The Daily Stoic - The #1 Gift You Can Give Your Future Self | Former Marine Elliot Ackerman

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Former Marine turned novelist Elliot Ackerman sits down with Ryan to talk about what discipline really looks like in everyday life. From 100-degree runs to cold plunges and daily writing routines, they discuss what helps them stay steady, focused, and consistent even when it’s hard.Elliot Ackerman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054, 2034, Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. Elliot’s books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a veteran of the Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Be sure to check out Elliot’s latest book, SHEEPDOGS. Apple Studios has actually bought the rights to develop the book as a series with Tom Hanks production company.  Grab signed copies of Elliot’s books 2054 and 2034 at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Follow Elliot Ackerman on Instagram and X @elliot.ackerman📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am Squeezer. I am using this in. I'm taking up one last little trip with a family before school starts and the year

gets rolling. Went for a nice run this morning, took the dog for a walk, you know, just doing my thing, sitting down working on some Daily Stoic emails while my kids are playing over with their grandparents. I'm very excited about this episode. I've actually had today's guest on a couple different times, but always remote. And I said, hey, I think you might have the record for the most times you've been on the podcast. But next time you're in Austin, let's do it in person. I've known of his work for a really long time. I believe I read his debut novel when I heard it on NPR at least 10 years ago. And then I've read a bunch of his stuff since. As I said, we've had a bunch of different conversations. And I'm just sort of in awe of this person.

He's a war hero. He's CIA, special operations officer. He did five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you've got the silver star, the bronze star, and a purple heart. And he's a great writer. I'm talking about Elliot Ackerman. He wrote Green on Blue. That's the first novel that I read. He wrote Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, Halcyon, red dress in black. And he wrote two really interesting sort of futuristic novels with my friend, someone I look up to Admiral Stavridis. And then he has this new book called Sheep Dogs, which Apple Studios bought the rights to before it even came out. Tom Hanks is going to be producing it. In addition to all that, he's also been nominated for a National Book Award, nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and he is a contributing writer for the Atlantic and a special fellow at Yale.

It's a pretty nuts resume across the board. An all-around fascinating guy. I'm going to split this one up into two because we really went into it. But we were talking about this idea of discipline. As I've said before, discipline is this sort of gift you give to yourself. You're going to want the results of this thing later. And I think this is true in training, whether you're going to become a military officer, it's true whether you're just going for run.

As I said, I did this morning, it's true as a writer. It's true if you're a musician. It's true whatever it is that you do. You're going to want to be better at this thing later. and so what matters is that you do the reps now. That's what it's about. And I'm fascinated by someone who's really undergone some intense training, you know, to be an Navy SEAL or to be a Marine officer,

to be an athlete. How does that apply to something? Obviously, I know a little bit more about what just being a writer. So this is a great conversation, and I think you're really going to like it. And I'm keeping this intro short because I'm going to go pick up the kids and take them to get some Legos from the story. So that's how my day is going.

I hope your day is going well. And I hope you enjoyed this episode with the one and only, Elliot Ackerman. Do grab any of his books. Sheep dogs is really good. It's really funny also. But you can't go wrong. If you want nonfiction,

try his book, The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. And there's another one called Places and Names on War, Revolution, and Returning. Just a really impressive dude. You got you just went for a run. Uh, no. Oh, okay.

That's how I dress. Oh, well, you're ready to run. I ran this morning and, man, it is hot. In Austin? Yeah. Run on Town Lake? Yeah, I want to call you this running app, you know? You just like, you know, I want to run this many miles and they like give you a cool route.

I ran there yesterday. I was, I usually run there most mornings, so I would have seen you. It was great. It was like totally great. Yeah, it's one of the, I think it's one of the best in the country. But hot. Yes, a surprising amount of shade. No, I was like, it was just reminding me.

I'm like, you know, like, I'm in my blazer. I'm like, this is the time of the year where it just like it shifts on you. And it's like, and usually for me it's like will be one like sweaty walk through a city. I know. Or like brutal run where I come back. It's just like dead. I walked the dog earlier and then I was like, oh yeah, this is why I dress this way. It's because it's like you're switching between roles.

