The Daily Stoic - Shane Parrish on Finding Clarity and Making Better Decisions (Pt 1)

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street Shane Parrish on Why people who are popular on social don’t succeed when they write books, The mark of wisdom is looking downstream and seeing how a decision affects your life, Delaying gratification isnt easy but is important to learn and his book Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results a must-have manual for optimizing decision-making, gaining competitive advantage, and living a more intentional life.-Shane is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Podcast, where he focuses on turning timeless insights into actions. Shane’s popular online course, Decisions by Design, has helped thousands of executives, leaders, and managers around the world learn the repeatable behaviors that improve results. His expertise is rooted in personal experience–he started working at an intelligence agency in 2001. Clar and critical thinking became a matter of life or death for him. He had to quicly learn how to methodize good judgment and make better decisions under pressure. He’s since dedicated his life to mastering these lessons and sharing them with others. Shane’s work has been featured in nearly every major publication, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. X: @ShaneAParrishIG: @FarnamStreet✉️ 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.

I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer and we stayed at this house, I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin, I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events. My wife and I would go out of town and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage and it supported me while I was a writer. You've probably had the same experience.

You stayed in an Airbnb and thought, this is doable. Maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb. And it's really that simple. You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic

and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays. While your way, your home could be an Airbnb. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca-host. Hey Canada, ever wish that managing your money could be a whole lot easier and way less stressful? That's why Coho is created. The financial app that's going to revolutionize

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$20 or more using the code DailyStoic20. Again, sign up for your free trial by downloading the Coho app and receive 20 bucks off when you make your first purchase of $20 or more using the code DailyStoic20. Welcome to the weekend edition of the DailyStoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic 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 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. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. So way back in 2011,

I was writing Trust Me Online and the internet was a very different place. Obviously, that's what I was talking about in that book, but it wasn't all bad. And when the book came out six, seven months later, so in the summer of 2012, my editor sent a copy of the book to this guy, Shane Parrish, who was running a Google blog, kind of a cult following called Farnham Street. He wrote a really nice article about it,

I'm sure you can see it. I remember thinking, here it is, someone's writing about something that I have written. I wouldn't have thought that all these years later, Shane would still be someone in my life. We'd be friends. We've been in this sort of writers mastermind together for many years. And it's been so amazing to watch his site evolve, to watch him evolve as a father, as a thinker, as a reader, as a business person, and he's just absolutely crushing it. His newsletter is awesome. His podcast

is awesome. The knowledge podcast. He's someone that I listen to who's introduced me to a lot of big ideas. And we have the same editor and publisher over at Portfolio. And so I know, I knew he'd been working on a book for a very long time. So I remember having dinner with him in Calgary, well before the pandemic. And he was in the middle of the book then. It's just coming out now. It debuted on the bestseller list. People love it. It's called clear Thinking, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results. When the book was coming out, he said, hey, we should do a podcast.

And I said, yes, but I only want to do it in person because I really want to get into it. And I really also wanted an excuse to see him. So I think this is a great two-hour episode that Shane and I did. Time flew by his new book, Clear Thinking,

Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results. You can grab at the Painted Porch. It has a series of books called The Great Mental Models. I think there's volume one, two, and three. And people just absolutely love it. I'll link to that in the show notes. They're super popular and just great books.

General Thinking Concepts, there's one on Physics and Chemistry and biology. Super popular. We can never keep enough of them in stock. So he signed a bunch of them when he was at the store and we had this great episode and I'm excited to bring the part one of that now. So you finally did the book, how's that feel? Feels good. It was a long time, like it was a long, when did you sell it? I sold it in 2018, 2017, 2018, end of 2017 or early 2018.

Yeah, because I remember we had dinner like right after you sold it, I think. It was right after the New York Times thing, the profile. Is that why it's old from that? Because there was so much inbound, we had offer. I didn't even have an agent, and all of a sudden I'm getting offers for these crazy contracts. I was like, I don't even know what to do.

Did you, why do you think it took so long? Well, I wrote it three times. Why? Because you gave me this advice,? Well, I wrote it three times. Why? Because you gave me this advice, and I didn't follow it. So talk about like, there's two pieces of advice. One I followed, and one I didn't, and they were super helpful. Yours in hindsight, because you talk about structuring the book

before you start writing. I didn't do that. Okay. And so the process of writing it twice was like a little bit of hubris on my part, I think, and thinking that the way that I had written before would lend itself to what I was doing and it wouldn't. Yep. And so the third time, you know, the first time I was like, whatever.

And then, okay, this second time I was like stubborn about it. Third time I like laid it out. Third time I was like, oh, Ryan, Ryan was right this whole time. I'm not going to tell him. But yeah. Who you told me? What was the other piece of advice? The other piece of advice was from Morgan Howsell who said, you know, if you have like a hundred units of editing time, spend like 80% of those units on the first like 50 or 60 pages of the book. And I thought that was super interesting because I guess the average person reads 17% of a book now. So if you're gonna have 100 units of editing, you want to make it at the start to get momentum. Yeah, I guess that's true. The idea

is if the beginning isn't good, it doesn't matter how and how good the end is. Nobody's over gonna get there. Yeah, that makes sense. That's one one where you look like maybe you don't tell people that one. Do you know what I mean? In the sense that that's not something maybe the inconsumer wants to hear about. In the same way they don't want to know that their refrigerator is going to be good for two years and they're not going to the end. But yeah, I think. But I apply that now to emails.

If I have like three paragraphs in an email, I'll reread the first like two or three sentences a lot more carefully than I will the rest. So I apply that principle basically to everything now. You have to get buy-in for any of the other stuff to matter and I think people don't focus enough on the buy-in and they don't focus enough on well begun is half done. Like that's essentially that his advice is the articulation of that wisdom. And this is, I think true, not just like, hey, how are you editing, but like, if it doesn't grab the person by the throw, if there isn't a reason to go from one page to another one scene to the next one day to that, like, if you're putting on a conference, you would think

I want the last day to that, like, if you're putting on a conference, you would think I want the last day to be great. Which you do, but the first day has to be great. And in fact, the first hour has to be good. The first minute, like, like, in, like, you would think this, and what's interesting is how it doesn't matter how much you reduce the length of the thing, the advice is still true. So, like, you would go, people used to make two-hour documentaries, and now they make 10-minute YouTube videos, and then that almost feels like an eternity in the world where people make TikToks. So, you go in a 60-second video, like, how do you get it all in there? The first five seconds, or the first, in

some cases, the first one second is where the whole thing is one or lost. So you're thinking, like someone's thinking, like, I got a minute, it's like, you don't have a minute. You have one fucking second. You have one second to capture someone's attention. And we see this, like, with the daily stoke videos, like to just accidentally, like to just riff in front of a camera and think you're gonna get the first one second, right? Or the first 30 seconds or one minute of your YouTube video, right? Or the first chapter, you're not gonna get it right on accident. You have to make what you're trying to do and then go back and go, does this begin in a way that gets someone?

