The Daily Stoic - Mark Manson and the Catastrophe of Success

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

Ryan speaks with Mark Manson about the new documentary based on his astronomically successful book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, how being highly successful can ruin one’s life, what he is striving to disrupt in the self-help industry, and more.Mark Manson is a self-help blogger and the author of four books, including the New York Times Bestsellers Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope, Will, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. His work focuses on providing life advice that is science-based and pragmatic, and it can be found on his website markmanson.net. Mark also releases a free newsletter to subscribers that features one idea, one question, and one exercise every week.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a

little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. 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. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I hope you haven't quit on your New Year's resolutions already. Hopefully you're in the challenge with us. It's been going nicely. I am trying to take a little time off here at the beginning of the year, trying to read, trying to reset, trying to cultivate some stillness and calm for the craziness of life begins once again. I hope you are doing the same. But before I headed off to do that, I had a conversation with my good friend, three

time podcast guest, someone I've known, ten years now, something like that, someone who's given me a lot of wonderful advice and guidance. Someone I would consider both a peer and a friend and someone whose work pushes me to be better, talking about the one and only Mark Manson. His book, The Settle Art of Not Giving The Fuck, was an enormous bestseller. Like, there are books that come out, there are books that do well, there are books that are hits, and then there are books that are freaks. And the subtle art of not giving a fuck was a freak

and enormous success. Millions upon millions of copies sold. So too was the sequel, everything is fucked, a book about hope. To say they were New York Times best sellers would be to undersell what sensations they absolutely were. And Mark isn't some overnight success though. He's been writing online since 2008. He started his blog, Mark Manson.net in 2013. It was in 2015 that his blog article,

the subtle art of not giving the fuck came out, which would form the basis of his book. And more excitingly, the sort of subtle art phenomenon has been turned into a movie, a documentary about these same ideas. It debuted in select theaters on January 4th. It's gonna be available for rent and streaming the digital download on a million different platforms. I'll link to that in today's show notes

on January 9th. You can follow Mark at Mark Manson on Instagram, you can follow him on Twitter, I am Mark Manson. And then Mark Manson.net, he has an amazing email newsletter that I've gotten for many years. I love the sort of carousels that he posts on Instagram. They're always thoughtful. And a fellow metalhead, fellow writer, a good dude originally from Austin, Texas. And I hope you enjoyed this episode from Mark Manson about philosophy, about the catastrophe of success, about philosophy, about discipline, and many, many other topics. Enjoy. You know, I was thinking, have you read Tennessee Williams essay, the catastrophe of success?

I have not. I think you would like it. It's really interesting. His point was that life without struggle is meaningless. And that one of the problems of success is that it removes a lot of the day-to-day struggle, right? He's like, suddenly you're not cleaning up after yourself, suddenly you're not, you know, necessarily as motivated because you don't need this or that. And so that basically getting to go to another sort of playwright's idea that

the two worst things that can happen to a person are not getting what they want and getting everything that they want. That's a, yeah, that was Oscar Wilde's quote. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it's in my wheelhouse, for sure. It's not always it's something I write about, but it's something I've lived to a certain extent over the last five years.

Yeah, it's it's it's weird to because like there's success and then There's also like catastrophic success, right? Like they're There's like the hey you worked really hard after 30 years, you got promoted to full professor at Insert University. And then there's the youngest professor in the history of Harvard. Or something, you know what I mean? There's regular success and extreme success.

And you certainly had extreme success relative to what we do, right? Like there are many Silicon Valley people who nobody has ever heard of who would be like, that's not catastrophic success, that's not even success at all, right? So all this stuff is relative, but it does strike me that there's getting what you wanted

and then there's getting more than you could have ever possibly dreamed of. Well, the best, so the best description of this phenomenon I heard is actually relayed to me by Will Smith when we were working on the book together because I asked him about this. Like, you know, after Sutelard, it blew up so big and so fast. And as you know, you know, we, we talked about off, like privately, you know, it fucked with me for a while.

And I was asking him about it. And he told me, he said, you know, I've never, I didn't experience that. But he said, it's such a common thing in show business. And he said that Quincy Jones used to call it altitude sickness. And he used to say that, you know, when he was a music producer, he would see that, you know, the same way

when you climb a mountain, you need to stop and acclimate at certain levels to prevent yourself from passing out. If you just go straight to the peak, you get altitude sickness and you fall off and kill yourself. I love that analogy. It makes a lot of sense to me. There's an acclimation process of certain levels of success that you go through. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. One of the things Tennessee Williams is talking about in the essay, he's talking about when

he was sort of in the thick of it, he'd blown up, he's working on, he was like, I lived on hotel room service. And he was like, how fundamentally abnormal that was. It's like, great food every night delivered right to your door. Like, you don't clean it up. You don't worry about where it came from. You didn't worry about waiting in line. Just like, every part of it is stripping

that just minor inconveniences and struggle of life. And that that is fundamentally warping and unnatural and not good for you. Yeah, and not only that, you're replacing it with these like grand existential struggles of like, do I deserve this? What if I fuck up and lose everything? What if I just got lucky? You know, so it's everything. What if I just got lucky? So it's, you almost, I found myself at a certain point like longing for those kind of dull quotidian struggles and concerns. Interesting. Yeah, it's funny like growing up like just specifically of room service. Like, like I was under the impression that like if we ordered room service in a hotel, it would like bankrupt as a fan.

