The Daily Stoic - YouTube Superstar Ali Abdaal on Productivity and Essentialism (PT 2)

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with YouTube Superstar Ali Abdaal during part 2 of 2 interview on how stoicism influences analytics, concrete vs. ineffable, the importance of sticking to the system, and his new book: Feel Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You.Ali Abdaal is a doctor, entrepreneur, and the world’s most followed productivity expert. He became intrigued by the science of productivity while juggling the demands of medical training at Cambridge University with building his business. Ali’s evidence-based videos, podcasts, and articles about the human mind have reached hundreds of millions of people around the world. YouTube | IG | Twitter/X: @AliAbdaalListen to his podcast (where this episode will also be released) Deep Dive with Ali Abdall.✉️ 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.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. 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 St 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. I'll get right into it because we're bringing you part two of my interview with the one and only Ali Abdul.

and only Ali Abdul trained at Cambridge University. It's where to become a doctor. Just a guy who loves reading, who loves learning, who loves systems, and he started making YouTube videos on the side, and somehow became one of the world's most followed productivity experts. And he's been working on this book for a long time. I met him when he was just thinking about doing it. And so now to see it out in the world, that's pretty awesome.

You can check out FeelGood productivity, how to do more of what matters to you. He came all the way out from England to do an interview at the Painted Ports. I think it went great. I think you'll like it. You can follow him, Ali, Abdel, everywhere on all the major platforms.

Check out his YouTube channel if you're looking for a good subscribe and grab FeelGood productivity as well. Yeah, my YouTube channel is essentially an exploration of the stuff I'm interested in and I've recently started to become interested in relationships in terms of reading books about how to have a healthier, happier relationship. And I hope that when I become a dad and continue making videos, then I'll be like, yeah, reading all these parenting books and making a video every couple of months to be like, right, just read the unconditional parenting alphic arts. Good, good, good, yeah, 10 takeaways, that sort of stuff. I found I guess similar to you writing daily stoic, through me trying to make a video or two every week for six plus years, or personal development adjacent those lessons seep into your subconscious in a way that they

really wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, yeah. Seneca says we learn as we teach. And so if you as a person who writes self-help books or makes YouTube videos or it's pockets or whatever. If you're thinking, I'm really smart and I am telling you everything that I know. Not only is that you could just go, but it actually continues to inflate and puff up the ego, right? But if instead you see it as like, I am trying to figure things out and I am explaining what I am learning as I am learning it. You are learning it and other people are learning it and you're creating this feedback loop

in which you're both learning at the same time. And by having to articulate it and explain it and distill it, You are understanding it better than if you were just learning it for yourself. Yeah. There's a book I'm reading at the moment called Notes from a Fellow Traveler by Darren Brown. He's a magician.

Yeah, yeah. He's really a mysticism, I mean. Oh, he's a book happy. He's very good at basically all about stoicism. Whenever you're like the title of that book, Notes from a Fellow Traveler, he's sort of a book written for other magicians, but that framing like a Fellow Traveler. I really like that, because he's not trying to be a guru. He's sort of a book written for other magicians, but that framing,

like a fellow traveler. I really like that, because he's not trying to be a guru. He's not saying I've got the answers. He's just like, hey, I'm in this business just as you are, and here are some notes. I just love that framing of it. It just takes, takes all the pressure off, reduces the seriousness, makes it feel more like play, all of the good things. Yeah, someone who's just a little bit further along the path in some ways, or with their own things and you're sort of channeling that and trying to make it accessible and practical To other people What is what what are some like I really like this list of the the parenting some things do you have any on relationships in general like

The romantic relationship with your wife and things. What are some things that you guys do that maybe you've discovered through reading and stuff? Well, I always say that the number one so I've been with my wife now for 17 years. We met when we were in college and we met at a college party. We got married almost 10 years ago. Eight years is your nine years. So it's been a long time. So it's, and we've basically been married that whole time, in that we always had a very sort of involved,

like serious relationship. As opposed to just, we know each other a long time. And so people sometimes ask what a secret to like, oh, you know, lasting that long is, and I usually say that the secret is to not break up. That's the secret. That's the number one secret is just not break up. Because I'm joking, but I'm also not joking, right?

Like, I think just as a productivity system or a business or a lifestyle, it's about picking a thing and then sticking with that thing, right? Through the ups and downs of what life inevitably brings you. And I find, you know, obviously we got together before online dating was really even a thing, but then dating apps and like I noticed that a lot of my friends struggle because it's easy to break up and it's easy to find another person. Do you know what I mean? Like essentially an unlimited amount of other fish in the sea exists. And if you conceive of that,

it makes it very hard to do what a relationship requires. You know what I mean? Which is sacrifice, which is struggle, which is putting up with shit. So it's hard. It's really hard. It's hard. So I profess to have no secrets other than don't quit.