And does it pull me through? Does it change how you write? In terms of the first sentence of a paragraph, because people are skimming quicker now, so you really have to grab people to pull them into the paragraph. Whereas before you were building more of a linear. I guess, yeah, I think about just coming out and fucking saying it, right? You just don't have the, well, I mean, I think I think about just coming out and fucking saying it, right?

Like you just don't have the, well, I think it's funny, you know, in the online world, you know, what a sales letter is, right? Like that actually doesn't work well in like a book or a video or whatever, because you're promising a payoff that's never coming, but you do have to understand how, so, so, and you go, well, what am I gonna say, I have to say that, and it has to be one good thing after another, and that's mostly why I write in stories. Is that stories by definition are taking you from one point to another, where it's much easier

to be interesting in a story than it is to be in exposition, you know, because in exposition, your voice, your tone, your point has to do all the heavy lifting, in a story that characters, the curiosity, all of those things are working to your advantage, if that makes sense. Totally. How do you reconcile, like, just keep the point, don't be overly verbose with, you have a 70,000 word contract or 80,000 or contract or... I think people think it would be hard to do that. Almost always, it's the opposite.

Like, did you find you were struggling to get to the end point or did you find you were cutting stuff? Oh, cutting. Yeah, so you think, like, I think when you're looking at the beginning of a project, you're like, how am I gonna get this, how am I gonna get there? And in fact, once you start out, once you've actually outlined what you're trying to do

and you get it all down, it's much more a matter of, okay, what's essential here, what am I eliminating, what am I cutting, what am I refining, as opposed to, how do I pad this to get to bed? Yeah. Well, I think I started the original draft, was over 100,000. We got it down to 60 something. I really wanted to get it down to 50. Some cut 40,000 words. And then you cut the other 65.

Yeah, yeah. Like it's sort of, it's so weird when you think about like what you're starting with and then chiseling down to like, where do people get lost? Where do they not want to read? Where's in the point? Sure. Oh, you're making the same point later on in the book. You can get rid of that.

So I made, you were asking me earlier, I made this decision. So I was supposed to do, when I sold the four virtues series in the fall of 2019, it was going to be four books in four years. I guess the first one was going to come out in 21. So I maybe had a little more, I'm trying to think of how that went because I guess lives came out first. But the idea was going to be four consecutive falls, four books about the stuporchuse. And so I did courage. I started writing it in the summer of 2020. It came out in the fall of 21. In the summer of 21, I started the discipline

book which came out in the fall of 22. And then I started in the fall, in the summer of 21, I started the discipline book, which came out in the fall of 22, and then I started in the summer of 22. I started the Justice book, which is supposed to come out in the fall of 23, but some time around maybe January of this year, I called my agent and I said, I have some ideas for some other books, which I'd like to do, and the publisher was interested in them, and I said, I'll sell them once we come to a deal, I'll sell them. But the other condition is that this project is going to get a year. I was like, if I'm going to be basically booked up for this whole period, I need at least one year off. So it is gonna be about 18 months, because it was starting in January,

I moved it to the following, right? Yeah. It was a break, which has been really good. Like I just did, I had more time, right? Just generally not writing, so I just did a lot more family stuff and took some trips. We did stuff that was great, but then actually the process of like refining and sort of simmering it down,

I got basically a year to do instead of four months to do. And so I probably cut maybe 10,000 words out of an approved manuscript. Like the book was done and ready to go into production, more or less, hadn't been copy edited. But then, so to take 10,000 words out of that is, but I was able to do a huge chunk. Yeah, I mean, it was one seventh of the book, right? Or one eighth of the book I cut.

And so ironically, you cut the 10 and then I probably added 7,500 back in of different other stuff that just I wouldn't have done without the time. But it was just the decision to take more time and to not be rushed and to create space. It was a big sort of lifestyle decision that ended up making the final product. I think much better, which I'm turned after we're done, I have to go up and do a couple more weeks, and then it's going in. Change your process, or did it just take change the amount of time? I'm thinking of Parkinson's law, right?

Where you're editing just to fill the time versus like, oh. Well, when Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote it, and then he put it, he was like, this will well, when Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote it and then he put it, he was like, this will come out in January and he's supposedly fiddled and adjusted with it on a fairly regular basis. It wasn't this like on his desk working on it every day thing, but you know, a word change here there, a sentence that needs to be added, a way of explaining it. It's just kind of lighting it age in a way that's positive. So yeah, I mean, let's say I've done that 18 month process in a four months.

Would I have gotten 80% of it done probably? And would it have been easier in some sense? Yes, but I wanted it spread out over 18 months because it was easier over 18. Like I wanted to, mostly I was not thinking about this book but I was thinking about pushing out the start date of the next one. I wanted space.

And discipline came out of the gate much stronger than maybe anyone thought. And so there was also some idea of like, why don't we just let it do its thing instead of stepping on it with another one? Yeah. So there's like a bunch of reasons for it, but like, I'm trying to do things a bit more slowly now.

But yeah, I think there's a tension. Like, I mean, so that's what, five years you did this? Well, COVID in there, T.I. didn't do much during COVID. But I was just gonna ask, it, five years you did this? Well, COVID in there, T.I. didn't do much during COVID. But I was just gonna ask, it took five years, but how much of that do you feel like we're working? So the last copy of the book was like six months of writing. Okay.

So it was it one of those things, there's that link in quote, which probably is intruder, he's like, if I have to chop down a tree, I'll spend three hours sharpening the axe. Do you think that's what it was, or do you think you would just do it differently next time? You would have brought me up. I would do the process differently.

So I have two other ideas for books. And I'm like, before I do anything with them, I'm like much more conscious of like, what would the structure of that book look like? What resources do I need at hand to make the writing process a lot easier? How do I weave things together in a different way? So having written a book, I think a bit of differently.

I don't know if I'll ever write another book. I have two ideas. Well, why do you think you were avert? Because it seems like plan it out before you do it is pretty basic, not objectionable. I didn't say it was like this. Why didn't you why didn't you want to do it? Well, I had a plan down. I just didn't have a plan there like in detail, right? Like I'm like I want to talk about this topic this topic this topic

But what I really needed to do is like here. How do I organize this? What do the chapters look like what are the points that I want to include? Yeah, that I didn't do that But why that's why why, because I think that's a very common thing, right? Like, it's like, hey, if you're going to do this thing, here's this process, you have to follow, right? We all look to someone who's done a thing that we're trying to do before. And they tell us, and it's only after we're like, oh, that's why you told us. So I'm curious if you can isolate why you think. Well, I think most of my writing was under like 3000 words for one. So like all the blog writing we've done or I've done is well read, never a plan for what

to write other than maybe an opening sentence and a conclusion. And then the process of writing is the process by which I figure out what I want to say, and figure out what I know and what I don't know, and then get new ideas to all of those things. And through that process, I end up with this really good article. And I think with the book, I sort of felt like I could do the same thing with chapters and with sections. And I couldn't, and I was stumbling on it. And you know how one of the big problems in life

is perspective. Like I only see what's in front of me. Like had I been watching me write this or you've been watching me write this, you feel like Shane, you're an idiot. Like you need to plan this out before you start writing. And it makes so much sense. But when you're in the moment, that's all you see. It's hard plan this out before you start writing. And it makes so much sense.