Do you know what I mean? Like my parents, the idea that one could just, could do this and should do this, you know, was inconceivable to me. And then, you know, you get to a place where, hey, actually, it makes more financial sense to just order room service than go downstairs and avoid all the inconveniences that we're just talking about. And then it does though, it skews your sense

of what's like normal and not normal. And maybe that stuff is actually important in terms of being a grounded person. Yeah. I know. So I'm friends with Derek Sivers and he, I know that he had a catastrophic success. He sold his, his company for 30 or 40 million dollars or whatever. And he said that he developed a practice. I don't know if he still does it but for a number of years he would make a point to once a year fly Fly coach somewhere staying like a dingy hostile. Yeah, you know eat

Trashy street food, you know basically put himself on the same budget that he had when he was 20 years old And just do that for like four days. They remind himself of like, okay, this is normal life. Yeah, you know, don't lose touch with it. Well, there's a passage in one of Santa Cousletters where he says like, we should do that every month. He said you should like wear your worst clothes, eat the worst food, you know, sleep on the floor in your house.

And he said the point of that, it wasn't just like play acting or anything. He was like, the point was that, he was saying that one of the, one of the costs of success is actually not security, but a kind of fear, because you're afraid of losing all the things that you're really comfortable with, right?

And he's like, you wanna get comfortable with, the way And he's like, you want to, you want to get comfortable with the way that, by the way, most people alive currently live, you know what I mean? Like, it's very survivable what you're afraid of, but you're afraid of it because it's unfamiliar to you, because you've distanced yourself from it. And he said the whole point of this sort of practicing poverty and adversity was to be able to say to yourself at the end of that exercise, is this what I was so afraid of? You still go back to your regular or your good life, but you're not waking up in the middle of the night going, what if I get robbed, what if I get canceled, what if I fall off, because you go the worst case in years, I just go back to how things used to be.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I just pulled up the essay and I would be curious what you think of this. Tensy Williams says, security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney shaped pool in Beverly Hills or anywhere at all that is removed from the conditions that made you an artist.

If that's what you are intended to be, ask anyone who has experienced the kind of success I am talking about, what good is it? Well, that's the perennial question, right? Is like, is too much comfort, does it? Does a certain amount of discomfort, a prerequisite for good heart? Yeah. And I think that's definitely open for debate, but it's, uh, there might be something to it. What have you found it hard to be creative or disciplined or to do the, the uncomfortable thing when you are not doing it for any need,

or is it actually better because you're doing it only when and because you want to do it? I think now, so I kind of look at, you know, my post-catastrophic success life in two phases. I think that the original phase was actually motivated, in hindsight it was motivated a lot by fear, and that fear was, or maybe not fear, but insecurity, and I think a lot of that insecurity

was like, this might be my 15 minutes, say yes to everything, do everything, sure, because it might not come around again. And I think that's a reasonable position to take. I don't necessarily regret it, but it did lead to a period of kind of overloading on projects that I wasn't. Some of them I enjoyed a lot, but it wasn't. You know, if you put me in a vacuum and said, what do you want to do with the next three

years, it wasn't necessarily what I would have chosen. It was the stuff that was coming to me rather than me sitting down and deciding what I was going to pursue. And then, unsurprisingly, that period led to a pretty intense burnout about a year ago. And I took six months off. And I think in those six months off,

I kind of reach that conclusion that you just said where I'm like, wait a second, I'm fucking rich and successful. Like I don't need to do anything I don't want to do. And since then, I feel like I'm in a really good spot psychologically. I think taking six months off, logically. I think taking six months off, the prospect of that seems very scary to me. It financially makes no sense that that would be scary, right? Like I haven't thought about

money the last six months, right? So I don't know why that would be scary to me. There's probably relevance is probably something that scares be scary to me. There's probably relevance is probably something that scares people. And then maybe there's even though, like, if I stop doing it, will I lose the ability to keep doing it? Like, will, will the skills get rusty or the magic stop or something like that. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of insecurities around it. And I'll be honest, the first two months or so, it was really difficult. For a lot of those reasons, it felt kind of like I was burning my career to the ground, which in hindsight was a very irrational feeling.

But a lot of the thoughts you just mentioned were absolutely in my mind quite a bit. But I think, especially in the career that we're in, like the thing that I come back to is if I think about what, I don't know, if you're a fan of the band tool, like tool went 15 years between releasing albums. Right. And I listened to that album the day it came out.

