The Daily Stoic - Are You Disciplined Enough For This? | 7 Essential Stoic Productivity Tips (From Top Performers)

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you know how to do nothing? Nothing, it seems, is harder for the busy person than to slow down. Nothing, it seems, is harder for the busy person than to slow down. Seneca knew this. It was as true and Rome as it is today, and that's why he wrote with such pity about the conquerors for whom there was never enough, about the lawyers very well into old age,

still exhausting themselves in court arguing for clients. They didn't care about trying to win a little more money or a claim, none of which was going to follow them into their graves, which were closer than they would have liked to think. Sennicka must have judged himself too for his inability to walk away earlier when it became clear what life and neurosurface was really going to be like. Yet here we all are equally incapable of slowing down, of stepping back or reflecting on what is important, finding balance of using stillness to our advantage.

At the end of his career after he had been pushed out of power, the French President Charles De Gaulle was asked how he spent his days. Ask the cat, he replied, we play solitaire and take walks together. It isn't easy for a man to force himself into a discipline of vitalness, but it is essential. Life is not work, he said, to work. Sends a man mad. Remember that. And to want to do so is a bad sign. Those of your colleagues who could not stop working were vynomines the best. Yes, Mark's really said we ought to wear ourselves down doing what we love, but he didn't mean that literally not fully. He meant that the time and energy we allocate to a vocation

every day should be something we love. And something we give our all to in those hours. But to do more than that, to sacrifice yourself on the altar of work that contradicts the essential stoic virtue of moderation, we have to know how to do nothing. We have to know when it's time to take a break, we have to slow down, we have to seek stillness, and those who cannot are not the best, because they have no tranquility, no perspective, and no self-control. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've always been fascinated with top performance. That's partly why we have the Daily Stoic Podcast.

I want to learn from other people who are really great at what they do. I want to incorporate their habits, their practices, their thinking, not all of it, but the stuff that makes sense for me, the stuff that makes me better, I want to incorporate into my life. And that drives a lot of the questions that I've asked on the podcast. But in today's episode, I wanted to bring you a little bit of a best of some essential productivity tips that I think are aligned with or if not outright derived from stoic thinking, from some of our most interesting guests on the podcast. And I'll bring that to you now. Enjoy.

This is an area that I've started to do some digging around in researching my book, which is this idea that when we think of our future selves, we endow our future selves with superhuman abilities like, oh, I'm feeling a bit tired right now, but tomorrow, my tomorrow self, is not gonna feel tired at the same time, and therefore I'll do this thing tomorrow, or eight months from now, you know what? Of course I'll be able to do all these things. How can it be?

It's just a talk, I've done these a lot. And that is a big part of what causes procrastination for people who suffer from it. Oh, this idea that tomorrow me is Superman, whereas today me is normal, and therefore, I will put this thing off. Yeah, Steven Pressfield says that nobody says I'm never going to write my symphony. They say I'm going to write it tomorrow.

Not only do we think we're going to have superhuman skills in the future, we think we'll have unlimited time in the future, but in fact, we'll be just as constrained eight months from now as we are today. Nothing ever clears off of your play. If you had to think about like what are the biggest tools for you as far as being more productive? If someone's like, I'm just a mess. Where would you start? For me, I found that actually just optimizing for what's fun

has been the single biggest hack for my productivity ever. And so now my advice for most people if they're struggling with productivity is find a way to make it fun. In terms of specific tools for getting more done, single biggest tape I found is something I came across in a book called Make Time by Jack Snap and John Ziratsky. They're called in the Daily Highlight. I think similar to Gary Keter's idea of the one thing, like what's the one thing I actually want to do

today? And honestly, if I could actually just do that one thing that's most important to me every single day for 365 days, I would completely move the needle on my productivity. Life without design is erratic, that's from Santa Cousin. So it's all about routine for me. So every day looks almost exactly the same for me, whether it's the weekend or it's a holiday or it's a hard working day. And so my day is a couple key things.

