The Tim Ferriss Show - #419: Ryan Holiday — How to Use Stoicism to Choose Alive Time Over Dead Time

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Starting point is 00:05:52 you. Well, hello, boys and girls, cats and dogs, lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is a special quarantine edition, as has been common recently, and it includes a conversation with my good friend Ryan Holiday. Specifically, he had asked me if he could interview me about Stoic philosophy, how to apply it in our current uncertain times, how I am using certain tenets from people like Seneca and others to calm my nerves and not just survive, but perhaps benefit from this time in some fashion. So who is Ryan? Ryan Holiday on Twitter and Instagram at Ryan Holiday is one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in modern life. He is a sought-after

Starting point is 00:06:45 speaker and strategist and the author of many best-selling books, including The Obstacle is the Way, which I loved so much. I was the producer of the audiobook, The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. His books have also been used by some of the top performing sports coaches in the world, many, many names you would recognize, also in the military, and have sold close to 3 million copies worldwide. He lives with his family outside of Austin, Texas. You can subscribe to receive his writing at ryanholiday.net and dailystoic.com. Ryan has also been a popular guest poster or guest author on my blog, and you can find a number of those, including Stoicism 101, a practical guide for entrepreneurs, on Tim.blog. Just search his name, Ryan Holiday, and it will pop right up.

Starting point is 00:07:38 He was also the fourth ever guest on this podcast in the very beginning many years ago. His latest book is Stillness is the Key, which was an instant number one New York Times bestseller and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Please enjoy. All right, so I was thinking, so we last talked podcast related in January. And man, life comes at you fast. I don't think, yeah. The three great correctors of human population, war, pestilence, and famine. And we certainly have number two in abundance and scaling rapidly.

Starting point is 00:08:20 So things have changed quite a lot since January. Yeah, and so I was curious, as someone who is a longtime fan of the Stoics like yourself, how have you been thinking about these sort of ancient ideas or ancient strategies for dealing with what is a very timeless ancient problem? Well, first thing I did was I looked into my stored belongings because I moved from California to Austin, Texas three years ago, four years ago, but the vast majority of my stuff is still in storage. And I had been sent as a gift a bust of Seneca that was still wrapped in bubble wrap. So, I tracked that down, opened it up, and put it in an upstairs room where we tend to spend, my girlfriend and I, mornings,

Starting point is 00:09:13 so that I would at least see it. And so I think that there are a whole lot of different ways to attempt to answer this. And I will begin with putting someone like Seneca, although he's a very crafty, funny character, so we could spend a whole lot of time on him specifically, Marcus Aurelius and so on, as ideals that I, on some level, strive to emulate. And I think the word ideal is important because it is very easy to beat yourself up for not being stoic or resilient or calm enough, which in and of itself is very unstoic. So it can turn into this spiral of self-loathing related to not being, one could say, stoic enough or simply calm enough. And so the first is to really recognize that these are ideals that I'm striving for, but that they are not a pass-fail hurdle in that respect. The second is I've been doing a lot of rehearsal, so premeditatio malorum, rehearsing of the worst case scenarios and combining that with the fear setting exercise that I tend to do, which is really just a written practice of writing out the worst case scenarios, what you could do to decrease the likelihood of them happening, what you could do to decrease the damage if they do happen, et cetera, et cetera. And a big part of that for me has been deeply envisioning the worst case scenarios and what they would not just look like, but feel like to observe

Starting point is 00:10:57 and experience. So I'll give a concrete example. As is the case for many people, and is the case for me, I have seen my stock portfolio drop, I don't know, let's call it 70% in value in certain cases. And I had a good line of sight into coronavirus and its growth quite early on, and began writing about it publicly in, I want to say second week of February, but had been tracking it prior to that. So I was able to sell a portion of my stock, let's just call it February 2021, whichever was the closest weekday trading day. And then I decided to hold the rest. Now, that could prove to be a terrible, terrible, terrible decision, right? This could be the worst financial decision of my life.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Could be. But after lots and lots and lots of discussion and lots of number crunching, lots of thinking about it, I decided to hold on with the belief that, and in this case, I'm referring to Uber that I was an early advisor to. So it represents a disproportionately high percentage of my net worth. Now this video will be trapped in the amber. So people will go back and say, what a fucking idiot, if it turns out poorly. But the decision-making process I felt was reasonable. I felt like it was defensible. Now, at the time, the stock was trading around $40 price per share. And I was talking to this much more experienced investor, and he said, if you're going to hold this, you need to commit to yourself to hold for at least five years. And you should expect that the stock will

Starting point is 00:12:46 go down to 20 or $15. Now at the time it was about 40 and this seemed not necessarily inconceivable, but probably far off in the distance. And he said, when it hits 20 and 15, you are going to want to sell more than you do now. And you need to prepare for that. And that's what I did. So I really mentally committed to holding for an extended period of time. I prepared myself for $15 a share. Little did I know that something like two weeks later, two and a half weeks later, would actually hit $14 a share or close to it. And that is the, I have had many struggles throughout this coronavirus experience and considering the ramifications, not just for me, but for my family. I have family members in

Starting point is 00:13:41 the service industries, for instance, for the economy, for people who are far less fortunate. And I've struggled a lot in certain areas, but the areas where I have not struggled are the places where I have rehearsed to the extent possible what might happen. So that has been one of the most powerful Stoic practices that I've been using in the last, certainly, two months. Well, I've got a bunch of stuff. So this is my Marcus Aurelius statue. I bought this when I was writing The Obstacle is the Way. So this is, from what I read about it, this statue is from 1840 so i i like looking at it and then thinking like okay this stat this literal piece of stone survived through cholera epidemics smallpox epidemics polio the spanish flu the flu of the 1950s so i like thinking about not just like, okay, who are your ideals? But then also, how have humans gotten through like, what sort of totems or reminders can you have that like, oh, life goes on? Like, I'm talking to you from my office, and my office was built in 1880, I think. So like this

