's sort of associated with virtue signaling, but I think I sort of thinking about it as priming, like the space has to evoke the mood or the tone that you want or just the inspiration. Like when you walk into the locker room of a sports team, you know, they've got like inspiring images of the players that came before and they've got the team values. They're kind of just, they're trying to create kind of a sacred space. So it's not just the books for me, but, you know, like the art. You know, I have, I have like some paintings of some of my favorite writers. And I have,

I actually, Hugh McLeod just sent me this thing that I have on my desk now. It's this great little card that he made. And it says, like an asshole, I took him, her it for granted. So I have that on my desk. I have a picture of Oliver Sacks with a no sign next to my desk. I have a little statue of Marcus Aurelius. I got some pictures of my kids. I think it's kind of about the mood or the, tone or even the words that you want to embody, I think about it more in that sense.

Yeah. And I guess your land is also a broader part of the priming. I mean, it's got to be to be able to walk out and you have some sort of animals, but like to see your animals and go to the pond. And it reminds me a lot of Darwin at downhouse having that path built that he could

walk the same circuit every day to prime. his brain. And so it's as if for you, like your priming is beyond just the spaces in which you work. It's the spaces, the spaces in which you live. Yeah. So we get up, we, you know, we get up like this morning, we got up around six. And then I took my wife and I, my wife sometimes comes, but we went for a walk and we walk from basically from where our house is to where all the neighbors mailboxes is, is, is one and a half miles. So we walk there, we check the mail. We walk back. So it's about three mile loop all in a dirt road. You know, you see your neighbors going to and from work and, and you're just outside. You're watching the sun come up. And it's, it's sort of priming the day.

And my thing, which I sort of took from your stuff is like, I don't take my phone on this walk. So, you know, I wake up at six, you know, I get back from the walk at seven, you know, then I do some journaling and maybe work a little bit. You know, it's 8.30. I still haven't touched the phone. So I think it's also creating space and routine that is putting you in the headspace you want to be rather than, you know, it's like you're, you know, it's New York City. You're waking up. You look out the window and there's traffic and there's noise and there's, you can see a billboard. And, you know, like you're just bombarded with stuff. And I don't have that.

Right. Well, this brings us to another question I have here. So Satya had asked, hi, sir, are we able to concentrate on our work? deeply, though we have distractions like traffic noise and big sounds. So for someone who's in the opposite, I've remembered you talking before about some Stoic philosopher. I don't know if this was Seneca or Epictetus, but there was someone who wrote about this, right? The noise outside his window in ancient Rome and how he dealt with it. The intro to stillness is the key is based on, I think it's letter 93, but I could have it wrong, but Seneca is in an apartment in Rome. And, you know,

he sort of catalogs all the noise that he's hearing. And obviously, some of it is old. He's talking about wagons instead of cars. And, you know, he's talking about, you know, a blacksmith instead of a jackhammer. But it's identical to what you would hear out of your window in a noisy city. And his point is, I mean, he would probably say, look, you can't just flee to the country. That's because you'll find noise there too. But he's saying you have to get to a point where you can be still and quiet and

and focused even while this is all happening. So, I mean, you can do it in these cities. And I'm not saying that, you know, running away is magically going to solve your problems. But I do think, you know, creating space, time, and place to do the deep work is really, really important. Like I was telling you, I was on a trip overseas. I was talking to a very high-ranking, let's say, a government official. and he was telling me about like this room that he had in his house that was like totally blacked out and he would just go there and sit and read and write and that was like his deep work space and he was a huge fan of yours

but the point being you know you've got to you've got to find something that works for you what you can't do is just wake up and wing it every day yeah well there's a there's a senator that you and I both know as well who did something similar uh I think you saw it as well at his Capitol Hill office where he, I guess he turned his magisterial office somehow into conference room so that he could take this small room with no windows. He put a little writing desk in there so he could actually find some time. Now, I should also say,

this is a good time. I mentioned the intro, but just to mention it again, if you're interested in that type of wisdom, Ryan's new book, Lives of the Stoics, it comes out this week. The same week in which this podcast is released is the week when that book comes out. So if you want to learn more about this from the master, that's the book. I'll also

mention just to add on there, an idea I had in digital minimalism that's relevant is that solitude, which I think is related here, time alone with your own thoughts and observing the world around you, people often mistakenly associate solitude with physical isolation. And one of the big arguments I made in that chapter of digital minimalism is that actually solitude is orthogonal to what's around you or physical isolation. It has to do. do with what you're doing with your mind. And you would call it stillness in your book. And I would use the term solitude. But if it's you alone with your own thoughts observing the world around you, you're in a state of solitude. And some of the most famous writers and artist of the 19th and 20th century,

they did all their work in busy, loud cities. And so there is this really big distinction between stillness and solitude and isolation, both of which play a purpose, but not necessarily the same thing. So speaking of that, though, let's go to a question from, Ethan, right, this is a very broad one. But actually, Ryan, I'm very interesting your answer here because this reminds me of you. He says, how would you recommend building discipline? Now, you're a very disciplined guy. So what is your, what's your philosophical foundation here?

