Why Kids Need Goats & Snakes, Top Writing Secrets Of A Famous Author, How To Read More Books, 33 Ways To Be Insanely Productive & Much More With Ryan Holiday.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, I'm a big believer in that rule of like, a few crappy pages a day, you'll get to the other side, but if you don't do that, you won't get where you need to go. You can have someone lift weights for you, but then you're not going to get any stronger. For me, the process of struggling with it is really, really helpful. Here I am cashing a check that I wrote to myself almost 20 years ago, right, that I put down notes to myself.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, today's a fun show with my friend Ryan Holiday, and, and we had a wonderful conversation. A couple of geeky authors nerding out about reading and writing and a whole lot more. But I think you'll really, really dig this. You know, one thing that, that Ryan and I kind of briefly mentioned was Ryan's article about 33 Ways to Be an insanely productive, happy and balanced person. And you know what? It's such a great article that I figured before we delve into the episode with Ryan, just you better wrap your head around, around R and who he is and what he does. If you're not familiar with him is. I wanted to share with you this article just because I think it's really, really wonderful as far as really, for you perhaps setting the framework of the way that he thinks. So he says, we all try to be productive. We all have lots of stuff that we need to get done for work, for our art, for our families. This is all good. So maybe you're too busy to get it all in to write the book you've been meaning to write, too busy to get to the gym or just drowning an email and want it to end. It doesn't have to be that way. The right productivity tweaks can get where you need to be to help you get more done without adding more to your plate. But you have to remember it's human being not doing. With that in mind, here's some productivity advice that will certainly help you get more done, but more importantly will help you get more done in a healthy, effective and balanced way. Some of these I have learned by virtue of working alongside people much smarter than me and stealing their tricks. Others through my own trial and error. So here we go. Keep texting for friends only if there are too many ways for people to reach you. The day never ends and you'll never have time to think. I try not to do Any business texting Only email and only phone. When I get a text, I know it's from a friend. Walk during all your phone calls. You'll be happier for it. A small to do list of 5 to 10 items, if completed day in and day out, will put you far ahead of everyone else. Save time in the mornings before you do email or social media. Write in a journal. Have breakfast with your kids. Take a long shower. Don't jump immediately into the noise. Have some peace and thoughtful time first. Inbox zero Inbox zero Inbox zero but here's the key you don't have to respond to most Delete archive is your friend. On that note, Napoleon used to deliberately ignore correspondence for weeks so the trivial stuff would deal with itself. I do that with things that are particularly frustrating or aggravating. What if you just thought, oops, I accidentally deleted that offensive email. Or oops, I guess I never saw it. Chances are it would save you some anger. What's your main thing? Okay, so why are you doing all these other things? I like that one. Alright, here we go. Reading is work. Important work actually. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you're struggling with something, print it out and go over it in physical form. The computer is a medium and not always the best one. Don't feel stuck or wedded to it. That's also something I do quite a bit. When I get something long to read or somebody wants me to review a book. I always say, send me the physical version, send me the physical galley, send me the hard copy. And by the way, I didn't say this, but I also do like Ryan, walk during all my phone calls every like. It also is a great way to stay fit. Save all your phone calls for a walk. Okay, we digress. Let's keep going. Fire crazy people from your life. That is people who send too many emails, people who stir up drama, people who can't be counted on, people who waste your time with projects that don't go anywhere. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to your clients, slash employer. It's not fair to your family. By the way, I actually disagree with Ryan on this. I think people can change, people can evolve. I've been so close to firing people or letting people go or decide. I'm just done with energy vampires or negative people. And I've realized, hey, you know what? If I love this person, if I educate them, if I cover this situation with love and peace and forgiveness, this person might just not ever have had the chance to be treated the way a human being deserves to be treated. And I've found that in many cases people do actually change. So don't fire someone right off the bat. Give them a chance first. That's my opinion. All right, back to Ryan to concentrate. Listen to the same song over and over and over and over. Make commitments short regular deadlines you have to meet. It will force you to ship and deliver results. This is how you will improve. It will also get you out of your own head. Use tools, but don't overuse tools. I really like Basecamp, 15Five, Buffer and Google Docs. Yeah, there are some other great ones out there. Scrivener, Evernote, Slack, asana, any dotful, etc. But you're supposed to manage the tools, not be managed by them. How many different platforms can one have going on? Keep it simple. Keep it straightforward. Don't feel guilted into trying every single thing that other people rave about. Beware of work addiction and work aversion. They're two sides of the same coin. Ask yourself why am I doing this? Am I avoiding anything in my life? Am I adrenalizing? Is this really that important? Next tip and you'll understand this one if you listen to today's podcast. Get a goat. Space and city provided. Next. Don't set up voicemail or if you do, tell people to email you. Avoid conference calls. Get to know each other, coffee meetings, industry events, and unless they're really important, even interview media requests that require meeting or Skype. Why? Because it puts you on someone else's schedule, not yours. Email is best for all these things, even if it takes a little longer to actually do for one reason, it's on your terms. You can do it after you've done the other things you want to do without interruption. Exercise will make you more productive. It will clear your head, process negative energy and give you a win every day. Don't follow the news, particularly online. It's mostly bullshit. Read people you can trust. There's the old Benjamin Franklin line about being a penny wise but a pound foolish. Same thing with time management. Most people get the little things right and the big things wrong, then wonder why they don't get Avoid stimulants. I include passion as one of those dangerous drugs. Ryan actually has a He has an article called Passion is the Problem, not the Solution where you can read more and understand what he means by that. And I'll link to all this by the way, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Holiday spells an L1L holiday. Be wary of giving your time away just because some asked. Try asking them to pay. It weeds out the moochers and make sure people will respect it and take it seriously. Don't play cell phone games. They're designed to be addicting. Besides, you're an adult. Read an article or pick up a book. Pick a set of clothes you like and are comfortable in and buy a lot of them. Everyone from the present to Steve Jobs realizes that this is a way to cut down on unnecessary decisions. It also means you're focused on what is important, who you are versus how you look. Treat yourself like a startup. Register an LLC if you need to. Make it clearer now. If your business needs something to be more productive, whether it's a nice pair of headphones or a trip, you won't think about money. You'll be objective. Keep a journal if you'd like, but definitely keep a commonplace book. You're essentially stockpiling information for when you'll need it later, saving you time and making you better prepared. Robert Louis Stevenson has a quote to the effect of thinking your work is terribly important is the first sign of insanity. Remember, you're not the president of the world here. Relax. It's going to be alright. You think hiring a professional is expensive? Try hiring an amateur. When you hire help, don't cut corners. You'll pay for it, I promise. Don't buy airplane WI fi. Take that time to get caught up, to think and to be unreachable. Put an inspirational quote or two above your desk. Not something like Hang in there with a cat photo, but something that reminds you of your purpose and the major tasks at hand. What do you make in a year? Divide that by how many hours you work to get a true hourly rate. I'm not saying that to do anything less than that rate, but don't lose track of that number. Let it weigh against your choices. One thing that will help you do is say no to things, which is critical. You need to say no more often. We all do. And then finally you have to know why you do what you do, what you prize, and what's important to you. Or you will be endlessly comparing yourself against other people, which will not only be a major distraction, it will make you miserable. Well, that's Ryan's article about 33 Ways to Be an insanely productive, happy and balanced person. Plenty of other articles by him and some good ones and some good books by him. I'll put that all in the show notes if you go to BenGreenTFitness.com/holiday. Let's go talk to Ryan. Well, folks, I'm pretty stoked to be interviewing my guest on today's show and his name is Ryan Holiday. Ryan, I don't think I've actually ever interviewed you on my podcast, have I?

I don't think so. But we've known each other for like 10 years.