Starting point is 00:15:00 office got through, you know, the Spanish flu, the First World War, the Second World War, you know, the Cold War. And you know what I mean? I think like part of one of the things I think the Stoics would ask us to do is like zoom way out and sort of be reminded that like, hey, as bad as it is, like history does go on. There's no guarantee you and I will be a part of that history. But like, you know what I mean? Like, we'll either get through it or we won't. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm curious about the stock market thing, because that's something I was going to ask you,

Starting point is 00:15:38 because one of the things I'm dealing with, I think the loss aversion is a big part of it. And it's hard for people to manage. What I'm struggling with is kicking myself. So I wasn't as early as you, but you and I had some conversations. And so I took it seriously. I went and stocked up on food. I cut back on my travel. I basically said like, hey, I'm sort of a buy and hold kind of a guy and don't have the exposure that you do to some of those stocks. But the thing I said is like, hey, this is going to be bad, but it's not going to be literally, it's not going to be the worst decline in market history. You know, I didn't think that, so I didn't do anything. And so one of the things I'm struggling with is like regret, you know what I mean? And I'm wondering sort of what you, how you deal with

Starting point is 00:16:26 some of that? Like, are you mad that you didn't sell I'm wondering sort of how you deal with some of that. Like, are you mad that you didn't sell more? Like, how are you dealing with decisions you made that you can't undo, but now you have a lot of time to sit and think about them? Yeah, well, that's the nature of all decisions, right? I mean, as I understand the etymology of the word, to decide, a decision is like an incision. It is a cutting away. So, once you have cut away. Now, that could be some fake attributed to Mark Twain and Abe Lincoln type quote. Maybe Oscar Wilde for on the internet.

Starting point is 00:16:57 But nonetheless, that's what I've been told before. So, all of our decisions are irreversible, at least temporarily speaking. This is something that I didn't grapple with until reasonably far after the COVID-19 and coronavirus came onto the main stage, so to speak. Sure. So when I was campaigning in part for the cancellation of South by Southwest, which brings 400,000 plus people to Austin, and I was just attacked by almost all sides and viewed as an alarmist, as fill in the blank. I did not

Starting point is 00:17:49 have trouble with that because I felt like the data were on my side. But I was so focused, and I think rightly so, on my household, on my family, on my girlfriend and her family, and ensuring that everyone were prepared that I did not, I really wasn't looking at, say, investment as an example. So now there are, and I, so part of the reason I'm not beating myself up is that I, at the time, at least in retrospect, I was beating myself up for a while. Then I realized, well, do I even have the toolkit to have taken advantage of that effectively? And by take advantage of that, one might be talking about shorting the market in some fashion. Well, it turns out it's very easy to get your face ripped off trying to short the market. And it's very, very easy to lose that game, or at least those bets.

Starting point is 00:18:47 And so I do have friends who are career investors who have the toolkit to take advantage of something like this. I gave them a heads up that I gave them a preview of what was coming early. So let's call it late January or early February. And they missed those opportunities and they are beating themselves up because they do have the toolkit and the experience. And yet they didn't take the actions. Whereas you have say some people who did like Bill Ackman at Pershing, who I don't know,

Starting point is 00:19:21 made $2.6 billion from short positions or something like that. Not bad. And so I feel as though my perspective on that specifically has been honed, if I could use such a dignified word, through a lot of the startup investing I've done in the sense that it doesn't matter how many opportunities you miss, it matters how many opportunities you take advantage of. Sure. Does that make sense? Totally. Just like if you're putting together a book or a podcast or fill in the blank, it doesn't matter how many people don't get it. It matters how many people get it. And,

Starting point is 00:20:07 and by that, I mean, if you are really waiting for the fat pitches, as Warren Buffett would say, not necessarily with his style of investing, but if you're, if you understand where your core competencies are and can focus on the most appealing opportunities, you can miss a lot of opportunities and net net still do very, very well. So I view,

Starting point is 00:20:37 I try to keep that in mind. And as you said a little bit earlier, to zoom out and not look at this as an anomaly of a few weeks. So it could be that a year from now we look back and the lowest low was, in fact, whenever it was. I can't remember when the lowest low was. March 12th or whatever it was. That might be off. But early March, something like that. 2020. At the same time, this could be, and I suspect it will be on some level, a marathon and not a sprint. So, there will be more opportunities. And then the reframing of

Starting point is 00:21:20 the question for me relieves a lot of stress. So instead of asking, why didn't I take advantage of X? What could I have done that I didn't do? Those are fruitless questions that just create a lot of stress. If you were to ask, how might I look for opportunities that do not have the time sensitivity of trying to time the stock market. And one could say the futility of trying to time the stock market. Because even in a bear market, and look, I'm not a professional public equities investor, so no one should take investment advice from me, and I'm not giving investment advice. but even in a bear market, there are these rallies that can really hurt you, not necessarily financially, although they can, but psychologically, right? Where you buy and then they spike. And right now the volatility, meaning the, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:19 simplistically the sort of amount of up and down is just unbelievable. So you're going to get whipsawed no matter what. And that can be super stressful. So I'm asking myself, well, rather than look at my god-awful computer screen all day like everybody else in the world, look at all the same information and develop the hubris and ridiculous delusion that I can somehow parse out a unique conclusion from that when millions of people are doing the same thing. What do I have access to? Where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? is what can I do that if this is a marathon or if this is going to last at least six months, there are opportunities I might be able to take advantage of.