Like, I didn't stop being a tool fan. I didn't stop being excited for their next album because they didn't put anything out for 15 years. And so you kind of forget that like when people like you, not only are they willing to wait, but they might even be more excited if you go away for a while and then come back. And honestly, I have to say, coming back after those six months, it doesn't feel like I really like it took a little bit of time for things to kind of ramp up again, maybe like a month,

but it doesn't really feel like I lost anything. Well, objectively, when a band takes a big break between albums, when they come back, there's like in the case of Toul, 15 years of people discovered the band tool. Yeah, maybe some people outgrew the band tool, although probably not really that many, but a bunch of people who were five when they took a break are now 20, you know? But you don't think about it that way. You don't think about every year kids graduate from high school, every year kids graduate from college,

every year, x, y, or z happens, and those people become part of the pool of your potential fan base, or, you know, customers, or whatever the thing that you're thinking about. But instead, we think only of the sort of, but are the people who know about me right now going to forget about me? There's kind of a narcissism to it. There, there definitely is. There's like, there's a little bit of, like, I'm the center of, because all these people are the center of my universe, they, I must be the center of their universe, you know? Right.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's also funny, and this would be a stoic concept too, is like, the way it is framed to you determines whether it feels, you it feels good or bad. So like, if you had cancer

and you had to take six months off to get chemotherapy, you'd be like, I'm so excited to get back to my career. I'm gonna fight for it, blah, blah, blah. You know, you wouldn't be thinking, oh, I can't believe I ruined my career by taking six months off. But if you voluntarily take the same period off, you're like, I'm never going to recover from this,

everyone will forget me, et cetera. It's like the way we frame the event, whether it's something in our control or not in our control. Like, when it's objectively outside of our control, we understand it just is what it is. But when we're choosing it, then we load it up with this sort of moral judgment about whether we should be doing it or not do it. Yeah, and that there's a lot of kind of baked in deep seated assumptions around laziness

and productivity and your value is a huge huge like if you're just sitting around playing video games every day like you know you're wasting your life and that you know you wrestle with that as well. It's funny too I one thing that kind of surprised me about this year coming back because it's you know it's things have dropped off a little bit the last few years. There's traffic is lower, engagement is lower. It's my book's been out for four or five, six years now. So obviously there's less excitement, less engagement out there in the world. And I'm doing new things.

And I realize that I actually like being, I don't wanna say the underdog, but I like being, having the claw my way back up again, if that makes sense. Like that, it feels, it's a much more comfortable position for me psychologically than being feeling like I'm on top of the mountain, desperately trying to stay up there.

And like I enjoy the climb and the process and I kind of enjoy, I almost relish the idea that that maybe people don't expect me to stick around or something. I don't know. So philosophically, is it wasting your life to sit around and play video games? Like, what's your take on that? Like, you could literally never work another day in your life. You could only do, you know, sort of pleasure seeking activities.

Why wouldn't a person just do that? What's the argument for doing it or not doing it? Well, I mean, I think you would have to attach a moral argument to some sort of like productivity or creativity, which I think there is a strong moral argument for that. I came to the conclusion that I am just not constitutionally a person, I'm not built to not be productive.

Like it just, some amount of productivity really makes me happy. Sure. It's just a question of what that productivity is. But I definitely do know people and have seen people who certainly seem completely able to sit around and play video games for the rest of their life and not feel any,

like any pangs of guilt or the existential dread or anything. And yeah, I don't know. I kind of go back and forth on that question. I don't, I don't know, honestly. What do you mean? If a person has a gift, like an ability to do a thing, putting money aside, you know,

if their work is a positive good for the world or improves other people's life, like to what extent is that person obligated to do that thing? Yeah. I don't know. It's a tricky question. I don't know either. I mean, you know, there's,

you could come at it from both angles that it's the, the increasing the social good is the moral imperative or the autonomy and the fulfilling of the, the individual's desires, the moral imperative. And, you know, who knows? Like, you can probably argue for a thousand years about it. Yeah, it's like you don't owe anyone anything. And yet you also owe people.

It's like, like both things are both simultaneously true, make perfect like intuitive sense, and there's probably a strong moral argument that would feel convincing in both directions. Yeah, absolutely. I think ideally you get to a place where not, like you do the work because it's your duty It's the role sort of chosen for you by random circumstances and luck and all these things and

You get to a place where you actually you find the way to do it and think about it Through which it is both challenging but also enjoyable and pleasurable to you at the same time So basically it comes down to this sort of idea of balance or moderation, that's probably the sweet spot. You don't have to make yourself, you know, a mule that works itself to death on behalf of other people. And yet also, indolence and laziness and purposelessness is probably not actually in the long run

the happiest or most fulfilling way to live. Yeah, I also, I don't know. I struggle to really think that people can do that for an extended period of time while being an emotionally healthy person. Like it seems like that, the only way that that is a sustainable lifestyle is if there's something that they're running from

or avoiding or buried in themself. You know, because I think about like my six months off, you know, I dicked around for the first month or so, but then I was like, you know what? You know, because the period of 2017 to 2021, I worked so insanely hard, I was traveling so much, my health, like I basically got fat and was unhealthy and out of shape.

And I'm approaching 40 and so those are things, I'm like, I need to get this shit together. So I actually spent most of those six months just working out, hiring a health coach, getting my diet straightened out, you know, cutting back on drinking, lost a bunch of weight. So in a way, it was like I was still being productive. It was just I was being productive on something very like personal and individual that I had neglected for a long time. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life.

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We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Well, there's that Abraham Lincoln thing. It doesn't actually sound like something he said, but maybe he did.

