The Daily Stoic - It Doesn’t Take Long to Do This | Mark Manson's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

It was a bad year. You picked up some bad habits. You let some good habits slip. You wasted time on stuff that didn’t matter. But just because that’s true doesn’t mean things have to continue that way.👉 Make 2026 the year where you finally bring yourself closer to living your best life. No more waiting. Demand the best for yourself. The Daily Stoic New Year New You challenge begins January 1, 2026. Learn more and sign up today at dailystoic.com/challenge.Get The Daily Stoic New Year New You & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life📚 Books Ryan gave Mark:Die With Zero Range Going Infinite MontaignePontius Pilate Conundrum The Daily Drucker🎥 Watch Ryan give Mark book recommendations at The Painted Porch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR-j9QxyQdc🎁 This holiday season, give the gift of Daily Stoic Premium |  https://dailystoic.supercast.com/gifts/new 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailystoic.com. bad year. You dropped some balls, you picked up some bad habits, you let some good habits slip. You wasted time on stuff that doesn't matter. You made plans for a creative project, but no progress on

them. But just because that's true doesn't mean it has to continue that way. As Marks-Royose writes in meditations, now they see you as a beast, a monkey. But in a week, they'll think you're a God, if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the logos. A week, a week is all it takes to turn it around. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but the point is it doesn't take long to get going in the right direction again. It doesn't take long to turn things around, to pick up the balls you dropped, to replace one bad habit with a better one, to recommit to your principles and begin acting like the person you know you can be. And that's what we built the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge around.

It's just three weeks, 21 days to start the year right, to create momentum, to transform you from whoever you are right now to who you're capable of being in 2026, 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges one per day to help you be what you're capable of being. you could be one way, one thing right now, but it doesn't have to stay that way and it doesn't take much to get going in the other direction. If one week is all it takes, imagine what you can do in three weeks. I know that I have personally been transformed by the challenges. We do each and every

year. This is almost the 10th year of the challenge. I have habits and practices that I do each and every year because of the Daily Stoic New Year and New Challenge. And I'd love to see you in there. And just a little note, if you want to do this challenge or any of our challenges or courses throughout the rest of the year, I'd just sign up for Daily Stoic Life. As part of this, you get all the challenges for free. So you can sign up there at DailyStoicLife.com.

Or just go to dailysteadic.com slash challenge to sign up for the 26 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there. And I can't wait for us to start on January 1st, dailystioic.com slash challenge. So we live on a Halloween street. We knew it was a Halloween street when we moved there.

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That's enter code S-T-O-I-C. Stoic at checkout. That's human with two ends. Dot com slash stoic for an extra 15% off with code stoic at checkout. What have you been reading or what do you like? Dude, everything, so speaking of podcasting, like most of my reading, it's just whoever's coming up next to the podcast. That is nice because it forces you to read new books.

that you probably ordinarily would take, like, a long time to get away from. Yeah, so I just went back and read some of Cal stuff, read his new one, and then I'm interviewing No tomorrow, so I just... No, Kagan? Yeah, so I'm... We had that around. He was here, he did, like, a thing at the store. It's down here.

It's the bright green. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I actually need to finish it. Have you read Iowa's zero? I've been raving about that lately. Yeah, actually, my wife's reading that right now. Really? And it's blowing her mind, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic. Gets you thinking about a lot of interesting stuff. He's going to come in. Did you end up going, so people don't know we're in this sort of writing group that met before the pandemic that was, Shane Parrish. James. James Clear.

Before he done any books. Tim Urban. Tim Urban. Near. Near. Hooked. Steve Cam, you, me. I think we're forgetting some.

Oh, David Epstein. Oh yeah, David, yeah. For range. Did you go? No. Okay. It's actually this coming weekend. Oh, right, right.

That's why I'm not going. Yeah, it's spring break. Shane's book is good. Yeah, I still need to have him on. Yeah, he came out. He did it. Do you read the Michael Lewis one? Of Going Infinite?

Yeah. So good. Is it? I think people, people gave him. So much shit. Yeah. He fillets the dude. He comes off as a complete client.

Really? Yeah, totally. The only thing, his somewhat contrarian argument is, like, okay, first off, he spent about $5 billion in investments. Yeah. And one of them alone, he invested in, what was it, ethmorphic or whatever, the big AI company that's now worth, like, a trillion dollars. Right, right, right.

So, like, that one investment is going to make up. for yeah so so like it's hard his argument is like um at the end of the day there may not be that much fraud there yeah which is which is not uh in any way a clearing him it's just that it's not it like 40 billion dollars to evaporate yeah whatever that it's a little it's a little different but he comes off as a great example of a person who's very smart but also a moron yeah like he doesn't read he thinks he knows everything he doesn't think personal or soft skills matter he's actually a horrendous manager he's not on top like so he comes off as someone who uh yeah i thought i thought i thought that book was really interesting i like it and then it's all you're just

watching one of the greatest of all time just i would i would he could write about there's a malcolm gladwell blurb where it's like if i found out michael lewis wrote a book about staplers i would read that book and like it's true i would i would read him about anything. Lewis got destroyed because he gave a 60 minutes interview and defended SBF on it. The interview was not great. Yeah, but it's not the book. It was a bad look.

I actually just read a new story recently. It said that SBF has been giving his prison guards crypto trading advice, and the prison guards are already up like 10x. Yeah, that's hilarious. I was like, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I thought it was good. I thought it was good.