Starting point is 00:23:10 Where do I have unique domain expertise or an informational advantage, right? So maybe that's, I'm making this up, right? But maybe that is distressed real estate in Austin, let's say, since I'm here, right? Maybe that is any number of other things, but it's probably not going to be figuring out whether Google or Berkshire Hathaway is going to move one direction or another and how much they're going to move. That is being the sucker at the poker table, I think. Interesting. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:48 So that's maybe a very long-winded way of saying it, but my belief is there are times when I make very fast, good decisions, but I almost never make good, rushed decisions. So if I feel rushed to make a decision because, oh my God, it might go up, it might go this, it might go this, it might do that, the likelihood of me making a bad decision is very high. And the cost of undoing that bad decision can also be quite high. So that is to say that if you have dry powder, meaning cash, I don't think it's a terrible place to be right now. But again, I'm not a registered

Starting point is 00:24:28 investment advisor, nor am I giving investment advice, but that's how I'm thinking about it personally. No, and I think for me, it's less like opportunities I didn't take advantage of and steps that I should have taken to protect myself. And so that connects to another emotion I think a lot of people are feeling that I'd be curious, your sort of stoic take on it, given like the South by Southwest example is a great one. So you and a handful of other people campaign, they shut down South by Southwest early, who knows how much impact that had probably a significant amount, because it was so early. And then government officials in Texas and all over the country,

Starting point is 00:25:05 basically, and this goes back to when it was first coming out of China, sort of sat on that time. It's not like we use that time and built a bunch of ventilators and, you know, so how are you processing or maybe you don't have any, but for someone who has a lot of anger about how this went or is feeling anger, how do you suggest sort of, what do you think the Stokes say about processing that anger? Because I do know that the Stokes did not tend to see anger as a productive or healthy emotion. Yeah. I'd be curious to hear your take on that. So maybe I'll turn it around. So my default gear for decades was anger. Yes. But right now, my focus is related to my locus of control in the sense that my sort of sphere of control has been constrained down to the family, effectively.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Sure. to the family, effectively, and my closest friends, and ensuring to the extent possible those people are safe and prepared and financially capable to cover their expenses and so on. I am more active, as you know, on the national level as well. But I suppose, I mean, and this is maybe cliched, but it's, I would think of the serenity prayer, and you probably have the full text somewhere, but, you know, in essence, the sort of strength to act on the things that you can act upon, and the wisdom to know that which you cannot act upon or influence. And I would say also that I don't think that the time bought by canceling South by Southwest was used optimally. But just in having that time and delay, there was a huge benefit. So it wasn't used optimally, but I'm satisfied with that outcome because it has

Starting point is 00:27:11 allowed us to see case studies like New York City that then spur local and state governments to do more so that they do not become the next case study. And also, in retrospect, looking at, for instance, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, spring break in Miami and Florida, I don't think those are uncorrelated to those two locations, among a handful of others, becoming the next hotspot. So I'm very confident in the benefits of South by being delayed. Anger, let me think about anger for a second, because I am a connoisseur. Well, what I was thinking about anger is like, okay, in war, you could see how anger is a somewhat productive emotion. It's sort of a fury that you could direct at the enemy.

Starting point is 00:28:05 So you might at least be able to make the argument that it has some productive benefits. Obviously, a pandemic doesn't care how much you hate it. Cancer doesn't care what names you call it, right? So when you're fighting something like this, I think you always want to think about, is anger productive, Yes or no. And then one of my favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes, it's a quote we know from Europeides, the playwright, but he says, why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice? And so that's the other, like, Trump doesn't care that you're angry at him. The governor of Texas doesn't care that you're angry. You know, like, so, and in fact, if you are active in politics or at the national level, you have to work with these people. So I think you're also seeing some of the governors,

Starting point is 00:28:52 Democrat and Republican, having to figure out, oh, hey, if I yell at this person on television, that might feel cathartic. But then the next day, I have to call them and ask for ventilators or ask for the National Guard. So I think what the Stoics talk about is like, is anger making things better or worse? And 90% of the time, it makes it worse. That doesn't mean that there wasn't something wrong and you can't be upset about it, but you've got to control that anger because there's a problem to solve. Yeah, I agree. And what I've also been trying to do, and this actually came out of an interview I did some time ago with Bozema St. John, who is an incredible woman. And one sort of philosophical tenet of hers that she underscored was applauding what you want more of not just sure berating what

Starting point is 00:29:47 you want less of and i think the internet has enabled a lot of things uh including the dominance of the noise that is just bitching and moaning without any clear proposal for solutions. So I have been spending the majority of my time reinforcing, particularly politicians who are in the game. Everyone's playing a game. Sure. You and I are playing games. And we all play games. And there are rules, there are stakes, there are rewards, sometimes there are punishments. And step number one is figuring out what game or games you are playing. And one of the games politicians play is re-election. And so you have to think about if you want to persuade someone who is playing that game or not just persuade but to collaborate in some way

Starting point is 00:30:48 or enable someone who is playing that game you have to think about the incentives at play and to that end i've been trying to support people who are making good decisions even if they are late yeah if they are better late than never decisions. And that's coming from someone who, I mean, has had a lifetime of anger. So, I do think the, certainly the Stoic philosophies and philosophers and writing has had a tremendous impact on my intellectual understanding of why anger can be counterproductive. But it's really been getting on the playing field and trying to get shit done that has reinforced how imperative it is from a practical perspective. It's one thing to understand logically why anger is counterproductive,