But when you're in the moment, that's all you see. It's hard to get out of that. The second time was pure stubbornness. I sort of knew I should have been doing it, but I was like, no, this is how I've always written it. I bet there's two things. One is the, sometimes we identify with how we've done things in the past. It's like, I gotta be lean or simple,

or I bootstrapped all my stuff in the past, or I don't wanna be too rehearsed. But we have this sense of it was easy and flowing and natural and authentic, how we were doing it before, and we're scared that a process or a system or somebody else's way of doing it. We'll change that.

We'll change that. I think that's a good thing to have a little bit of an aversion to. But I imagine what you really bumped into, and I think this is also transferable to Domain's far outside writing books, is you were dealing with something at first that was manageable or conceivable by a single person in a relatively snap way. And you were transitioning towards a project that was much larger in scope that really no one, you can't have on your head.

It's like the difference between, I designed this shed for my backyard, doing sort of rough estimates and now I'm trying to build a cathedral. Like, you need to have a whole different, you know, there's all these things. And so, so you have to ask yourself, hey, is this like a small project or a big sort of multi-phase, multi-part, you know, multi-person thing? And ask yourself,, is the system or the scaffolding that was able to do that first one? Is it sufficient for this much larger task and realizing that I'm about to tackle something that I can't

conceive from beginning to end at once because I've never done it before and it's too big for me is kind of a, I think, a an awareness that we have to have going into stuff. It's a different sort of battle in a campaign. I think that's a great way to think about it. As you were saying that, one thing that came to mind is like, I think we learn through, I call it the learning loop.

We have an experience, we reflect on that experience. We create a compression and that compression leads to an action in the future. And I'm used to writing basically my compression. Yeah. And what I was really doing during the process of the book is like going back to the reflection stage, pulling out bits of the experience that I think that the reader wants to use

and would add context and value to them. Yeah. And that's part of what made it hard too is because I'm going backwards in my head for a lot of things that have just become subconscious because it's like you have this experience and it's like five gigabytes, but your brain's not going to store five gigabytes, it's going to store like one megabyte. And so that megabyte is usually how we talk. It's also how we consume, right?

Like Twitter is all about those one megabytes. It's all about the compression, but the real value comes from the reflection. And so how do you give the reader the reflections that they're actually learning and they can take away and implement stuff? Well, I think this is why a lot of people who are popular on social media, you know, or YouTube or podcasts even,

like the reason they don't succeed when they go into books, or the reason why someone writes books doesn't succeed when they go into pot-wide. Why domain expertise doesn't transfer is that, well, I think one is they're not learning how one medium works for another. And then the other is because they don't realize the way that they have been supported by the medium that they're in and the medium they're going into is asking for more, right? So it's like, hey, you think you've been writing 5,000 word pieces on medium? Like, I know one writer is really going to meet, he's writing these big medium pieces. And so in your head you go, well this is 10 of those pieces.

That's, I can do that in my sleep. And you don't realize that actually, no, it's one large thing. And you're gonna have to be able to conceive of that one large thing, but also that thing to be able to stand up on its own has to be conceived from start to finish and operate under the logic of the medium that you're entering in, and you need to have the chops to actually do that.

And you think you have the chops, but you don't. You haven't built the chops to like, it's just like, hey, I write scripts. There's a different surrounding movie scripts and a 10, a 10 season television show. They're just fundamentally different expression. To use your sort of analogy earlier, it's like just because you built 10 Sheds doesn't mean you can build an office building. Yes, right, yes.

And you have to, it's actually good to be intimidated by the fact that you have to respect the office building. Right? You have to go, this is a thing that I'm starting effectively at zero and I have to figure out how office buildings work and more importantly, why do office buildings fail? Like what makes a bad office building? What makes a great office building?

And you really have to figure out what is being demanded of the canvas or the medium that you're going into. And then you have to come up with something that works for that. It's not what I'm just going to multiply what I'm doing by 5 or 10 or whatever. It's so much more than that. Everyone leaves the legacy. I like Mr. Gorbatov. We can do business together. For some, the shadow falls across decades, even centuries.

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Stream an all-new season of Hollywood House Lift with Jeff Lewis, now streaming on FreeV. So what in your mind makes for good Friday and a good book, specifically a good book, because one thing I tried to avoid is I'm like, what books don't I like? And one book I don't like is like, the book where you read the intro and you basically know the rest of the book. And then every chapter is just like a story

about you read. So you're not getting anything new. And what do I tend to like? I like books where like every page I'm like learning something new or highlighting something or thinking about something or it clicks in a different way. So I want to write a book where every page, every couple pages you should be getting insights, practical that are useful, that connect things possibly and hopefully in new ways for people. And you can read to the end of the book and not feel like it's a repetition over and over again. Sure.

Well, look, you didn't do yourself any favors when you picked this topic because the topic is inherently ephemeral and hard to define. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. You mean like habits, it's very clear, right, or how to overcome obstacles or how to do something about ego or discipline. These are much clearer things than thinking clearly, right? Because what does that look like? Who are the exemplars of that? How do you know when you're doing it and how do you know

it or not? It's you picked a hard topic and that's probably what perhaps an easier topic you could have gotten away with not outlining, right? Because you would have been able to define it much more clearly, and that's probably why it was tough. I remember you actually appear in the book a little bit in terms of hard mode or easy mode. And I don't know if you remember, we were in Sedona together, and I was talking about self-publishing the great mental models books, which we sell out.

Which are super popular in the books for, by the way. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So we self-publish them and you just look to me and you're like, Shane, you don't have to do everything on hard mode. He's like, you're literally, you're being a publisher, right? You're creating content, you're designing it, you're going to designers, you're getting custom images, you got a layout team, you got a printer, you got to ship

them, you got to store them, you got to feed them through this beast, you got to maintain inventory, you got to put up all this money. And you just looked at me and you just shook your head and you're like, you don't have to do this on hard part. Yeah, that's funny. Although, and then I think I remember it shortly after that conversation I was like, by the way, I have this idea for a bookstore and you were like, gave me the exact same advice, which is like, don't do it. It's going to be really hard and not worth it, which I'm glad that I actually didn't listen to.