And it's like if I'm dressed for like, it's like why am I dressed for the made up thing that I'm not doing? What I'm actually doing is chasing children around or walking dogs or how old are? kids eight and six boy girl two boys oh wow yeah cool how far did you run it's like an hour so i don't know like you measure in time or do you measure in distance yeah it's it's funny i've been having my so i have i have four kids two still kids who have my own and my son is 13 and he and i've been having a lot of conversations about this whether or not it is better to measure in distance or in time okay so i measure in time i've always measured in time really yeah because i feel like it pushes me if i'm doing the same run, the same run starts to get longer over time. Whereas if I'm just like, oh, I'm going to go

six miles, it's easy for me to be like, you know, whatever, like six miles and, you know, in 40 minutes versus 43, who cares? I'm doing my six miles. So it allows me to slack off. But you don't do like a loop where, like, I do out and back. So wouldn't measuring it by time. Well, here's the thing. I'll go out and back. So I hit, like, so I'm going to live 30 minutes out, 30 minutes out. Okay. So I go 30 minutes out. And if I'm doing a consistent run, I'll get to like, I'll know, I'll want to hit. the turnaround point from the last 30 minutes so i'll be like trucking to try to like because if i don't hit it's 30 minutes i'm like man i totally you know like it's just psychological so like i'll hit my halfway and then i'll be coming back yeah but you better not come back short

you better like you better like you better make the 30 back you know you better not like you better not be like one you know one hour and you're like and you got like an eighth of a mile to go you say it for me like it's just psychological it kind of keeps me so that that trail around austin is exactly 10 it's like 10.02 or something so you can start like and there's lots of different lots So it's like, depending on where I am, I pull in here, and then if I get back to the car and I do the full lap, it's 10. But then you can cross it. There's like, if you cross at this bridge, I've been doing it for 15 years. If you cross at this bridge, it's five.

If you cross at this bridge, it's four. Like different bridges, you can cut it off or double it or whatever. So I'm so, like, OCD about my out and back thing that I actually went on my running app. And I'm like, all right, because I don't know Austin. I'm like, so like, like, okay, we're going to go out here. And it gave me like a very elegant loop to do. I was like, well, I'll just do the loop. And I was like, the loop might be a little short.

And I'll just like, I'll just like kind of go a little further than out and back. And I got to like five minutes from the halfway mark, you know, where I should like start living back. And there was like a bunch of construction. I'm like, no way. I'm just going out and back. So I'm like running through the construction, like over the anyway. So yeah, I like out and back and I like time.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess I do miles, but I'm trying to do it in less time. I don't know. The question I get all the time is people go, are you training for a marathon? Yeah. And then I'm like. Well, you look like a marathoner. This is the mariner.

Well, they don't just look at me and ask. They find out you run. They say, are you training for a marathon? But you look like the guy who would train for a marathon. So I guess that's nice. But I'm like, though, this is the marathon. Doing it for no reason is the marathon. Well, yeah.

Do you run, have you run marathons? I've done, well, I did. So one time on my birthday, I was like, I'm going to do a marathon. And so I did that loop in Austin two and a half times. So I just did that. So that's the only time I'm, done it, but actually this, so I'm going to do the marathon to Athens run. Oh, cool. When? 13th of July. Again, just by myself. Oh, okay. So it's not like a, we're going on vacation.

This is like the thing I'm asking that like, I'm like, hey, I'm going to skip one day and I'm going to go do this. When was the battle fought? It wasn't 13th of July. No, I'm like the date. Like I wonder if like a date. Oh, I should find out when it was. Yeah, yeah. They defeat them in marathon. Yeah. And then the idea is the show of force, by making it back to Athens in time. I thought it, but it was the, no, it was the messenger had to run back to Athens. I thought the whole group did it. No, I think it was one guy and he passes out dead, like that they need to get the news of the battle back to, and if somebody, Wikipedia, yeah, yeah, I, where I remember the story is they

defeat them and then they make it to Athens and time. I thought it was the whole group, but maybe, whatever, that's where it's from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have to do some reading. If you read what I talk about when I talk about running, the Maricombo. my book. I haven't read it. We go walk through the bookstore after this. I'll give you it because it's one of my favorites. But he does it in that, in that thing. And so I've always wanted to do it. So that's like, that's the one I'm going to do. And they do have, they do have that as a marathon like every