I wake up early, I don't use the phone for the first 30, 40, 50 minutes I'm awake. I do my big creative task first. I spend some time with a journal. I only have three things scheduled in my calendar every day. No more tasks are allowed to be scheduled in the calendar. Then I do some form of hearts, turn you as exercise. I try to be done with work and at home with my family by five

at the absolute latest. We do dinner with the family every day, kids in the bath every day. Then I read my kids to sleep every day, and that's the perfect day. Before I was an author, I learned a system. Now, I probably, if I'm being honest, there's nothing magical about the system that I learned from Robert Green. It's that I didn't make it up myself. It's that he was like, here's how a book is made, here's how a writer does what they do. Interesting. And because I was following a system, I've adapted myself to the system and it's

pulled product out of me as opposed to me reverting to whatever like the lowest impulse or drive is. And I think systems allow us to make good decision. One aspect where you can be useful if you're managing people is to say, let's actually be crystal clear about what are the things we do. Let's actually think about each of these things and say, how do we want to implement it? How do we want to keep track of the information relevant to this? How do we want to communicate about this thing?

Answering those questions is like a small example, but answering those questions about the processes you come back to again and again can exponentially make the work more effective. Because when you don't answer those questions you fall back on defaults. Defaults are often lowest common denominator and in the world of work, for example, the default is often just we'll just rock and roll and slack or we'll rock and roll and email and kind of figure things out on the fly, which is a cognitive disaster. It's a terrible way to try to organize brains to actually produce value in a cognitive disaster. It's a terrible way to try to organize brains to actually produce value in a systematic matter.

The secret to productivity, but most of all happiness, is to not be so reachable. We have our phones, we have emails, we have watches, we have 50 different social inboxes, and then we wonder why we never get anything done. Senaqa says, if you want to improve, be content to be seen as ignorant about some matters, you can't always know what's going on. You can't always be reachable. Napoleon famously would wait three weeks until he opened his mail because he knew that most issues would resolve themselves. If you are always reachable, if you may be gotten a hold of the moment's notice, you will not be focused on the big important things, you will not be doing your

work, and you will not be philosophical. On my podcast, I use this phrase facing the productivity dragon. You can see, here's what's on my plate, and if it's terrible, it's terrible. And you see the exact extent of the terribleness. This is, look at all these things I'm committed to when they're done. I can't make these pieces work. This is on way over committed. But a lot of times I think when we get overloaded we flee. But you got to face the productivity dragon at some point.

If you get drafted, you're playing professional sports. And then you can't figure out how to deal with the pressure, how to be in charge of your training, how to communicate, how to learn the playbook. You're not going to make it because the stakes are too high. The competition is too stiff. You have to go, all right, I am way in it. I'm going to figure out a way to survive.

What you can't fall prey to, and this is what most people do, is magical thinking or entitlement because both those things will kill you. I think there's like a nice thing to pull out of there. It's not about, what's my dream job? How do I get it? It's like, how thing to pull out of there is yeah, it's not about what's my dream job? How do I get it? It's like how do I get started and really systematically building skills being responsible being good figuring out how to get better Ratching up, ratching up, ratching it up until you get to a level where now you can actually reach Whatever that window is you're trying to get through and then you make the aggressive jump That's interesting too and I relate to it which is weird because I'm someone who has

a calling. I am a writer, I love writing, that's my passion. At the same time, there's lots of other stuff that I do and I like doing. What they all have in common, I would say, is that I like to be in control of how and when and why I do that, right? So to me, that's where it comes down to this idea of autonomy. And sometimes I'll talk to people and that there will be so much, so successful, 10 times where success will be 100 times.