My philosophical foundation is that when you look at the lives of most artists and elite performers in various fields, athletes, whatever, it's routine. but a routine done enough times and with enough earnestness, I think becomes almost ritualistic. And so I think the philosophical underpinning is that it can become almost a sort of a sacred experience. And so what I find is that it's a discipline of like, okay, these are the things I do, but then this is also how I approach them. So I don't see them as like, you know, obligations on my attention. to-do list, but I see it as a really important part of the experience. So the walk, like, if I don't get to do the walk, I can feel it throughout the day. If I don't spend any time

writing or being creative, I can feel how that affects me throughout the day, almost in the way that like if your kid skips a nap or, you know, dinner is 30 minutes late, suddenly their behavior is a nightmare. They can't figure out why, but it's very obvious to you. it's that, you know, it's almost as if the order of the universe has been shaken. Yeah. Well, what about your, what about your reading discipline? So this is something that that always amazes me is that the number of books you get through. Just based on your reading list email, which I highly recommend, by the way, you have to sign up for Ryan's reading list email for his monthly recommendations. Take us inside that. Is there, is there a

mix here of some sort of strategic skimming with reading, or do you have protected a, like very large amount of time every day for the page. How does one get through the number of books you get through? Well, I don't have a day job like you. So this is what I do. So people are like, how do you read so much? And it's like, you know, it'd be like going to a basketball player and going like, how do you have so much time to just like play basketball? It's like that is the that is the thing, right? That's part of the job. I would say though that during the, because of the pandemic, I've been traveling a lot less. And you might think that means I have more time to read. It actually means I have less time to read. So I've had to get a bit more deliberate

about the practice because I realized that I was actually doing a lot of my reading on airplanes or, you know, I would have dinner by myself. And so I would read over dinner or, you know, I'd, you know, I just had a lot more time when I was, you know, it's almost like a few nights a month I was single because I was on the road. And so I've, I've had. to schedule it more. I now sort of read at lunch. I read after the kids go to bed and then I read before I go to bed. I don't know if I'm skimming, but I would say there was something Tyler Cowan talked about a few years ago where he was saying if you want to get faster at reading, just read more because then you start to know what's happening and you can skim. So it's not so

much that I skim, but it's like if I'm reading a book that's in part touching on, say, the Civil War, I can skip, like, you know, I can go fast through the parts where they explain the causes of the Civil War because I've already read about this like 30 times. Or if it's a quote that I know, you know, I don't need to, I'm not comprehending that quote for the first time. So I am faster because of the work that I've done, but, I mean, mostly I just spend a lot of time reading and I really enjoy it and I try to read books that I want to read. Yeah. Yeah, I think people aren't necessarily always familiar with scholarly reading, but that's exactly what you're explaining. When you know a subject well, what you're looking for is, yeah, what's the new,

what's the new twist? What's the new idea? Like what's interesting about this scholars take? And often you weave through the book to get to that because the other stuff is background you know. I mean, it's always the old rule. How do you know you've done enough research? for your book is where everything you see reference as something you've already read. So once you sort of recursively get back. But I mean, so your particular style of writing is very citational.

So it's definitely built off of references to things that you have read, stories that you have read. So like what does it take to keep up? Like what you need two hours a day, would you say one hour? Like what is the wrong? An hour or two.

And so there's reading for me and then there is the reviewing. So, like, I'm in the middle of reading this fascinating biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. right now. I'm really enjoying it, but there's also a part of me that is dreading the going back through because he's such a, he's such a quotable, brilliant thinker that, like, you know, I'm 150 pages in, and I've probably marked, like, you know, 30 pages. and some of the pages I'm putting an arrow saying that I also have to go back and review the next page or the page before.

And I think maybe the other way that I'm able to skim is that as I'm reading, if I see a really good quote, I can sort of instantly recognize this is a really good quote, but I don't have to fully comprehend it or wrestle with it until I go back through to do my notes. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I'm kind of, I'm reading, but I'm also breaking things down or, or, you know, disassembling them as I'm reading and then I review them and I kind of organize it and put it all together. Yeah. Well, that might be worth elaborating because that's a place where you and I differ in our habits. I don't, I never go beyond the marginal note stage. So for me, I do the marginal

notes where I, I mark the corner if there's a note on the page and then I make notes on the page. And then when I go back for the process of book, I just go through looking for the marks and basically reread them. You have a more elaborate habit where you then transfer those quotes to a sort of a discretized commonplace filing system. So maybe it's worth elaborate on that a little bit. And also, what's the thinking here? Like, why is, is this because of the nature of the specific type of writing you do? Or is this something like the rest of us should also be doing with key books?

I mean, I definitely think everyone should have some system where they're synthesizing and organizing and making connections within the writing that they're doing. Like, I'm working on a book project right now. And it's like, so whenever I start. new book. Now I go and I get special note cards printed that have the title of the book. But you'd be amazed going through my note cards, what, like if you could somehow, because I don't usually put dates on them, like, there are ideas like that I was writing about yesterday. Actually, here's a good example. I'm writing this section and I'm talking about Sparta. And so I had this note card

about Astoria in Sparta. And so I had to go get my copy of Herodotus. And you know, I pull up my copy of Herodotus and, you know, it says go to page, you know, 236. I go to page 236. I pull it up. I'm looking at it. It was just, I felt this, you know, it was just a very weird feeling to realize that I'd probably marked up this copy and written this note card in 2006, you know, maybe 2007. And that was just paying off, you know, in 2020 on. And that was just paying off, you know, in 2020 on my 11th book. So you don't know where you're going to end up needing the stuff. So you're doing the work for the uncertain payoff, but the payoff is eventually there. Yeah. Well, how do you organize these cards? Like, where do you find a Herodotus card? So that one, I think I'd originally

organized it as like some sort of strategic, maybe I put like strategy of some strategic idea. And so I just went back through all my note cards of a section and I'm pulling out all the ones that actually it happened. They are now related to the concept of the new book, which I had no conception of when I was first doing it. Like as an example, when I wrote conspiracy, which was ostensibly this book about, you know, the billionaire Peter Thiel destroying Gawker Media, I went back through and looked at all of my notes about strategy. and leadership and deception and, you know, stoic philosophy. I went through all my cards and then it happened that I found stuff and I didn't even yet know how I would possibly use it, but it was just interesting to me. So I think what you're trying to do is just collect interesting things that you have this,

you know, intuition might be valuable one day and, you know, occasionally you're right. and that pays for all the times you wrote something down and you weren't right. Right. So like working on lives of the Stoics, I'm assuming there probably was not that much original reading you had to do from scratch, like something you've never read before after you decided to write that book. It sounds like it was probably more a process of going back. It was a research in your own card system.