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Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. And in the minute we've been talking here, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data. There's no need to wait any longer to speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash daily stoic. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. I had a good buddy in mine who we'll talk about the book who's sort of the uncle. I mean, he's not, but he's the uncle Tony character in the book. And we were kind of younger and the Marines together. And I came back off a deployment. And he was turning.

I think he was turning to 34. And we had to catch up. He said, hey, man, turning 34. We ran 34 miles from my 34th birthday. You're going to come with me. And we woke up at like 4 in the morning or whatever it was. And we just ran around D.C. Yeah.

We hadn't seen each other like, you know, better part of a year. And we just caught up and ran 34 miles together. That's what I was trying to do on my birthday. And I was great. I was probably turning, I think I was turning 30. And then what happened is like, I, this is I think is a good sign slash bad sign. was like, okay, we'll do it on Thursday, right? I said this to my friend who lived here.

And, like, my birthday was actually, like, on Wednesday. So, like, anyways, we got the date wrong. So we both had to do it ourselves, like, differently. Separately? Yes. I've always found it, like, one of my rules is, like, if you don't regularly, completely lose track of time, your job sucks. Like, if you don't love what you do to the point where you're like, what day is it?

Yeah. You probably have a shitty. I mean, that's a good rule. Yeah. But anyways, I run there. And then Barton Springs is right there on that trail, too. So I usually swim there. Do you know what Barton Springs is?

No. Barton Springs is like this, I think it's the best pool in the United States. It's like natural. It's a natural spring, like millions of gallons of water every day. I just come up from the ground in like the Depression, the Works Progress Administration, turned it into a swimming pool. So they just put like sides on it. So it looks like a swimming pool.

Sort of, yeah. But when you get in, it's 20 feet deep, and it's rocks and turtles and fishing in. But it's always the same. It's always 71 degrees. And it's an eighth of a mile long. That's amazing. When I used to live in Istanbul, there was a floating barge in Galatasarai, which was their big university that would churn water from the bosphorus. And so it was a swimming pool basically, like, made out of bosphorus water, which was awesome.

And you could swim. I used to go around. I mean, this is my favorite ones I'd ever do. When I lived there, I would go down, I'd like run on the bosphorus. You know, do my out and back thing to my apartment, finish, take off my shirt, my shoes, my socks, put them on the side. And then I go swim in the bosphorus. Yeah. The bosphorus is, you know, it's not like a stinky river.

It's like, it's the ocean. So, and that was, like, amazing. Yeah. In Berlin, they have a floating swimming pool you can swim in, too. Yeah. I think the ones in Sydney are the greatest, probably the greatest pools in the world, though. Yeah. The ones, like, on Bondea Beach that are next to the ocean.

I was when I was a little kid. I want to go. It's the best. Anyways, I haven't run today yet. I'll probably do it this afternoon. That's a good time in summer to run. Yeah. Well, so I grew up in Sacramento and I went to school in Riverside. Yeah. And so I can basically run on the, like, surface of the sun.

And I just, and then I've lived here for almost 15 years. So, yeah, I just, I try, I just don't think about it. And I don't let that, like, determine whether you. Yes. Although I was talking to my wife once about, we were talking about, like, destructive habits. And she was like, that's a destructive habit. She was like, that's cutting yourself. You know, like, you deciding that you're going to go, you want to go for run. it's 110 outside, you can't judge someone who has another destructive habit. And I was like, I guess that's true. It seems, the worst part is it seems like a healthy habit. I can do it in the cold in that way. Yeah.

But I think in the really brutal, I mean, if I need to, but in the really brutal heat, it's just so bad. Well, the cold, you can make, you can take precautions again. Yeah, you can bundle up and then you're warm and you're fine. Yeah, I mean, when it's really hot and you're like, I mean, I've been in situations around like, been doing, you know, like physical exertion to the point where like, I'm going to have, like, heat stroke. Like, I've been on the margins of pieces.