Yeah, forever. I'd be embarrassed if I actually have interviewed you and forgotten about it because it was that forgettable. But I'm pretty sure I have never interviewed you, although I've talked about your books a lot. Like I've recommended your books multiple times on the show, particularly Stillness is the Key is one that I've talked about a lot. But for those of you listening in, you're probably familiar with some of Ryan's other books, like the Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy, a couple of newer books, one called Conspiracy and a brand new book called Courage's Calling. And Ryan writes a lot. You also, you have a bookstore too, don't you, Ryan?

I do, yeah. I was hoping to show it to you when you, when you were out here, but I opened a bookstore and I started it in the winter of 2020, which is just about the worst possible time to have been in the midst of opening a small in person business. But we soldiered through the pandemic and now, now things are, things are going great.

What's the name of the bookstore?

It's called the Painted Porch. It's right outside Austin. And the idea is it's basically a bookstore of only my favorite books.

That's amazing. So is it a bookstore where people go in and browse and purchase books? Is it more of a bookstore where all the books stay there and people just read? Or how's the bookstore actually work?

No, no, it's your standard bookstore. But you know, instead of being like, you know, instead of trying to have every book or trying to compete with Amazon or trying to have, you know, whatever the newest sort of hottest book is. It's over the last 15 or so years I've had this email list where I recommend books every month. So I have this sort of long relationship with people over, like, what books are really, really good, like life changing books. And so the idea is that it's the, those books, it's all my favorite books that I've recommended over the years that I would say like 10% of our books have come out like in the last few years. Like almost all the books are old or classics or sort of unknown sort of cult Favorites. Yeah, it's really fun. I have an office upstairs and it's kind of a podcast space and a bookstore and. Yeah, just a bunch of shit.

You know what's funny is I actually kind of sort of worked at a bookstore through college, but basically it was a coffee shop, it was a pub. And then one of the guys who worked there would just find amazing books and add them to our library. And it wound up becoming so massive, it lined all the walls of the coffee shop all the way back into the back where there used to be a cigar smoking room before. Idaho is one of the last bastions of places where you could legally have cigar smoking rooms. Got rid of our cigar smoking room, but this bookstore still exists. It's called Bootser's Coffee Shop Pub in Moscow, Idaho. But I loved going to work because there would just be random new books, meaning new old books that I'd never heard of before that were always available, always dirt cheap, almost like, almost like a dollar store for books. And it's still there to this day. And as a matter of fact, my sons. I know you have, you have two sons, right?

Yes, I do.

Okay. Yeah, me too. I've got twin 13 year old boys and they actually fell in love so much of that coffee shop that their dream in life right now is to open their own bookstore coffee shop. And they of course have all sorts of other fancy ideas like a beanbag and a slide that goes from the top to the bottom of the bookstore. But that's actually what they want to do, is open a bookstore as well.

Yeah, that's sort of one of the less. One of the reasons we wanted to do it is that like, like you, like so much of my work is sort of digital and it's awesome. Like the scale of this podcast reaching millions of people and the articles that you write and even, I mean, the reality is, even most of my book sales are Digital. Something like 50 to 60% of my books are sold either in ebook or audio form. So, you know, so much of what I do is impossible for my kids to interact with or see in any way. And we wanted something that was real that they could go to and see and experience. And I think there's something special about the store in that sense. And like it has a tree house that they love playing and it's got all this stuff, but I think the main thing is just, it's like a brick and mortar physical space with human beings in it and they can see how like they come here after school or they come here after daycare or they come here on a weekend and we hang out. But they also, they just, like, they see how stuff happens. And that's been like a really. Wasn't exactly why we did it, but it's been like an important side benefit of it. And it's also something they can participate in. And, yeah, hopefully one day would, I don't know, take over if it's still around. But it's been one of the most challenging but rewarding things I've done in a long time.

It's such a good point because I've had that kind of angst as a father. When I look at the history of education and the fact that in many cases sons would apprentice with their fathers. That was a lot of kind of like the formative bonding time that a son would have with their father would be going to whatever, shoe horses or build fences or work on a construction project. And. And this idea of shadowing one's father at work is, to me, a very palatable idea because I love the idea that a son can spend time with their father and learn a skill or a trade. And I think that's just as important as a formal, so to speak, education. That's kind of like our modern idea of education. Yet the few times that I have arranged for my sons to shadow me, so to speak, at work, feel as though they're terribly bored because dad's just like, standing at a computer typing, and, you know, they just kind of sit in the background, you know, reading a book or coloring. But there's, there's not a whole lot that goes on, you know, and then occasionally, because I'll, I'll take. And I think you actually, you have somewhere. And I'll link to it in the show notes. If folks go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com holiday spelled with one L BenGreenfieldFitness.com Holiday is where I'll link to all Ryan's books and any, any notes from this discussion. But Ryan has an article somewhere out there on the Internet about ways to be insanely productive. And I think that one of the tips that you have on there is to take all your phone calls walking, which I also do. And so the only other element of my workday is my sons will just kind of be trailing behind me on a farm road, walking along with their hands in their pocket while dad talks to somebody on the phone about their health or their fitness or something like that. And so the idea of opening a book store so that your kids can actually be a little Bit more involved with. With Dad's business is that's kind of a cool idea.

You know, the other thing is, like, I work from home, which is great, or it has been great, but it's. It's kind of hard to have good boundaries, you know, when. When you do that. And so one of the other ideas was like, let's have a place where all of our stuff is, right? So this is where the bookstore is. This is where, I don't know, I keep my paper. You know, this is like the headquarters. It's where I record the podcast. It's where I shoot videos. It's where if I want to meet someone, if I have to do a meeting, someone comes there. There's conference spaces where my employees are sort of a home base that's also a bookstore. But then it's just like a place we go as a family outside of the house. That, like. Which worked out really nice during the pandemic, obviously, because it was like, okay, let's go here. You can ride your bikes. You know, you can mess around with stuff on the shelves. You can help us do things. But. But that. It's like a place away from the house. So there's also this sense of, like, this is when I'm at the office, this is when I'm at home. Right. And I think it's. So it can. I do think one of the benefits of virtual work is that you can sort of blend stuff together, but then it also becomes hard to distinguish between things and distinguish between different modes. And so I wanted to have, like, a headquarters, but then I also wanted, you know, the idea of, like, well, I need this. I don't want, like, just faceless office space in some office park somewhere. So we. What we did was we got this building in this small town near where we live that, like, has a main street that's doing okay, but, like, it couldn't, under normal circumstances, support an independent bookstore. But the fact that, like, I don't need it to. It's not subject to the purely the economics of the foot traffic from the small town that we live in. Right. It can be sort of supported by the other stuff that I'm doing also was a really fun part of, like, sort of being not just being a part of a community, but contributing to and improving a community. And so it's just been, like. It's just been. It's just been really awesome.

Yeah. I think a lot of people who have a digital job, including me, feel as though it would be nice to have, like, this this little office that you can duck away from to go to, particularly because the boundary issue that you alluded to, that. That I think is. Is of course, the blessing and the curse for anyone who's got a digital job is, you know, when does it stop? Can you actually go back to the office at 8:30pm after the family's finished dinner? Because it's so easy to duck down there because it's about 15ft away. And, you know, for me, you know, I started a supplements company a few years ago, and our offices are in Boulder, and they're amazing. You know, we have like, you know, infrared lights and yoga trapezes and inversion tables and kettlebells, you know, and little basketball hoops and all sorts of stuff. But unfortunately, it's like 10, 80 miles away from my front door, so I can't exactly take my sons to dad's office. You know, I just fly down there once every couple of months. How far from. From your guys's house is your bookstore?