I mean, it's amazing how in all these different spheres, like, you know, the stuff you were talking about with kids, presence, patients, rooting without conditions, judgment expectations, being repair and not being perfect. All of that stuff applies to every other aspect of life as well, like work too. Well, even the kids have applied to yourself, right? Because we all have sort of, we all have this inner child that needs work, right? That's stuck somewhere, not fully developed. And one of the beautiful things about having kids is the way that it allows you to repair

it yourself, because you suddenly fully understand what a six-year-old is going through or a nine-year-old is going through or a nine-month-old is going through. And you can see more clearly now the things that you didn't get that maybe you needed or the ways that how everyone used to do things was insufficient, maybe just for you specifically, or maybe just as a practice, it was terrible. And you can kinda see, oh, okay, I can't go back in time and fix that,

but I can do things differently here, and I can also empathize, connect with an earlier version of myself that needed those things to, and that by giving that thing to someone else, you're also partly healing yourself. That's great stuff. You're in pretty good shape. What are some of the secrets to staying in good shape as you've been a bit apparent? I possess to have, profess that notice secrets there either other than I try to run, swim, or bike every day. I just try to do some hard, strenuous, physical activity every day.

And if there is a health benefit to that, I consider it a bonus on top of the two real benefits that having exercise practice gives you. One, you are literally practicing having a practice. Like every day I go for a run. The default is that I do the thing. And every time I do the thing, I am building the muscle of doing the thing and being the kind of person that does what I say I'm going to do. Yeah. Like it's not fun to do it. It can hurt to do it. But

I get up off the couch and I do the thing that I say I'm going to do. And the second benefit of having a physical practice is that it's usually getting the mind moving in some way. And so, you know, there's no screens, there's no multitasking. You're just in that headspace. So I have the flow state every day from the physical activity. And the days when I don't have it, nothing else is as works as well. Do you do any weight training?

Yeah, I try to lift weights like, I don't know a couple of times when you've been like, I've seen some B-roll of you in like the backyard. Yeah, I like some kettlebells or I have a squat rack. I do some stuff, and the pandemic, I got more into it than I do now. The important thing for me is I run swim or bike like they do

some form of cardio exercise for a long period of time. And if I can get the other stuff in, sure. Changing gears a bit. I was relisting to the conversation we had three years ago in the car on the way here. And the one of the things you said in that has actually stayed with me for the last three years. It was something to the effect of, you know, you've got all these friends who are in real estate. And sometimes you're like, huh, maybe I should get into real estate. And then you realize all your friends want to be self-help book writers. And you're like,

I'm going to put a good gig. Yeah. I wonder if you can just sort of riff on that for a second. Senaqa had this word, euphemia, which defines as tranquility. Is this tranquility is the sense of the path that you were on and not being distracted by the paths that Chris Cross yours is especially from those who are hopelessly lost. Which I think is very beautiful and true. Sometimes you find like when you're running, you know, someone will pass you.

And you go, are they faster than me? They could have started eight seconds ago and you could be five miles in, or they could be stronger than you. They could be doing sterile. You know, like, the idea that you're comparing yourself to this person when you don't know when they started and you don't know where they're finishing is madness, right?

And life is like that. Like we're all running our own races, and you've got to have a sense of the race that you are running and what victory or success in that race is to you. So I think that's like the number one life lesson. And something I remember learning when we're running around this tracking college,

and I would sometimes catch myself picking up my pace to keep up with someone else. And then they would stop. And I'm like, I just sometimes catch myself picking up my pace to keep up with someone else. And then they would stop. And I'm like, I just gasped myself. You know, now I have to cut the run short because I was competing with this person. And I have no idea what their goals are, what they're doing.

I know nothing about them other than someone competition, and it sucks you in. So I think that's a really important lesson that I've learned from the physical practice over the years. But one of the things about jealousy or these are envy, that sort of competitive urge that we feel in other parts of our lives is that we don't spend a lot of time thinking about who that other person is, what their life is like, and what they want. Marcus Ruez says, the people whose approval you crave,

he says, take a minute to think about who they really are and see what that does to the approval you want from them. It's like you just go, oh, this person has this, I want to be like them, or I want to be accepted into that group. I want to be in this club, and you're not really thinking about who those people are, what they do, whether it's working for them.

And I've had this surreal experience pertaining to that, where you meet people, and you think they have it all. And then, you know, you're jealous of them. And then it turns out they're jealous of you, right? Like you, you, jealousy almost always takes for granted what you have because it's, you know, eyeing what someone else has. And there's usually an ignorance of, would you act, what is it actually like to be that other person? And I've, yeah, I found, it's funny.

You meet, you meet these billionaires or whatever, and what do they actually want to do? They want to write books. Like they, they have all the money in the world, and what are they trying to spend the money on? They're trying to spend it on having the thing that I get to do. And so I try to remind myself of that and count myself as lucky to get to do this. Do you feel that sense of comparison?