It was in my cards and sometimes even in my own writings, like because I do this email every day for Daily Stoak. So it was finding old articles that I'd written and stuff like that. And then, yeah, I think, I don't know about you, but like, when you go back through a book that you've already written, or you've already read, and you've done the hard work of identifying all the interesting stuff and even putting down your thoughts about them, it's just like, it's like you're having, it's almost as if you had a glimpse into the future that you didn't even know you were doing. And you're now like reconnecting with Cal eight years ago who was reading Neil Postman and suddenly thought there was a germ of something here, but you didn't realize it would take eight years for that to reveal itself. Yeah.

And it's crazy how much that happened. I mean, that's for the listeners. Like that's a look inside the sort of the scholarly life or the intellectual life is this constant engagement with ideas for the sake of liking to engage with interesting ideas. for the sake of liking to engage with interesting ideas. And then when it comes time to write a book, you're drawing from this thick web of connections and pulling some threads out of there, which is you know this because you say you don't have a day job,

but you do run a book marketing company. So you've, or at least you did. So you've worked with a lot of authors. And this is something I've heard you say a lot when you give advice publicly, which is people don't put nearly, and by people I mean aspiring authors, They don't put nearly enough thought into coming up with a really good book idea.

And what sort of intellectual lifestyle you have to have in order to support a really good book idea? And then how item one, two, and three on your checklist of having a successful book launch is writing a really good book on a really good book idea. And it's almost like that's the output of a lifestyle more so than a goal. No, it's the output of a process. And I think, look, you captured the essence of that in the title of one of your books about being so good they can't ignore you. Like people think that there's this sort of magical solution to marketing a book. And there are things you can do, but they really only matter when you have some kind of product market fit or you've tapped into, you've created something that's truly worth doing. And that almost always has to come from an authentic, you know, raw and human place.

Like just as an example, like when I was finishing my book, Ego is the Enemy, I had this flash of this quote that I liked in one of my favorite novels, which is a book called What Makes Sammy Run. And you're kind of developing like a fingertip feels. A lot of this you're writing down, but some of it you just know, right? You're like, I, this is somewhere, you know. And so I went back and I opened, you know, that novel and I found, you know, the chapter where it is and I'm reading it. And I get to the last page. And there's, you know, two, because there's blank pages at the end, there's like two or three pages of handwritten writing from myself, having read this book at maybe 18 years old, that like captured exactly what I was trying to say in this conclusion that I'd totally forgotten about. And so when I go and write that book, of course it's going to resonate with younger ambitious people.

because it resonated with me as a young, ambitious person, you know, several years previous. So, you know, it's not, I think people go, you know what would be good right now or you know it would give me a lot of speaking gigs or something like that. And it would be good for my business. That's not really where it's got to come from. It's got to come from like you're just drawn there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I get a lot out of my journals to go back to 2004.

And every time I go back and read through those, yeah, it's a record of the things at certain ages that I really care about. So you can find all these entries around that period where I began working on the idea behind, for example, so good they can't ignore you. And so good they can't ignore you was a almost like primal scream of frustration and curiosity surrounding this question of how are you supposed to figure out what to do with your career? And why is the advice out there so stupid? Why is no one taking this seriously? And it's captured in those notebooks. I went back and read those recently because I was citing them in digital minimalism. But that's probably why that book resonated is because I was 28 and I really cared about those issues.

And I do think that comes through. And I would say the thing that that book and, for instance, the obstacle is the way have in common is that they're built around, fundamentally built around an insight from someone else that you had to have described. discovered at some point. You know, like yours is built around the sort of the Steve Martin idea. Mine's built around the quote from Marcus Aurelius. But it's like, I found that quote from Marcus Rialius about turning obstacles upside down. I wrote it down. I didn't realize that two years later that would be my next book idea. But there was, you know, clearly I had some idea that it was something. You know, when you, when you hear comedians, they talk about calling people like other comedians going, is there, is this something, you know, like, is this a bit? And I think you have a lot of

those conversations as a writer, probably as an entrepreneur too, where it's just like, is this an idea? Is this a business? Is this a, you know, is this a blog post? Is this a tweet? And you're just kind of like, you, you take the smallest risk possible, which is write it down. And then time elapses and the path forward on it becomes more clear. Yeah. I mean, you and I have had these conversations. I remember when you were just gestating ego and having a talk with you and you're trying to figure out like, is there something here?

Is there? Though I have to say, maybe I was a bad source for that because I have this memory. I think it's true. I have this memory from way back when. I didn't know you yet, but we had some friends in common.

And I think it was Ben Casanoca was hanging out with me in Boston. And he was like, you know, Ryan is thinking about writing a book on stoicism. And I remember thinking, oh, what a bad idea. Like, what? Because you had just written confessions. And I was like, I guess I imagine you were going to write a textbook or something. And I was like, that's a really bad idea.