But about like if you're supposed to chop down a tree, you know, you spend most of the time sharpening the axe, there's an argument that actually, if you're going to do this over a long period of time, if you want to do it without burning out or hurting yourself, or if you actually want to be metaphorically sharp, you have to spend some time stepping away, getting in shape, taking care of yourself, getting your priorities straight so that what you brought back to the work was the best version of yourself. Yeah, and that certainly feels true. I feel more energetic and motivated than I have and probably seven or eight years.

Interesting. Why do you think your health suffered? Do you think it was, you just didn't have the energy to focus on it? Do you think it was, like, why was that happening? Because it's not like you were working 20 hours a day in a coal mine. Like, I'm sure you could have figured it out.

It was a combination of things. I think the primary one is, there's, so it's two things. One, I think a lot of people can relate to, and then one was maybe a little bit more specific and individual to me, but the one I think most people can relate to is that I had a set of habits that you can get away with when you're 25, you can get away with when you're 30,

but by the time you're 35, you can't really get away with it anymore. And so I think that there would have, even if my career wasn't going through kind of this crazy phase, there would have had to be some sort of re-evaluation there of some basic lifestyle habits that would have had to be done. It probably would have been much simpler and less drastic than it ended up being, but it would have had to happen anyway. The second thing is just, I really overloaded myself

over, 2018, 2019, 2020, just really overloaded myself with work. Like I said, it kind of came back to just saying yes to everything. I wrote three books at the same time. I did a movie. I did an audio original. I, at the same time, I was doing a weekly newsletter.

I was doing speaking tours. I mean, I think I, I think 2018, 2019, I was on the road like five months a year. And so when you're, when you're on the road constantly, you're working like seven days a year. And so when you're on the road constantly, you're working like seven days a week, you're eating room service all the time. And so you're eating the $40 burgers. Like you're showing up jet lag,

you've gotten to vent the next day, you've got to write an article that night and you're like, fuck it, I'm gonna order the $40 burger and you're not sleeping well. So it compounded a lot of the problems that were already there. And to your point about keeping the act sharp,

I think it really started to weigh down on my energy levels, my ability to focus, my ability to just do excellent work. And so it was, you know, I started to try to kind of address it even before I took the time off, but I lost a little bit of weight. But like once I knew I was gonna take an extended period of time off, I was like, okay, let's hit the gym,

let's eat some salad. Let's do this shit. It's funny, because I've talked about this before, I think a lot of people think that like having a family or being like homebound or all these things that they hold you back. And in some respects, that's true. I think one of the things they hold you back. And in some respects, that's true. I think one of the things they hold you back from

is kind of exactly what you went through, which was this sort of untethering or fundamental imbalance of having the ability to say yes to so many things. I mean, obviously, there's plenty of people who have kids and houses and a lawn to mo and all these things, then they neglect all that because they're going on sales calls or they're building a company.

But I think in a weird way, there's that flow bear line about being sort of ordered in your life so you can be disordered in your work. You can be chaotic and experimental. I think it's hard when there's no good reason not to spend five months on the road, to not spend five months on the road, right? Or you're like the only thing holding me back from doing this is whether I say yes or no, it's hard to say no to the coolness of the thing, the financial renumeration of the thing, the guilt of not doing et cetera.

I think like to me, the only way to do a lot sustainably is to find a way that it slots in in a somewhat balanced or ordered life, and you're doing it consistently day to day, you're acclimated at the altitude as opposed to this more, which I think is more common, the sort of like, binge and purge mentality

that people get sucked into. Yeah, I think it's, you know, I forget if it's like Parkinson's law, but it's like the the the amount of time a task requires will shrink or expand the the amount of time given to it. And I think a lot of the reason that that is true is that the more commitments you have, the more you're forced to think about prioritization, organization, the more seriously you have to take, you know, your discipline, like if you're at a event and people invite you out to the bar, after, you know, yeah, afterwards, like you say no, you know, like you said, it's,

when you have kind of this blank slate to kind of run with everything. And that's something that I've just always, I've struggled my entire life. Like I like a little bit of chaos, I like, I tend, my personality is such that when I do something, I tend to overdo it. And I've always been that way, and I think I just did it with work and all these cool opportunities. And yeah, now it's like, it's time to like pull the reins in and sort my shit out. Yeah, if you want to talk about catastrophic success, I read this thing about Lin Manuel Miranda when Hamilton came out. So the biggest play in the world that blows up at this totally insane level,

but he had, right as the play was starting, his first kid was born. So backstage, after every night, people would be like, we're going here, we're going here, this celebrity's coming, this celebrity's coming, and he was like, I have to get home to the baby. Because the baby's gonna wake up in the middle of the night.

And if I don't get X hours of sleep, I won't, and assuming that I'm gonna be involved in that, I'm not going to be able to perform the way that I need to perform the show. And his point was actually that having kids instead of destroying his artistic life, it actually saved his artistic was actually that, you know, having kids instead of destroying his artistic life, it actually saved his artistic life in that unusual circumstance because it forced him to be normal.