Or do you, like, did you ever feel that sense of comparison when it comes to best set of lists and book sales numbers? And James Clears got this many five-store reviews on Amazon and I've only got this many five store, you know, that whole shabang. Well, that's why it's important to understand what race you're running, right? So, I remember I was at a conference in Canada. I don't remember. I was at some conference in James who was then, he had this popular newsletter and I surveyed the news work retort a couple of times. I was doing a panel or a session on publishing and he came and he asked for a bunch of advice, but he was just generally, if I remember correctly, quite skeptical about why anyone would traditionally publish or publish a book at all. He's like, why would I do this? I have this huge email newsletter, why wouldn't I just write stuff on the internet? And I thought I said,

look, people have read books for thousands of years. It's a medium that has a certain cultural significance. And books are actually a great way to deliver ideas, right? But there I was a person who published, you know, a few successful books at that point. And I'm sort of like condescendingly telling this internet writer why publishing should, you know, a few successful books at that point. And I'm sort of like condescendingly telling this internet writer why publishing should, you know, be something that he considers. And then a couple years later, he puts out a book. And that one book is so more than all of my books combined and then some. So, you know, the one reaction to that would just be jealousy, scorn, sentence, like you could,

that could make you feel shitty. And I think there are times in my life when maybe that would have made me feel shitty. But first off, I like James. Second, I think he's a great writer and I think Atomic Habits is actually a very good book. And third, I don't know how many I've counting now, but whatever.

There is no universe in which that book selling more or less copies affects my life in any negative or positive way. Right? So that book could sell 100 million copies. They're not, it's not coming out of my pocket, right? So more power to them, right? And so I've tried to remind myself of that. But then what I, I've, you have to do when you realize you're running your own race, is you have to go, James is writing a book about habits, which is for everyone. I'm writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, which I would like to be for everyone. But by definition, it's probably going to be for fewer people. And that is a choice that I made willingly. I can write about whatever I want.

I could have written about whatever I want. I chose this thing, or this thing chose me because it's the right thing for me. And you have to be able to go, ah, right. This is where I'm supposed to be. I made a series of choices, and for better or for worse, those choices made some outcomes possible,

and some outcomes not possible. Like, I remember I spoke to these high ranking officers in the Navy once a couple of years ago, and I was talking about ego or something, and I said, you know, like, if you got into this for like money and recognition and fame, you fucked up. Like you shouldn't have joined the Navy. Like you joined this because there were certain parts of it that lit you up that were meaningful to you that you thought were the right fit for you. You chose classical music, not pop music, right? And

by nature of making that choice, some outcomes are possible and some outcomes are not possible. And you have to accept that. And the worst thing you can do is make those choices, which are objective and a sort of unbeatable. and then work really hard and expect things that are in contradiction of that choice. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you're a classical musician and you go, my goal is to be the best classical musician I can be and to push the boundaries of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you can succeed. If you go, I'm putting out this album and I hope it debuts at number one on the Billboard charts, you know, you're almost surely going to be severely disappointed because you've chosen something that is a smaller pool. You know, maybe you have a higher floor

but a lower ceiling. That's the nature of the choice that you made. Being honest with yourself about that is really, really important. At least for happiness. 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

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Combining an original score Dolby Atmos Sound Design and the richness of theatrical performance Anne of Green Gables. Listen now, only on Audible. Do you have a meet-right to us who you feel have sort of this unhealthy relationship with comparison? Like, or most of the people you just hang out with fairly enlightened? No, no. I mean, definitely there's people that are, you know, sort of driven by how much they sell,

or how much money they make or whatever. But again, if that's why you got into books, you fucked up, you know what I mean? Like if you got into writing books for money and fame and power, you're an idiot. Like, like, there's, that's not even, that's like, that's probably the worst of all the different genres of entertainment or show business. You pick the worst one. For that, if that's what you're optimizing for, you pick the worst one.

So to expect, like the Stokes say, don't expect figs in winter. That's like the essence of happiness is to not expect figs in winter There's a time when you can get figs and it's not winter So, you know, you can be successful writing books you can make a Good amount of money you can make more money than you need But are you going to rival the fortune of Warren Buffett? No. So to expect otherwise is probably silly. It's not probably silly. It's stupid. It's stupid. And it's not fair. It's not fair to you or to the people around you, right? Because you are feeling aggrieved that you didn't get something that it was not possible

I've ever to get. So my book is coming out and at the end of December, so I'm not sure when this is going to be aired, but end of December, any advice. It's the first one. You've been been through this a lot. Yeah. So I always tell people when they finish a book that you have completed the first of two marathons. And you finish this first marathon and you think, you know, you stagger, how's it finished? And you think there, someone grabs you by the hand

and you think that they're gonna take you over to like the metal stand. And instead they're just leading you over to the starting line of the second marathon, which is now marketing and selling the book, talking about it, and getting it into people's hands. And so understanding that these are two equally important races, I think is really, really important. And not enough people do that.

They just bright something and then they just expect or assume that the world owes them success, which it doesn't. People are busy, people have a lot going on. There's not only all the books that are coming out, but there's literally everything that has ever been published for all of human history up until this point. And a lot of it is very good.

And most people haven't even gotten to a fraction of that. So the idea that your thing is gonna jump in front of that line is inherently presumptuous, if not delusional. And so it takes a lot of work to break through. The obstacle is the way when it came out. First off, you know, I said to myself, I'm writing a book about ancient philosophy. Most people are not interested in ancient philosophy.