And so it's basically my worst take ever. So I don't, I don't know how much you should trust it. Well, I had Nikki on my podcast. I wanted to like interview, which you should do. I think it would actually be really interesting when your next book comes out. like just interview because we have the same editor for people that don't know this, interview her and just talk about the process of the book. I found it was like an interesting way to talk about the book without being like salesy, you know,

and just sort of give people a peek behind the curtain. But anyways, I asked her. I was like, all right, so I'd written these two books about marketing. What was your reaction when I came to you about this Stoicism book? Because I was like, I remember your business reaction, which was like, you know, a relatively low offer. what was your what was your true reaction and she said our reaction was we hoped that you that if we bought it you would write it and get it out of your system and go back to your other books. This is like the the Jocka Willink story where they're like all right, well let you write the kids

books. Yes. You got to get back to leadership. And then he's like, I want to write another kid's book. And they and Schuster was like, well, nah, it's going to take too long. And he called their bluff and said, okay, I'm starting my own publishing company. So you have to be careful of it. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. So you have to know. You're not always going to be right, but you've got to know what you want to do. How did you, obstacle was a huge success, but it wasn't sort of like with deep work. It wasn't one of these, you know, week one blockbuster. And I think people are always very curious about what it feels like to be an author that has a very successful book. When did you know for obstacle or was it entirely like the frog in the pot of water that just get hotter and hotter? Because I'm curious about your experience compared to mine with Deep Work, but I think they might have been similar.

That's a good analogy. It does sort of sneak up on you. So that book came out. And I think, you know, so Tim had bought the audiobook rights. And so he'd put it out. So it didn't, like, it didn't hit any best sell list when it came out, but it did sell reasonably well. Let's say, like in the first six weeks that it sold 30,000 copies, which is a hit by like normal standards, but not nobody's throwing you a parade and you're certainly not you're certainly not like they're not rushing to give you your next book deal or anything um so it kind of was selling steadily you know a few hundred copies a week let's say and and then the sports stuff started to happen and it did pick up but like it wasn't in so the book came out in may of 2014 but it hit a bestseller

list not not the like it hit a bestseller list for the first. time in May of 2019. So it was five years before, I mean, it was undeniably a success. And I'd heard from lots of people and it had been financially rewarding. But like, you know, it wasn't number one. And it hit number one that first time. It's sort of a weird fluke. But the point being, you didn't get that outside validation for five years. So one of the things I think that taught me was like the book has to just be the book and you have to determine success on your own terms because it's so fickle and confusing. So it kind of snuck up on me.

But at the same time, it never felt like a failure. So it wasn't one of those things where it's like everyone was laughing at it when it came out. And then, you know, you slowly proved them wrong. it was just more like kind of underrated. It's like it went from cult hit to regular hit, and that was like a slow transition. But I would say one of the best ways I tell people to think about it or to deal with stuff like that is just to be so busy doing more work

that you really don't care one way or another. Well, I mean, that's definitely your philosophy. More so, I don't know if other people know this, but more so the most writers, I think a lot of writers think in terms of in nonfiction, all right, I've spent a lot of time on this, book and now I want to spend the next two years trying to sell this book. Ryan's philosophy is like, why don't I write another book while I'm waiting for the copy edits to get back

for the current book? So is the mindset like let's ship? Let's produce things in the world, put good things in the world, everything else will work itself out. Is that basically what's going on? Because I'm trying to do it again. I'm writing again right now. I have another book coming out in March. I'm already working on the next one. I've been infected by the Ryan. The Ryan virus. year. That's good to hear. No, I mean, I think the world could use more Cal Newport books. So I will take that as a compliment.

For me, it's, I think it's two things. One, I realize I've come to find that I actually don't feel as good when I'm not writing a book as I do when I am writing a book. Agreed. So they're as painful as writing a book is, and it is painful. I found that just the pain of being alive in the world is actually, slightly more uncomfortable than the pain of being in the bubble of writing a book. So there's a part of it that's just kind of like that compulsion. And then the more conscious sort of career strategy for me is like, look, you have a moment. You should seize that moment produce as much work as you can. And that like,

when you actually look at like the window of, let's call it fecundity for a writer or an artist, it's usually really small. And so I just, I just heard. heard from too many authors over the years as a marketing consultant where they're like, you know, in 2000, I put out this book and it sold a million copies and now I'm ready for the follow-up. And I'm like, it's 2018. You know, what have you been doing for 18 years? You know, and why do you think that anyone cares that, you know, they read a book from you literally a lifetime ago?

So I think for me, it's like I'm in a flow. I'm I'm I'm it's working I'm gonna do it it's not like a cash grab like I've got it because I'm actually probably leaving money on the table it's more like I want to strike while the iron is hot creatively yeah yeah I mean I feel that I feel and also if I ever gave a commencement address and this is why I'm never asked to do it I think the theme would be everything is hard your move that's the way I basically like life is hard everything is hard everything is hard. You're not going to avoid hard stuff. You might as well, might as well choose some hardnesses that actually are fulfilling. But the escape of difficulty, I've just made peace with it.

This has been my new thing, basically, when people ask me about writers block. I say, I think what you are calling writers block is what professional writers call writing. Yes. That is it. That pain of like, how do I say this? I don't know what to say. I'm trying to figure it out. That pain of thinking, that's our equivalent of the muscle straining as the athlete while we're trying to get stronger. Well, that's a beautiful. That's a beautiful. full expression. I mean, to me, writer's block almost always comes from like, want the fantasy of just sitting down and it coming easily, when in reality, it only comes because you've done the pre-work, like you have the material, and you are trying, you are trying to get it for free, you know,

and it doesn't come. It only comes for free from the gods, you know, like the occasional, divinely inspired moment, but the rest of the time it has to be like sort of dug up from the earth. Well, that's what's so devious about writing is that stupid every once in a while occasion where you get the Chixitmi High Flow State. You get it enough that it seems like a possibility. You know, it's like when you're learning how to golf, the very worst thing that could happen to you from like your family's perspective is that you get that really sweet hit. And you hit it just right and you have that great drive. And you're like, oh, this is what I'm doing now.