But, yeah, I think sometimes you're doing, it's important I think people realize you don't really get to pick what you are called to do. And sometimes you're called to do a really straightforward down the middle thing and sometimes you're not. And having some clarity about that is actually really important because you know sometimes you're picking voluntary hardships that actually don't need to do like the difference between between, let's say, cell publishing and traditionally publishing, or, you know, just some people are very picky and finicky and they get tied up in like details

that are not moving the needle, but are making things much more difficult than they are. And then other times, what you're excited about, what's meaningful to you is, perhaps the less marketable thing or the less immediatelyable thing or the less immediately accessible thing and you're going to get advice from people where they're trying to steer you towards the easier thing. And if you don't have

clarity with yourself and your motives about why you're doing it, that advice will be hard to resist. And weirdly you'll end up really fucking yourself and the project by like kind of trying to do both at the same time. Because like they're, it's just a problem. So you have to know like, here's what this way, I think, outlining is important and clarity and meditating on this stuff is so important. Because you got to go, here's what I'm trying to do. Here's why I'm trying to do it. Here's what it's supposed to look like. So then when someone comes along and says, well, what if you did this for this reason,

you can know, does that get me closer or further away from what I'm trying to do? Like, how do you integrate feedback? Actually, the wrong question, that's kind of the wrong question. You first have to know what you're trying to do so then you can know what feedback to listen to and what feedback to ignore. Well, I think there's value to doing the hard thing, right? Like there's value to sort of like diving into these subjects if you want to learn about them. Yeah. And you want to learn

them at depth. Yeah. You can only learn so much from other people you have to like get your hands dirty and struggle with things. Sure. As long as you're willing to take on that battle, then there's a lot of learning in that. You've probably learned a ton about operating a bookstore. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably made you a better writer.

I would. It's made me a more disciplined writer. It's taught me a lot. Yeah, for sure. And also though, it was like I was trying, like for the same amount of work that went into a starting, funding, whatever, I could have just started a company that probably would be have the potential for exponential returns of some kind.

But I wasn't interested in doing that. Like that. You weren't doing it for financial reasons. Yes. So when you know what you're trying to do and more importantly, why you're trying to do it and where it fits into your life, then you can know whether that advice is good or not, I think.

Yeah, totally. But you have to like dive in and do the thing to really figure it out too. Like, you have these ideas about how things work. And, you know, I had ideas about publishing. And then I created a publishing company. And, you know, I've really got to know publishing quite a bit. Yes. And it's helped me in other areas of life too.

Sure. But I don't know if I would do it again. So, publish them or write a book again. Oh, self-poll bit. Yes. And it's helped me in other areas of life too. Sure. But I don't know if I would do it again. So publish them or write a book again. Oh, a self-publish. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I've said that because I self-publish these two kids books.

And the reason I self-publish them was not because my traditional publisher wasn't interested in them, they were, but they wanted it to be a different book. Yeah. They wanted it to be like basically a young adult novel, and I wanted to write a different book, to fit with it. They wanted it to be basically a young adult novel, and I wanted to write a fable. And so knowing, again, why I was doing it, it was like, yes, you're offering me more money and the ease of not having to do any of this stuff myself, but it would defeat the purpose of doing it, which is this is the story that I have in me right now.

That's the exact same reason we ended up self-publishing the Great Mental Models books. So we wanted a certain level of quality and a certain level of product that we couldn't get guaranteed at that point in time through traditional publishers. And it wasn't about the words because the words would be relatively the same. It was the paper quality, it was the binding, and they were like, we can't do that profitably unless we charged like 60 bucks a book. And I was like, I just want to break even on the books. I don't even want to make money on the books. I just want to get these ideas in the world and give them to people, but I really want to create this high quality product because that's

going to be a lot of people's first contact with our brand as Pharnam Street and our company and me as a person. And so I want that to be a high quality experience. Yes, I don't remember this specifically, but I thought I think there was some stuff you're doing that seemed like it was needlessly painful if I'm printing our own books, shipping them, storing them, where has it? Yeah, there's a lot.

And then our first distributor was bankrupt, right? Like during the pandemic and like there's hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in the book warehouse that we have no access to that all of a sudden seemingly belong to the bank. And I was like, what? Just give me my books back and they're like, no, you can buy them. And I'm like, I already bought them. I printed them like, yeah, you I think also realize, I think some sometimes people will go, Yeah, I think also realize, I think sometimes people will go, sometimes people will go, the profits are better this way than this way, right? Like if you look at the math, cell publishing is much better than traditional publishing, except what are you optimizing for

is the question, right? Is it actually when you dig it, when you really do, you go, actually, the math is not as good as you think once you calculate risk and a bunch of other factors into the equation. But going, what am I, what did I set out to do here, right? And was optimizing for profit, my primary motivation? No, it wasn't. And then once you have that, it's clarifying then when you come up to individual decisions, because the default is, well, what is cheaper, right? Or what makes the most money.

And like, you already told yourself, it's like you're not getting the message from yourself that that's actually not what's important to you. So you end up making these individual decisions, it goes to the ideas in the book, like, because you didn't have enough clarity when you were beginning, you're then making these individual decisions that are not adding up to the ballpark of where you wanted to go. Yes, you're perhaps being more profitable, but it's coming at this great expense in this other way. And so having that sense is really important. Well, you're sort of like winning the moment and losing the decade. Yes. Sure. And I think we often make those trade-offs, right?

And so simple as like when you eat a chocolate bar, you know, you do that once, you're not going to get fat and overweight, but you repeat that choice day after day. I think how you're going to feel two weeks from now. Or even 20 minutes. Yes. Because 20 minutes from now, you're going to crash

and you're going to have this sugar high. And then you're going to be lethargic and you're not going to pay as much attention. You're not going to be as engaged. Yeah. And you think about it year after year, day after day, the same thing. I heard a commercial many years ago that illustrated that in a way that I think about all the time. It's like, people are sitting in a restaurant and the waiter comes with the check and it's like

$100. And the guy says, I'd rather pay $170. And then this conceit happens over and over again. This car is $20,000 and then it's like, actually I'd prefer to pay $30. And basically what they were illustrating was like, when you just put things on your credit card, what it actually is costing you, right? What it's costing, we tend to think,

hey, what is the price tag on this thing? Not like we don't think, for instance, that you're paying with post tax earnings. So what did it actually cost you? What did you have to earn to be able to pay for it? That's one kind of blind spot we don't have. But we don't think of the cost that come along with something, right? The cost of ownership, whether that's insurance or maintenance time, time, opportunity costs, financing costs, right? Like you're, you think your house costs $200,000, but the

mortgage statement in very small, you know, numbers towards the end tells you what your end cost of the house will be. And it's several times that over 30 years of interest. And so we're not good at calculating those hidden fees that are being tacked on to what we're doing. So we're thinking, hey, I'm pulling one over on the industry by self publishing this book or by building the deck myself or whatever it is, right? Like we have these ideas that we're getting the better end of the deal,

but that's just because we're obscuring from view all the things that it's costing us. Like one of the ones my wife and I talk about is like, we're thinking about doing this thing, maybe it's a cool opportunity, maybe it's a trip, maybe it's an investment, whatever, we're going, what is the cost to our marriage? Right, like, is this the thing that, like, the one I fast forward to is I go,

when we get divorced, do I look back and say, we got divorced because we decided to remodel the house for no fucking reason. And we just fought endlessly about it. And in retrospect, the potential upside of it going like like that was a silly thing to trade something priceless for right and so if you're thinking about those costs it allows you I think to make better decisions as you go. Yeah we're so prone to thinking about things in material like something quantifiable but a large part of the cost of things isn't necessarily quantifiable. It's the stress on your marriage to talk about that, right? The time commitment, you don't know how many hours you're going to be involved with architects and designers. You're going to have to leave the store and go deal with something in an issue.