Yeah. So it's already an uphill battle. And then I said to myself, I read a lot. How many books do I read the week they come out? Or the month they come out? But the year they come out. And I read way more than most people. How many books have I pre-ordered ever in my life? Maybe one or two? So the idea that this thing is going to come out of the gates as they hit is stupid. It's gonna take a long time.

So first off, try to make something that doesn't have an expiration date on it. That's number one. Number two, seeing it as a marathon and not a sprint, it's really, really important. So the obstacle's the way it came out in May of 2014. I'd started writing it in 2012. So it took two years, came out. It sold three, four thousand copies.

It's first week. It got skunked on the Neurotransp cellar list. And it probably sold enough to hit that what was then the extended list. There was 20 spots on the advice I to then, and it didn't. And it certainly sold enough to it, though Wall Street Journal hardcover business list. And someone at my publisher had decided

to list it as a different, like it didn't qualify for that list. Like they categorized it, checked the box, categorized it, something different, didn't hit it. So it did not hit any bestseller lists until September of 2019. Wow, nice. At which point did it hit sold close to a million copies?

So again, we think, like, you know, we think of what a best seller is, we forget that best seller lists are categorized by the week. So a book that sells 10,000 copies in one week will hit a best seller list for that week, almost certainly. But a book that sells 1,000 copies a week for a year, sell five times as many copies, but almost certainly not make any bestseller list. Which would you rather have? And so it's about setting yourself up to last and it's about not quitting on it.

Nice. And the obstacle is way sales. Most years sells more copies than it did the previous year, which is, you know, pretty rare in publishing. But every single week that comes out, it is out. How many copies it sold in its first week becomes less and less important, right? And unless you are not successful, that will be true for your project.

Right? Like every week, the percentage of how you did at the beginning comes more and more in the maintenance. It becomes more and more meaningless. But that's very hard to think about when you, when it is 100% of the weeks that you have been out. Right. Takes time and realizing that when the thing I've tried to send to myself is the two people who have never heard of you, you are new. So I'll probably almost certainly have an email in my inbox when I get done from this, from someone and say, I just read your book, the obstacle's way, that is approaching

it's 10 year anniversary, right? And so to them, it's a brand new book. And it's a brand new book to them because they're a junior in high school. And they were eight when it came out. Yeah. You know? And so, you know, that's what sort of lasting can do. And to, yeah, to sort of be patient with is the main thing.

One of the ways that we have a telegram group for a podcast, and we said we were gonna an interview, and we were like, load the people asking you other questions. There's one comment from one guy that I felt a bit salty about. He was like, Ryan Holiday says the same stuff on every podcast he's interviewed on.

And I was like, because I also, I say the same stuff on every podcast on the interview, and it's like, it's kind of like a thing you have to do. And I like, I found that it was less a common in you and more like, I started thinking, fuck, I've made the same video so many times. I've been talking about productivity

for like six plus years now. Basically, you've been saying the same stuff, but each month we get like 100,000 new subscribers. It's clear you need to someone. Yeah, there's some main character energy in people who don't realize that most people are consuming this thing for the first time and hearing about this person for the first time. So, you know, as a creator, there's a little bit of narcissism in that you go like, everyone's following everything that I do.

And in fact, not only is most people not know that you exist, even the people that know you exist and our fans, you're like 500th on their list of priorities. Like I think about my favorite bands, I've ever authors, like, how closely am I following their life? Like, not at all. I'm I'm in the conti- main character energy of my own life. So realizing that like, that self-consciousness can actually hold you back as a creator, because you're like, though people will get mad that I just talked about this two videos

ago. And actually, they didn't see you two videos ago, so you're not. But the other product of this is, the other part I would say to that person that's a little tricky is it's like, just not my fault. I can only answer the questions that I do, yes. And I tend to get asked the same questions a lot, right? What is this?

So I would love to have a totally new and unique conversation every time. And I do, I definitely feel like there are ones where I'm like, that was interesting to me for a change. I didn't feel like I was sort of, you know, giving the same song and dance. But a lot of people are just asking the same questions because they're introducing you to their audience

or they wanna get the basics, you know what I mean? So it's, it can be weird. Do you ever get bored writing about stoicism? Not really, because one of the ideas from the Greeks is this idea that we don't step in the same river twice. Because the river changes and you change. And so, I mean, I've been doing the deal is talking about every day for seven years. And I've been doing the deal with Stoke Emile everyday for seven years and I've probably used

some of the same quotes hundreds of times at this point, but it feels new to me every time I do it because what I'm trying to say or the way into the idea is different and I know the audience is different and I know what's happening in the world is different. So it keeps, it certainly keeps me, it feels fresh to me because life is fresh. But when I am bored, I just write about whatever I want. You know, like, it isn't the only thing that I do. And so when I feel like writing something, I write that thing.

Yeah, because people sometimes ask me that, you know, you board on, you board a talking about productivity. Like honestly, not really. Like I'm bored of, I guess, making videos that are like top 10 productivity tools. But I do very little of that these days. And I think productivity is, you know, really just about using our time well, which covers basically everything

in personal development. So even if I'm writing about relationships or making a video about health, I would count that as productivity. Yeah, but also productivity to you when you were in medical school is different than what productivity is to you now as you are not in medicine. It's different to you when you had one employee, it's different to you when you had 10. What you're going through and where you're applying it is fundamentally different. So, you know, you're talking about the same ideas. You have a larger sense of it.