And I think that's something that people who haven't had extreme success don't quite understand how inherently destabilizing and unnerving and tempting it is. And whatever you have to pull you back down to earth, whether it's, hey, I'm training for a marathon or I just had kids or X, Y, or Z, is really, really, really important. Yeah, and I think what you also don't realize, and I know I had to learn this hard way, is that you kind of convince yourself, you're like, oh my God, an

after party and this celebrity's gonna be there, and you kind of... It's work, guys. I should do it, it's work. Yeah, like you convince yourself, you're like, oh, meeting this person is actually a really great networking opportunity, and it's gonna be great to know this person. And who knows what sort of people they can introduce me to. And after a certain number of years, you just start to realize that it's 99% of it

is completely pointless and just like ego gratification. Yeah, that's actually a tricky thing. We should talk about that because I'm have two minds of it. So one, COVID happens and that goes away for like a year, right? There's no impromptu coffee meetings or big dinner parties or events or whatever. And I don't know about you, but my career didn't suffer for that, right? And my personal happiness went up, my professional productivity went up. So it's like, it's a lie you're telling yourself that you should do this for work that you need to do. It's just not true.

Yeah. Yeah, I think you and I are in the same boat in this regard. You always talk about how books punch above their weight in terms of networking and the rooms that you get invited into. And as I think as young authors experiencing a lot of success for the first time, that is very exciting and a little bit intoxicating at first. You're like, oh my god, this so-and-so wants me to come

to his house or have dinner or whatever, and you're just like, oh, this is crazy. I can't believe this is happening. And then nothing comes of it. Like, you meet them, they're normal people. They ask you the same questions. 100 people email you and ask you every day, and you just have dinner and life goes on.

And the funny thing is the only actual kind of famous person that I, the famous person I did end up working with and doing a big project with and making a bunch of money with was Will Smith. And he just did it the old fashioned way. His team reached out to my agent and said, hey, is Mark available for a meeting? You know, like, yeah. There are no dinner parties. There are no dare parties. There are no after parties.

There was like no, like, schmoozing at the, you know, the cocktail lounge or whatever, like it was just classic bean professional. Well, the other part that's tricky for me though, is I go, okay, like, what were some pivot points in my life? They were, they came through relationships that I have. Somewhat I met, who opened up this door. So it's like, it's this sort of contradictory thing, which is, most of the stuff is totally

extraneous, not important. That's why you should have a no-new friends policy, you know, just stick to your stuff, say no to all this stuff. And yet, if I had actually kept that rule my whole life, I probably wouldn't be here. And so that's the trickiness and the insidiousness of it where you're like, but I should do this because you never know what it could lead to. But I think it's, so I think there's a difference there because when you said yes to those opportunities,

you weren't Ryan Holiday, the successful famous author. You were Ryan Holiday, like the college dropout, trying to get your foot in the door. You know, whereas I think, you know, for me, it was like the success from the books was opening these doors and then I got excited and ran in and I was like, oh wait, why am I here? I'd rather be at home watching Netflix with my wife.

Like totally. Totally. Yeah, for me, it's like, you know, I speak at events, which is a part of the way I make my living. And then I'll get invited to, well, this one doesn't pay, but it's the coolest event you've ever heard of in your life, you know, and the following people will be there. Well, this one doesn't pay, but it's the coolest event you've ever heard of in your life, you know?

And the following people will be there and I go, you know, I feel like a dick saying, like I only go to the ones that I'm working at, at the same time, I find that rules really bright and clear rules are super important as far as discipline is concerned because it eliminates the gray area, the exceptions that you'll make that inevitably when I do agree to one of those events, I'm like, oh yeah, this is why I have that rule. Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. So you talked about Parkinson's Law earlier. I'm curious about this movie that you did about the subtle art because if there's any

part of the American economy that embodies Parkinson's Law, it has been in my experience the Hollywood production process, which is like like conspiracy got optioned in the summer of 2017. And it still hasn't gone into production, but it almost always looks like it's about to. And I'm like, I've written five books since you guys have been working on. How does this work? Was the process maddening for you,

or was it exciting, or how did you take? So I went when the book first got options, one of the first things my agent told me was she said, these things pretty much never get made, so don't get your hopes up. And I was like, cool, noted, and I kind of did, you know, I had zero expectations going into it.

It did end up getting financed. It did end up getting made. I mean, it took two to three years longer than, I think everybody said it was gonna take, but it did end up happening. And I really just kind of kept those same low expectations the entire time. You know, it was like, I knew the production company had optioned it.

They've got a history of doing documentaries. They've turned a lot of books into documentaries. They do a good job. So it was like, okay, you know, it'll be fine. As long as it's not embarrassing, and as long as it's not like, agonizing and waste a bunch of my time, then cool. And so the shooting process was a ton of fun, the creative process was fun, it was all fine.

But yeah, it's that industry, one thing I have learned from that industry, not this project a little bit, but dealing with some other options of optioning of my IP. Hollywood seems to, it's like the more they tell you, they love something and they can't wait to do it, the less likely it is to happen. It's this bizarre world where everybody constantly has to kiss each other's ass and like inflate each other's egos. And I can't really, I think like part of it, the cynical explanation for that would just be like,

it's just, it's a bunch of narcissists who are running around with cameras. But I also, like, I also kind of understand that the reality of that industry requires a little bit of that because it is such a small in-bred industry. And you never know if this producer or this cinematographer that you had lunch with or whatever ends up being the person who brings you into the next film or introduces you to your next director, or can make the connection to finance your next project. And so everybody has to be completely inauthentically nice and excited to each other all the fucking time.