And we just tend to think, oh, it's going to cost $x. And I'll tack on 30% because contractors are usually off. And then I have a ballpark of the cost. But like you said, we're not thinking through the invisible sort of cost opportunity, cost time, all these things that because when you look at people and they've ended up somewhere they don't want to be, right? They can usually, and we have to be careful about stories, but they can usually tell themselves a story where they trace back, a seemingly small to say, like, why are you very out of shape?

Well, I took on this new job and I just started working a ton and I was getting stressed. And so it's like they made this decision to get accept a raise and a promotion that was a 5% increase in income and maybe 5% increase in status or whatever that came at a 40% cost of their health, right? And so you like the ability to sort of think about how this is going to translate in a larger way across your life in all the different ways that you measure yourself is to me that kind of the definition of wisdom, the ability to go, if I do this, what are the downstream consequences of this decision?

And we and people are extremely bad at that. One way to look at that is imagine your life being a mosaic. And the most important parts are, you know, like health, community, your relationship, work, all of these things, and you pick your own parts, right? But you put them in this sort of, and they take on different shapes and sizes. And so you can think through the impact of one choice on the different sizes of the other parts of it, whereas like releasing a book, I went to the kids, it was like, hey, this can be really busy

for three months. Like work is going to be a bigger piece of this mosaic. And then we're gonna shrink it back down to where it was before. And that's natural and normal and sometimes that happens. And sometimes like you're gonna be the biggest part of this puzzle while they're always technically, the biggest part, but like, you know, sometimes we're gonna be doing things that are like more

in time, we're gonna go away for vacation. Well, that's me and you two together, three of us. Well, that's going to be a huge piece, and work is going to be a smaller piece during that time. Sure. And so it helps me to think through some of the impacts on various parts because I can't change the size of the box. Yeah.

I can only change the size of the pieces, and you can't ever let them go to zero. Yeah. So health, community, sort of relationships with your partner, your kids, your family, work, like all of these things need to integrate to create your life. Well, let's go back to this mosaic thing

because it's actually a good, I think, analogy for doing a book. Let's say you were doing a mosaic of a snake or two gladiators find some like ancient Roman mosaic. You would never like if someone's like Shane what are you working on? You'd be like I'm making a mosaic and like they they would know because it would need to be sketched out like you would never just be like I'm I'm making it as I go because there's all these tiny pieces of glass that, cumulatively, thousands, hundreds of thousands of them would go into just an arm or a sword or an animal, right? And so you have to have the whole thing drawn out, and then you're knowing where each one

is going, right? Or else you're going to put something here that makes it impossible for that thing to go there. And so that ability to conceive of the whole, and this is true for projects, but also for life, like if you don't have a good sense of what you want your life to look at, like, then you're not able to evaluate decisions properly, which is, hey, we'd like you to come, you know, take this important position in Washington, or, hey,

this company is offering this big contract. If you don't have a sense of where everything you're doing fits into a large hole of what you're what your life to be and what's actually important to you, you're just going to be like, well, this thing is offering more money than that thing, or this thing seems cool. Or this is the only offer that I've gotten recently. And so you make these things and then all of a sudden you made this choice and then again that explains why your health fell apart, why your marriage fell apart, why you're feel ex-wires, how did I end up here? Well I just accepted

this thing and I didn't think about how it fits into this larger mosaic of my life. And that's what the last chapter of the book is sort of around that, which is it's one thing to get what you want and it's a completely other thing to know what's worth wanting in the first place. Yes. And I've worked with so many people and I'm sure you know quite a few who sort of get to their mid 60s, early 70s and realize that they've just chased sort of the wrong goals and the cost becomes very apparent at that point in time.

Or not even chasing the wrong goals, because I have no judgment on that. They're unconsciously pursuing something that haven't thought about. Yes, and now that they have, they've thought about it more, it didn't do for them what they thought it was going to do. So it's not, you're right, it's not a moral judgment.

They are saying, I got it, and it's not what I want. Or I got it in a way that was mutually exclusive from meaning. So I still wanted to pursue the same goal, but the way that I went about pursuing that goal, if you think of a typical CEO who comes up in a sharp elbows environment, the way that I accomplished, and I worked with somebody like this,

who basically went from everybody wanted to play golf with him to quitting, to nobody wanted to talk to him, because the way that he accomplished all these things was mutually exclusive from meaningful relationships with other people, and all of his relationships were transactional, and he didn't realize that until he quit, and then nobody's returning his phone call anymore and nobody's, and then it sort of dawned on him slowly that like the way that I wanted to be CEO, that doesn't change, he was conscious about that,

but the way that he accomplished that goal was not the way that he would have pursued it had he had to redo. The way he purchased the thing was more expensive in retrospect than it seemed at the time. He was thinking, this is the expedient way to get what I want, or perhaps he thought it was the only way to get what he wanted, and he didn't realize that it was pushing other things that he would want or need in the future further out of. Yeah, and we lied to ourselves, we justify these

sometimes these actions, right? He was telling me some stories really in his career about how he, you know, and this was post, so he reflected a lot on this, about how he stepped on somebody basically to get ahead of them. And what he would tell himself was all make it up to them, right? And what we don't realize is that when you have a relationship that's when lose with people, you can't really ever get it back to where it was or if you do, it's like a huge, harculine effort. And if you think of sort of four permutations of relationships, there's when, when, lose, lose when, and lose, lose. But only one of those relationships survives across time. Yeah.