You have a larger set of experiences to draw from. And so, even if it is the same, it's better and different because it's based on more. Nice. Why do even people are so interested in passive income? Ha, ha, ha. Ah, I'm really interested in passive income. Does it exist?

I think it does. So this is the whole dream. I'm not sure if Tim Ferriss used the phrase in For Our Work week or if it was a thing afterwards. But I remember reading that book when I was like 17 and just about to apply to medical school. And my mind just absolutely blew wide open at the thought that I could be making money while I stepped and just that thing of like, you know, was always in back my mind.

And now we know it's another one of those things that anytime we make a video on YouTube, with the phrase passive income in it, we know it's going to do well, because people love the idea of doing a thing and then it's making money without needing your additional input. I think kind of like books, books are also passive income. Yeah, what intellectual properties. Exactly. Yeah, you know, you wrote the obstacle as the way 10 years ago. And it's not been making you passive income ever since.

I've certainly found in our business the stuff that I, I get so much satisfaction out of seeing like a striped notification that someone bought a course I filmed three years ago, and I've made $149 from it. And a way less satisfaction making way more money on a sponsored video. There's something about it being an asset that is spinning off, I guess, free money. That is like really nice. And also, I guess it really appeals to other people. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was talking to an internet marketer, a person that I knew, and you know, like let's say,

he was saying like the email subject client like, follow strategy to make $1,000 a month or to make thousands of dollars a month would actually perform worse than say like, this strategy helps me make $1444 and 17 cents per month. Like the spec- was saying, like the specificity of it, even if it was total nonsense, resonated with people more. And I always wondered what, there's something, now you've not the wrong, right word,

maybe unsophisticated is a nicer way to say that, about the idea that, if you just do all this stuff, at some point you won't have to do anything. Do you know what I mean? Because that's not really how life works in my experience. Yeah, no, it's not really how life works. Nor is it how you would actually,

nor is it how life works for most of the people that you admire. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, people who do stuff that you're like, that's cool. I want to be like that. Are not people who own a series of bending machines that passively make money while they sleep. Do you know what I mean? They're people who are actively engaged in what they do. Yeah, I guess. So, I've kind of gone back and forth in this whole passive

income thing. We still make videos about passive income and I always do a whole 20 minutes of philosophizing at the start to be like, okay, here's how money works. Money's an exchange of value, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I find that, like, if I think back to myself, back when I was in medical school, the thought of being able to, if someone gave me a vending machine business, and it was making 3,000 a month, I'm like, whoa! I never need to work it down my life now.

Now I can do what I really want to do. Sure. And just that being able to cover the basics through some sort of automated income stream, even if it's not like, greatness or anything, even if it's just like, I don't know, automated vending machines selling cook cans or like

a T-shirt business or whatever the thing is, I think that is still very appealing because then it's like cool. The base is in our cupboard. I can now spend my time doing the things that I actually want to do. I get that. Yeah, I thought about it that way earlier in my career. I mean, first of I had a job as I was becoming a writer, which allowed me to make certain creative decisions

that maybe if I was a starving artist, I wouldn't have been able, I wouldn't have had the luxury of being able to turn things down or doing things a certain way or having as much time. But then yeah, I thought I was like, I don't have a trust fund, but if I have sort of income streams other than like the creative work that I do,

it's like I gave myself a trust fund. And now I have a certain amount of freedom or independence that I wouldn't if I was living and dying by how a single I can. Yes. Or till I burned through the book advance or whatever it was. Yes. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it.

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Because with hotels, you often don't have the luxury of extra space or privacy. Recently, I had a bunch of friends come down to visit in Mexico. We found this large house and the place had a pool, a barbecue, a kitchen, and a great big living room to play cards. Watch movies and just chill out. It honestly made all the difference in the trip. It felt like we were all roommates again. The next time you're planning a trip, whether it's with friends, family, or yourself, check

out Airbnb to find something you won't forget. Yeah, honestly, like, there, and anytime I make one of these money-themed videos, there are always some comments that say, oh, I can't believe you're so obsessed with money, like, stop talking about money all the time. I'm like, oh, this guy's such a, so greedy and stuff. But I'm always like, no, like, having, having more of the one stream of income is genuinely life-changing. Yeah. Like, the fact that I had money coming in from my YouTube channel and my business meant

that I could leave my day job or at least go part time on it to focus on the thing that actually brought me joy and fulfillment. Being able to have an extra stream of income is what allows parents to spend more time with their kids. It's like one of the most worthwhile things in the world to have if you care about personal,

freedom, fulfillment and stuff. And so I always sort of feel, I feel a bit distasteful of the phrase, passive income. But I almost view it as a bit of a Trojan horse into kind of teaching people that like, hey, you know, the way you actually make money is by creating X amount of value and capturing Y percent of it. Now just figure out a way that you can do that. That's not correlated with your time. Generally, by creating something that's like media or code or basically those two things. Yeah, we're investments or money itself.