Starting point is 00:31:54 and it's quite another to not just keep your anger in check, but to sort of sublimate it into a different area that you can strengthen, right? And I'm not the paragon of this. I still get pissed off. But... Yeah, I think there's a difference between being angry and doing things out of anger. Yeah, totally. Yeah, you're allowed to feel angry. Look, I get pissed off. And yeah, so it's not so much a question of suppressing anger. It's more of a question of, I think, taking notice of what angers you, so that over time, fewer things hopefully anger you. And one thing that's been very helpful to me also, and this is, I can't remember, well, I do remember one quote from Krista Tippett, who has a podcast called On Being, which I believe, I'm going to paraphrase it, but that anger is fear shown publicly. Okay. at least as an exercise, if I'm really angry to journal or sit and just think about for a moment, if this were traceable to a fear, what would the fear be, right? So, it's presupposing that it's

Starting point is 00:33:15 accurate for the sake of a thought exercise. And because anger, at least for me, right? Anger is, it's harder to wrestle in the sense that like head on treating anger as an object. It's harder for me to grapple with and to disarm, if that makes sense. Because I get where the story I tell myself that perpetuates anger is, well, it's the principle, justice must be served. Yes. This is da-da-da-da. And I get on my high horse. I love that phrase, how dare they? How could you do this? Yeah, I get on my high horse of righteousness. And you can justify a lot of stupid behavior that way. But I don't quite know how to defuse it. Whereas if I can take the anger

Starting point is 00:34:08 and turn it into fear, or not necessarily turn it into fear, but find a source that is related to fear, then I can use fear setting or other exercises, premeditatio malorum, et cetera, to turn down the volume. Sure. So that's a step that I've found very helpful also. I'm curious about fear, because obviously you have your fear-setting stuff, which you talk about in your TED Talk, which is probably very timely for people right now. But having sort of two young kids, you get this sort of hit in your stomach, right? And I can sort of empathize, people are really afraid, right? And I'd be curious, was there two things? One, I'd be curious what you say to someone who is afraid. And then the other thing, which maybe you want to riff on,

Starting point is 00:34:58 I was kind of thinking, I was trying to think of, so I was born in 87. So I was like, what scary things did my parents go through with kids which is actually really helpful so it's like you know black monday there was uh obviously 9-11 there's the the tech bubble bursting there's the financial crisis there's the end of the cold war i tried to go through and think of there are two wars in in in the gulf right? So, that was something I did. But I'm just curious, like, how are you thinking about fear? And what would you say to someone who is being overwhelmed by fear? It's a very good question. It's a very

Starting point is 00:35:36 timely question. I don't have confidence in a single answer for that. Okay. In the sense that I do think it's very highly dependent on what you're afraid of. And I have relatives who had restaurant jobs and so on, and they're in very tough positions. And I wouldn't want to make this purely an academic exercise and lose sight of the fact that fear is a gift in many cases. It tells you what is wrong. So, I don't want in any way to seem like I'm detached from reality by making it a sort of mental gymnastics exercise. So, let's start there. I would say that, and I've been telling myself

Starting point is 00:36:21 this, so I can, which is just because you're feeling afraid. I have, for instance, I have older parents in poor health who are in New York. That has caused me quite a bit of fear and anxiety. And there's very little I can do. There's very little I can do. And I can do a lot. And I have very good contacts. And I have very good contacts in New York itself. And to an almost complete extent, there's next help that I'm very unaccustomed to.

Starting point is 00:37:13 And so what I've been telling myself and might be helpful to others is, number one, it's okay to feel afraid. Like, that doesn't make you flawed that means that your sort of evolutionary machinery is intact and there's a lot of value to that right yeah and so i would say that you're not alone you're not flawed millions of people tens tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions are feeling the same thing right now. And there are reasons to be afraid. It doesn't mean there's not, it does not mean there's nothing you can do. You always have options, right? You always have options. That's the other thing I would say, and this is what I'm saying to myself, it's like, you always have options. You may just not like those options.

Starting point is 00:38:05 Right. Right? Sure. Right? So, for instance, if you look at the plight of some workers right now who have gone from kind of getting laid off from one job to, say, delivering groceries for fill-in-the-blank app or company and want more personal protective equipment in order to do that job. It's a very, very difficult situation to be in because number one, no matter how much those companies would love to give you personal protective equipment right now, healthcare workers don't even have enough PPE, personal protective equipment. So you have then, you might be inclined in such a position to say, I have no choice.

Starting point is 00:38:47 You do have choices. They just may be very unattractive, right? So you could stop working for a period of time. You could move in with your parents. You could ask a friend for a loan. You could sell some of the belongings you have that you have great sentimental attachment to, or maybe your only car, whatever it might be. I'm not saying these are all viable. I'm just brainstorming. Or that they're fair. Or that they're fair. Yeah, you have to, I mean, for me, I just take fair out of the equation. I don't think fair, except perhaps under the law as equal treatment of citizens, I don't think fair is a very, I don't think it's an

Starting point is 00:39:26 enabling concept. Right. No, I think the Stokes would agree. They'd say, you know, Epictetus, he goes, it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. And so fair is an opinion we have about an objective reality that we're in. Right. So if I were trying to train a group of 1,000 people to be a really effective, autonomous army, a benevolent army for handling, not just weathering, but benefiting from the crisis, I think if they were just computers like Westworld hosts that I could program, there are certain concepts and questions I would remove. I think that unfair is,