Like, that is not fun. No. And you get, like, yeah, that is just not. This is going to sound patronizing. But I feel like you are unusually productive for a novelist. There's something about novel, where they tend to take a very long time and do a very few amount of books. Yeah.

What are you at, like, 10 now? Eight. Yeah, that's my time. That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, you know, do you identify that way or no? I don't identify that way, but I think, um, I recognize that. I guess it is comparatively.

But like, I have always just sort of worked at the pace that I work, right? And I'm like, okay, like, I mean, so I don't, you know, like, oh, I have an idea for like a book I want to do. Oh, this would be cool. Yeah, I think this could work. Like, okay, I'm going to, like, you know, sit down today and like take a crack at the opening, you know, and like take a crack and like, all right. And then, you know, and when I'm working on something, kind of like my out and back running, you know, I sort of have like my, you know, my whatever. you want to call them, my pathologies of the, you know, this is how I set myself up. Yeah.

So I have, like, you know, the work count I do every day, the times of days that I work, you know, like the, you know, what I do on weekdays versus a weekend and how I kind of like my, you know, my process. Yeah. And so that's like my pace. And I guess the pace has wound up being, I mean, about a book a year for the last 10 years. Yeah, I mean, you're obviously, you're not doing like huge, thick, like sort of novels. You know, I'm not like writing like Ron Chernow's Twain biography or a rea.

Oh, is he? Yeah. Very cool. We should talk about that. But you're not doing short books. You're not doing like a series of novellas. No. But like there, that would take a really long time.

It is interesting though. You like, you'll talk to someone and they're like a novelist and then they've been working for seven years and then it's this. Yeah. I'm like, where is the seven years? I don't mean, I don't want to, I'm not being judgmental. I'm just saying I'm not seeing the seven years. Like it's not, it's not. They're doing other stuff.

I mean, that's what I think they're doing. Yeah, they're doing other stuff. You know, and they're, everyone's different. You know, like, my. My wife's a writer. Yeah. I mean, she writes, she does a lot more stuff in Hollywood than I do. So that's a significant chunk of her kind of creative time.

But when she, when I'm working on something, it's like, I'm like a coal miner. I'm like going down into salt pits every day. I mean, I think most mornings I wake up, I'm like, you know, I always say something like, you know, got to go make the donuts, you know, like I kind of let's, that's sort of my mindset. And usually if I'm working on something, I'm like staring at my computer screen until I figure it out. Yeah. And I've noticed my wife, who's a beautiful writer, I remember, it's great books.

Like, she will kind of be going about her business, doing whatever she's doing in a day, you know, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily writing, you know, but she goes, and I'll know she's, you know, working on something because she'll allude to it. She won't necessarily tell me everything that's going on. And then it's a certain point. She'll just sort of, you know, announce that within the last, like, two weeks, she's, you know, written 100 pages of something. And what I've realized and recognized now about being, you know, looked with her or so long, it's like, she's working. She works it all out, like in her head. She rolls it over. And then, like, then it's finally ready.

And for her, it's just this matter of, like, dictation of everything she's already figured out. Yeah, you sometimes you're like, oh, that's what it would be like to not have the compulsions that I have. Yeah, exactly. For you, maybe it's not like this sort of relief thing. Right. You're enjoying it. And it's more balanced and healthy. Whereas, like, for me, if I don't do it, there's guilt or frustration or, like, some sort of distress.

Yeah, like, or, you know, as everyone's around, I mean, like, I sent an interview with Sork and someone asked him, like, how long does it take you to write a play or a TV show, whatever? He's like, well, I was like, it takes me about, like, a year to 15 months, but, you know, about a year to 15 months of that looks like me sitting on the couch watching ESPN. Yeah. Well, sometimes you're like, oh, yeah, I run sometimes. And I go, what? Yeah, that I don't get. Yeah, exactly. Like, what do you mean?