I'm chasing that. And riding through, at least with like weightlifting, you say, yes, this is a strain. It hurts, but that's what makes the muscle grow. And every single time you do it is going to be a strain. You never have a time where you walk in the gym. You're like, I can lift the weight really easy. And actually, I feel really good. But riding screws with you because occasionally you get that.

And then I think that's the amateur professional sorting is the amateur is like, oh, that's what I'm looking for. And the professional is like, oh, that was nice when that occasionally happens. But it's basically unrelated to what I do for a living. Yeah, and to me, like, it is your point about it being hard. It is hard. So to stop only makes starting an issue. So like if you're always, it's like, it's like if you're a fighter, do you stay at your fighting weight, you know, within a, you know, a small fluctuation. Or are you that are you the kind of person that you're, you're training so you're in good shape and then you let yourself go? Like, I never want to report to training camp and have to lose 20 pounds. I want to have it just be about tightening things up. So I don't take big breaks between projects because maybe I have this fear that if you take a big enough break,

not only might you not be able to come back, you might not want to come back. And it's the wanting, the rare thing. Well, look, I'm going through this right now. during the pandemic, I fell out of academic writing shape. So I fell out of theoretical computer science shape. And I've been talking about this some on the podcast, but like, I'm going to have a bad year this year from a peer review publication standpoint. And I don't like it.

I've never had a bad year. I'm like embarrassed by it. And now I find myself clawing back to cut metaphorical weight. And it's a pain. So I'm buying giant whiteboards to install and I'm building this library in my office. is like I'm actually having to go through a lot of effort to get back in that rhythm because, you know, I have I've never had an off year since, you know, I was whatever, 23 years old as a fledgling academic. And so I get that. And I think that's a point that people miss is,

yeah, you do lose it. But, but okay, so here, this is, I'm sort of inserting my own questions here, but I think you're the only person who can answer this one. So I don't know if this is a thing or not. And I thought you could tell me if it is. So speaking of writing, it seems to me like you and I came up in the nonfiction world among this group of writers who all got started in their 20s and are all in their like 30s or young 40s right now. Like you and me and this is like Tim Ferriss and with Mark Manson and James Clear and a bunch of other authors who kind of got started in their 20s and are now in their 30s, every one of whom has sold a million books or more, which is like a really big milestone in writing.

It was like this bullies of young writers that have had a, pretty big impact, right? Where is the new generation of young writers? Like, am I missing it? Where are the 25-year-olds, like, where we were 10 or 15 years ago? Is there not a new generation of young nonfiction writers coming up? Or am I just missing it? That's a good question. I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I guess if I was trying to identify whether this was a phenomenon or not, I might ask, you know, accepting Tim, because Tim is sort of at a stratosphere, Tim and Mark, but Tim is a little earlier than some of us as well. But I might ask, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, would, if you'd pick sort of the dominant

nonfiction writers of that time, whether maybe it's a Malcolm Gladwell or someone, would they have known who we were, you know? So it may just be a, you know, existing in separate planets or, you know, sort of not, The seeds are still underground, but definitely sprouted. So I don't know about that. But I do think that writing is really, really hard. And one of the advantages that we had and that all our predecessors had is that if you were a big idea person, writing was the only game in town. even if you wanted to be a television like newscaster or something or a screenwriter,

you still had to start with books. That was like the most accessible cultural medium or whatever. I know a good portion of people, for instance, that are in the same age group, so not before, but anyways, they have very, very successful, let's say, podcast or email newsletters. And they've sold books. and they've gotten book deals, but the book is a year late or it's 18 months late.

And why is it late? It's because the podcasting is such an easier medium or Instagram or YouTube, although these are difficult mediums, they're easier in the sense that they're much more immediate, your scale is much larger. And I would say that the actual creative demands are less. You know, making a nine-minute video is really hard, but it doesn't take nine months.

So I think if there is a reason why that scene isn't there or why we're not as familiar with them, it's not that there aren't talented people that ordinarily would have taken those spots. It's that they have podcasts or Instagram accounts or YouTube accounts. and, you know, that's the reason why they, they love books, and I think they assumed books were easy, and maybe they even worship books. And then when it comes time to put in pen to paper, they can't do it.

Yeah. I mean, the reason this came up is I was, there's been like a new generation of young people who have discovered the books I wrote for young people. And I was thinking, hasn't anyone else written this book? since then. Like that's the thing that's a part. Like even my student books. I'm like, how could no one, why is my book at studying in college still just the de facto book for studying in college? Like it's,

it should be updated. I wrote that book before Google existed. Like, like, why has no one else written that book? I mean, it's, it's, that's what paid for, you know, that was, I didn't have to have a day job in college or in grad school. Why is no one else doing it? Or why are they looking at so good? Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I guess that's, it's a good thing in the sense that new mediums bring in new ways of thinking. The Neil Postman analysis would say the form of the media makes a big difference in terms of the type of thinking is encodes. So I think I guess that's something that's lost when your generation doesn't have a voice in long form, long form written. And I love, I love podcast as a dialogue and a discussion. And I mean, it's just like, like, look, if you're, if you're 18 years

old, and let's say you're, you're, I don't want to say you're, let's say you're, and maybe you're interested in the, I don't know, the intellectual dark. or maybe you're interested in this sort of Black Lives Matter, sort of protesting, social justice sphere. Like when you look at your heroes in that space, it's Joe Rogan on one side and maybe it's, I don't know, Sean King or some activist on the other side. And where is their genre-defining book, let's say, right? Like what you're looking at is like, oh, I want to have.

lots of followers or I want to have a popular podcast. There just isn't there just isn't I mean Jordan Peterson obviously did a huge book so maybe I'm not totally right. But I do think like when people are looking at role models, there's not like they're just the things people are aspiring to are not necessarily the medium of long form writing. Yeah, you don't see as many examples. You're right. I think Peterson is probably an exception as a professor, I think, who did a star professor, by the way.