Yeah, people talk about like, I wanna earn like fuck you money. But really you could just have enough to be like, yeah, you know, or like, I don't need to. Or you know, just enough that it can kind of help you swing you one way or another as you're thinking about making a decision. Do you know what I mean?

Whereas if your livelihood is dependent on this thing entirely. It's really helpful. I think about like, I mean obviously you're not American, but in America, the fact that for most people, their health insurance is tied up. Yeah, that's all I'm saying.

Especially as a country that celebrates entrepreneurialism and risk-taking, it seems like the most basic thing in the world that you would want to separate those two things. So people could take bigger risks and bet on themselves and do like, you shouldn't think I could literally die if I leave my job. That's madness to me. But being able to go, hey, actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see where this thing takes me and I know I'm not gonna starve.

Like I know that I have this thing. And maybe it's not covering my full expenses. Like you know what I mean? Like I have these things that allow me, like when I did, the obstacle is the way my publisher offered me about half of what I've gotten paid for my first book. So if I didn't have my day job,

I probably, I don't know if I would have said yes. But I, I wasn't indifferent to money, but I was able to go, I really don't care what the amount is. What I care about is, are you going to publish this book? As if you are, then I'm going to go on and on this thing. Do you know what I mean? And so having, I do see how that gives you, gives you a certain amount of freedom of movement. Yeah, I think even in the UK, so obviously, health insurance is not tied to your employment and the national health service

is very good. But even then, people still act as if quitting their job means that they're gonna die. Yes. And I often speak to people who, you know, like, you know, back in the day, I was a bit concerned that, oh, if I leave medicine, will people think,

oh, fuck you, I don't wanna listen to your content anymore? But it's actually kind of the opposite's happened. People are like, oh man, you got out of the system. You like, I don't know, something about the matrix and stuff. So people keep asking you, ask me for advice around quitting their job all the time.

They're like, yeah, I really wanna leave my job and do this thing. I'm like, great, what's stopping you. They're like, oh, but like, you know, the paycheck and They're like, yeah, I really want to leave my job and do this thing. I'm like, great, what's stopping you? They're like, oh, but the paycheck. And I'm like, okay, are you on the poverty line? Where this paycheck is actually meaningful. There is a difference between survival and not. I'm like, nope, have you got any dependence?

Nope, these are all people in their 20s that have a safety in it from their parents. And yet still, the thought I might quote, fall behind. And fall behind my friends who are then getting that promotion at McKinsey or whatever the thing might be, is preventing people from making a decision. They're just very unlikely to regret. So I try and like nudge that as much as possible.

Well, I got so lucky when I dropped out of college, as I, I've talked about this before, but when I went in there, I was like, I'm here to drop out of college. And they were like, what? You know, they're like, just fill out this form. You take out, you're, you're just taking an indefinite leave of absence and come back whenever you want. There were some consequences like, I remember I was signing, I signed something and it was like, your scholarship may not be here when you're back. As an adult now, I realized I probably just

would have given it to me again. But like, so there, it wasn't totally without cost, but there was the idea that like I thought it was this permanent irrevocable lifestyle decision when in fact it was a pause. And you think, hey, I'm gonna leave this to go do this. I'm gonna go give this a try. I'm gonna open this coffee shop. And you think you can never go back. Yeah.

And of course you can go back. If you were in the hospital for a year, would you be sitting there going think you can never go back. And of course you can go back. If you were in the hospital for a year, would you be sitting there going, I can never go back to my job. No, you would know there's gonna be an adjustment period. I might have some catch up, I have to, but you just go get another job. Like that's how life works.

Right. And, but especially when you're younger and you don't have the experience, it feels like the shift or the transition or the quitting can never be end on. And only one time you realize that the stakes were so much lower than you thought they were. Yeah. Yeah. I find the the Tim Firth fear setting exercise. Would you just really help actually the worst case in your year. What's the worst case?

And I was like, okay, what does it look like? How could you make it against it? Let's say the worst case does happen. What can you do to come back to where you currently are or at least some place that's good enough? I think I've done that three or four times in my life at the sort of crux of making a big decision. And I've always been like, oh, this is really helpful.

Yeah, the worst case is never as bad as we think it is and recovering from the worst cases also never as bad as we think it is and recovering from the worst cases is also never as hot as we initially think it's gonna be. Yeah, I remember what I was thinking of dropping out. I was talking to this person and he was telling me I should do it and I go, you know, what happens if it doesn't work out, you know? And he was like, when I was in college,

he's like, I got mono or something. He got something and he spent a year recovering. Yeah. And he's like, do you know how many times this has come up in my life? That it took me five years to graduate from college? Zero times, nobody knows. Nobody even does the math.

You started college at this date. You got your, like nobody knows. It just, as more time goes by, it just all, like you spent your time in college and I'm not in college. No one's like, oh, but what about that year between your sophomore and your junior year? What was that about?

It never comes up. And his point was like, if I take this risk and it doesn't work out, I just go back and it takes you four years for graduate, five years for it, whatever, it's a rounding error in the big scheme of things. I think it's the thing that Jeff Bezos says, which is like, he's talking about the game of entrepreneurship, and he's sort of likening it to a baseball match.