So we have a house in town, and we have a house at some property out in the country. So what, it's about 30 minutes from one and like five minutes from the other. So we kind of built our life around this sort of three things, and we're kind of rotating between the three things. But, yeah, that. That's. To me, that's the idea is like, when you. When you watch, like, old TV shows and the. The guys, like, getting his briefcase and walking to the office, I just. I like that so much. And that's sort of the. The life we kind of wanted to set up that I think is rarer and rarer for people. And I think one of the things that I really took out of the pandemic was like, oh, I'm much more productive, much happier and much healthier when I'm not getting on airplanes. And so I want that. I want a much more sort of rooted life, and that's what I've been trying to do.

There is a place about two miles down the. Down the road from me because we kind of live in this. This quaint little spot out in the forest about. About 10 acres. And it's not really out in the middle of nowhere, even though it looks like it, you know, like 25 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes from downtown. You know, you kind of drive down the old dirt driveway and. And, you know, within a couple of minutes, you're thrust straight out into the. Into the highway and into the normal city life. But it. But it does kind of feel far removed but about two miles down the road, there's a little bookstore that sells ice cream and puppets. And there's probably just a ton of mold and lots of cobwebs and dust all over the place. But as we're talking, kind of in the back of my mind, I'm like, maybe I should just go make them an offer on their ice cream puppet bookstore and just put something up there. It could happen. It's in this little spot called Millwood, Washington. Every time I drive through, I think it'd be a perfect place for a little development. But I'm not a real estate developer.

That's totally the vibe. And it's been really fun. I mean, look, there were definitely moments, especially in the depths of the pandemic, where it was sort of like, what have we done? This was the worst idea you could have possibly spent, you know, your life savings on or whatever. But as we've come out of it, it's been really wonderful and I think it's been productive. It's been better for our family. It's been better for my sort of work life balance. And, you know, it's close to the river, it's in a beautiful part of the country, and it's just checked a lot of different boxes and I think. And then on top of it, like the most rewarding place, the most rewarding part is like, people walk in that have lived in this town forever, and they're like, oh, my God, I'm so glad there's a bookstore here. And so it does feel nice too. Again, like, it's wonderful to make things that beam out all over the world. And there is. Is there something incredibly rewarding about doing a podcast or books and reaching millions of people at scale, but you never see those people and you're not watching them come in and leave with books and then come back a week later to get more books. Right. You're not seeing other businesses come, watching ecosystem grow. Even in the last year, the stuff that's opened up near us and watching people drive in from Austin or people that have flown in to go to the bookstore and then they're eating at the deli across the street and then they're, you know, buying stuff from the store down the street. Like there's just been something to do, something at a much smaller scale has. Has been like a different experience. And I've just enjoyed it, like, so much.

Yeah. And getting their, their candy sticks and their flour from the general store, just. Yeah, exactly. The full on Little House on the Prairie, you know, the other thing that you have is a farm, right? You've got basically. Well, I mean, are you actually farming? Like, are you out on a tractor, like, harvesting wheat or what's the farm like?

So it's. It's. I never know exactly what to call it, so it's not really a farm. And that we don't grow much other than, like, our own, you know, like, tomatoes and carrots and stuff in the strawberries in the garden. We have, like, fruit trees and stuff, but we don't. Like. It's not a farm in that sense. And then to call it a ranch by Texas standards seems also offensive. But we mostly run cattle. We have about 40 acres. We have a small herd of cows, which we sell each year, and then we have some goats and donkeys. But I guess you'd call it a hobby farm or a hobby ranch. Again, like the Texas. Like, you know, the people down the street from us have 1,000 acres. Right. And so the contrast is so weird. It feels silly to. It feels like it doesn't quite get categorized easily. But when we moved out here, that's actually first where we moved. So we moved out this place called Bastrop county, which is right outside Austin. It's the. It's the county next to the county that Austin's in. And what happened was we started. And I'm sure you've seen this. You think you're going to commute into the big city, but actually you commute to the smaller cities that, you know, like, wherever the closest Walmart is or the closest grocery store. So that this town that we're in, where the bookstore is, is that sort of closest little city, but the farm is. That was the sort of the first step for us sort of leaving, you know, your. Sort of your typical urban or suburban life.

Yeah.

For a different lifestyle. Yeah.

We kind of had something similar here where people come over and they don't quite know if we are. If we're a farm, if we're just like a bunch of random preppers out in the wilderness or what. We've. We've got. We've got chickens, we've got goats. We've got a greenhouse. We're adding bees and a pond. Right now, the. The land is kind of like on a slope and pretty heavily forested, so it's not conducive to any livestock, or else we'd have those. We have, you know, we have a little fruit orchard. But I. But I think probably the one parallel that you and I both have besides. Besides being nerds who Write books. Is the Nigerian dwarf goats. You have. You have dwarf goats?

Yeah, I do. We have three goats. And do you like. Do you. Do you actually, like, milk your goats and stuff or they're just pets?

Yeah, well, we do now. I mean, you got to get them knocked up first, of course, to milk them. And we don't like to get the. The males can be kind of ornery, so we. So we send off the females to get bread and then they come back and we actually have two babies out in the garage right now. We've got a refrigerator actually, because of that, just chock full of. I can't. We have to find new uses for all the goat milk and all the, you know, all the colostrum and everything they make. But yeah, we've got milk. We've got some nice goat cheese. My wife made goat cheese the other day, which, oh, my gosh, on sourdough bread with a little bit of raw honey and sea salt. That stuff is amazing. These goats, they're entertaining, but they also put out a surprisingly voluminous amount of milk. And of course, goat milk is wonderful for the body anyways. It's more bioavailable and more easily digested and less allergenic than cow milk. But the, you know, the kids love to play with the goats and, you know, we don't really. We don't really use them. I don't know about you. We don't really use them as like lawnmowers like some people do, or as, you know, as trash consumers. But they're. They're wonderful to have around and, oh, my goodness, like, the amount of milk that they actually produce once they give birth is pretty surprising.

I would say our farm is sort of optimized over. Around, like, what are the fewest amount of recurring tasks that we have to do. So we've never bred the goats and we don't milk them because it's sort of like once you start, you can't stop kind of a thing. So the chickens, like, it's weird. I think people think, like, it would. Having a farm would be a lot of work, and it is in some ways. But like, weirdly, like, I would say chickens are probably the most work of any of the animals that we have because they're the most vulnerable and create the most daily product that you have to take care of. But for the most part, ours is sort of just like a live and let live farm. Like, the cows are out, they're grass fed, we give them cows or we give them hay, sometimes they have, you know, we have water on the property in the form of a couple different ponds that they drink out of. It's like it's a nature park and they live there and we live there and you know, you throw feed out to the goats and stuff. But, but for the most part, it's cool to be sort of part of an ecosystem and just participate in it. Our kids love it, we love it. It's both challenging and humbling. Right, because the animals, I don't know about you, but is it sort of introduced your kids to death in a very real way.

That's a big part of it. And really, you know, absent of the convenience of having fresh milk and eggs every day. For me, one of the coolest parts is how much it ties into child rearing. Meaning that, you know, not only do you of course, get access to the, to the wonderful hygiene hypothesis theory that, that, you know, your kids get stronger immune systems hanging out with all these dirty animals and getting licked in the face and, you know, playing in the chicken dung and wandering down and, you know, grabbing the eggs in the morning and kissing the goats. But I think that for, for kids, the idea of animal husbandry and learning how to, how to care for a creature and being able to get their hands dirty and doing so in a manner that is a little less intimidating for a parent than say, just like popping out more babies. For the older children to learn how to take care of actual human babies, it's much easier to just have some animals around. And it's wonderful for the kids too, because they learn how to care for a living creature. And as you alluded to, they also learn death. You know, they learn what happens when you got to sacrifice a rooster or, you know, when a goat kicks the can. Like, it's, it's something that I think creates a healthy relationship for a kid to be aware of this life death cycle. But for you, I don't know if you found this, but it really is a very, very cool formative part of a kid's upbringing to be able to just have these little creatures that you care for. And you know, when I just this morning, you know, I was actually on the stationary bike in the gym, but my gym has just a giant picture window in it that looks out over the barn where the, where the chickens and the goats are next to the greenhouse. And I see my sons wander down there every morning, you know, with mom to do their farm chores. And I think it's really, really great from a parenting standpoint as well, to have all These little animals around.