And that's a when, when relationship. So the minute somebody's losing, if you're on the losing end, we feel this, right? Like, if we're forced to use somebody for a service that we don't want to use, we're looking for an out, we're looking for a competitor, we can't wait to find a new, so it doesn't mean that we take action that day. It's like we're this negatively coiled spring though, we're just waiting for something to happen. And I think, you know, we create these little, and it's sediment, right? So that's one relationship, but that relationship builds up over time. And then you have this huge weight that you have to overcome, not only with you and justification

of how you're living, but also these people are, you know, they're not your friends. They're not telling you things, getting in your way. They're not giving you information that you should have. You actually become a, like, a less effective person because of it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, the paradox of life, or most lives, is that we, we know where we want to end up,

which is we want to be admired, and respected, and generous, and kind, and on. Like we want to be a good virtuous person, but we think that in order to succeed or to get to the point where we have the luxury of being those things, we have to basically do the opposite of those things, right?

And then all of a sudden we'll change, right? Which of course never happens. And like, yeah, you wanna be that leader who is selfless and thinks big picture and puts other things ahead of, you know, you want to be all that, but then you're like, but if I don't throw sharp elbows, if I don't, then I can't get ahead. Yeah, and I won't, and it's very hard to become something

by doing the opposite of that thing. Right? So that's Aristotle goes, virtue is not this thing that you possess. Virtue is a thing that you do. You do not become a house builder. If he says you build houses. You don't become a flute player. You learn how to and then you play the flute. So it's basically this idea that it's it's something you do not something you are, but by doing it you are that thing. And the converse is true. If you're an asshole, now you're going to end up an asshole. You're not going to do asshole-ish selfish things or dishonest things or cutting corners. You're not going to do the end then end up in a place where you are not that think that's not how it works. It seems obvious, but almost everyone at the outset of their career slash life makes some version of that rationalization to themselves.

But it's never was something black and white, right? Like it's always a slow progression into this. Like if you think about how big organization works, your promotion to be a team leader, what are they looking for? They're looking for people like them. It's like the slow change, and as you work your way up the ranks, you don't even recognize yourself anymore. You become the very person that you were thinking, oh, they don't get it, they're making bad decisions, they don't treat people very well.

And had the contrast been that stark on day one, you would have said no to the opportunity, but there's a hundred steps in between here and there, and at each step you're rewarded with money, with, you know, praise, with all these other things, and then you slowly change. It's almost, you know, it brings to mind the frog in the boiling water, which I don't know if it's actually real or not, but if you put a frog

and boiling water, it jumps out. But if you boil the water slowly, it doesn't. And I feel like that's what happens to us in organizations. If we're unconscious about how we're acting or thinking or the life we want to live or the way that we want to be. Yeah, I mean, so this expression character is fake. That's what it means. Like, you are what you do. Like, so if you're, if you do dishonest things, you're going to end up a dishonest person, right? That's what that idea means. Like the sort of character traits or the values that you set for yourself are deterministic in the sense that they, they, they, they determine the individual decisions you make, which determine the cumulative impact of where you end up.

So it's funny how as a society, we are always surprised, right? We go like, why isn't this CEO like wildly innovative or take big risks? Well, how do you think they worked for 20 years at this company before they got promoted? You think they were taking wild, huge, risky swings, and that's what got them promote? No. They were going along with the way things are. This is what politicians do. The process of working your way through the system is also working on you. Right? So you're doing what you think you need to do to survive,

but actually what you're doing is remaking yourself in the image of the system or the society that you're in, and then you wonder why you don't, why the end result is you're like everyone else or you're not the good person you would wanna be. Well, it's at these individual juncture points, you were predetermining that outcome. How do you change your character?

Like, it can't just be a matter of, I wanna be a good person therefore, I will become a good person. Like, how in the moment do you, okay, well, you know, this situation calls for honesty and it's not black and white, it's really hard for me to do. How do I make sure, like, how do I go about doing that?

How do I teach that to my kids? How do I, I mean, yeah, it's a tricky thing because when we go characters, it's very obvious we see this in other people. Like, they, Kyrie Irving is not going to change, right? Like the idea that it's gonna work out at the next time, it's, no, it's not. But it would be sad if we saw that about ourselves, right?

And we have to accept that. It's like this weird kind of paradox of like, other people are what they are. You've got to accept that and you're going to fool yourself and you're thinking they're going to be different. And then you can't also can't give up on yourself and your ability to change. And I feel like I went through a change.

Like my 20s were mostly about me, mostly about succeeding. And I found myself in environments where I did things that in retrospect, I'm like, why was that an environment that I was trying to succeed in? Why was I willing to do that? Why was I not acting with sort of virtues or values that I now hold to be important or that I would like my children to play? What didn't have the wisdom of my 30 year old self in my 20s? But I think a big part of that was, yeah, one, it's knowledge, like you don't know, but two, it like James Clear talks about this with habits, like you have to decide to be someone who eats well or runs or works out. This has to be a conscious identity shift that you make first,

and then you have to make individual decisions that reinforce that identity. So like you wanna be the leader who makes hard right decisions, right? Like the expensive but moral choices, right? That we wanna see other CEOs or leaders do and they don't. Well, the idea that you're going to be faced with this one singular big decision where you're life or your career, your futures online, and you choose the hard, right thing,

that's incredibly naive, that's not how it goes. You have to build the muscle of making those individual decisions as you go. Like, if you want to be the leader, it says, we're pulling out of Russia because we don't want to be complicit in what's happening. It's very hard if you're the company that's been making bottom line shareholder value, profit, only decisions up until this point. And then now you are ahead of a $6 billion company and you're supposed to light 50% of the business on fire, you haven't

built the strength to do that. We're seeing that with a lot of university presidents and anti-Semitic behavior right now. And the lack of calling it out. You haven't been in these individual culture hot, you know, hot button issues. You were like, I'll just give them, I'll give this side what they want. Or here, you're like, I'll give this side.

I don't wanna be involved. I'll hide behind, press release. And then this big moment happens and you don't have the balls, you don't have the skills, you don't have the support, you don't have the reputation, you don't have any of, you don't have the support, you don't have the reputations, you don't have any of the things that you need to make that hard bright decision.

I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Palaling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on. So do sit back and enjoy. Brighten and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. Get game day ready at BETMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. From game-winning drives to unbelievable catches, Bet MGM gives you the chance to take those highlight reel NFL plays to a whole new level.

Bet MGM.com for turns and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to age or Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Honnex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bed MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with eye gaming Ontario. I think I'm part of it and I don't know if this is right, I'm not sure what to take on this is. I'm not. And it's unconscious. I don't think people are consciously thinking of it.

And it's unconscious. I don't think people are consciously thinking of it. They're not able to handle the pain of taking a stand. And the pain is people are going to, you know, people on one side are going to be pissed off or the other side. You're going to get a whole bunch of hate mail or whatever you want to call it. You have to be able to withstand this emotionally.

And I think we're not strong enough these days or a lot of people aren't strong enough to go through the, so financial pain is like one thing, but like this is a different type of thing. You might lose your job. Yeah. Are you willing to take a stand on something and lose your job over it?

