GET-TO vs. HAVE-TO

Yo! What's going on everyone? It's episode 107 of The Daniel Bourke Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for watching. Wherever you are, I hope you're having an amazing day. It is the 14th of July, 2017 here in this lovely city of Brisbane. Well, that's where I am at least. Wherever you are, I hope it's a lovely day as well. And it's about 7 PM. I just finished a workout, so that's why, I don't know, my muscles might look a bit bigger than usual. They got a lot of blood through them. But I'm in a good, you know when you get post-workout? You get in a really good feeling? That's why I decided to record a podcast, right? And so I think I've talked about that in the past, in the last episode actually, about public speaking, is that if you want to sort of have an engaging talk or you want to use some energy to talk, rather than eating or sitting down before talking, try to do some sort of activity, whether it be like a 20-minute walk or whether it be, I don't know, a workout like I just did. Something fun to get you sort of in a good mood, and then, I don't know, those nerves of that talk or meeting someone new will more than likely go away. So if you go on a first date, how about instead of going to dinner or something, ask to go for a walk. Like, I think that would be cool. I think that would be fun. And plus, walks are fun. You get physical activity and you get conversation with someone, or even just on your own. Yeah, where is this going on to? Oh yes, so it is episode 107 and I was almost about to put this off to tomorrow. It is Friday, so I said I would release an episode every Friday and I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put it off to tomorrow. I'm going to do it now. And I was about to have dinner after working out, but I decided no, I'm just going to get this workout— this, sorry, get this podcast done and I'm going to have some food and then I'm going to call it a night after that. But what is this episode about? Well, it was originally going to be about what I've learned from Ray Dalio. However, I'm going to save that for a later date. So, look forward to that in the future. I'm going to put that into a blog post of some sorts as well. Things I've learned from his book and whatnot. But instead, I did read an awesome passage from this book today. And for those on the podcast, you can't see this. It is called The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. By Ryan Holiday, who's the author of— the best-selling author of The Obstacle Is the Way, and Steven Hanselman. So, this book I read every morning getting up. I'm actually about a week behind, so I've got a few— I've got a few days to catch up on. But, every morning I get up and I read a page of this, or I might read a couple of pages, depends how many days I've gone without reading it. Sometimes I forget. But it is called the Daily Stoic for a reason, because it has 366 little passages from people such as Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. For those of you who don't know, these guys were all Stoic philosophers back in the day. Marcus Aurelius was actually an emperor of Rome, and he has a really popular book called Meditations, which is a collection of his journal entries that would just be his thoughts at the end of the day. Daniel Bourke, writing down being the Emperor of Rome. And that's amazing. Like, that's 2,000 years old and we have access to that text today. But I thought I'd share a passage like this one. Every couple of days, like, they're all great, the passages in here, but every few days, like, one will just stand out. And I don't know whether it's like confirmation bias, like, you know, you read your horoscope of whatever time of year it is. And something in there will stick out to you. But this, this is similar. I suppose the effect is similar with this book, right? But today, this one, this one hit home with me because my to-do lists have been getting out of hand, right? Like, I've got this— you can't see it, but it's on the whiteboard there— and there's— I like to keep things to like 3 things, and right now I've got 9. 9 for today. And I didn't even allocate any time to them. It's just like, do, do all of these today. And I don't know, when you, when you sort of have a list that's that long, um, can be, can cause unnecessary stress, all right? And I'm, that's what I'm all about. I'm about, anyone who knows me, I'm like chilled out, calm guy. I don't like creating stress. I like creating calm. I like being the one who's calm in all types of situations. But the things that I get stressed about are more and I think this is probably, I don't know, let's just talk about me. I don't know about other people. But for me, the things I get most stressed about are literally the things that I've created myself. Like, you have a choice in every moment, like whether you want to be stressed or calm or whatever. And every single time, like I've created a stressful time. In the past few years, I've been very lucky to sort of live a relatively sheltered life. I haven't had any major tragedies in my life as of yet. Probably would, but most of the stress has been created by myself, whether it be self-imposed deadlines, whatnot, workouts, losing weight, etc., etc. Whole bunch of things, diet, you name it. It's all been there, but it's completely unnecessary, right? Like, it's all self-imposed. And so, that's why this, and a lot of it comes from to-do lists, like, being too long and me not considering how much time I've actually got in the day to sort of get all these things done, right? We can create— like, the to-do list is never-ending. I think it's Cal Newport who talks about in his book Deep Work, rather than sort of having a to-do list, schedule time to do activities. So, for example, say you want to work on projects, schedule 2 hours of time to work on that project rather than having the goal of finishing that project