You don't do it every single day? Yeah, and I'm happy. Like, my work brings me joy. So if I'm not working, like, I'm not happy. And so I'm always like noodling on something, working on something. And one of the things I love about writing or just being a creative person is that like it's, you know, it's on you. So it's just, you know, I've got an idea. I want to go do it.

I've got to kind of like set a pathway of how I'm going to create this thing that I have a notion that I want to to execute and bring it to the world. I just ran with my buddy. on Town Lake Trail here in Austin, did 10 miles in roughly 70 minutes. And then I ran with his brother, his twin brother. This is my best friends from middle school. I ran with his twin brother when I was in Greece. He was there with his wife's family. We ran outside Olympia. And then in between these two runs, I ran the original marathon. I ran from Marathon to Athens. And you know what shoes I used? I used today's sponsor, Hoka. They actually have a new, new shoe, the Rocket X3, which is a race day shoe that's engineered for speed when every second

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and you can check out this cool video I did about the Marathon Run, which Hokka is sponsored. I'll link to that in description. Or you can just go to dailystolic.com slash marathon. So you measure in time, but you measure your writing in word count. In words, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, they're kind of opposite.

They're very opposite. Yeah, yeah. I would never measure my writing at time. See, I would think time you're like, hey, I put in the work, sometimes it's good. Like sometimes the inspiration struck, sometimes I pulled it off, but what mattered is that like I made the space to do it whereas word count to me feels I don't like word count because it feels arbitrary in a way that like time on a run doesn't or a pace on a run doesn't feel arbitrary which is like you could have a thousand shitty words yeah and often you

do yeah for me it's all about like holding your self-accountability yeah right yeah yeah so if I'm running my hour out I guess you could say uh and and it's also like self-knowledge because I know myself. I would never tell anyone else that they should do it the way that I do it. I'm like, okay, but given my psychology, I know myself all enough to know that if I am running out and back and like my turnaway point today is like a half mile shorter than my turn. I'm going to be so filled with self-loathing that like I'm going to run faster. I just, well, I'm not going to let that happen. And actually one of the reasons I like, you know, running in cities where I've never been, or running places I've never been, is because I'm like, well,

I'm not going to have this, like, moment of, like, you didn't get to as far as you did last time, Elliot, like, you know, like, I can enjoy the run a little more because I, like, don't, you know, I mean. Yeah. And I think with, with writing, for whatever reason, for me, being like, listen, my work today is these thousand words. Or, you know, even if I'm revising something, it's going to revise these 20 pages or whatever it is.

It's like whether the thousand words are good or bad doesn't matter. Like, you got them down. And then what I always do the next morning is, I reread, or actually I do it in the afternoon. I read what I've done. And then I'm merciless, and I read it like someone else did it, and I'll chop up and delete half those words, but it doesn't matter because I did write them in the first place. So I feel like to get the good words, you've got to write the bad words.

If you're only trying to write good words, you're probably not going to write that much. Yeah, I just tend to see, like, sitting in the chair as an equally valid proxy. Because, I mean, like, sometimes you're thinking, and that still counts as sitting in the chair and doing the thing. I don't know. I don't do word count as much because, I don't know, I just never, like, even, even like in the contract, you know, you sign a book contract and then 70,000 words, it doesn't matter, you know, like, the book is the book.

So I've just, I have a sort of an aversion to word count. And maybe it's also because I think that's one of the things you hear from, like, either amateurs or people who suck is a lot of focus on word count, right? where they're like, I wrote, like, how many words a day do you, like, as if it's an impressive number. Right, right, right. Right. Is it so, it's so ultimately not tied to the main thing.

Like I've never, you're also, you strike me as someone who's less distractible than me. Oh, no. I don't know about that. Yeah. I think the thing with me is, like, I got to do it because otherwise I'll get, I'll get distracted or I'll not. Like, I got to, I don't know. I just feel like I want to, you know, I know every day where, like, the story's going.

