The Daily Stoic - BONUS | Not Everything Has To Be Productive (with Chris Guillebeau)

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Heading into the weekend, here’s a reminder that not everything you do has to be useful, efficient, or productive. In this bonus episode, Ryan and Chris Guillebeau talk about making space for fun, following strange impulses, and doing the small things that make you feel more alive.Watch the full episode with Chris Guillebeau here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHyEgbTg-BAChris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of The $100 Startup, Side Hustle, and The Happiness of Pursuit, which have sold over one million copies worldwide. During a lifetime of self-employment that included a four-year commitment as a volunteer executive in West Africa, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his thirty-fifth birthday. His latest book, Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live, Chris offers a bold path for redefining our relationship with the clock.Check out Chris’ new book Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live and grab copies of The $100 Startup, Gonzo Capitalism, The Art of Non-Confirmity,  100 Side Hustles at The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.comFollow Chris on Instagram @193Countries and on X @chrisguillebeau. 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You have to think about how to be of service and also how to have fun and enjoy life yourself, which is also something that I don't historically do a good job of like, I want to have fun. I actually wrote about it. It's like, how do I practice having fun, right? It's a whole chapter about this. And I like have the story of this guy in the Netherlands named Yon. who for like 30 years every Wednesday, he would go to Amsterdam, Schipel Airport, and book a flight somewhere within Europe, wherever was cheapest. He'd fly to Stockholm or Barcelona or somewhere, and he would just kind of hang out and he would like walk around the terminal and he'd fly back.

Never leave the airport? Never leave the airport. Okay. It's so interesting. This is what he liked to do. He just like, he found it really peaceful, enjoyable, relaxing, and so on. So it's so easy to criticize that, you know, be like, but he never, he traveled so much and never traveled at all, right? but it's a small thing that made him happy, you know? And I think, you know, if we can all find like small things that make us happy,

even if they seem weird to other people or strange or like, why would you do that? Then our lives are going to be better. And I was thinking about his story one day when I went for a walk. I found this restaurant I wanted to go to that was like 17 miles from my house. I thought about it for maybe like a few days in advance, but not too long. And I was like, I should walk there. You know, I was like, I should walk to this, you know. And so one day I was like, okay, what do I have this afternoon?

not that much, nothing that I can't do later. And so I did. I got like right after lunch, I left and I walked like six or seven hours. And it's funny because I thought, well, I'm going to try to get some stuff done on the walk. You know, like make some phone calls or whatever. But then your phone battery dies, you know, because you're on GPS the whole time, like tracking. And I was like, oh, this is not going to actually be a very productive experience. But of course, it was actually very meditative and kind of fun and, you know, also silly.

But like, it's like, this is the thing I'm just doing for myself. And I'm not even going to, like, blog about this. I'm not like, hey, everybody, I'm out on a walk for six hours. You know, I'm just doing this thing. And I went to the restaurant and then like went home. And then like for days afterwards, I'm like, what a cool thing. You know, what a fun thing that I did. It's a weird core memory.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so there are things you can do to feel more alive. Yeah. And I have been trying to lean into that myself and I hope that other people will. Yeah, instead of going, hey, I got across these 15 restaurants off a list. Right. I got to do this.

You're not just, you probably felt alive because you were present. you were only doing that thing however silly and inexplicable that thing. That was the attraction, right? That was the thing. Did you walk back? No, I took an Uber back and then the whole way. It took 15 minutes. Exactly.

That's what's funny. I was like, but I'm passing all the places that I walked, you know, and I was like, oh, that's just fun. And probably when you pass by those places now, you can tap into that feeling for even just a fleeting second. Yeah, and this is two years ago, and I still remember this weird memory, and it wasn't that hard of a choice to make. And it's not like, I was like, every Wednesday from now on, I'm going to walk 17 miles. I don't have to do that. I can just be like, what are things like that that I can respond to and say yes to? How was the food?

The food was really good. It was really delicious cornbread. There's a cornbread appetizer that's usually like shared among people, and I ate the whole thing myself. Sure, you just worked off. Yeah, you could do it every one. You want it. Yeah. I think as you get old.

you have less time and also tolerance for doing inexplicable things because they seem irresponsible or hard to justify or even just hard from a scheduling standpoint. But that's kind of what life is. Those are the things that you remember.