or something like that. So, you can control how much time you dedicate towards something, but you can't control whether you finish a big task or not. So, that actually worked really well for me. I was trying to put out a blog post this week, and instead of doing it all in one sitting, which I've been doing lately when I do writing, I just did an hour each morning, and I posted it today. And it took a bit longer than I thought, but it's out in the open, it's out in the wild now. It's about how I'm learning deep learning in 2017, part 3 of the series. So, I'll link that in the description, by the way. But let's get to this book, right? Because this is the passage that I wanted to talk about. So I'll just read the quote to you. So it's July 3rd. So as you can see, it's 14th today. So I'm about 11 days behind. So, turn have to into get to. The task of a philosopher, we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen. Epictetus, Discourses 2:14-7. And so, a lot of the quotes from the Stoic philosophers, like what I just read, are kind of hard to interpret. That's why I really like this book, is because at the top you've got the quote there of the actual philosopher from history, like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and then you've got this paragraph here of what the authors, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, have sort of translated into their own words and sort of brought it into the 21st century in terms of giving examples and in English that's more readable for today's age. And so, something really— I highlighted, as you would have seen on the video, I highlighted a line of text because it really stuck out to me. So, A long to-do list seems intimidating and burdensome. All these things we have to do in the course of a day or week. But a get-to-do list sounds like a privilege. And the things we're excited about, the opportunity to experience. This isn't just semantic playing. It's a central facet of the philosopher's worldview. And so, I'm even having trouble reading that right now. I'm sorry. I was too amped up after the workout. But essentially, it said, swap to-do lists for get-to lists. And I've spoken about this in the past, like no more to-do lists and whatnot. I've put it on my blog and I'm sort of contradicting myself and all this sort of stuff. But instead of a to-do list, a real quick concept to think about is a get-to-do list. So, rather than thinking about I have to do the dishes, think about you get to do the dishes, right? That's— you got to eat a meal off a dish and now it's dirty. So, that's— I don't know. Find the benefit in everything, right? So, for example, I was putting off this podcast and it's like rather than me thinking of it, I have to do this podcast today, which of course I don't, right? I've self-imposed this Friday deadline for me every single time. I get to do a podcast, right? I get to. To record this video and I get to record this audio and put it out into the world. 60, 70 years ago, like that, well, even less, 20 years ago, this would not have been possible. Like, I, to get this sort of setup, like, to get a YouTube video up, to get a, have my own radio show, that wasn't even conceived of in the past 20, 30 years, let alone, like, when this stuff was written. So, I don't know. That's the simple concept I've been playing with. Tell me what you think about it. I highly recommend this book, by the way. Get it. I got the hardcover because it's something I want to be reading every day. Stoic philosophy has definitely changed my life. And look, with everything that I say, make sure you apply it to yourself. Well, if you do choose to apply it to yourself, make sure you decide if it's true or not in your world because The things that I share, and I think this goes for everything, like if you learn something new, if you listen to someone else, be sure to try it out and find out if it's true for you first, right? Because if I'm preaching all this stuff, well, not preaching, but I'm just sort of, I like to share what I've learned, and if it's fun, I like to put that out into the world, which is what I'm doing here with this YouTube video and podcast and whatnot. And so, before you, I don't know, implement into your life make sure you just think about it. Is it true to you? And that goes for everything. Maybe that can be a double-fold lesson. Just ask, ask everything, ask the question of everything, sorry. Is this true? Right? And for me, turning a to-do list into a get-to-do list is something simple I can do and it's simple, like, mind hack that I can, I don't know, think of these tasks and instead of being a burden, like, that I have to do all these things in a day, I get to do all these things in a day. So, I don't know, for me, that seems like a simple thing that I can do to sort of change my, change my point of view and make, like, have to-do lists rather than be anxiety-caused, be like, make, make me excited, right? Make me excited to get to do them. So, that's a challenge. Try it out. Instead of having a to-do list for the next, let's say, day or week or whatever, make a get-to-do list, right? Or think of something that you think you have to do and change it to a "I get to do this." So, I don't know, a bill comes through, registration for my car comes through, so rather than have to pay that, I get to pay that because I get to use my car. I don't know, I could get— you could go so extreme on this, it doesn't matter, but I thought it was cool. That's going to be the end of episode 107. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to check out my monthly newsletter, it's available on my website, misterdevoke.com, little sign-up box on there. Otherwise, all my social media handles are @MrDBourke, M-R-D-B-O-U-R-K-E. Otherwise, we'll catch you next Friday, and it may be an episode on Ray Dalio. If not, I'll work something out by then. But have an awesome day, and we'll catch you later.