That's something people don't realize outside of academia unrelated to his more sort of recent subject matter. He was a huge hot shot in psychology. I mean, he was tenured at Harvard, which is really hard to do. And Toronto bought him away as like a superstar higher. And interesting aside among Peter, but Peterson, he was a shooting star psychologist. Who was. But I always say that about him. I was like, whether you disagree with his stuff or not, I think it's hard to argue. And in fact, even if you do disagree, it almost makes the point more salient, which is like that it shouldn't be like, why is Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson. It should be why are there not more Jordan Peterson.

I told him this once when we had, when he had breakfast. It's like, that is the fucking job. Like to make people love ideas, to communicate them, to crack into the cultural consciousness, to be both beloved and controversial with your students. Like, to me, it's an indictment of a lot of academia that there are not more of them. I was talking to Scott Barry Kaufman a couple weeks ago, and he said something. He was like, you know, he's like, do you know so-and-so at NYU? you know, he's like, that is like the number one philosophy department in the world or something. And I said, like, I write about philosophy for a very large audience and it's all I think about. And I literally could not name one, like one philosophy professor at NYU. The point being, I think a lot of academia is very good at academia and not at reaching people. Yeah. Well, just like two related points there. One, I think there is a lesson. So, speaking of Peterson, I used to hear about him years ago when I was focused on students,

you know, student advice, because I would hear from students who would be like, oh, like, Dr. Peterson taught me this and this, back when he was doing a lot of the sort of youngian interpretation of life through a, and a lot of students. And he was doing the, these, these exercises where you would, they had this product where it was like you would visualize like heaven and hell, like what's, where could you end up, it would be good and where are you going to end up if you don't make change your life. And it was mainly sort of underprivileged kids or kids from hard backgrounds that, you know, gravitated towards it. But you look at his example. And again, put the political stuff aside because it's almost orthogonal. He sort of had this very long trajectory

who was on TV and TV and Canada doing sort of young Ian readings of the Bible and applied psychology. And then there's the other stuff. He had a huge audience of people that showed, I think, a hunger, I guess, for long form content. I mean, he was a long form thinker. And so that's why I agree with your surprise. Like, why are there not more academics? You just strip away the political aspect, but do the other aspect, like long-form thinking on issues that are deep to people's aspirations. You think like you could have big impact, you know?

And so I'm also curious. Now part of the answer might just be, I do think that guy has a supercharged brain. And so like part of it might be is like he is an idiosyncratic person. And I don't know, there might be some degree of this like most professors aren't. and you have to be a sort of, he's kind of a weird guy, a conoclastic with a super horsepower brain. Maybe you have to have some sort of weird combination to break through. But that goes back to like the original question of, you know, what's the price going to be that this young generation of writers we don't have long form thinking? Like I've been talking to my audience a lot of a lot of young people who are who are interested and they want deeper philosophical or ethical or political beliefs, right?

They want foundations. And I'm just trying to teach them, well, here's the way like Socrates, he's taught us to do this, right? I mean, you have to, you have to tackle long-form thinking on the topic, and then you have to take the very best critique of the topic. And you have to let that collide. And then you have to throw in the very best alternative. And there's this dialectical collision. And out of that collision, intellectual roots grow deep. We've known that since the ancient Greeks. But we have this, like, Twitter type of graphical culture, which creates this rhetorical world in which, like, everything is simplistic. And, you know, not only are people dead wrong,

but you can show they're wrong in 240 characters. And it's like a sort of like childlike rhetorical universe where there's these like simple stances and people are really long. It's all about dunking. And it's basically the opposite of Socrates. But I find like a lot of my young listeners, they're just not used to the notion of long form thinking

or dialectical thinking as a way of building intellectual foundations. I mean, I don't know. This is like, yeah. I get that. And because like let's let's look at some of the social justice stuff. Like, it's been a journey for me to get to the beliefs that I now have, let's say, on on some certain parts of American history, on, on, you know, sort of civil rights, on, on, you know, all these different things, right? And so sometimes people go, like, I haven't seen you recommend, you know, I don't know, me in white supremacy, or haven't seen you recommend, what is it, Ibram Kindy's books or whatever. And I've read those books.

And I agreed not completely, but I agree, like, let's say we're in the same ballpark as far as like diagnosing problems and even suggesting some solutions. But when I read a lot of them, I'm very dismayed by the sloppiness of some of the thinking and the lack of historical basis for a lot of the ideas. And there's this really great Feynman video you can watch. I'm forgetting what it's about, but he's talking about how hard it is to really know something and how you talk to people who think they know and then you realize they can't know because they haven't actually done the work. You know, like my my understanding of, right now. Yeah, like my understanding of like, for instance, like let's say Confederate statues or my understanding the police brutality issue or even, you know, these racial justice issues is shaped by

you know, reading dozens of books on the Civil War. I'm just doing a deep dive now on Reconstruction. It's reading about the Great Migration. It's reading about the Harlem Renaissance. It's reading the memoirs of Bookerty, Washington, and Frederick Douglass and Oudalekino. And, you know, this has been like a 10-year exploration for me. It's not been, you know, like reading a tweet storm or watching some video. And so, and then you see this, some.

sometimes in this the slogans, right, whether it's like abolish the police or what, you, you realize that because there isn't the basis of thinking, the solution is not just going to be wildly unpalatable to most people. It's probably not even going to accomplish what they think it's going to accomplish. And so the long form stuff is really important. And the intellectual humility to decide to go down a deep rapid. and to not to not simplify, as you were saying, or demonize the other side without actually having done that work first, you know? And so I think there's just a lot of sloppy thinking out there

that because it confirms what people intuitively know to be ethical or right or, you know, tug at their heartstrings or giving it a pass. But if you really thought about the implications of it or you really checked under the hood, you'd be like, maybe this isn't the person that I should be, you know, recommending. Right, right. That's that's the consequence of just saying, look, I feel very strongly about this. All right, what's our team's, what's our team's approach? And, you know, I did, see, I'm an academic.

