The Tim Ferriss Show - #179: What's Important to You?

Episode Date: August 14, 2016

My job is usually to deconstruct world-class performers from business, military, entertainment, politics, or athletics, and then to tease out the routines and habits you can use. But in this in-betweenisode, Ryan Holiday, author of the book Ego Is the Enemy, shares a chapter called What's Important to You? This chapter alone is worth the price of the book, and it contains many fundamental truths that can be applied to business and life. (The book is also the newest addition to my book club, which can be found at audible.com/timsbooks.) If you like what Ryan has to say, check out the recent conversation we had, which dives deeper into what he's all about. Please enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Headspace, the world's most popular meditation app (with more than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program -- 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. Hello, my frisky little kittens. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers, tease out

their habits, routines, tools, etc. that you can use and apply immediately. This episode's a little different, but it's not totally unfamiliar to long- listeners. This is an in-between episode where I do not interview someone. And instead, in this case, I'm going to provide you with a chapter. And this is a great chapter. It's called What's Important to You. It's from the book, Ego is the Enemy. And it alone is worth the price of the book. And you're going to get it here for free. Imagine that. And there were some alternate titles. I thought it could be called, for instance, Two Paths to Greatness.

Or perhaps something that I like to keep in mind, when to ignore, quote, successful, end quote, people. And if you would like the audio book in its complete awesomeness, then you can go to audible.com forward slash Tim's books. It is one of the 10 or so books in my book club and highlights a lot of stoic philosophy that I apply on a daily basis in my own life. But in the meantime, this functions as a standalone piece. You don't have to get any more from the book to get a lot of value out of it. And please enjoy What is Important to You.

What's important to you? To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Robert Louis Stevenson At the end of the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant and his friend William Tecumseh Sherman were two of the most respected and important men in America. Essentially the dual architects of the Union's victory, a grateful country with the snap of its fingers said, Whatever you like, as long as you live, is yours. With this freedom at their disposal, Sherman and Grant took different paths. Sherman, whose track we followed earlier, abhorred politics and repeatedly declined entreaties to run for office. I have all the rank I want, he told them. Having seemingly

mastered his ego, he would later retire to New York City, where he lived in what was, by all appearances, happiness and contentment. Grant, who had expressed almost no prior interest in politics, and in fact had succeeded as a general precisely because he didn't know how to play politics, chose instead to pursue the highest office in the land, the presidency. Elected by a landslide, he then presided over one of the most corrupt, contentious, and least effective administrations in American history. A genuinely good and loyal individual, he was not cut out for the dirty world of Washington, and it made quick work of him. He left office a maligned and

controversial figure after two exhausting terms, almost surprised by how poorly it had gone. After the presidency, Grant invested almost every penny he had to create a financial brokerage house with a controversial investor named Ferdinand Ward. Ward, a Bernie Madoff of his day, turned it into a Ponzi scheme and publicly bankrupted Grant. As Sherman wrote with sympathy and understanding of his friend, Grant had aimed to rival the millionaires who would have given their all to have won any of his battles. Grant had accomplished so much, but to him it wasn't enough. He couldn't decide what was important, what actually mattered to him. That's how it seems to go. We're never happy with what we have.

We want what others have too. We want to have more than everyone else. We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we've achieved it, we lose sight of our priorities. Ego sways us and can ruin us. Compelled by a sense of honor to cover the debts of the firm, Grant took out a loan using his priceless war mementos as collateral. Broken in mind, spirit, and body, the last years of his life found him battling painful throat cancer and racing to finish his memoirs so that he might leave his family with something to live on.

He made it, just barely. One shudders to think of the vital forces drained from this hero, who died at just 63 in agony and defeat, the straightforward, honest man who just couldn't help himself, who couldn't manage to focus, and ended up far outside the bounds of his ample genius. What could he have done with those years instead? How might America have looked otherwise? How much more could he have done and accomplished? Not that he is unique in this regard.

All of us regularly say yes, unthinkingly, or out of vague attraction, or out of greed or vanity, because we can't say no, because we might miss out on something if we did. We think that yes will let us accomplish more, when in reality it prevents exactly what we seek. All of us waste precious life doing things we don't like to prove ourselves to people we don't respect and to get things we don't want.

Why do we do this? Well, it should be obvious by now. Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small. Ego undermines greatness by diluting its holder. Most of us begin with a clear idea of what we want in life. We know what's important to us. The success we achieve, especially if it comes earlier in abundance, puts us in an unusual place. Because now, all of a sudden, we're in a new place and have trouble keeping our bearings. The farther you travel down that path of accomplishment, whatever it may be, the more often you meet other successful people who make you feel insignificant. It doesn't matter how well you're doing, your ego and their accomplishments make you feel like nothing, just as others make

them feel the same way. It's a cycle that goes on ad infinitum, while our brief time on earth, or the small window of opportunity we have here, does not. So we unconsciously pick up the pace to keep up with others. But what if other people are running for different reasons? What if there is more than one race going on? That's what Sherman was saying about Grant. There's a certain gift of the magi irony in how badly we chase what will not be truly pleasurable. At the very least, it won't last. If only we could all stop for a second. Let's be clear. Competitiveness is an important force in life. It's what drives the market and is behind some of mankind's most impressive accomplishments. On an individual level, however, it's absolutely critical that you know who you are competing with and why,

that you have a clear sense of the space you're in. Only you know the race you're running. That is, unless your ego decides that the only way you have value is if you're better than, have more than, everyone, everywhere. More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose. That means we're the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose. According to Seneca, the Greek word eutemia is one we should think of often. It is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it's not about beating the other guy. It's not about having more than the others.

It's about being what you are and being as good as possible at it without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It's about going where you set out to go. good as possible at it without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It's about going where you set out to go, about accomplishing the most you're capable of in what you choose. That's it. No more, no less. By the way, eutemia means tranquility in English. It's time to sit down and think about what's truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest. Without this, success will not be pleasurable or nearly as complete as it could be. Or worse, it won't last. This is especially true with money. If you don't know how much you need, the default easily becomes more.

And so without thinking, critical energy is diverted from a person's calling and toward filling a bank account. When you combine insecurity and ambition, the plagiarist and disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer said when reflecting back on his fall, you get an inability to say no to things. Ego rejects trade-offs. Why compromise? Ego wants it all. Ego tells you to cheat even though you love your spouse because you want what you have and what you don't have. Ego says that sure, even though you're just starting to get the hang of one thing, why not jump right in the middle of another? Eventually you say yes to too much, to something far beyond the pale. We're like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick for reasons we don't even understand anymore.

Maybe your priority actually is money, or maybe it's family, or maybe it's influence or change. Maybe it's building an organization that lasts or serves a purpose. All of these are perfectly fine motivations, but you do need to know. You need to know what you don't want and what your choices preclude, because strategies are often mutually exclusive. One cannot be an opera singer and a teen pop idol at the same time. Life requires trade-offs, but ego can't allow it. So why do you do what you do? That's the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn't. Only then can you say no. Can you opt out of stupid races that don't matter or even exist?

Only then is it easy to ignore successful people because most of the time they aren't, at least relative to you and often even to themselves. Only then can you develop the quiet confidence Seneca talked about. The more you have and do, the harder maintaining fidelity to your purpose will be, but the more critically you will need to. Everyone buys into the myth that if only they had that, usually what someone else has, they would be happy. It may take getting burned a few times to realize the emptiness of this illusion. We all occasionally find ourselves in the middle of some project or obligation and can't understand why we're there.

It will take courage and faith to stop yourself. Find out why you're after what you're after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend.

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