And I know what the next day's work is going to be. And then I just sort of. of like, all right, I'm going to keep going. And, you know, and, oh, by the way, it always winds it being almost the exact same amount of time. Yeah, sure. Each day, you know what I mean? So is fiction different than nonfiction for you? Like, is it the same approach?

Yeah, I mean, in terms of like word count and how I think about things and just, you know, I mean, and it's, and oh, by the way, it's also like I will write my, you know, it's not like I get to a thousand words and it's done. I'll get to like roughly there and then I write words that I give myself for the next day, if that makes sense. Like you leave some. Oh. So, like, I'll hit. I'll hit like a thousand and then I'll be like, all right, I'm going to get, you know, but I'll be like, oh, I got to finish this idea, you know, and I got to kind of put then I'll like, and this is actually if you really want to know, it's, it might be boring, but like, I'll write in all caps the words that over that are like my starting for the next day. So you're like priming the pump for tomorrow. I'm priming the pump for tomorrow so that when I show up, I'm not cold. Like, well, these ones count for today. And then I just keep going.

You're already 10% done? Exactly. I'm like 10% done. Like, oh, this feels great. I didn't even have to do anything. It's like the gift I give myself from yesterday. Well, Hemingway talked about how, you know, if you stop in the middle of a sentence, I think there's something to that. There is actually, I mean, I stole it, and I stole it, but like, I've heard Hermanwe's sounds like, that makes sense. Like, it gives you so you don't have a totally cold start. You can, you know, you have like two or three sentences that are yours to, you know,

it's like, yeah, you sort of fire. So you're a little bit of kindling. And then you're like, all right, those two or three and then I'm going to keep going. So the idea that discipline is a gift that you're giving yourself tomorrow is an interesting way to think about it, right? So like by doing extra work or by doing not eating the thing you shouldn't eat or eating the thing you should eat or pushing yourself a little bit further, you're like, this is this is something future me can you. I think about that as with research, right? Because everything I'm doing now is a result of work that I did a while ago. And then so

I'm sort of haunted by the question of like what am I going to be withdrawing from a year from now? I absolutely think, though, I think discipline is like, yeah, it is gifts you're giving to your future, so. Yes. It's time travel. Yeah, it is. It's like a form of time travel. And I don't know. And I find I'm the happiest when I'm, I mean, it sounds very unromantic to say, but I find, like, being a Marine and having this background, it was like fantastic preparation for being a writer.

Sure. Because it, you learn the discipline. Yes. You know, and you learn that, like, things just suck a lot of the time. And you're just, like, going to have to be comfortable with things sucking. and like, you know, the world not always like shining in your face and just sort of being miserable. Yeah. So it's like it's actually, it's pretty great.

And then, yeah, but then that idea of, yeah, just this sort of like the grind, you know, there's a real value in just kind of grinding work that I feel like we don't talk about as much because it's not very romantic. What people want to hear about is that like, you know, you like go into the desert like Jim. Morrison and have like a little, you know, dance party and you come out and there's like total genius. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or whatever it is. You know, so I'm like, no, I think it's more like just kind of a lot of times just grinding.

No, it's a job like any other job. And you have to put in the hours and the work. And I do, I do think people that were attracted to it first and foremost as a sort of an art or a symbol or something have trouble developing the discipline. But if you come to it from the discipline first or you have some. analogous discipline in your life. Like, this is what Maricami is talking about when he's talking about running, is that, like, by having this thing that sucks most, like, I've never, I've not enjoyed many runs,

but I'm almost always glad after. Always. Right? And like, the same goes for sitting down in writing. The same goes for, like, the decision to sit down and go through a book I've read to break it down, like, to do the research stuff that, like, I'm not going to get the benefits of what I'm doing for many years from. from now. Or pushing through reading a book that sucks, you know, but you know you need it for something.