Starting point is 00:40:17 as true as it may be, subjectively or even objectively, it is a disabling word that even if you are a victim, puts you into the passenger seat of life where you feel like you do not have options, nor should you take actions. And that is paralyzing, and it's just going to compound your fear. So, I would remove that. And then there are questions, right? And I alluded to this a second ago, and we're probably straying from the Stoics, but I feel like I've been so infused. I don't know if you've heard of any of these large trees in the Pacific Northwest that have like 30% salmon DNA from salmon being dropped off from bears and so on. They become these hybrids. I feel that's maybe too long a story to explain now, but I believe Radiolab has a good episode on this, but the Wood Wide Web, if you want to look it up, W-O-O-D. But the point of that extremely confusing sidebar is that I feel like stoicism from having read it and ingested it and

Starting point is 00:41:26 ruminated on it and reread it and so on over the years has kind of infused my thinking to a very large extent. So, then there are questions of, and this definitely harkens back to certainly some of the moral letters to Lucilius, if we want to cite some of the sources. Which by the way, he wrote in difficult times, you know, at the end of his career, he was threatened by a tyrant. Like he wasn't writing this in a fun, joyful vacation. No, no, he wasn't. And that's Molly who's gonna, Molly's's my dog who's in the habit of going apeshit these days. Molly, you feeling stressed because of coronavirus? I know.

Starting point is 00:42:11 She's actually pretty stoked to have her humans home. But I digress. This is audio video verite,antine edition. So I was going to say that if you look at, say, one of Seneca's letters where he's composing this letter, and it's somewhat pet slash gym underneath him. I don't know if you remember where you can hear the slapping of flesh and the grunting of lifting weights and all this. I open stillness with that letter. I love that one. Yeah, it's a great letter. It's a really, really great letter. So, this may not be the perfect citation, but the point I was going to make is that the question I was asking myself early on for me and my family, and it's the question you should be asking initially,

Starting point is 00:43:11 was how do we ensure we don't die? And physically, financially, how do I ensure that my clan doesn't die? And that sounds dramatic. I don't think it's going to seem that dramatic. I mean, 80s. No, those are the stakes. Those are the stakes, right? I mean, there are 85 refrigerated double-wide trailers that were just brought into New York yesterday as temporary mortuaries, right? I mean, this is real. And I have relatives in a number of hotspots. So, these are stakes. Now, what I'm trying to ask, since I have checked off, at least for the time being, the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and not everyone is in a position to do that. Nonetheless, I do think this question is really worth asking.

Starting point is 00:44:07 And I owe my girlfriend credit also for reinforcing this because she's very good at this. And that is, how can you make the next three to six months some of the most enjoyable or productive of your life? Or if that's too much pressure, right? You can phrase it different ways. You know, how can you make the next three to six months something you look back upon as a sacred time that you really treasure, not just survive, right? And it was kind of like, and look, I'm not, whatever, I'll use it, but I heard a Nelson Mandela story once from Tony Robbins, actually, who asked, he asked Nelson Mandela during his time in prison, how did you survive?

Starting point is 00:44:54 Something along those lines. And he said, oh, I wasn't surviving, I was preparing. And I think that that type of question, not how I can survive, how you can survive in a sense is sort of like extreme frugality. I've had my cup of coffee, so I'm off to the races. But it's kind of like extreme frugality in the sense that if you're trying to find financial freedom through one tool, and that is extreme frugality you have a finite ceiling to that yeah right like you make let's just call it for simplicity a thousand dollars i'm making this up thousand dollars a week and you can cut from that you may make some faustian bargains and cut things that materially detract from your quality of life. But nonetheless,

Starting point is 00:45:46 the most that you could possibly subtract is $52,000 a year. Yeah. Right? Yeah, sure. Ignoring taxes and everything. Whereas if you're building a business, you have income generation, and you're also focused on that, you have a much broader scope of options. And similarly, if you ask, like, how can I survive? Like, survive is a binary pass-fail. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:13 And I feel like that places a ceiling on the options that are visible to you, if that makes any sense. No, totally. Yeah. So, when I ask, like, how could i most in and i'm going to use a word here that might bother people but if you were to ask like how could i most profit and benefit from the next three to six months like what is this an opportunity to do that i would never otherwise do so i've been for instance like getting rid of clothing that I've had for years and cleaning up the garage and doing this stuff that seems so mundane, but it would otherwise

Starting point is 00:46:51 not get done. So, I'm trying to ask myself, you know, if this were a sacred time and that what can I do or not do that will lead me, say we're out of this in a year to some extent, to look back and say, wow, I'm so glad we had that time, in a sense, because it allowed me ABC. As opposed to shit, I didn't realize that was going to be so valuable in so many ways, and I was blind to it at the time. Yeah, the dichotomy that I use that Robert Green gave me, and I have this written around somewhere, I was going to show it to you, but he says, alive time or dead time, what will it be? And I think that's like, whether this quarantine goes for two more weeks, obviously, it's going to go much longer than that, or whether it goes for two more years.

Starting point is 00:47:41 All you know is that you have that block of time. What you do control is how you use that time and what you get out of it. I have one thought on fear. There's a Hebrew saying that I love. It's from the 1800s, but he goes, the world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is to not be afraid. The point is when you're walking on a narrow balance beam or a narrow bridge, the one thing you can't do is be scared because it'll mess you up and you'll fall. And I think that's sort of the predicament we're in. It's not fair. Nobody chose it.