And as a person who very much prides myself on being blunt and a little bit curmudgeonly, I just feel so out of place in these meet. Like I have never felt more out of place than on like conference calls with Hollywood studios because everybody just tells everybody else how amazing they are and how great everything is gonna be. And I'm just

I'm the asshole in the corner who's like okay, so have we done anything yet? Is there any deliverable yet? What's like a conflict between the sort of maker manager Distinction and almost 99.9% of the people in that sphere are are not makers their managers or paper or paper pushers or agents of some kind. And so there is this, if you're a person who exists in a world where you sit down and make stuff and then that stuff goes out into the world because you do a podcast or you make videos

that you post on the internet, to then go, it's like you've entered a world without gravity, suddenly. You know what I mean? It's just, you're like, what? None of the things I'm so used to taking for granted work here and it's maddening. It's a bizarre world where I think it's even more,

books coming from a background of blogging, books still make sense because, you know, just the process of consuming a book, you know, there's a lot more depth to it. It takes a lot more investment. There's a heritage behind books. There's a prestige behind books. And I do think film still has a lot of that prestige. Like there's kind of, there's something very notable

and kind of gets everybody's ears to perk up when you say that you made a movie. But it's funny because I've been on, you know, now we're doing the marketing and promotion cycle. And I've been on some of these calls with them. And they're trying, I can tell, they're trying to get me hyped up. And at one point, they told me they're like, they're like,

Mark, you realize like tens of thousands of people are going to see this movie. And I'm like, tens of thousands. Yeah, I'm just, it's killing me because I'm like, okay, you realize, if you just take my YouTube channel, which is like a very small thing of everything that I do, this movie, it's paying me less money, it's going to be seen by fewer people. If you just take my YouTube channel, which is like a very small thing of everything that I do, this movie, it's paying me less money, it's going to be seen by fewer people. I have less creative control. I have no control over the monetization or the promotion of it. You know, like, how is this a good deal in any way, shape, or form for me? You know, it's ultimately, I think there's a little bit, there's, there a little bit stuck in the past, very much in the same way the publishing industry often

is of kind of like, you know, we're Hollywood, you should be so thankful to be here. You're so, you know, you should feel lucky. And not really considering that the reality of my career or career like yours is just completely different. Like they can't even account for it and their usual calculations. So. Yeah, it's, it's also interesting because obviously when you, when you wrote, when you wrote the self-lark, it's sort of a screed against self-help, where it's a different kind of self-help. And the movie sort of is a continuation of that. And yet also, like, it is more self-helpful in the sense that it's like, oh, you can't read a book here, watch the movie.

You know what I mean? Yeah, you can't be bothered to read. Yeah, it's, you know, in this, so this is the funny thing about it too, is I really like how the film turned out. Like, you know, the creative process was really enjoyable from beginning to end and filmmaking is so different from anything I do in the process. It's so collaborative and involves so many moving pieces and there's dozens of people and they all know a little bit of what it's

going to look like, but nobody seems to know completely what it's going to look like, but nobody seems to know completely what it's going to look like. And it was a very fascinating and interesting experience to go through it. And I do think that the movie turned out great. One of our goals going into it when I had early conversations with them is I said, like, you know, I think one of the reasons subtle art worked was it was very disruptive to the self-help genre. It kind of like through a curveball

add a lot of people in situations that they weren't used to like seeing a curveball in a book. And I thought I'd love to do that with the movie. Like it kind of take a documentary about a self-help documentary and just flip it on its head and then like do a bunch of wacky shit that kind of surprises people. And we did that.

And it's, so the creative part of it, I love, and it was fun, and in a vacuum, I would gladly shoot another one and make another one. But it is that the industry is so anachronistic and just alien to me. I don't, I really feel, I told my agent, I'm like, I am a tourist in this industry, like I don't, I feel like I'm in China or something and I don't speak the same language.

What do you feel like you have been trying to disrupt in self-help? Like it is weird, like you write a book and then it gets sort of branded as that, but that's not. I don't, I think there's a very specific type of person who sits down and is trying to write a self-help book and I don't think either of us is that person, but I certainly have no problem with people who like self-help books liking my stuff and I certainly have no problem

with the concept of people helping themselves, but it does seem like there's something you're striking against that you don't, that you feel like is false or untrue or misleading in self-help. What, what is that to you? To me, it's, I feel like a lot of the traditional self-help industry of the traditional self-help industry is it's optimized for making people feel like they're changing and not actually changing. And I think especially when you get a lot of high-priced products and seminars and stuff involved in manipulative marketing tactics and the fact that most consumers of self-helper vulnerable people and emotionally difficult spots in their lives.