Like, so if you have something in your life where you're like, I do hard things, even though I don't want to and even though they're not fun while I'm doing them, but afterwards I get benefits. I think cold plunge is a perfect metaphor for this. I've said that. I think that given the people that talk a lot about cold plunges and the utter pseudoscience that they also believe in. Have you done it? I have one. Right at my house at the shoot. Yeah. Like, I am more. and more convinced that there are zero health benefits to it, like that it's total nonsense. But I do it anyway because I think its primary benefit is that it is unpleasant and you don't want to do it. And you are developing the skill of doing an unpleasant thing for a amount of time

you've committed to doing it and then feeling the invigoration and the pride and self-command after you have done it. Totally. One thing I have tried to always. cultivate in my life, which can at times feel sort of antithetical to the kind of, you know, the rigor of discipline in routine is like, and I'm going to respect to cold plunges, is like being very open, being like, would something lands in your lap? Yeah. And it's like unexpected, you know, I mean, and if there isn't a really good reason to say no, you were obligated to say yes. Like the universe has brought this to you. Like an editor said, hey, you want to write a thousand, do you want to write this? Yeah, you want to do something on this. And, you know, your reaction

should be yes unless there's a compelling reason to say no. Or like, so an incident that happened with me was a very good friend of my wife's. He had, he had some like just weird health problems and he was sort of trying to figure out what was going on. It's someone like, well, you should go do like a Wimhoff thing. Yeah. You know, and he was into and he was going to, and I knew he was doing this. He was telling me he was going to do it with an old friend of his.

And that friend had like a conflict that came up. And the guy who was like the certified Wimhoff instructor was like, well, if we lose him, there aren't enough people in this thing to even do it. Sure. And so they're like, so my mom was like, do you think you'd ever want to go do this? And I looked on my calendar and I had this like chunk of like six days of white space. And I was like, I really think I should, you know? And so I knew nothing about this.

And anyways, wound up like going up and it was like the tippy tip of Scotland. And like, it was, it was, and spent like a week like, you know, sitting. Do you do that stuff? Sitting in frozen, you know, in frozen streams. Yeah. I don't. Not because I'm like against it. Mainly because like I just don't.

I'll do like the cold. shower in the morning or I'll like fill my bath up cold in the winter, you know, and the like the tap, you know, is chilly and I'll do it. And I totally buy that there are, here are the health benefits I think probably, you know, exist, right? Like, I think, okay, we did like, it was really effing cold. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, brutally. Yeah. Like, the first time I did it with this, this guy and our, our instructor was like a total character, but he was like, I'm not going to tell you what we're doing. We're just going to do it. You're never going to know. It's like, I was like, maybe still hell weak, but like, you know, Wimhoff, at least for how he organized things.

But, like, I went like 30 seconds of the first time. I'm like, this is brutally cool. Like, this just seems totally miserable. And then, you know, like you go up. I think by the time we were at the end, we were like, you know, like approaching like five minutes sitting there in the cold and shivering. Yeah. But so, what, you get a lot of adrenaline out of it. You jump your, the wallers brutally cold.

Yeah. And you get out and you get this huge rush from endorphins. I think the combination of like the adrenaline and the endorphins, like it clearly boost your metabolism a little bit. Yeah. I don't know. That's probably good for you. I mean, I don't think it's going to like save your life necessarily, but I think it's not bad for you. No, it's definitely not bad for you. I just think information and, you know, stuff like that. I think about it with running too. Like, if you told me actually that running was at this point bad for my health. Yeah. I would still do it. Because it's good for my mental health. I worry about this when I get older, actually. I worry I'm going to like kill myself on the treadmill or something. Like I won't, I won't be able to. I'm going to have to go through a process of. Yeah. convincing myself that it like, you know, like having, you know, like letting go and being like you've got to now, what was once your hour run is going to be a 30 minute daughtering walk and

that's okay. I think you, to me, this is why I tried to, I do some biking and then I try to swim. I do. I cross-train too like that. Yeah, just to let's, let's swap one day on the knees for something very low impact. But you will be 87 someday probably and then you're probably. But when you're swimming, you see a lot more old people in the pool than you do, like, on a, on a trail. Yeah, on a trail, for sure. No, I have my things. I do. I do a lot. I do not run the way I ran when I was like 22. Yeah. I like switch it up with other things. Well, that, and that's my wife's point about, like, okay, so what do the, you think you're keeping the discipline up by running when it's 110, but like, what is the actual effect on you and the body that, you know,