So I have this, like, insider view. I've been in academia in my entire adult life. So, like, the view from inside academia is very different. From inside academia, you see, for example, the rise of a particular theoretical framework that's known as postmodern critical theory. And it's like an interesting avant-garde theoretical framework, but also quite radical and has some very weird parts. And in like academia, it took over various departments.

And this is sort of what Jonathan Haidt at NYU's been pushing back on. You cannot have intellectual homogeneity. You have to have at least two theories. There has to be a clash of theories or it doesn't work. Things get weird. And it took over a lot of departments. And it took over a lot of university administrations where basically university administration said this particular theoretical framework. We're just going to assume this is right and we're going to run our university based on the assumption that this actually describes the world.

And it's borrowing ideas from the French postmoderns, which were sort of intellectual tricksters. I mean, there's crazy radical ideas in it. And then so you watch that from inside academia. And it's a completely different view because then you see it spill out of academia and people say, okay, this is the answer. there's one theoretical framework. And yet, you know, most people you talk to actually don't know the name of the theoretical framework. And they don't know where it comes from. And they don't know about the critique of this framework from the left that's happening now within academia.

And they don't know about the main critiques of the framework from the intellectual right within academia. And it's just taken as some sense of like, I guess this is just an emergent response or something like that. And so there's there's almost like some power that comes from just, like, that epistemological humility of like, okay, well, what is this theoretical framework? Where does it come from? What does it say? What are the alternatives? Let's clash those together. And you get a sort of intellectual confidence. But if you don't have that, then what you end up with is, I mean, I think a lot of what happens in these situations is people fall into the binary of no theory and theory. So you get exposed to a theoretical framework. And it's very exciting the idea of having a theoretical lens to which to see the world. And then you simplify things to like, there's dumb people who don't know theory. And I know theory. So, theory is great capital T theory and I'm someone who knows theory and that's great but then what you don't if you step back you're like oh wait a second there's a lot of different theories and what you really mean is like you like this particular theory but this other theory clashed it and Chomsky had a two hour debate against Foucault about this in the 70s and there's like a lot of interesting intellectual history here and the theory that's not going to be the theory that's big 10 years from now and it's different than what was really big 10 years earlier and and it's all kind of shifts and there's this whole sort of lost epistemological humility of like I like this theory but I know it's not the only other thing that's not the only other thing. theory and I'm willing to put it up for debate. But I don't know, I guess that all ties back to in a Twitter type of graphical culture, that type of long-form thinking and understanding and just even the notion of like a big reader has of there's different ideas and people advocate

their ideas as strongly as possible. But there's alternatives and you clash them and trying to pull out a personal philosophy somewhat complicated. I think you lose a lot of that when it's just am I going to get thumbs up when I tweet this? I totally agree. And one of the things I found many years ago when I first moved to the South, I was like, well, what's this? Like, I wanted to learn more about the Civil War. And so this has been a metaphor or an analogy for me. It's like, okay, so in school you're like, what's the Civil War about? The Civil War is about slavery.

And then you read a bunch about the Civil War. You go to the battlefields and you study it and you read the memoirs and the books about it and whatever. And then, you know, you go through this phase where you go, oh, it wasn't just about slavery. It's really complicated. And there are these people that have this motivation, this motivation, and there's this, and there's this. And they can't all be bad people. And what about this? And then that's this sort of weird discombobulatory period where you're kind of going through the wilderness.

But you come out the other side, having really done the research and what do you find? It's that lo and behold, it's actually not complicated at all and that it was totally about slavery, right? And so that's a process that I've gone through on a bunch of different things over the years where you go, it's really simple. Then you study it and it becomes very complex. And then you study it and it's very simple again. And so it's hard to know when you're hearing about like these critical theory or you're hearing, you know, right now it's the left because the left is sort of the intellectually dominant group culturally. you hear these theories and it's very difficult to know, are they coming at it from the phase one simplicity, or is this coming from phase three simplicity?

Like, did they go through that valley and actually come out to the other side? And the simplicity is the result of a lot of synthesis and understanding, or is the simplicity coming from a place of ignorance or worse, arrogance? And I just find that a lot of these people that have, you know, come to, you know, positions of influence or, you know, celebrity are really operating from phase one and not phase three. And that's very dangerous. Yeah, I think that that's probably what's happening. I think, like, postmodern critical theory, what it does really usefully, I mean, it's the whole foundation of any of these postmodern inspired theories is that it problemizes and deconstructs things. And you kind of have to do some of this.

The avant-garde is what it does. Like, you have to, if you don't problematize and deconstruct things, you get stuck in intellectual conservatism and then things stagnate. But it does, from an intellectual perspective, this is like a phase one, the user terminology, shaking up the snow globe. And then from this, it's going to evolve to a phase three understanding. We're like, yeah, some things we didn't realize before, there was really a problem.

And we need to shake up the way we thought about this. We need to understand these issues. But you feel like in the phase three to use your terminology, there's going to be a much less, like, radical and more coherent and more importantly, more politically effective philosophy that emerges from this, I think will hopefully advance the country. Because I think a lot of the critical theory, you know, could be just better expressed as nihilism. And so there's nothing really to do with it. And that's why it's created all this kind of like toxic, destructive energy. because it really isn't coming from a place of understanding. It's just coming from a general place of awareness of injustices and wrongs.