He's normally in a baseball match, you can either hit one to four runs or whatever, the number is I don't know anything about baseball, but he's like in entrepreneurship, you can take a swing, but the upside of the number is. I don't know anything about baseball, but he's like in entrepreneurship, you can take a swing, but like the upside of the swing is infinite. And so if you take enough swings, you can actually get an outcome

that way outperforms what you could have done if you were doing the job thing, for example. And I think the, I wish more people would appreciate the asymmetry of the upside that you'd get from taking a risk and doing your own thing potentially. Right, so you understand,

and you articulate the downside, which is less than you think. And then it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that the upside could literally be incontransable. Like, when Jeff Bezos starts Amazon, she has some idea that it could be successful. But it would have been literally impossible to conceive of what it became,

because it didn't exist yet. And when I left, I had this sense that I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that I thought leaving got me closer, a better chance of being that writer than staying. And maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but like the writing that I ended up doing and the level at which I ended up doing it

would have been, if I thought that's what I was doing, I should have been certified. Do you know what I mean? Like I would have been a sign of a mental illness. Like any sense that this is how it was gonna go. Yeah. So you're just taking it step by step. Yeah.

I think the other big thing that I found really helpful was back in Jeff's day, where there were very few examples of what does entrepreneurship look like. Like these days, like people don't have that excuse anymore. Like if someone is even entertaining the thought of being a writer, there are a zillion interviews with professional writers out there.

Sure. Someone's been entrepreneur. There are a zillion interviews with entrepreneurs where they're literally talking about how much money they're making. Yeah. Semility for YouTube and stuff. Um, and so. Surrounding, I think in information diet is a really important part of this.

Yeah. Like even just watching videos, reading books and listening to podcasts from people who are doing the thing that you think you want to do helps you realize that, not a fairly normal. They've just been doing it for a while and that's what the outcome could look like. Yeah, like look, if you're no one goes, it must be impossible to be an accountant. How does someone become an accountant? Right, because you accountants are everywhere. Right? Although, you know, if you grew up in the inner city and your parents didn't work and you never had it, it might actually seem utterly unattainable and impossible to become that thing.

And the reality is it's not people do it every fucking day. And as I said, it's easy, but it is possible. It's very possible. And if you steep yourself in how possible it is and surround yourself, not physically, but intellectually, with people who have done it, you figure out how it can be done. And we talk a lot in these days about like, nepot Babies and nepotism. I think so much of that is, if your mom was a famous actress, sure, that gives you advantages and introductions. And you're in this sort of milieu that's beneficial. So much of that is if your mom was a famous actress, sure, that gives you advantages and introductions,

and you're in this sort of milieu that's beneficial, but also that doesn't seem impossible or impractical because your mom is doing it. She's not that great. Do you know what I mean? You're just like people do this. It is a job. You see how it works.

It's deconstructed and demystified for you in a way that allows you to go to give yourself that self assignment. Like I can do that. You have the same for me with the medicine stuff. Like I didn't have any any official advantage getting into medical school, but my birth my parents are doctors. All of my friends are parents are doctors. Basically everyone I knew growing up was a doctor. And so it doesn't seem that hard.

People become doctors, and then it was only when I started applying to medical school and stuff, where some people, oh my god, you're applying to medical school. Wow, that's so hard. Everyone I know is a doctor, it's not that big a deal. I think it's that same concept applied to everyone I know is a doctor, like it's on that big deal. I think it's that same concept applied to anything. So people probably will listen to this towards the end of the year when they start thinking of habits and resolutions. If someone's like, I wanna be more productive next year.

Yeah. What would you tell them? Ooh, if someone wants to be more productive next year. All right, I've got, well, three things. Number one is actually just figure out, or at least make rough first draft of, where do you actually want to go? Like, sure, you can be more productive

by cranking out more words per day or whatever, but like, if you're not trying to be a writer, I'm just saying that. Don't have a big sense of productivity is not a goal. Exactly, yes. Productivity is like a sort of an effectiveness measurement on route to a particular goal. And if you don't have that goal, then optimizing for productivity

is completely pointless. Yeah. So I think step one is to figure out what the goal is. You know, some people don't like the word goal. The most helpful exercise I've ever found for this is something called the Odyssey Plan from the book, Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and the other guy who's like some Stanford professors. And basically, the idea is that you imagine your life three to five years in the future

if you continue to down your current path and you write out what it would look like. Then you go back to day one, back to today, and you imagine your life three to five years from now, if you had to take a completely different path, and then you go back, and then you imagine your life three to five years from now, if you had to take a completely different path, but money was no object and you didn't care about what people thought of you. And that just gives you sort of this divergent thinking that most people just never do, and I personally enjoy doing that exercise every year year and then converting it into a, okay, what does my 12 month celebration look like? 12 months from now, what would I like to be