The trade-off of, like, having the discipline now at the expense of yourself later, I think that's something that kind of keeps me up at night a little bit. It's like, how do you, if there's a part of you that's always going and will always push, how do you keep that within sustainable bounds, even with writing, right? Like, you could, you know, like, the market can only support, like, I could probably write more than the market would be interested in the short amount of time. So spacing them out is a decision. giving them room to breathe that is a decision and then also just like burn out like the

decision to go like hey I'm going to I'm going to actually exert the discipline here to not do than to do more that is sometimes harder yeah I think that can that can be harder I think you've got to you know you I think it's important to sort of get into the the paradigms that work for you and support your goals like you know like when I was in the military for a long time I mean I I thought about my fitness in like very specific terms, like the tests I needed to pass, the courses I was going to. And, you know, it wasn't, there weren't like wild shifts in how I was training, but I was very cognizant of like, you know, I got to hit these metrics. And then I got out and I was like, okay, well, what are my metrics I'm going to hit? Yeah. And I sort of landed on a very basic metric, which was, all right, when I am 90 years old, I don't want to be fat. I don't want to be broken. Yeah. And I was like, all right. So everything. all my fitness goal. And oh, by the way, this two are like connected. Yeah. So, you know, you know. But maybe even attention. Right, right, right. But so I was like all of my fitness goal should be leading to this like long term goal of like being that, you know, like I have a friend

who's a family friend who's, I mean, he's about to turn 90 and he still skis. Yeah. And not like, like, you know, he really goes out and he skis every winter. I'm like, man, I want to be that guy. Yeah. And of course, you know, genes and other things factor into that. But, you know, some of it is just like good life choices. Like, you know, so I stopped. like, you know, I don't clean press above my head much anymore. Yeah. You know, and I'm not going to, like, tell someone, know, you can't ever do that safely.

But, like, you know, my random sampling of people I know who've done a lot of clean presses over their heads, like for years and years and years and years, like it doesn't get you to being 90 years old and not broken. Right. So. Yeah, no, I need to start stretching. I don't have any stretching.

Yoga. Do you go yoga. I hate it. I do yoga once a week for an hour. Okay. See, that's an invest. That might actually be more an investment in being what you want to be when you're 80, then the running is.

So I started doing it. I had always been a runner in the military. And then my same good buddy who I ran with on his birthday, he got into where I worked at the agency, like, you know, for there's different corporate cultures where you go, like some places they golf, some people, places they surf. Here it was like, it was like, it was ultra marathoning. Yeah. And so it's like, oh, you want to come around this ultra?

I'm like, actually, I kind of don't. Like, well, all the bigwigs are going to be. I'm like, all right, I guess I should probably go run this ultra marathon. So you invited me to come around this ultra. And I'm like, well, I had done a couple marathons that I've been a really good shift. Like, you know, I could probably just cold run this marathon and it won't be a total disaster. And it got in a way. It's like, well, so if this one ultra, like, you know, I do need to, like, I need.

That's a bit further. Yeah, like, I need train for this properly. And someone gave me advice. It's like, you know, for injury prevention, like make sure you're doing really good yoga, like one day a week and you won't get injured. And so I started doing that like, guys, I mean, 15 years ago now, once a week. And it is like, I swear by it. And I do the same video. And it is, it's on YouTube.

It's Brian Kess Power Yoga 3. Okay. You can Google it. And it's like from 1989, he does the entire hour long session wearing like cut off jeans, no shirt, like a dream catcher thing around like his phraselet around his sort of upper arm and long hair. It's like, but yeah, it works. I did this book for Chris Bosch a couple years ago and he was telling me this story about when they all went to the heat. they get in the plane and they're flying after a game and LeBron James starts doing like yoga in the aisle of the plane and they're all laughing at him you know this is like quite some time ago

they're all laughing like it's lame it's weird what are you doing and and then he's like he's the only one of us that's still playing it's still playing I know I can tell I can tell like if I have to miss it or I haven't done it like I can totally tell the difference yeah I really I swear by it you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.