Starting point is 00:48:13 It's not our fault. But you've got to cross this bridge now. And this fear, as you said, there are some evolutionary reasons, but courage is going to be important, right? And that's one of those sort of core stoic virtues, which is like, and there's another quote I love from Faulkner. He says, you can be scared. It's okay to be scared. You can't help that. He says, but don't be afraid. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think you have to keep going. That's just the reality. So, you might as well. Yeah, if afraid is being paralyzed, right? So for instance, a few more comments on fear. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:49 Because you just reminded me of a few things. So, and this could be apocryphal, but I believe based on the sources I had at the time, I have no idea what they are, that this is true. So Dean Martin, now that name may not mean much to a lot of people, but in his day, Dean Martin was the consummate entertainer, sort of top tier, top five most recognizable names in the United States, probably. And he used to vomit. He would get so nervous and one could say afraid that he would vomit before every performance. Mike Tyson, same story and his the trainer who really made mike tyson mike tyson customato uh you can find video or at least audio of customato saying this he would say the hero and the coward feel the same thing they feel the same thing. If they feel the fear, it's what the hero does that makes him different.

Starting point is 00:49:47 And Tyson was also terrified. I mean, terrified may not be the right word, but fearful before he got into the ring, one of the most dominant boxers of all time. And if they can't get an immunity bracelet for fear, it's unreasonable to expect yourself to. And I would also say, if this is helpful to anybody, and it's very specific to the United States, but the United States, at this point in time, we're recording this April 1st. Happy April Fool's Day. And right now, New York is the hubé of the U.S., the global hubé, effectively. It's the new global epicenter, will be. This is going to continue.

Starting point is 00:50:32 The United States is going to be the largest hotspot. Unless things change dramatically in Russia, it's probably going to be the largest hotspot in the world for some time to come. And prior to Pearl Harbor, the strategic belief on the part of the Japanese was that by destroying the Pacific fleet, the morale and capabilities of the US would be completely shut down or paralyzed for a period of time. What instead happened when the bear got stabbed in the eye with a stick, meaning the U.S., is that within a very short period of time as though it's been forced into a corner through extreme states of duress and crisis, are truly staggering. And we've fucked this up so many ways. It's really hard to overstate how badly we've screwed this up in terms of supply chain management and so on. But nonetheless, I think, give it six months, things are going to

Starting point is 00:51:55 look very, very different. And like it or not, the global economy is dependent on the U.S. in large measure. Not that it's too big to fail. Every empire comes to its close. But at this point in time, it is in everyone's best interest that the United States not collapse. Almost everyone's best interest. Russia has gas to sell. China has products to export. and so on and so forth. And so I am very confident that crisis will overcome incompetence, if that makes any sense.

Starting point is 00:52:40 And I'm very confident that things will get worse. The economy is going to get sort of kicked in the nuts for a while. This is not going to be a one-quarter affair at all. And the U.S. is going to have to take very extreme, what might be seen as extreme measures, to have any chance of survival, economically speaking. So, that gives me a degree of optimism, if that makes sense. Interesting. Sure. That gives me a degree of optimism. Maybe it will prove unfounded. I hope that's not the case.

Starting point is 00:53:18 Yeah. But that also has the example of Pearl Harbor, and it's not the perfect example. It's just a very easily grasped visual example, I think shows, and there are many examples of this, what the U.S. can do in times of crisis. So that gives me some degree of optimism as well. So, and I'm sure you've got to go. So, as far as this sort of a place to close, because I think this ties in well to the fear, and I think it ties well into Stoicism, what I love about the Stoics in particular, like, the Stoics and the Epicureans were actually much closer philosophically than people thought, right? And you love the good life, you have Epicurean tendencies, but what I suspect draws you to the Stoics and ultimately draws me

Starting point is 00:54:14 to the Stoics, and I think why there is this threat of Stoicism going not just in the Roman Empire, but to the founding of America, to the. Civil War, to a lot of the great movements in history, is the Stoics felt that we were obligated to participate in public life, to serve the common good, to help other people. Most of the greatest Stoics were famous not because of what they wrote, but because the actual heroism that they did in their life. And I mean, Marcus Aurelius specifically is the emperor for 15 years of the Antonine plague. He doesn't flee Rome. At one point, famously, is one of my favorite stories in all of history.

Starting point is 00:54:52 As the Roman economy is collapsing under the weight of this pandemic, he forgives most of the debts owned to the empire. And then he goes through the imperial palace and he marks down the treasures owned by the emperor for sale on the palace lawn to to like sort of get the economy going. So this to me is what like I think this goes to your point when when stuff breaks down, real leaders stand up. And so maybe as a place to close for people who are afraid, but want to put that energy somewhere productive, what do you advise people as far as how can they help? How can they make a difference? And what good can individuals do? You know, obviously, there's a lot of, we all have different resources and skills, but what would you advise people to think about as far as making a difference and using this as an opportunity to do that sort of ultimate stoic duty? Yeah, thanks for the question. That's a good question. have the trifecta of books for understanding and handling this entire chapter of our history

Starting point is 00:56:10 right behind your head. For those people who aren't watching the video, you have, and I'll read from the bottom up, you've got The Black Swan, you have, is it The 48 Laws? I can't read it. Yeah, The 48 Laws. The 48 Laws of Power, and then Mastery. So, The Black Swan by... And then I have Meditations right here. And then Meditations, right. But the Black Swan, perhaps just as much so fooled by randomness by N.N. Taleb, T-A-L-E-B.

Starting point is 00:56:39 Anti-fragile. Anti-fragile. Anti-fragile. But The Black Swan or Fooled by Randomness specifically, I think, helped to explain what we are contending with and why it is so difficult for humans to grasp what is happening and properly prepare for it. So I think that is worth reading. understand how seemingly confusingly and irrationally different leaders are behaving and how polarity is affecting our response to this in the United States and elsewhere, not just here. You look at Brazil, it's the same story. Then the 48 laws of power do a great job of explaining that. And then if you take mastery and the 48 laws of power combined, those can act as a possible roadmap for the abilities you want to develop in this sacred pause that is being provided to you, not inflicted upon you necessarily.