Are you, can you go through that? Are you prepared to go through that? And this is some of the stuff that you talk about. Yeah, and you'd think it'd be transferable, right? Like, I interviewed Adam Kinzen, and he sat in that chair, and we were talking about, there's multiple war heroes in Congress.

So they put their physical body, their life on the line for abstract principles, and for which their courage and Selflessness is unquestionable. It's almost unfathomable that they were able to do what they did and then Someone comes in and says my inauguration was the biggest inauguration. There's ever been and you're like, yep Yes, sir. Sure, whatever you say, right? And it's this process of getting of the small cowardly decisions, which then ultimately culminate in the inability to go, I would prefer to do the right thing more than I would prefer to remain in the job that I have. And so you think it would be transferable, right? If you were, if you had incredible physical courage, that you would be able to have moral courage,

incredible physical courage that you would be able to have moral courage, but it can atrophy and then also where it's clear and concise in one domain, it doesn't transfer as well because maybe you don't see it that way or maybe you identify more with material success than you identify with like for you, perhaps ego death is scarier than actual death. And that seems crazy, but like, there's not really another explanation for it. So it's something you have to practice, but then it's also something you have to step back and go,

like, what are my values here? And is the decision I'm making in line with those values or not in line with those values? As opposed to, I think a lot of it is they're just sort of caught up in the news, like if we're talking politics specifically, they're just caught up in the news cycle, and they're, they think that this is a trap or this is giving the other side what they want. I call that like leading by polling. Yes, right. They're just thinking the other side, I know what the other side wants me to do here,

so I'm just not going to do that. I'm going to do the opposite. Yeah, instead of going, hey, I still hate the other, like I still think the other side wants me to do here, so I'm just not gonna do that. I'm gonna do the opposite. Yeah, instead of going, hey, I still hate the other, like I still think the other side is wrong on 90% of things, and I don't like them, and I know that they don't like me, and I know they only want me to do this because they think it's humiliating me,

or that's humiliating our opponent, but like I'm doing it not for those reasons, I'm doing it because the other thing is unthinkably wrong or unjustifiable. So I don't know if you'd ever get to the, like, even the primary race if you took that stance, but imagine somebody in power doing that and being like, no, like, I mean, that idea is a better idea than what we had. We're just going to do that. What do you think would happen? Well, great politicians do that, right? Like, do you think they'd ever even get to that point

to become a great politician now? To shoot that out. Right, to be, that is the process, right? The process of running for, first, the party system obviously incentivizes, but this, oh, these are the positions I'm supposed to have. Sure, I'll have those if that's what it gets me elected.

Right. Then when you're elected, you're supposed to suddenly be like, but I'm swapping those in for these. Like, it's not how it works. Right. And so it's tough. It's really tough. You, it's really tough. And yet, and yet, it's tougher on another level because,

uh, idealists and purists don't accomplish anything either. And so pragmatism is this incredibly difficult thing. I talk about this in the Justice book that I'm doing now. So Jimmy Carter, the day he's elected governor of Georgia, he gets up, he gives us inauguration speech, and he basically opens with it. He runs like a sort of a typical Southern Democrat campaign. And then he gets up and he says, by the way, the time for racial discrimination in this state is over. It ends now. And people are like, what? Like it was the opposite of what he campaigned on and it shocked everyone. Now, the sort of

dirty secret there is Georgia governors at that time could only serve a single term. And so he actually was being somewhat pragmatic. It didn't matter, right? You save it to later or not. Then Carter wins the presidency in a sort of surprise moment. Literally the first meeting that Carter has after he's elected, it's like 335,

the day of his inauguration is with a disabled veteran from Vietnam who is that he asked to be the head of his inauguration is with the disabled veteran from Vietnam, who is that he asked to be the head of his veteran affairs division and says, I want you to work on a memo, which is a blanket pardon for anyone who evaded serving in Vietnam. And most, not not most, many people trace his not getting a second term to that decision that he made on his first day in office. And the point being, how do you say that for his second term, what might he have been able to accomplish? And so there is some argument that part of what makes Carter not the great president that in retrospect, he actually was capable of being, because he's a very smart

man, clearly a decent man and actually a good politician, that he could have done better, but he didn't because he had this sort of purity treat. He says, I don't care if everyone in the Senate is against me, it's the right thing to do. And it was the right thing to do. Now he would say that actually, that is the pragmatic move. So, because you don't know you're going to get, the idea of deferring to your second term is kind of an idealistic thing, too.

Right? You think you're being pragmatic and practical, but you don't know you're going to get a second term. So his point was, I'm president now. I'm going to do all the things that I can do as a president now because no future is guaranteed. How do you distinguish between pragmatism and something more blanket like the ends justify the mean?

It's tricky, because it's a spectrum, right? It's a spectrum, right? You have ends justify the means, you have pragmatism, and then you have this sort of moral purity. Like, it's funny that people sometimes get mad at me for talking about the stoics, or for talking about politics, because they get mad at me for talking about the Stoics, or for talking about the politics, because they're like, just tell me about the Stoics. As if the Stoics weren't inherently political, I mean, Marx really says Emperor,

Sennaka is a senator, he's a console, Kato is a senator, like the Stoics not only hold public office, but like they say it's part of Stoicism. Sena says, you should only not be involved in politics if something prevents you. He's like, a Stoic has to be involved. So the Stoics were inherently political, but it's interesting, Cato, the purest and the sort of most moral of the Stoics

is probably the worst politically. Like, he's so... But that makes sense. He's so conservative in the lower case, sees sense of it like things should be the way they've always been, that his inability to compromise with Caesar, which there's a difference between compromising and collaborating, his inability to understand that Caesar represents a force and a constituency and also has certain intentions

that his inability to adjust and to anticipate and sort of jiu-jitsu, that energy ultimately empowers Caesar to do what he did. There's this famous scene where Pompey returns from basically becoming Pompey the Great, he's the great conqueror, and he comes back to Rome and he's going to enter politics. And someone says, like, Cato is the greatest man in Rome, you should ally with Cato. And so Caesar, sorry, Pompey proposes a marriage alliance

that he would marry like Kato's niece or daughter, something like this, we don't know the specifics. But and Kato's family's like, this is an amazing idea. We like the women just so we're not talking about consent here. They're into the idea. And Kato says, I will not be acquired through my female relatives. He turns down the idea. And Kato says, I will not be acquired through my female relatives.

He turns down the alliance. So what does Pompey do? He aligns with Caesar instead. And Plutarch goes, the irony here is that because of Kato's purity, he brings about the one thing that he didn't want to have. He believed was the worst thing that could happen. He drives his potential ally into the arms about the one thing that he believed was the worst thing that could happen.