I think there's a real ethical issue in the industry that I've always had a chip on my shoulder about. I think a lot of it too is just offering more practical and better advice. You know, I look at like you, me, and James Clear, I feel like we're all kind of, not hammering on the exact same thing, but we're kind of in the same territory

and that, you know, it's the classic narrative in this industry was always like, these three tips will change your life this weekend. You know, give me $5,000 and come to this seminar and by Monday morning, you'll be a completely new person. And it's like, you know, I think you and I have been kind of hammering on the life is actually very difficult and struggles persist for a long time and there's no escaping it.

And I think James has been kind of hammering on the, change is actually extremely gradual and it happens, it's almost imperceptible over a long period of time. But I think out of the three of us, my writing style is just the most layman. And like, if a random person who never reads a book is going to pick, like, read one of our books, it'll probably be mine.

And it's, so I think I get lumped into that category a lot more, a lot more than you guys do. Interesting. Even though we're kind of like banging on the same drum. Well, there's kind of this, there's like a conflict of interest in self-help, which is that there's clearly a lot of people who need help, right?

And therefore delivering that help is potentially lucrative. But the most lucrative thing you could do would be to give them what feels like help, but it's not actually help, right? So like what you're just saying. It's like telling, most of the time, what people need to hear is not the same

as what they want to hear. And so if you're a self-help artist, a self-help artist is probably what should call it, because it's similar to a con artist, I feel like. If you tell people what they wanna hear, there's a much larger audience for you than if you tell people what they need to hear or it's stepping even back further,

if you simply say what is true, right? And so I think that is probably what, I think both of us are reacting against, like the secret is the ultimate self-help book in that it managed to reduce down to its essence exactly what people wish was true, but is fundamentally not true. And therefore sold probably the most copies of any self-help book ever written. Yeah. Yeah, and it's in, and not only that, but I think the saying what is true is actually far more difficult because it's, you have to wrap, you know, you have to wrap the uncomfortable

truth in something that is shiny and sexy and, and, and, and a lot more palatable. You almost have to give them sugar to make the medicine go down. Yeah. But yeah, it's been, yeah, it's just a mission or a cause that I've had for pretty much since the beginning of my career and I don't see any reason to stop anytime soon. I don't know. It keeps me fired up. It keeps me pissed off when I see a lot of this stuff

out there. I just feel like I need to be the wet blanket. I was going to say something. I remember now relating to your point of like telling people what feels good, I think there's kind of an inherent, not bias, but like our mind plays a trick on us. Like when we have an experience that's extremely emotional, a side effect of that is that we tend to assume that it must be very meaningful. And so I think what a lot of self-help content does is it's very good at triggering an emotional

response and then telling the person, like, look how emotional you are, you just had this life-changing moment. People don't realize that it's emotions and identity and behavior change are actually two completely different things. So yeah, I just feel like it's a magic trick that has just been used over and over and over again. Yeah, it's also like, so I've noticed that my books have gotten longer the more... I think I've talked about this before, but my books have gotten longer as I've gone. And I'm trying to be aware and on guard that I'm not getting more self-indulgent as I go on. And in fact, it's because as I experience more and know more, I come to realize what you said, which is that the truth is a hard thing to say. It's a hard thing to wrap your head

around. It's a complicated thing. And so in a, in a sense, in a way, the more kind of like delusional you are, egotistical you are, self-absorbed you are, it actually makes being successful as a self-help author easier, because you dispense with nuance very easily, and you just sort of self-assuredly reduce some super complicated thing down to nothing. Like I'll give you an example. I wrote this article when I was like 22 years old about dropping out of college,

which I had just recently done, right? And so I was somewhat biased towards it being a good idea. I was rationalizing it. I still think it's a relatively good idea. But as I've gotten older, when people ask me about dropping out of college, my answer is no longer like, yes, of course, you should do it. Because I don't

I don't want the weight of that on me. And I have a much more nuanced complicated take on it. And so I think like if you're a simple minded person, you could write the secret or whatever. If you see reality as complicated and complex and people as complicated and complex. It becomes harder and harder to give advice generally because you no longer even accept such a thing as possible. See, right. Your problem is you have a conscience. If you didn't have a conscience, you could just write this here. You, yeah, you would sell so many more books. Like. I actually do, people will go like, it's weird, you can't get credit for the bad you don't

do, but sometimes people will say things like, you're just doing this to make money. And you're like, if that's what I cared about, let me tell you how easy that would be. And I'm going to be more like, do you think I'd be studying Seneca for 10 years if I just wanted to make money? Yeah, or you look at these, like you look at the Tai Lopez's or the Andriates of the world, these people that sort of blow up in this huge way online

and make lots and lots and lots of money, it's a combination of probably both ignorance and sociopathy at the same time that allows them to act and be that way. And then, you know, people who are not in a good place fall victim to that. Yeah, it's really sad because the, you know, the nature of most people who come to self-help, the reason they have problems in their lives

is because they are chronically unable to take responsibility for themselves in their own choices. And so what do they do? They find somebody, you know, like a Tai Lopez or an Andrew Tate who is willing to give them all the answers and relinquish them of the responsibility for making choices in their own lives. And it's like this kind of gross, codependent relationship that happens at scale and then is monetized.