Starting point is 00:57:34 I understand there are some very serious costs, but that's just a way that you could plausibly or try to frame it if you want to feel enabled and not disabled. Those are three fantastic books for the quiver. I'm just going to say that first. As far as stoic slash civic duty, and like you said, many of these stoics per se, if we just put aside the best known names, if we put aside Marcus Aurelius, we put aside Epictetus, we put aside Seneca and so on. You still have George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. These people are not known as Stoics, and yet they were very much informed and directed by much of Stoic philosophy. And to the extent that George Washington, I guess at Valley Forge,

Starting point is 00:58:28 had the troops perform, I'm blanking on the name of the play, but it was a play about, it was Cato, right? Yeah. It was Cato to boost morale and continue the fight. And I want to make a comment

Starting point is 00:58:44 in response to something you said, and then I'll answer super directly. And that is that I do have Epicurean tendencies. I find the Epicureans to be of great interest, but what allows me to tend the garden, to drink my wine, and derive great pleasure from simple things is the safety net that is stoicism. For me, I do not think as someone who, maybe a story for another time, but had some very traumatic experiences in childhood and has always been hypervigilant. Without stoicism and tools that are complementary to stoicism, I don't feel like I have the safety net underneath me with which I can then walk across that narrow bridge. And that is what allows the Epicureanism. So it really is the precursor and necessary antecedent to those

Starting point is 00:59:46 things. As far as helping, how can you help? There are two different levels of answers. The first would be my most common recommendation, and that is don't try to save the world, help the people around you. And think of if you are fortunate enough to be in a stable financial position, even if you are suffering financial hardship but you have time, think of how you could reach out to people and offer your support. That support could be a weekly Zoom or Skype chat with a handful of friends who are all sharing difficulties. It could be reaching out to your barber. I'm bald, so I don't have a barber. But reaching out to your barber or your local coffee shop owner or fill in the blank someone to offer to help in some fashion because you know they're also suffering from financial hardship.

Starting point is 01:00:42 That could be paying them some amount of money if you have the financial means. Yeah, buy a big gift card and then cash it in. Like buy six months of haircuts in advance. Right. It could be something like that. It could also be simply reaching out to them and asking, how can I help? And more often than not, because I've done this with, say, the dog walker who I've used, who's just fantastic, and I want them to survive this.

Starting point is 01:01:11 The, say, house cleaners who help with my home. I've reached out with these offers and asked, how can I help? Would you like me to pay in advance? Would you like to simply have me continue paying? Most of them have declined. But the act of asking, how can I help? And then possibly offering if you have the means, or the space is tremendously, I think, reassuring in times of uncertainty. And the gift doesn't have to be capital, The support doesn't need to be money.

Starting point is 01:01:47 It could just be group cohesion and people feeling that they have a safety net of sorts in your offer. So acting locally in that sense makes, I think it's tremendously compelling. If you try, as I have done for the last few weeks, to figure out how to save the world, or early on just how to stem the tide for the United States to buy time, there were certain things that I could do, say, as it related to South by Southwest and so on. But I am in a very unusual position

Starting point is 01:02:20 and I have a large platform. For others to feel compelled to do something like that is, I think, very unproductive because it's going to be like shouting into gale force winds. It's going to be very frustrating and I don't think terribly healthy for people to try. So act locally, number one. If you are looking for outfits and ventures

Starting point is 01:02:43 that are focused on this crisis and you want to contribute in some fashion. There is a GoFundMe campaign going on right now, depending on when this is published, which is a collaboration. I'm blanking on the exact organizations. Flexport, I know, is one of them, flexport.com or flexport.org forward slash donate. But they, along with a number of organizations, have put together a large GoFundMe campaign. If you just search Flexport GoFundMe campaign- It's called the Frontline Responders Fund. That's right. That's right. So Frontline Responders Fund, I would say, appears to be well-vetted. I've had conversations with the CEO Flexport and feel

Starting point is 01:03:26 confident in their integrity at this point. I don't know them that well, but they certainly have checked a lot of good boxes. There's another organization which may be part of the same, maybe not, called Operation Masks. Operationmasks.org is co-founded by a number of people I've had some contact with. And this landscape is very rapidly changing. And access to personal protective equipment and other items is in a state of constant flux, particularly since we have states competing against one another and driving prices up. The entire thing is quite a fucking spectacle of messiness but i i do think the you said the frontline responders fund this is gofundme campaign which includes flexport and operation masks are

Starting point is 01:04:20 two that have kind of checked a few boxes for me. I can't vouch for either 100%, but there is a lot of noise. And those are two that seem to have cut through the noise. So those would be another two options. Food banks. Yeah, I was gonna say food banks, anything you can do to prevent people from having to leave their houses or go to the store is very important. Yeah. So food banks, I think, are another good option for helping, say, locally or helping where you grew up. Yeah. Or both. So those would be a few that come to mind. And last but not least, I would say one way you can help is commit to be constructive and consider perhaps experimenting, and I'm considering doing

Starting point is 01:05:08 this myself because I think right now it could be particularly valuable, something like the 21-day no-complaint experiment that Will Bowen, B-O-W-E-N, wrote about long ago in, I believe it was his first book. But this, if you just search 21 Day No Complaint Experiment, it'll come right up. I do feel like complaining is easy, it's in vogue, it's seductive, it is reinforced socially, and it, for me at least, is utterly counterproductive. I think that complaining and anger are similar in the sense, and I can't recall the attribution for this, but that there's an expression as it relates to anger that a vessel that holds acid is damaged more than anything it pours acid upon. And if you are the vessel for anger or complaining, I think it does more damage to you than that which you point it at. And for that reason, if you want to improve or maintain or improve your health, your well-being, and your ability to function as a contributor in society, I think a no-complaint experiment goes a long way.