Yeah, totally. I mean, like my dog we have. My wife and I got a dog when we first met, shortly after we first met, that's now like 14 years old. Meanwhile, we've been through like four cats since we've lived on the farm, right? Because something comes and snatches them away, right? Or, you know, they wander off, right? And so you're forced to talk to your kids and. Sorry, that dog's like 15 years old now, right? So, you know, you're forced to interact with pets in a way that's a little more, you know, I don't want to say detached, but it's a little bit more realistic, a little less antiseptic even. Just like the idea of, like, hey, you have to be careful around these animals. This is not. Like, this thing is not your friend. This is not domesticated, right? And. And so I think it's. It sort of keeps you. It's both very relaxing, but then it also, you know, kind of keeps you on edge. Like when we're. When we go for a walk, we go through a walk every evening out on the farm. And it's like, hey, like, you guys can run around and do whatever you want, but, like, just know there are snakes, right? And there are spiders and there are things that exist out on this farm that are not. We can't. Like something we can't protect you from. But, like, that don't care about you the way that we care about you. And so you have to be careful and you have to be smart. You know, sort of. What are our practices if we come across a rattlesnake or whatever? Like just the other day I was on. I was actually on the phone with Robert Green and I was like, robert, I have to go. And I had to run inside and get my rifle and shoot a snake that I could see in the chicken coop from the deck. You know, it was a whole family thing, right? The kids are like, oh, my gosh, what is that? They're so excited. And then they're like, okay, guys, I like, this snake has now habituated itself to eating the chicken eggs. This isn't like a friend. We can keep this. You know, it's bye, bye, time for the snake. And then, you know, the experience of that. And then it's the. What are we going to do with the snake? Well, let's put it on this ant mound and let's come back tomorrow. And the snake is gone, right? Like, you know, the sort of cycle of life very much embodied there. And so there's just all of that, I think, has been really good and really fun. Although the other funny thing that. The humbling thing for me. So we have 40 acres and our kids favorite spot is this like, patch of dirt next to our driveway. Like, that's where they want to spend 90% of their time is rolling these trucks around in this, you know, six foot patch of dirt. And so it's also this reminder that you act like I'm always like, hey, maybe one of the neighbors will move and we can get more space, you know, and the kids are like, happy with, you know, six by six feet in the driveway. And it's. I think there's also a reminder of like, they don't really care.

The notion of like this romanticized nomadic lifestyle where you bring your kids all over the world and expose them to, you know, a wide variety of cultures is actually something. It's a notion that I had in my head when, when our sons river and Taran were born. And for the first few years of their life, we actually traveled a lot with our kids. And I realized, you know, kind of based on this idea of the dark side of hypermobility and the disruption in circadian rhythm and just like the hassle of, you know, putting the, the strollers and the. In the baby seats and everything through the, through the, the, you know, the, through the, through security at the airport. Kids that really like, they like our kids, that the happiest they are is again, just, just like playing on a little dirt patch, you know, for, for them right now, it's literally like a pile of rocks next to the greenhouse that we dug up to build the greenhouse. They'll spend two hours out there during the day stacking rocks and putting little sticks in the stacks and making forts and you know, if you have those little spots around the house, like, it's amazing how happy kids are just with a patch of dirt. It baffles my mind sometimes.

Well, that was another thing for us during the pandemic. You know, people sort of talked about it as this lost year. I'm not sure my kids really noticed anything changed. Right? I mean, obviously they noticed like grandma and grandpa were coming around less or we were getting on airplanes less or, you know, certain things, like, hey, the groceries are being delivered instead of going to the grocery store or whatever. Like, I'm sure there was some small changes, but like, because their world is. And they're. They're young enough, but because their root, their world is so rooted in like our house and the things they like to do around it. And the sort of life, self sufficient life that we've built, like really nothing changed for them. And obviously that's immensely privileged in one sense, but, but in another, it's like the kids who live in the trailer down the street probably also had a similar experience. Right. I think sometimes people hear this sort of the farm life and they go, oh, you know, you can afford that, or oh, that, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it's actually a much cheaper, accessible, easier life in many ways than, you know, the people that I know that have really expensive houses in the suburbs or, you know, really expensive house in town. Like, like our 40 acres and our decently nice house is like what I was renting an apartment in New York City for. Right. And so it's more accessible than people think, I would say. And then turns out to be one of the best investments we ever made. Because then when so much of the things you're dependent on in the world went away as they did in 2020, we were much less impacted than we would have been again if we were house to house in a nice neighborhood 30 minutes down the road.

Yeah. And by the way, the story about the snakes brings back fond memories for me because even though we don't have snakes where we're at, aside from the occasional garter or ball snake that occasionally pops up, I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, where we were just surrounded by oodles of rattlesnakes. And we used to have to battle those things every single day. I remember when I was 13 years old, you know, I had my 22 with snake shot and would just go out and, and, and get rid of the snakes. My brother, actually, my older brother, his email address is still. I'm not gonna give the full email address, but it's basically rattlesnake Ike is, is his handle because he used to just basically go out and harvest snakes with it with his bare hands. He got to the point where he'd go into rattlesnake dens and just yank rattlesnakes out.

Yeah.

And people still hire him. He's a farmer now, but people still hire him to, to get them snakes. Like, like he, he actually specializes in hunting down and grabbing live rattlesnakes. And, and he, growing up, he used to save their rattles. We used to have rattlesnakes all over the place. I, you know, I remember one time I wandered out, my little sister was literally on the, on the back porch eating half of a rattlesnake that she just found laying around. So so, yeah, that might be the, the, the hygiene hypothesis on steroids, but, yeah, I, I grew up with a lot of snakes.

One of the reasons we did end up getting a house in this little town that we're spending more time at is that our kids were turning into feral animals. And we wanted. We wanted some balance of civilization versus, like, do whatever you want in the country before it was too late. But I very much relate. I haven't seen my son eating a rattlesnake, but I have seen them doing some crazy things that just sound, you know, it's like, hey, look, at home, you can pee anywhere you want, but when we're, you know, on the road, you can't just whip it out and go to the bathroom. You know, it's sort of. You just. You just sort of revert to a more natural, uninhibited life, and it's quite wonderful.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, my wife finally put her foot down and had all of us boys stop peeing outside because she said certain areas were starting to smell a little bit. But, yeah, that's, that's how it is up here sometimes is the FedEx and the USPS and everybody, they. They kind of sort of know to drive up the driveway slowly to give the Greenfield boys a chance to actually put our pants on, because half the time we're just wandering around half naked in the, in the woods and peeing outside. Now, now, how old are your kids now?

One is five and the other is almost three.

Are you guys homeschooling?

Yeah. So. So we're doing like a mix of remote school now, and I mean, they're not quite school age yet. Remote school. And then one of my sons goes to this thing called adventure school, which is basically like, sort of like a. Like a Boy Scout camp kind of like they go through the woods and they learn different outdoor skills and sort of. They've not stepped foot in a classroom yet, which has been kind of a cool experience.