And I'll look at their life and I'll be like, that sounds awful, because they're in so little control of their life. You know, they've got a car waiting for them downstairs, they're scheduled down in the five minute increments. You know, to me, I think what I actually like of all the things that I do is the ability to focus deeply on it. So whether I'm investing in something, whether I'm, you know, working outside of my farm or whether I'm writing,

what I like is not the specific content, as you're saying, but it's the ability to concentrate and really give myself fully over to it, not knowing that I have seven minutes to finish this task or else I'm gonna get in trouble. I found myself saying these words like, I can't want this for you more than you want it for yourself. So what do you do when you are a fan of someone, you do want them to be successful, you are rooting for them,

but they seem to be stuck in some sort of trap of self-doubt or fear or laziness or entitlement. How do you get people to rise to their level of potential or excellence? So you shake them up, but shaking them up doesn't necessarily a negative. Like sometimes it's around, it's about putting them

in the right context so that they're able to succeed at a higher level. I work with lots of college golf teams and one of the things I like to do is I like to take the teams a couple of weeks before they have a big tournament. I like to put them on a course that everyone's gonna shoot 63 on. And then they go like, wow wow like that's not really good

Damn right and by the way, it's not gonna be like that a couple weeks So that's the last time we're gonna do that, but I want to pump you up I want to shake you up. I want to get your confidence as high as I can get it as an example or it might be that I just need to put you in a Situation where you can demonstrate your skills and your skills will be more rewarded not just by me but by other people I want to create a context by which you can come to see yourself differently or at least see yourself more like I see you. I'll tell you this, giving an example, I have a great town, a person, and our team. And for whatever reason, she goes in and out of confidence.

Well, I had a very honest conversation with her, the other, about two or three weeks ago. And she was shocked by it, by the way, and I'll tell you how it ended up. But what I said to her, I took a chance, and I said, you know, I feel insulted by you. And she said, we meet. I said, I have all this confidence in you, more than you have confidence in yourself. But what you're telling me when you lack confidence

to yourself is that I must be stupid. That my confidence is unfounded, that I must not be a good judge. She said, it never occurred to me that you could be insulted by my lack of low confidence. And I go, I think the world of you and I've invested a tremendous amount of resources. And here you are undermining yourself and you're basically calling me stupid. And she said, seriously, and I said, not completely, but mostly.

Yeah. And I said, you gotta stop it. And believe it or not, that was the thing that shook her up. And now she goes, listen, if Randall thinks that that highly of me, I better start getting on the train. But at the end of the day, you got to shake people up because you can't let them stay in this place where they are underperforming based on what they're capable of because they simply lack a view or a perspective or a context by which they can assess themselves more objectively. or a context by which they can assess themselves more objective. Number one thing I tell the young people I talked to, you're like, I have my first job and I want advice. I was like, you can't ever drop the ball on something.

It's just, you have to say this is not an option. If something comes onto my radar, it can never be an option that I just like, I'm just gonna let that one go. Because I like, everything will fall apart if that's who you are. You're gonna be constantly bothered by the people above you because they don't trust you to get things done.

You will never build a foundation on which you can take a next step up. So you should put all of your energy, reading David Allen, like reading me, like figuring out everything you can, to make sure you have very good full capture and organization systems that you're diligently reviewing, nothing gets forgotten.

Like the number one thing you can do in your first two years of employment, it's gonna earn you the number one thing you can do in your first two years of employment, it's going to earn you the ability now going forward to start crafting your job more and more towards what you're like. I tell people, here's a hack. Like, one of the things you should do early on in a new job is say, great, I will get this to you on Wednesday.

And then whether or not you have time to get that done by Wednesday or not, write them on Tuesday afternoon and say, Brian, I'm sorry, I just get this to Wednesday. The sketching out a little tight. So it'll it's going to be Friday more than I apologize and then and deliver on Friday morning. Even if you're delivered it on Wednesday because it shows that you are on top of your stuff. It's more important that people realize like Cal is on top of his stuff. He knows what's on his plate. And to me, the opposite of that, what's like the death sentence is when they're like,

Hey, I'm going to get this to you by Friday, and then, you're like, okay, cool, I'll see you Friday or whatever. And then like Thursday night, you hear, what was the password again? And then you're like, ah, you haven't touched it. And now there's problems, now you need help. You have just shown me or whoever you're working for, that you're not only not on top of it, you don't feel obligated to be on top of it. That's like my number one advice. Refuse to ever drop a ball.

If you wanna learn more about stoic philosophy, totally for free, you can sign up for a daily stoic email. It's one free email every morning. The best of stoic wisdom, dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day

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