Starting point is 01:06:29 And by the way, if you address complaining, which is easier to identify and measure sometimes than anger, there is a very significant carryover effect into decreasing anger. Very, very large carryover effect. So, those would be a few things that come to mind as possible actions people could take. Yeah, and I think for Daily Stoic, we've been doing this sort of a live time, dead time challenge, like how are you going to use this time? I think that's the, so it's locally, you know, what can you do for your family? What can you do for your neighbors? You know, if you have old people that's locally you know what can you do for your family what can you do for your neighbors you know if you have old people that live near you what can you get them so they don't have to leave their house right like but then i think also you know this is now a time for entrepreneurs and business people like if if everyone is sitting at home watching netflix

Starting point is 01:07:19 for the next three months that's there's gonna be worse economic damage from that than if people are at home being productive, thinking about, you know what I mean? I think there is a real economic damage to the world grinding to a halt. It's not just, hey, you can't go to the pizza restaurant anymore. But it's like, if you cease working and you cease thinking and you cease taking care of the people that you're supposed to be taking care of, there's going to be even longer lasting residue from this as well. Yeah, I agree. I think this is an unfortunate and special set of circumstances that can really foster a sense of community where community has largely broken down. Yes. This is where we're weakest, as David Brooks has said.

Starting point is 01:08:11 Yeah. And I mean, I remember when I moved from San Francisco to Austin, and my first neighbors approached me and knocked on my door, and I felt like in a karate stance, because it was so shocking to me since that never happened in San Francisco. And I've had more contact at a distance with my neighborhood in the last few weeks than in the last few years. And I do think there's something really unusual about that that will disappear. It will, or at least dissipate. Let me say that. It'll dissipate once business gets back on track. And we have a very unusual window of time in which, as you put it, and I really like that expression, that you said that's from Robert Greene, the alive time, dead time.

Starting point is 01:09:01 Yeah. What could you speak to, just for my benefit, since I don't remember reading about this? What characterizes Alive Time versus Dead Time, or how does he talk about it? So, actually, it came up when I was thinking about leaving my job to become a writer. I had about a year left that I owed American Apparel. And so I said, Robert, you know, I'm thinking about leaving to become a writer, what should I do? And he said, this year for you could be a live time or dead time, you could show up to work every day, you know, cash your paycheck, you know, sit at your desk, or you could learn as much as possible, you can meet as many people as

Starting point is 01:09:39 possible. You could the day you leave your job be have all the research and preparation that you need done for your book. And so I actually ended up writing about this in Ego is the Enemy, but I tell the story of Malcolm X. Malcolm X goes to prison. At this point, he's known as Malcolm Little. He's sentenced to about 10 years. He spends every day in that prison cell reading, writing, studying. He basically gives himself a college education in this prison. And so I think, you know, Nelson Mandela spent a far worse time in prison than any of us are going to be spending during this quarantine. Shakespeare, Isaac Newton,

Starting point is 01:10:19 they all spent time in quarantine, you know, fleeing the plague, but how they chose to use that time to write some of their greatest works, to develop relationships, to come up with theories about the universe, you know, to study, to learn, to get in touch with themselves. That's a live time. Yeah. Isaac Newton had one of the most productive years of his entire life. Of course. Yeah. And I think that's what's so beautiful and haunting about history is like, oh, this actually isn't new. I was telling you about the statue. This is another thing I keep on my desk.

Starting point is 01:10:54 This is a pen knife that's from, I think, the year 200 AD. So like this knife. Speaking of prison, it looks like for those people who aren't watching the video it looks like a shiv that you would make out of a mattress coils but but you just think about the amount of times that human beings have spent doing exactly what we're doing which is i can't go outside a lot of commerce and business has ground to a halt. This situation is not new at all. And the question is, some of those people use that time productively, Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, and then far more people, other people were in the exact same quarantine as William Shakespeare,

Starting point is 01:11:39 and they did not write Macbeth, you know, and so that that's, that's the one you don't control that you're in the situation, the one you don't control that you're in the situation, the Stokes would say, but you do control how you respond to the situation, what you use it for. And I think that's ultimately what that's, that's what we should all be focused on here. Here. All right. Let's do on close it there. Yeah. Let's close it there. All right, man. This is awesome. I appreciate i appreciate it yeah for sure and i'll just i mentioned the fear setting for people who want to check check that out they can just go to tim.blog forward slash ted it's also a talk but the text can be quite helpful as a supplement

Starting point is 01:12:16 and you have the exercise there right you should show how it works it's all there there's nothing there's no paywall there's no there shouldn't be any kind of block. If there's a pop-up, you can just close it. But no, I mean, you actually show the, like, it's more than just watching the talk. You like give people how to do the exercise. So it's really helpful. I give them all the instructions and examples in the, in the text. And since this is something I use myself as well. Awesome, man. Really appreciate it. Yeah. My pleasure. Good to see you. All right. Yeah. good to see you too. 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

Starting point is 01:13:07 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

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #419: Ryan Holiday — How to Use Stoicism to Choose Alive Time Over Dead Time

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #419: Ryan Holiday — How to Use Stoicism to Choose Alive Time Over Dead Time

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.