Yeah, yeah. Are. Are they doing any type of, you know, like, like nature awareness, nature immersion, like, like as part of that wilderness school? You know, my, my sons, they. They go to, you know, they're. They're. They're homeschooled, slash kind of unschooled, but they go to a nature awareness school that they go and take camps at. And then they also have this woven into their education that. This kamana curriculum, which comes from, I believe, Tom Brown, the wilderness tracker back east. He's, he's one of the guys who originated this curriculum. But this whole nature Awareness curriculum where they go out each day and they have sit spots and they learn bird language and tracking and nature awareness and plant foraging. And so we've woven that into their curriculum a little bit. But this adventure school, do they actually have like, kind of like homework that they do, you know, like sit spots or anything like that?

Yeah, yeah, it's like that. And that's one of the things we found too is like all of our friends who, their kids went to remote schooling when the school was shut down during pandemic and you're basically taking teachers who used to teach in the classroom were suddenly teaching online and that wasn't a good experience. We've also found like a really good remote school where like that's the medium that this person is an expert in, you know. And so we kind of have a mix of virtual and then a mix of this, this adventure school which is, has all that fun stuff. And then we try to do as much as we can ourselves too.

So for you having that, having the bookstore kind of removed from the house a little bit and then the farm and obviously as a prolific author.

You.

Put out a lot of books, you put out a lot of writing as well. And I'll link to your website because you have fantastic articles, you produce, you have these book reviews that you do. But what exactly does kind of a day in your life look like right now? And obviously there's a lot of little rabbit holes. I'm sure we could go down, we have a little bit of time. But what's it look like for you right now as far as what your daily routine is?

Yeah, so like today I woke up a little bit before seven. I took both the kids, we walked for about a mile with them in the stroller and then I ran about four miles. Then I came home, I did a little journaling, I took them to their grandparents house. That's where they're going to do virtual school. And then I came into the bookstore, I wrote for about an hour, then I had to shoot some videos for Daily Stoic. And then I'm doing, then I had lunch. I'm doing this with you. Someone's coming to visit me later. I'll probably get a little bit more writing done in the afternoon. I'll probably be done by I don't know, five or six today. I'm not sure if we're going to stay in the country or in town. Kids have soccer practice tonight and then that's sort of the life. I'll read before bed. But to me I try to create a sort of a really easy replicable day where I'm always making some project on, some progress on the things that I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm writing, I'm reading and you know, I'm spending time with the kids and I'm taking care of my health. Those are like the sort of the buckets that I think about when I'm trying to like design my day.

Are there particular comings and goings or bookends or rituals that you weave in? You know, for example, we always have our like 7:30am family 10 minute meditation. And then that's also. And then we have a process of self examination in the evening when we're all getting ready for bed and we finally get the kids up to the room, we close our eyes, we play our day like a movie in our mind. We typically always have family dinners and almost always those family dinners involve a game. I have my morning sauna session with the cold pool and then an afternoon workout, etc. Etc. But do you have those things that no matter how widely varied the day's activities might be that are, that are non negotiables for you?

Yeah. So waking up early is a huge one. They're going for the run outside.

How early is early for you?

Like between six and seven every morning. So not Jocko Willink early, but like early for someone who can make their own schedule.

It's funny that that's a saying now you actually hear that people say, well I'm not Jocko Willink. But so, so, so early wake time.

Yes. And then outside my rule is I don't touch the phone for the first 30 minutes that for 30 minutes to one hour that I'm awake. So I don't start the day with email, I don't start the day with social media. I don't start the day with work. I start the day with being outside, being with the kids, being active. So that's like I think our big set piece and we can tell like if for some reason we can't do that in the morning, the kids are a mess if they're not outside in movement for a chunk of time in the morning, they are a mess during the day. That's the biggest part. Writing is a huge part of the routine. Journaling is a huge part of the routine. At night we do a wind down, so it's usually a walk. They like to go pick up rocks and find things so we do a walk where they splash in puddles if it's rained recently. So we do this sort of the outdoor thing, and then, you know, we do bath and then we read a poem out of this book called the Poem for Every Day of the Year. So we read like a poem and then we talk and we read books. And then my kids are obsessed with this YouTube channel that's actually done by a friend of mine. I don't know if you, if you ever met Brett Underwood, but He has this YouTube channel called Sarah called Ghost Town Living. He lives in this ghost town in the mountains of California. And they're obsessed with it. And so they watch like every night before bed, they want to watch like 10 or 15 minutes of this YouTube video of like this guy building cabins or exploring mines or rock climbing. So they, they're like fascinated with this world. And then they do that and we listen to music and we just sort of slowly drift off to sleep. And then, then it's like my wife and I's time after the kids are out of our hair.

Yeah, what, what's, what's the journaling? You alluded to a journaling habit. Do you guys have a specific journal that you use?

I use a bunch. So I sort of do some freeform journaling. One of my favorite ones is I have this journal called the One line a day journal that you write one sentence a day. I've done it now for five years. I can see what I did on that day five years ago. And so I've done that now for a long time. I did a journal called the Daily Stoic Journal that has sort of a stoic inspired prompt every morning, which I also do. So I kind of just like have a stack of journals and I just spend some time putting on pages and then go from there.

Now, how about your writing process? You know, I actually really like your writing style. You know, I've kind of well informed historical approach, a lot of historical anecdotes, you know, combined with what I would consider to be kind of like modern day philosophy, modern day practical wisdom. You have a very good article on your website where you get into like your, your note taking process for consuming books, which I think is quite good. And I'll link to that in the show notes. I never like to ask people things on a podcast that folks go get for free in far more detail on an article. But in terms of the actual writing process, what's that look like for you?

To me, it's. So I go to the office, I sit down and I try to tackle it. First thing I find, if I've put it off, or if I've scheduled things during the day or I've done anything else first, the writing material is not as good. So for me, I just sit down and I write every day. Like, I think about it like a job. I think that's something that some writers struggle with because maybe they never wanted a job. But, like, I had a corporate life before I was a writer. So, like, the idea of, like, no, you show up for work every day is sort of ingrained in me. And so for me, I just show up and I write every day. Sometimes it's. Sometimes it's for my books, sometimes it's for the email list, you know, sometimes it's articles. But I'm doing some form of writing every day. It doesn't have to be for very long. It could be, you know, today it was maybe 45 minutes because I got tied up with stuff. But in those 45 minutes, I made forward progress on this book project that I'm, you know, maybe six or seven months in on. And like that. That project's almost. It's towards the end, it's starting to wrap up. And it's starting to wrap up because every single day, I've made forward progress on it. I'm a big believer in that rule of, like, a few crappy pages a day. I think if you do that, you'll get to the other side. But if you don't do that, if you're sort of paralyzed by perfectionism or by procrastination, you won't get where you need to go.

So when you're actually writing, especially when you're writing a book, are you using any particular software? Like, are you a scrivener guy? Are you putting everything on a Google Drive or Google Google Docs or how you actually organize the information you're writing?

So I start, like, all my research, all my early thinking is on note cards. Then when I actually sit down to write, and that's a big transition for me, is going from like, the loose sort of researchy phase to like, okay, the process has started. I start, and then from there I move on to Google Docs. I'm writing a Google Doc, but I write each chapter in a different Google Doc. And then. So the big transition then, and I'm almost there on this new project, is the transition from 50 Google Docs to the singular Microsoft Word Doc, right? Where everything has been combined. So I try to. I try to do most of the writing not thinking about word count, not thinking about anything. But, like, what's the little project I have to do today.

