Brian Johnson breaks down Ryan Holiday's Stillness is the Key, arguing that indecision and lack of routine structure make people miserable. William James said automating useful habits frees your mind for harder thinking. Johnson pushes installing high-leverage habit algorithms to fix this.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize. Plus one. Ryan Holiday has written a bunch of great books. The Obstacle is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, the Daily Stoic. His latest, Stillness is the Key. It's fantastic. The book is all about how pretty much all wise teachers across pretty much all cultures have used stillness as a cornerstone to peak performance and enlightenment. All that is good. Today I want to chat about one passage in particular. Ryan quotes William James wisdom on habits to make the point that we need to buy room for peace and stillness, and this makes good work and good thoughts accessible and inevitable. Here's William James on the subject. I quote for this we must make automatic and habitual as early as possible as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. James tells us there is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation. He says full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. End quote Highlight on I quote again, there is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day in the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Enter our algorithmic Automaton. That's today's plus one. As you get ready to make 2020 the greatest year of your life and again the start of the greatest decade of your life, I wonder, how are your habits? Have you been using your willpower wisely to install habits that run on autopilot? Let's celebrate the awesome algorithms and let's get to work on installing the next most high leverage ones. Specifically, what's the number one habit algorithm you could install that would have the biggest positive impact on your life for 2020? Is now a good time to start installing it? Little PS here? Algorithms are a huge part of our mastery series and optimized coach program. In fact, we spend a considerable amount of time optimizing our algorithms in module five of our program, right after Udaimonology, the big three times two Carpe Diem and Heroic Quests, and right before the Fundamentals and antifragile Confidence plus Heroic Confidence plus Response Ability. Learn more and sign up today. We've got a link if you'd like to use our program to make sure that 2020is the greatest year of your life.