You know what I mean? Well, and this was the original motivation of the French post, I mean, I did this whole thing in my podcast about it because I think it's an interesting history, but critical theory is a thing that came out of Marxism originally. And then you had sort of the French postmoderns were doing their own thing where they were just trying to problem with ties things and deconstruct things. And then critical theory got revived. But now they said instead of using Marxist tools, we'll use postmodern tools.

And now instead of looking at economic class, we'll look at identity groups. But it has the spirit of the French postmoderns, which they served a really important role. Like they were public intellectuals that were trying to deconstruct and promulitize everything, which you want and you want people doing that. But I think where it becomes a problem, and this is true of any radical theory, is when you say, okay, now let's run something based off that philosophy. Foucault is supposed to be yelling really poignant ideas from a lecture hall. He's not supposed to be running your company. So that's where the radical philosophies are meant to help you see the world better, but they're not great for running the world.

And in particular, this was the one thing that concerns me most about critical theory is when around 2009, 2010, they added a plank that said, you're also not allowed to critique to theory. And that's where things got a little bit dicey, where they said, any critique of the theory is evidence that you are the worst of what this theory is trying to point out as being bad. And that exact same thing happened with Bolshevikism in the early 20th century. Once they added the plank of this is not just a theory for understanding economic exploitation, but any disagreement, it means you're just part of the bourgeoisie superstructure that's trying to keep in place these exploitative arrangements. and therefore, like, you are an enemy of the state. And that's when it went off the rails.

You know, once you throw in, and that's Jonathan Heights's whole thing. You cannot have the plank that says, no one can critique the theory. That's when everything bad happens. You know, one theory is infinitely more dangerous than having two theories. But three theories is only a little bit better than two. You have to have at least two so that you have that dialectic. And we've really gone off course here. I know we're short on time.

So let me just to be just to be. just to be consistent here. Let me, let me throw in one more reader question. Let's see. If they've stuck around. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Drew asked, can you give me a overlong, nuanced critique of postmodern critical theory? Let's do one. Okay, what about, what about this idea of this is someone named Mr. Robot? This is a hard phase change.

Is there a point of diminishing returns when it comes to specializing or getting so good they can't ignore? you. So, I mean, I have a take on that, but what's your outside take on? I mean, my sense on that is yes, right? I mean, my whole, I know, my whole philosophy is that skills get you career capital. Career capital can be invested to make your working life better. But ultimately, what you're trying to do is have a working life that's satisfying and meaningful skills are the currency that you use. And so the myopic or relentless polishing of skills just to keep doing just to keep doing, just to keep

doing beyond where you need the capital, I guess could be, could push you into workaholism or what have you. But I mean, do you struggle with that? How do you? Yeah, totally. I mean, I think there's definitely diminishing returns. I highly recommend David Epstein's book on range. There's that great line, you know, specialization is for insects. I think you want to be really good at what you do, but this actually connects well with, you know, what we're talking about with academia, sometimes people become so specialized that their insights become almost worse than worthless, especially when what you're trying to do is generate insights about insights that are designed to be used in the world. I could maybe see a theoretical physicist. It makes sense they would be in a

theoretical world. But let's say you write about something like philosophy, which is supposed to be wisdom and the pursuit of the good life, you know, you get in this trouble where, you know, you just don't exist in the same world as the people you're talking about or trying to advise. So I think one of the reasons I try to keep multiple irons in the fire, I try to work myself hard, is that even though writing is a weird job, I know I'm working as hard or harder than someone who has a nine to five job. And so I feel connected to reality in that sense. So I think you don't want to be too specialized and you also want to be rooted in an experience or a worldview that lets what you're talking about lands effectively and practically.

I like that. I like that that notion because I see this in my academic life. Specialization for the rewards of specialization eventually can become. There's rewards for it, obviously. but it could become so narrow that, yeah, so it's very interesting for me, for example, to be a very specialized academic who also writes books for general audiences and seeing the difference there. On the other hand, there's great pleasure in craftsmanship and mastery.

So there's this, like, interesting, I just think it's a hard tension. I mean, I think the pursuit of getting better will always be rewarding. But if it becomes obsessive, and I guess there's good research on this, harmonic versus obsessive passion. is there's this weird line between enjoying the mastery of getting better and suffering the pain of doing nothing but that. And an interesting topic. No, I love it.

I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we are over time, but happily so, because nothing is going to get you into less trouble than somehow covering Jordan Peterson, postmodernism. We got in Confederate statues and the reason why we fought the Civil War. So we managed to work that in. How do you keep track of notes for your books and what animals do you have on your rant?

So wide ranging. So Ryan, I appreciate it. And want to remind everyone, lives of the Stoic, life of the Stoics. This is Ryan's new book. Absolutely, absolutely recommended if you want to start replicated in your life, this sort of intellectual commitment, commitment to ideas that I think Ryan does such a good job of conveying. So Ryan, my appreciation to you. Thank you. So thank you to Ryan for joining me on this week's episode. And thank you to everyone who submitted their questions. My apologies

for the sporadic static on Ryan's signal. That was just from his mic. That's a local recording from his mic. His mic was having some electrical interference. There's nothing we could do about that. post facto, but we will handle that like Stoics and move on and pull out the wisdom that still remained in the interview. Okay, so if you want to submit your own questions, you can do so by signing up

for my mailing list of calnewport.com. If you have feedback, you can send it to interesting at calnewport.com. We'll be back later this week with the next habit tune-up mini episode. And until then, as always, stay deep.