I'm going to use him in the wisdom book as like an example of a smart, stupid person. Musk being another great example of that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Of a person whose brain is apparently so open that, or mine is so open that their brain falls off. Well, it's also,

Musk is a great example of, like, domain brilliance. Yes, of course. What else? Did that Montania book come in yet? Do you know, Tristan? We don't? God damn it. So the weirdness of the bookstore is that a lot of the books that I really love are not super popular,

and so they are constantly out of print, and it's hard to get them. Like this, I've been raving out this book, which I think you would like as a, it's a biography of Pontchus Pilate. Oh, wow. Which, like, you don't think of as a guy who had a shitty job. Yeah, right. He's just the governor of a province of the Roman Empire. and there's like a troublemaker in it

and we don't know that much about him but like she does like she's the obituaries editor for the economist so she's like a really interesting writer and it's like one of the greatest biographies I've ever written my life. Really? So good.

Huh. Like and it's a good example like multiple times he tries to do the right thing but it would have required just like 10% more spine yeah like he kept trying like because basically at the end he says like you guys decide he tried

to let Jesus go yes but and then at the end he goes all right you guys do you know what he means I wash my hands of it yeah right that's where the expression comes but like he if he had had just if he just said like my job is to make the decision that's my job yeah and a good chunk of people are not going to be happy with the decision like all of history might have turned out differently yeah and then at the same time she does talk about it which I don't think about from a biblical standpoint which is like or is he the fall guy because the prophecy was that he would come and be put to death right so somebody had to do so he actually didn't have a choice yeah like he he was just the guy like his number came up and god said you have like you know what i mean

like so the other way is that like it couldn't have happened any other way and so i don't know it's really i love that book i think you'll like it um I'm trying to think what else. What else are you, what do you've been into? Or have you read any of these recently? Um, what have I read recently? Ooh, okay. Talk about the best way to understand the present is to read from a long time ago.

Do you know who Jan Morris is? So Jan Morris was, what's his name? What's his actual name? Is it, oh, James Morris? He's the journalist who climbs Everest with Hillary. He is the great historian of the British Empire. And then in 19, what year is it, I don't know, 1960, 1970, gets gender reassignment surgery, like, realized.

Super early, yeah. Yeah. But so it's a memoir of what it is like to be trans. But from like three generations or multiple generations before. any of the things that are now made that discussion toxic you know yeah so you're like oh this is just what you know what I mean

so you're just like oh this is what it's actually like and how hard it would be and what you would feel and all of these things yeah but none of the political none of the culture war stuff it's just and and you can't

possibly say that like this wasn't a dude yeah you know what I mean who like this was like a man's man he's in the army like all this stuff but like deep down knew he was someone and something else i thought it was incredible it's one of the best books i read last year i've been reading a lot of business shit lately i've been high i've been hiring a lot so i'm like hitting that point where i'm like sure i should like kind of know what i'm doing when i like when it comes to yeah like people yeah dealing with people managing what do you what have you liked because that's the section i don't

have a lot of great books i so I just finished Ben Horowitz's, the hard thing about how things. That book's great. Yeah, I really like that one. I read some of Drucker stuff. Have you read The Daily Drucker? I'm not. That was the inspiration for The Daily Stoke.

Really? My agent Steve did that book. No, true. Yeah, you go like, people know Peter Drucker is a leadership expert, but they're like, where do you start? Yeah, yeah. And there isn't like a class, it's not like, if you're like, I want to read Jim Collins, you read good to great, that's just like classic book.

There isn't one for Peter Drucker. And so you could, you could get the wrong one. And so he was like, why don't we just do one page a day of the best stuff? Yeah. And it was a huge hit. And so that's, when he suggested the Daily Stoke, that's the model he was using because he had done it as a publisher. Wow. So it's pretty good.

You might like that. Nice. Um. I don't flip through it enough, but I should. No asshole is good. Is this, uh, is this like bonus footage, you pitching me books? to buy from your bookstore So we do this

It's so funny We do this every time Like the whole point of the bookstore It's like I love all these books Like these aren't like Like we should have If this was like a regular bookstore None of these books would be in it

Probably and or some of them would be But most of them would not be in it And we'd have way more books Like a bookstore this size should have 15,000 books in it Yeah Like titles Sure Not inventory

And so So it's mostly like I just I love all the books So I could ask me anyone I tell you why it's amazing Yeah But so we do this like we just go oh like we just started doing a recommend it and then they'd like walk they walk

up at the end and try to pay and i was like i did not just trick you on camera into buying seven books or whatever i didn't i didn't think you were going to make me pay no when admiral mcraven was here he was like no no i'm gonna pay and i was like well but i wasn't picking the books based on like what i think you should buy i was just saying like i was just picking all my favorite like i maybe wouldn't buy this one if i was paying for like because i just I think you just might get one thing out of it. Sure. Yes, I'm not, this isn't me on camera bullying you until mine.

Hey, it's Ryan. I try not to make too many puns on my last name because I've been hearing it my whole life. But if you want to give a holiday gift of me, Ryan Holiday, and the Daily Stoic, well, you can. We have a special offer. If you want to give Daily Stoic premium as a gift, you can do that, your friends, your family members, coworkers, whoever you give it to, can get ad-free episodes, early access, and exclusive bonus content. Plus, we'll even throw in premium episodes of the Daily Dad podcast. You can get both

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