Yeah. It's interesting. You and I have never actually talked much about our writing process, but mine is a little bit similar in that I tend to when I'm beginning a book, I have one single document that's kind of like the Dream Catcher document. And sometimes that's an Evernote doc, sometimes it's a journal, sometimes it's a mix of that along with little note cards. But what happens is that the book actually is part of a giant Google Drive, and then each chapter for the book winds up having its own folder. Each folder has a document, and one document is the actual chapter. Another document is, for example, people I want to interview for that book. Another document is resources for that particular book. Another document is basically like drafts of a chapter. So by the time that a book is well underway inside this Google Drive, you'll find the chapter and different drafts of that chapter. Kind of some of the brainstorms, some of the people I want to interview, some of the things I've researched regarding that book. But typically there's about anywhere from, gosh, by the time a book's done, like eight to 10 different Google Docs for each, each chapter, all in the drive. And what I found honestly to be most useful with that approach is a everything's in the cloud. So you're never having that background angst going on about, what if this gets lost? Probably stemming from the first book I ever wrote. As a kid, I think I was 14, I finished this giant, epic 400 plus page fantasy fiction novel and my brother somehow deleted it from my computer. And since then, you know, I've got backups upon backups of anything that, that I ever write. But having it all in the cloud, to be able to work with an editorial team is super convenient. And then the other thing that's nice is when I'm writing, one of the things I hate the most as you're getting close to the, to the book being done, is the editorial process of having to kiss all your babies goodbye, right? All the writing that you did that you thought was pretty good, but maybe not good enough to make it into the book. Well, all of that, that can live on if you've got draft one of chapter two, draft two of chapter two, draft three. And then what happens is a lot of times, once the book's actually published, I can go back to draft one, grab everything that didn't actually make it into the book, and that can live on to be an article on a website or a future book, or even like hidden material. Or bonus material that people might be able to unlock after they've purchased the actual book. But for me, it's Google Drive and then documents for each chapter within, you know, within specific folders in that one massive, you know, overarching Google Drive.

Yeah, I think Steven Pressfield talks about killing your darlings. The hardest part is cutting, and I've been struggling with that on this, this. I'm doing a series now of these four books on the cardinal virtues. And, and like one of the, the only upsides has been like, oh, if I cut something out of this book, maybe I can save it for another book, you know, but that, that process of like, I sweat. Not only did I write this, then I did five rounds of editing on it and now I'm just having to cut it entirely. I mean, it's just extremely painful. And so it does require a certain amount of discipline to be able to say like, look, this is good and this might work. And certainly people would not complain that it was there, but they would, they would, it would negatively affect the quality of the reading experience even if they didn't know it. Right. And so, yeah, having to trim always is just one of the hardest things.

To do now when it comes to brainstorming. And you mentioned that you've got these note cards that, that are full of material that you might use in a book. I think it was actually you who I read an article at one point about the idea of keeping a commonplace book and how a lot of the great men and women in history, like Marcus Aurelius and Montaigne and Petrarch and Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson, all these people had these books that they would just keep clips of, just little snippets, ideas to do's, etc. For you, is that commonplace book an actual book or are you using technology like the notes app on your iPhone or something like that?

I think people should use whatever works for them. Mine, it's not literally a book, but it's also not digital. For me, it's note cards. As I'm talking to you now, my entire desk is covered in note cards from the chapter that I'm working on in the book. Now whenever I find something that I like, it goes on a note card. Whenever I read a book, I break down that book in the form of note cards. So I'm, I'm always using note cards and breaking and compiling material, ideas, quotes, thoughts, whatever it is I am putting down on a note card, which I then organized by themes or, or go into specific chapters on a specific book.

That I'm writing has that ever been an issue with travel? Because. Because the reason I never really got into note cards or physical means of having this kind of commonplace, you know, dream catcher, so to speak, or place where I'll just like slap stuff, you know, throw, throw wet noodles against the wall, whatever. The problem with me with the note cards and everything was when you travel, you're kind of separated from those. Or else it's kind of laborious to actually travel with all of those, all those cars. Have you ever had to, had to kind of battle against that?

Of course, of course. But because I sort of break it into smaller pieces, I just take with me what I need. So. So the obstacle is the way is three parts and it's about 10 chapters in each part. So call it 30 chapters plus an intro and a conclusion and an afterwards. So 33 or whatever. If I'm working on part two, I'm bringing chapters one, two and three from part two and that's all that I need. And that might be 50 to 100 note cards. And I actually like having it kind of compartmentalized there because I'm not thinking about the book as a whole. I'm thinking about this 10 chapter section that I'm writing.

Yeah. You know, even though I think it's kind of a clunky piece of software and I don't use it because I think it's the best solution, but it works for me is I use Evernote as kind of like my dream. Like I have one Evernote doc that's just always open, always synced across my. Well, mostly my phone and then my couple of laptops, but it has anything from articles I've read that I may want to tweet later on to little to do's that I just, you know, I don't know where I'm going to put them, so I'll just slap them into the Evernote doc. To ideas for books. And again, for people listening in, this is not just something that's useful for authors. I mean, anytime you have like this central resource or depository for ideas and for quotes and for observations and for research and for to dos or you know, almost like your external brain. I do have that one doc that's always open in Evernote nobody sees except me because eventually that stuff winds up getting refined and turned into an actual whatever series of tweets that I'll send over to the social media team or things that eventually make it into that Google Drive section for the books. But for me it's been, gosh, for almost a decade or so. Evernote.

Yeah, of course. I mean, the reason I don't use Evernote is that I find that if I have to sweat for it a little bit, like by writing it out or summarizing it or getting it down on the page, I'm more liable to remember it. So part of the experience of having to transfer it from physical book to physical note card, to organizing the note card to going through the note cards, it's to create multiple touch points. Obviously, copying and pasting saves a ton of time, but in the saving the time, it's like. Like you can have someone lift weights for you, but then you're not going to get any stronger, Right? And so for me, the process of struggling with it is really, really helpful.

Now, when it comes to writing, one thing I've noticed that I briefly alluded to earlier was you weave in a lot of historical anecdotes into your book. What I think is interesting is that in the end, I don't know if it's that I'm gaining a greater appreciation for learning lessons from history as I grown older or that I've just found that there's a great deal of wisdom to be derived from a lot of these historical anecdotes. I was never into history. Growing up like US History or really any history class was not my favorite. I didn't enjoy it that much. For you. When it comes to how much history, history of the Stoics, and history in general that you weave into your books, have you always been into history? Or is it something that you kind of had to gain an appreciation for as you became an author?

I think I've always loved history. I think it's just as I've grown as a writer, I've found that the best way to teach is through stories and that people are more open to hearing the same truth. Like if you just said, hey, this is how it is, people would be like, well, how do you know? I don't agree. What about this, this or this? Right. But I find when I tell stories, particularly from history, people are somewhat disarmed or more open to hearing about it. They remember it better. So I just find that stories, particularly historical stories, are a better way to get buy in, a better way to connect, and a better way to show rather than tell what you're talking about.

Yeah, well, probably history and I would say personal anecdotes are those, in my opinion, are two of the most powerful ways to write. Like starting off with a story from your Own life or a story from history for. Are you systematically studying history on a regular basis or are you kind of like reverse engineering it to where, you know, whatever? You have this new book, Courage is Calling. And when you're writing a section of that book that you know you want to weave history into, are you reading history regularly to get ideas? Are you more thinking of something that you want to tell someone that you know is important? And then going in and researching historical anecdotes of that particular idea or theme for the book?

It's both. It's both. So I was thinking about writing a book about courage. Obviously, I've always been fascinated with courage. So I already have a huge selection of ideas or stories or things that I was. I was interested in. And then as I'm. Before I write the book, I'm sitting down and going, okay, who are some people who I know a little bit about or I know might sort of fit in this general bucket? I'm gonna go read biographies and articles and watch documentaries and visit the places that they've lived and find, you know, really salient examples or ideas that are ultimately going to be important for the book. So that. That's kind of how I think about it. So I'm always reading, and then when I'm working on a book, I'm reading very specifically around the ideas in that book.