celebrating in the different realms of life, health, work, relationships? Joy. Those are the four that I like best in nature. And now I've got some goals written down. And there's so much evidence that says that people who write down goals, people who have goals are way more productive than people who don't, and people who write them down are even way more productive than people who don't write them down. So step one, figure out what your goals are and just write them down. Step two, I find it super helpful to just convert all of those goals into what is the action I have to take each week. So if you're, for example, trying to write a book, it might be a daily action of writing for two hours a day or a thousand words or whatever the thing might be. In my case, I'm trying to get fit and so weight training three times, three times a week

is the habit or the system and trying to develop. And then number three is putting all those things in the calendar. And then if they're in the calendar and you can turn, and you can make yourself the sort of person that does what's in the calendar, and you can turn, and you can make yourself the sort of person that does what's in the calendar, honestly, that is like 95% of all of the world's productivity advice condensed into three things. Figure out where you wanna go, turn it into,

and figure out how you're gonna get there and then just put it in the calendar and do the thing when it comes around. With a fresh year coming, what would you recommend people stop doing? Like what's a, what would you recommend people stop doing? Like what's a destructive habit that you would say to get rid of? A really big one that holds everyone back is overthinking. So much research from this book around procrastination was realizing that

procrastination is primarily an emotional problem. There is some sort of kind of fear of looking bad, fear of failure, self-doubt. The mind starts to weave all these stories about how we're not good enough to do this particular thing. And, you know, I've interviewed a couple of kind of professors in procrastination who've done all the research about this. And the whole thing is like, you've just got to find a way to cut through the bullshit that the mind will present to you and just make a start on the thing. And often procrastination is a problem with getting started because once we get started, the inertia means that we'll just continue going. It's way harder to... Objects in motion tend to continue.

Exactly. Newton's first low, yeah, we talk about that in chapter four of the book. So recognizing that has really helped me recognize that. When the mind is getting in the way, the best thing I can do is just get started with the thing. And then the mind has a habit of just sort of getting out of the way. But if people can stop overthinking

and stop letting this fear of self-doubt and failure and stuff get in the way, getting in the way of living their best life, I would love that. I would love for that to happen. All right, last question. What's something you feel like the Stoics can teach a person who wants feel good productivity?

I think the main one I always come back to is the dichotomy of control. Epic teetus is it? Yeah. There are some things that are within our control and there are other things that are not within our control. And any amount of worrying about the things that are not within our control is usually worried that it's about the things that are not within our control is usually worried that it's wasted. And I think a big part of field-good productivity is find a way to control the things that you can control.

A huge part of what drives intrinsic motivation is the sense of autonomy and so of control, the sense of we have power over what we're doing. And some people are like, well, I don't have any control over what my boss tells me to do. I was like, okay, you might not have control over the specific thing you have to do, but you might have control over how you choose to approach it.

You have control over the process. Can you find a way to make it more interesting? Can you find a way to speed it up? Can you find a way to slow it down? Can you find a way to add music in the background to make it more interesting? There is always control that we can take in basically every situation, even in situations

where we feel like we have none. And there's that quote from Victor Frankl, where he's in Auschwitz and is sort of surrounded by the German concentration camps and everything. And even in that scenario where he's got, he and his fellow inmates have no control over anything at all, at least they retain control over their own mind. And over how they choose to approach the situation. So even in the most extreme of situations, we can find the things that we can control and we can focus on controlling those. And I think that's such a nice idea from Stoicism that I was convective. No, it's very well said.

My productivity advice from Stoics would be a question. Mark Shurez says, you have to ask yourself every moment, is this essential? He says, because most of what we do and say is not essential. And he says, when you eliminate the essential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. And so when I think about how I'm able to do what I do, it's there's the things that I don't do that I've stopped doing or that I have delegated someone to do or that I have brought on a team to scale being able to do. And when you get rid of the wasted movements or the wasted thoughts or you stop chasing the things that don't matter or move the needle, you find that

actually I mean it takes a lot of energy to be graded something, but it's less than people think. You know what I mean? I think maybe someone would assume that like a writer writes 10 hours a day, but it's like two. You know what I mean? You think that an athlete is practicing and lifting weights and training all the time, but they're also taking long naps during the day. And they've built a lifestyle where someone's cooking for them, and the team takes them from place to like, they've also eliminated so much of what is inessential that just concentrated

bursts of the essential thing allows them to be best in the world at what they do. Absolutely. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all your advice and tips and stuff over the last three plus years of this book coming together. Well, the book is great. I think it's going to crush. I think it's crossed, but that's not a thing I can control, so I'm not going to think about it.

But it already did crash. The way they think about it is that it already did crash and that it exists. It exists. And I'm not sure. And I'm not sure. And I'm not sure. And I'm not sure. That would be more satisfying if this was the actual book. The hot box. This is the advanced reader copy that we've said before. Yeah, they're deliberately very flaccid and fortified.

But it doesn't have the satisfying cred of a, or thought of a hardcover. But it exists. And so literally every person that reads it, even if that's seven people and three of them are related to you, it's all extra. That's all. That's all.

So, we, man, well, thanks. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If 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 we'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 ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Get game day ready at BET MGM, an official sports book partner of the National Football League. From game-winning drives to unbelievable catches, us in Apple podcasts. 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.

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