And I do think it's getting better. I actually, like not the Pat Us on the back, but like I think you, me and James, of like really, I'd add Tim Ferris in there and a few other people. I really think- I think it's a great job. Yeah in there and a few other people. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think.

I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think.

I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. I can't really think. that just is on average, becoming higher quality and becoming more helpful.

But yeah, there's still a lot of nonsense out there. Yeah, I think it's good to see proof or to prove to the market that you can write thoughtful, nuanced, also entertaining, accessible stuff that makes a real difference for people that doesn't involve, you know, complete and total nonsense. And that deciding to go that way, let's say, up market isn't somehow like career suicide. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, I think the video is good too because like all, all, all, the movie is

great in this sense too is like, like your point that like people read your books who maybe don't read a lot. I think that's great. I have also come further along in my, in my sort of worldview, which is like, I am a person who reads and learns via books. And that's simply how it panned out for me, but that's not necessarily superior or better than someone who learns from podcasts

or someone who likes TikTok. I've come more around to the idea of what matters is the idea and the truth you're delivering. You should go in whatever medium you're best in, but then also, once something has worked, again, we're going back to this idea of obligation, but I think there's almost an obligation to try to translate it in as many mediums as possible to reach people who would not have accessed it through a book or whatever that other art form that you're in is. A hundred percent. And I mean, you and I, the vast almost everything we write, it's not, these

are not new ideas. I mean, you are very explicit in that these are not new. These are thousands of years old. But you know, even a criticism I often get from people is they say like, well, you didn't come up with this. Like this came from, yeah, from Nietzsche or whatever. And I'm like, well, no shit. But like, are you gonna go read Nietzsche? Like, I very much see my job as doing what you just said, which is kind of taking timeless, very important ideas

and translating them in such a way that they're accessible to the person who is never gonna go to a philosophy section of a bookstore. But it's still helping. Or maybe not now, yeah. You know? Yeah, I just wrote it.

I, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, but it just helped, they can still get the benefit from the idea if it's delivered in a different package. I just wrote a daily stoke email about this. It hasn't gone out, but I was saying, people who are like, they'll go like, why would I need a coin to remind me

that I'm gonna die someday? And, or like, why would I need to read one page of the stokes every day? And my response is sort of like, maybe you don need to read one page of the Stokes every day? And my response is sort of like, maybe you don't. You know what I mean? Like maybe you don't. But there is this narcissism in assuming that everything that is made must first and foremost be for you, right? Like, maybe you are further along than a high school dropout who just went through a soul crushing divorce

and is trying to rebuild their life and doesn't know where to start or somebody who just had a major health scare and they want this, like not everything is for you. People are in very different places than you. I came to the Stoics through the actual Stoics, but I also did that in a college apartment in America that my parents were paying for, right?

Like I had time and space and privileges and advantages and in education that not everyone does. And that's not to say that the people who read my stuff are stupid. In fact, many of them are very, very, very smart. They've already read the originals, and they are looking for a reminder of what's in the... So the point is there is this kind of

elitism and narcissism of going like, well, that's simple, I don't need that. And it's like, maybe you're right, but you are not everyone. Yeah, and it's not even where people are in their lives, but also just fundamental personalities. Like some people need reminders often. Some people don't.

Some people have great memories. Some people don't. It takes all kinds in the world. And the thing too about these concepts, both the stoic concepts and these other philosophical kind of self-help concepts is you're never done with them. Like you're never, I never stop. You're like, oh, okay, I got the gratitude thing figured out.

Like don't have to worry about that. No, it's like a daily practice. If you have to do it repeatedly and like a muscle, you will lose it if you don't keep it up. Yeah, and weirdly, I think even bouncing between the mediums is really helpful. So your reader watched the documentary,

your podcast person actually tried reading the book. I think you get different flavors and angles on the stuff by being sort of multi-disciplinary in how you learn about stuff. And not just being an elite snob, it doesn't serve you or anyone, and it's super obnoxious. Yeah. All right, so don't be a snob. That's what we've learned today. That's what we're, that's the nice lesson. Don't be a snob. That's the best lesson. Well, it's like to go to your,

one thing not to give a fuck about is how other people consume their information or food or life's, like just like, I think we have a huge problem caring too much about what other people do in their private fucking lives. Yes, and I run into that all the time. Like, I'll do a reading recommendation list

and people will e-mail me and they're like, well, I tried to read the first two books and I didn't enjoy them. Like, what should I do? And I'm like, then don't read them, it's fine. There's like, there's no wrong answer here. Yeah, there's a Thomas Jefferson line he was saying about something, he's like, it neither breaks my leg or picks my pocket, right?

That was his, like, sort of standard for what should be allowed or not. And I think that that's a good way of thinking about like what do you care? I actually I saw a tic talk about this. Someone was just saying like when someone tells you they like something, you don't need to tell them your opinion on that thing. You can just let them like that thing. And I was like, that's so great. And that's such a better way to live too. Like why do I need? Why is it important to me to let this person who likes something know that I think what they like sucks? Yeah, it doesn't make, it doesn't help anything. Well, I think your stuff is great and I'm pumped about the movie and it's always Yeah, absolutely dude, good to catch up.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years We've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.