So. So when you're. When you're reading, obviously, that. That's kind of a different animal than writing. And, you know, a lot of people want to read more. I know you. I know you've written some on how to read more and how reading is. Is work and important work.

Sure, but.

But for you, how are you. How are you actually reading? Like. Like, how do you structure getting through books? Or do you.

I know I do. I mean, so it's always physical and.

Then always you don't do much Kindle or anything like that.

I don't do Kindle and I don't do audiobooks. I have no judgment against people who do those things. And obviously I'm happy to sell books to people who do those things if that's what works best for them. But for me, I read physical books. That's what gets me excited. That's how I engage best with the material. People think because I read a lot, they go, oh, what's your speed reading secret? It's like, I don't have one. I read a lot, right? Like, I spend time reading a lot. That's my job. And I have for 20 or so years, right? And so. So when people go, how do you read more? I mean, if you. How do you read faster? If you read a lot, you will start to read faster. Not just because you'll. You'll be better at it, but you'll have a larger base of knowledge that allows you to read effectively. Right. Like, on my 15th book about the Civil War, I'm able to burn through it faster than your average person. Right. On my 10th book about Winston Churchill, I'm able to skim a little bit and just look for the parts that I really want. So as I think about reading, it's a thing you just do a lot of. Right. And it's not a thing you're trying to rush through necessarily. Right. Like, I don't try to rush through sex or rush through meals or rush through beautiful sunsets. Right. Like, the whole point is to savor them and enjoy them and. And appreciate them for their own sake.

Yeah. I, of course, have said multiple times on this podcast that reading is a muscle. And same as you, I don't use any type of particular speed reading approach. I've never taken a speed reading. So I've just read a lot since I was a kid. And as a matter of fact, that's one thing that I do with my sons, is every week they get a book. They get a book from me. I typically read three to five books a week. I'll choose one of those. I give them to my sons, and a lot of times I'll let them choose. I'll set out, like, four books and say, okay, you pick which one's kind of calling out your name this week. And all they do is their assignment is to read the book in a week. And thus I'm trying to get across to them the idea that reading should be something that you can do at a relatively rapid pace in terms of your digestion of books. Like, a book should not be something that takes you, you know, one to two months to get through, unless it's a real classic and you're savoring it and, you know, you're reading it slowly. Like, you know, they're reading To Kill a Mockingbird right now, and they're going through that book over the course of a month because they're taking a little bit more time in it. But at least one book that they're assigned, they get through in a week. So they're getting this idea that reading is something that can be. Can be done quite a bit throughout the week, and then, then they have an assignment to write about a one Page report on what they've read. So they're able to actually demonstrate that they've harnessed some information from that book. Fortunately, all my books have. I fold as I go, then I highlight and I underline. I don't put note cards in the book like you do, but.

No, I do the same thing. I fold pages, I highlight or I use a pen usually. And then it's afterwards, I transition. Transition. I. I take that. And that's what goes on to the note cards.

Right. So. So none of my books will be resold because they're all pretty much destroyed after I finish them. But. But so, so they're. They're able to read the book and kind of like see some of dad's takes in the book and, and see what I found important. So they're kind of like reading the book through my eyes to a certain extent. And then they write that report and they. They do that every week of the year. At least one book from me. It's. It's not part of their actual curriculum as much as it is kind of like an extra thing that gets thrown in. But the idea behind that is, of course, you know, as you were just talking about, reading is a muscle. The more you do it, the better you get at it. And then the idea of being able to write down a little bit about what you've read, I think is a good skill. But this idea of reading. I think this may have also been you that mentioned that you're not a huge fan of. Of the library. Right?

Well, I mean, or at least checking.

Books out from the library.

I, of course, love libraries and support them and understand why they exist. But what, I guess what I'm saying is that, like, to me, I only want to read books that are worth keeping, right? That are worth writing it, that are worth building my own library out of. So if you're reading just sort of disposable fiction, of course. Look, if this is the only way you can afford to get books, check as many books out of the library as you can. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that to me, books are not this transactional thing. Like, here's the book. I read it now I don't have it anymore. To me, like, I. I was just. Actually, I just finished last night. I reread the Great Gatsby for probably the 10th time. But it's my copy from high school, right? Like, I can see not just like, through. If someone were to read it, they'd not just Be seeing it through my own eyes. They would be seeing 10 different Ryan's in 10 different snapshots of my life. Right. And it was fascinating to me to see things that struck me then that don't strike me now, things that I missed then that are obvious to me now. And so for me, reading is not just a thing you do once, but it's something obviously, hopefully, you do multiple times on. On books that are worth doing that to. But also, you want to be able to go back and find what you marked in these books because you could use them for something versus having a.

Loss of the library. I like the idea of using a library for reference. And my happy place used to be the library. Growing up, I would literally have my parents drop me off at the library and check out as many books as I could. But I don't do that anymore either, and really haven't since that point. Just because I'm kind of on the same page as you. Ha ha. Pun intended. That if you're reading a bunch of books that you're just giving back after you finish them, then either they're not important to you or else you're not going to be able to access them in the future. If it's a really fantastic book, at least you won't be able to access it highlighted, underlined, folded over, and kind of have it be your own version of that book. I even have a shelf. And I don't know if you do something like this, Ryan. A shelf in my library, that's the one shelf where all the books go that are the books I want to reread every year or every few years. Like. Like, there's. There's that one spot that is the. You know, it's. It's the whole, like, full body, hell yes. Bookshelf, where those are the books that I'm definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, going to come back to.

Yeah, I sort of call that my. My life shelf. And it's usually, like, what's behind me when people see me on, like, Zoom or whatever. But these are like the books that, like, are for life, right? That, like, I'm not putting them over with the novels. These are like the novels that have shaped who I am as a person that, yeah, I want to reread or I want to go back to. I was just. I was. As I was. The last chapter of Courage is about the 300 Spartans. And I. As I sat down to go, that's right, that story. I was like, oh, wait, who's the main source of this? Oh, yes, it's Herod. And so I went to my shelf, I got Herodotus off the shelf and it was like, oh, wow. Like, here is the copy of this book where I learned about these people for the first time. And here I am having a discussion. Or here I am cashing a check that I wrote to myself almost 20 years ago, right. That I put down notes to myself marking what I liked, what I thought was interesting. You know, it was like I was. I didn't know that all these years later I would be writing a book about this thing, but I knew that I might use it for something. And again, if I just checked it out from the college library, that would have been lost to me forever. But because I paid $12 for it on Amazon and kept it, you know, now I'm having this nostalgic experience that is worth so much to me.

What do you ever. What do you do about the inevitable pile of books that wind up accumulating that you really want to read that kind of annoy you every time you walk past them? Do you kind of like, I guess it was Bill, wasn't Bill Gates who would go on like a, like a week long retreat, almost like a sabbatical each year just to read, you know, with a giant pile of books that had been calling his name. Do you do anything similar?

I do. I. Yeah, I've got a big pile of books, books that I'm supposed to read that I haven't read. Although the fact if they haven't made it to the top of the pile, that usually is saying something to me. But, but I'm trying to, I'm, I'm trying to get better at like, what am I reading next? What's my next book? But one of, one of the, one of the agreements my wife and I had when we got the bookstore was that like, if we set up this office, I would not keep my books at home anymore. So, like I have like the kids books and I have like the book I'm reading right now. And then like everything else is at work, right? So I can be a bit more sloppy about it without it, like turning our home into a hoarder's den of unread or half read books. But I tried just to always be reading. And I know that I'm just chipping away at the, the, at the, you know, at the pile.