He drives his potential ally into the arms of his opponent. And so that is the problem with politics of justice with life. Like it's one thing to be pure and idealistic and clear about your sense of right and wrong. Then you have to understand that you live in reality. Caesar tries to mess. Yes. right and wrong, then you have to understand that you live in reality. Cesar tries to mess. Yes, Cesar goes, Kato, you, you don't live in Plato's Republic. He says you live in the drags of Romulus and that inability to go, how can I pragmatically and realistically get the most of what I'm trying to do,

as opposed to I want everything that I want or nothing is a really a masterful skill that not enough good people have. But I guess it's still sort of like begs the question, at what point is it pragmatism towards a better end and what point is it I'm justifying the means. Will you flash forward a generation? And Seneca is in exile and has been driven out of power. He's in the middle of nowhere, he's miserable.

And it gets us offered to come back to Rome if he tutors this young prince. And so he says, yes, of course. And that young prince is a promising boy named Nero. And at first, you know, he thinks, this is my chance to influence this guy, to become a great leader. But it becomes increasingly clear with time

that Nero is not remotely qualified or well suited to where the purple to be. He's insane. And he's an egomaniac and he's delusional and he's bad and evil. He's all these things. And so we can imagine. Sennaka perhaps even thinking of the example of Kato and going, look, if I leave someone worse, we'll do it. Like this isn't I don't live in Plato's Republic. I live in Rome. And he tells himself, I'm the adult in the room. I'm making it less bad. I live in Rome and he tells himself I'm the adult in the room. I'm making it less bad.

But at what point does this supervision or this constraint become a form of complicity? And I would argue right around the time that Nero tries to kill his own mother. You know, like there were these bright line moments that that's that Senna could ignore. You don't you don't see those bright. And like, I'm just mapping this to real life, right? Like, if he walks in and on day one, Nero like tries to kill his mother, he's like, I'm out. But because he's involved, because he's invested,

and every day he's investing in this, he's got more at stake too, right? Like, he wants a different echo. It's dealt by a thousand cuts, right? No, you think they're gonna come to you with an envelope full of money and say, I want you to do a 180 on all your beliefs for this exchange of goods or services or whatever.

Or, hey, if you do X, I will make you Y, right? We even think of this now, we go, this politician's a foreign agent or they've been, and there are examples where someone's corruption is so blatant and clear, but that's more the exception. It's much more like, now I'm in the in-group and I don't wanna not be in the in-group.

I don't wanna lose what I have. Or it's even more insidious, which is, yeah, Seneca is probably telling himself with Nero that the person who comes after me will be worse. And he's not wrong. The person who comes after him probably will be worse. And so it really is this tricky decision of like, yeah, where is that line?

How long can one go? And that becomes very unclear. You have to be willing to take a stand, I guess, with yourself and not, even if you're doing the right things, nobody's gonna clap for you. And nobody's gonna give you, and nobody's even gonna understand. You understand it, because you're involved

in this situation, and you see it differently, but nobody else is gonna understand it, because they don't't have the full picture and they have the stories that come out about you And all of this stuff and so you have to be strong enough to just do it when the way we deceive ourselves is like You're giving yourself credit for how much worse You could be or what you could get away with you're like look at the other people around me They're lining their pockets. They're going along with everything. They're proposing horrible ideas.

And so you're seeing that, what you're not seeing is what the outside world is seeing, which is how are you in this room at all? Yeah. Why are you there? You must be guilty too. Yes. And that, like, you should have left a long time ago, right?

And that is what we see this a lot with online stuff today, right? Like, people don't, they make snap judgments of a situation that they have a very specific lens into, and they think that what they see is all there is to see, we don't understand the nuances of all of the stuff going on. And the flip side of that is a lot of time when the nuances come out, you're like, oh my God, it's worse than I thought, right? Well, the up and down clear line is it's very hard to get someone to understand something

that their salary depends on them not understanding. But I would say it's even harder to get someone to understand something that their identity depends on them not understanding. So like, to go, hey, I'm going to have to resign this position, or I'm going to have to leave this political party, or this religion, or this class that I've been a part of, and that I have a sense of myself tied up in. That's an extreme, that, in a weird way, that can be scarier than, well, I'm going to go do this thing and I could be killed.

So I sort of talk about this a little bit in the book, right? Where we have a biological instinct towards territoriality and like all animals do, but we're not wolves pissing on trees. Yeah. Our sense of territory is our identity. And so if you trigger something on that identity, we're gonna hang on to it, we're gonna fight back're not going to want to give it up. So you have

a bit of loss of version going on where like, what am I without this piece? But you also have this, I'm not even going to listen to what you're saying, because you're threatening how I see myself. And more importantly, how I want other people to see me. Yeah. If you heard that expression, you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. And it's really hard. Like I think we've seen this again politically and culturally. Like certain people think, if I can just give them this information, if I can just bombard them with facts, they'll see it.

And it's like, you don't understand to accept this fact, to accept the truth that you're trying to express to them. You're asking them to willingly step into a reality in which they were an idiot, in which they were wrong, in which they are complicit or have blood on their hands. And it takes a very strong person to do that, or it takes like a real bunker buster of a bomb that blows apart their whole life, like a criminal conviction or a devour, it requires something so much more earth shattering than evidence. I think that's the opportunity, right?

So if you see somebody at work or in life doing something that you wouldn't do. What it's really telling you is that they see the world in a very different way than you, because whatever they're doing is totally rational and logical to them, given all the information they have and how they think about things. And so it becomes an interesting argument instead of giving out facts and hoping somebody's gonna change their mind to take a different approach, which is one of, tell me what the world looks like from your point of view.

What has to be true? What do you see? What does it smell like? What's going on in your head? What are the variables that matter? Because I, that doesn't mean I have, we always think that means you have to agree with the person. It doesn't.

You don't have to make a judgment about right or wrong, but step into that person for a second and try to see everything they're seeing. And I guarantee you their actions are completely logical based on how they're thinking about it. I mean, this is, this is Socrates's idea. He says, nobody is wrong on purpose, right? Like they think that they're right. And so this, nobody is wrong on purpose. They think that they're right.

And so the socratic method, I don't think we get to give it enough credit as an invention, as a way, we see it as something kind of interesting or unique, but we don't see it as a work around against a very timeless human problem, which is most people have assumptions that make sense to them and then viewpoints based on those assumptions. And what Socrates is doing literally in Athens and what we now call the socratic method is not going around saying you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, I'm right. In fact, he doesn't usually even say what he thinks. He's asking questions and he's asking incisive enough questions that they tend to slowly provoke the other person, his interlocutor, with the understanding that there's a contradiction or there's a faulty assumption in there and they go, oh, okay, and that's what ultimately

creates the ship or it doesn't. And he and Socrates himself now has clarity because he asked the question, but yeah, understanding that this person is in a self-contained universe where the logic makes sense and it all checks out. They're not like, yes, I saw all the facts and I am choosing to persist in error. They're saying, no, the error is in your facts and because of that, I think X. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. 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 add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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