Yeah, I'm excited because I've, I've finally scheduled my first ever reading retreat. I've always thought it was maybe just a little bit Gimmicky and perhaps reflected the fact that those books might not be so important that they even need to be read. But, but I actually have a retreat set up in January because I have, I've got a real interest right now in apologetics, in systematic theology and in like church history. And I've got, and oh my goodness, like you don't wake up in the morning super excited to just delve into something like church history or apologetics. But I've got like seven massive tomes just, you know, every time I walk past them, I almost get annoyed at myself for not having delved in yet. And so I set up a writing retreat in January. And so a, it's a thematic writing retreat. Right. It's not just like a random pile of books. Like, okay, sure, this is my theology writing routine. I'm actually going to make it happen. Take all these books, disappear. And you know, my team knows I'm not going to be accessible and I don't know how it'll go, but I'm going to, I'm going to try it out. I mean, I really, I love to read, but I'm not sure how much I'll love to read, you know, eight hours a day. But we'll find out.

Yeah, it'd be interesting. I've never done something like that.

Yeah. So this new book about courage, I think that you wrote an article somewhere about your idea, how this idea got into your head in the first place to write a book about courage. How did you get that idea?

I was actually just finishing Stillness is the key. Or it was just about to come out and I remember my wife saying we should go do something with the kids. And so we ended up taking them for a hike in this place called Bastrop State park, which is down the street from us. And as we were on this walk, one of my sons is in the backpack, the other is walking along. And you know, this idea, it just, it just kind of hit me like, hey, it would be cool to do something about courage. And that very quickly, you know, escalated to not just courage, but a four book series on the cardinal virtues. Courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. And so, you know, for me it was a nice reminder of just like, hey, sometimes by not working you're actually doing the most important work. Right. And you know, sometimes when you're trying to do something, you're actually preventing your mind from like doing that sort of unconscious or subconscious unintentional work. And I would say most of my best, you know, most of my best ideas are just Kind of of popped in my head while I was in the middle of doing something else.

Yeah, my best ideas for articles and books always come from massage. I have found that one of the few times that I'll just shut myself off to the world and think of nothing else is if I'm paying someone for literally like anywhere from two to four hours for me to be laid out on a table with nothing but a little bit of peaceful music in the background, lost in my thoughts as someone does bodywork on me. And I have a digital recorder right underneath the table. And while I'm getting the bodywork done, any thoughts that pop into my head, and many of them are about content I want to produce, I'll simply speak. And then after the massage, I take that audio, I upload it to my computer, I send it off to a transcriptionist, I get the transcription back within a week. And that literally creates almost like my dream catcher document for article ideas and for book ideas. But for me, it's that, that twice a month, very long massage where I just can do nothing but dream about what I want to write or what I want to work on or problems I'm trying to solve.

Yeah, totally. I think it's. I was swimming once and someone recognized me and said, oh, hey, you know, I just read, you know, your book. I loved it, or whatever. And I said, you know, I, I wrote it in this pool. And they were like, what? And I was like, you know, most of my important work, you know, happened at the end of the workout day in this pool. You know, the idea just sort of popped in my head. I thought I was jammed up or I was stuck. And, you know, it happened.

Yeah, I used to race in Ironman and would spend many hours staring at the black line at the bottom of the pool or in the lake or in the ocean or in a river. And my problem was I would think of something halfway through the swim but be unable to write it down. And I actually got to the point where I, I had. During my last few years of Ironman training, I would keep a waterproof, like a little notepad that you'd use for logging your swim workouts on the side of the pool. It really wasn't to log my swim workouts. I would just write down ideas that randomly pop into my head. But I wish someone would come up with some type of way that you could write things down while simultaneously moving your arms and legs while swimming. Because that sensory deprivation of being in the pool, there's something about ideas that come into your Head that are pretty good. But it's accompanied by the, by the frustration and the awkward situation, not being able to actually put them to paper when you're there in the water.

That's totally, that's totally right. And I find like on my walks or my runs in the morning, like my wife knows, like when I come back inside to not say anything to me until I've said something because I'm usually like on my way to write something down.

Yeah, yeah. That's why I like to do my massages late into the evenings. When I finish the massage, I can sell some time to just lay there and dwell on it. Well, so Courage, the new book on courage. Courage is Calling is the full title, right?

Yes.

Yeah. It's part of a series with courage being first Virtue. What are the other three virtues going to be? Or do you know yet?

Yes. Self Discipline is the next book. Justice is the one after that. And then the final book in the series will be on wisdom.

Amazing. It'll be a good series. For those of you listening in, the book's called Courage is Calling and I'll link to it in the show notes. I just finished writing a book on discipline, Ryan. It's actually called Endure. It's focused on spiritual stamina. Actually, just this morning finished recording the audiobook version of it. I've been a little bit tired. I get up at 3:30 every morning.

Are you recording it at home?

Yeah, the past three weeks, just because the house is quiet around then. So I spend the first couple of hours reading the book. And for this particular audiobook I'm kind of doing something different where I'm reading, but I'm also throwing in a lot of my own prose and little ideas that pop into my head. I've realized that when you record an audiobook, you don't just have to read the book. You can kind of talk about whatever you want to talk about with the book kind of thrown in there too. But I've been getting up very early. So this idea of self discipline is something that's been top of mind for me and I'm going to try to get that book out by, I think April of next year is when we've scheduled that one.

So typically the virtue is described as temperance or moderation, which obviously I support and support or a fan of, but it's kind of boring. And so as I'm thinking about, well, how do you make people understand temperance? What does it really mean? I think it means self control and self discipline. And, and I think your point is right, too. Self discipline is not just getting up early and taking cold showers or heading into the gym. There's a spiritual element to it. And I think, really, if you do it right, those physical, mundane things actually even take on kind of a spiritual element.

Yeah. I even have a chapter in the book about how sometimes going to the gym is lack of temperancy and escapism, the ability for you to be able to flop around like a Muppet because addicted to moving, when in fact there are other more important things to be doing. Or your exercise session is actually a display of a lack of temperance. Because rather than lifting something heavy or moving in a complex manner or challenging yourself with balance or complexity or something like that, you're just kind of doing the same old thing that you've been stuck in a rut doing over training, et cetera. Training to eat, eating to train for years. And yeah, even physical activity can be a display of a lack of temperance, ironically.

So, for sure. No, especially if you're a driven, ambitious person. Right. For most people, going to the gym is not a sign of a lack of temperance. But for those of us who are good at it, who love it, who have done it for so long that it's become almost an obsessive, compulsive thing, especially like if you're injured or something, it can take more discipline to be like, today I'm going to rest.

Right, Exactly. Yeah. It's a concept I wish more people in the health and exercise world could wrap their heads around.

Well, it's bad for business, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there are so many articles you've written, some of which we've alluded to during today's show, even life lessons you've learned from your pet goats. But you've got your article about different ways you're insanely productive and how to read more and more. How the idea for Courageous Calling came to be some of your articles about your daily routine and what I'll do. For folks who are listening in, who want to take a deeper dive into anything Ryan and I have been talking about, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comholiday and I'll highlight and link to some of the articles that I think would be more relevant for you, as well as links to Ryan's new book, Courageous Calling, and all of his other books. Probably my favorite, being Stillness is the Key. I still think that's one of your favorite, one of your greatest works, Ryan.

Well, thank you, man. This is really cool.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so that's all gonna be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com holiday and Ryan, next time I'm in Austin off to come out and show you how to milk a goat. I guess you got to get them pregnant first. Then I'll come out and show you the rest of the process.

We've got some neighbors who will loan us a goat, I'm sure.

All right, man. Well, it's always, always a pleasure talking to you.

Appreciate it.

All right.

All right, we'll talk soon.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Ryan Holiday signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mentioned. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.

Sam.