Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

Clever Heroic Gods!: Another Great Opportunity to Practice Our Philosophy (Heroic +1 #1,845)

17 Dec 2025 · 2 min

Episode

17 Dec 2025 · 2 min

0:00

Brian Johnson records a short Heroic +1 episode (typed at 10:27am Central Time on July 23, 2024) describing a production-day mishap: after filming eight of 15 planned clips, his hard drive filled, he used ChatGPT to clear space, deleted ~400 GB which inadvertently removed the just-filmed files (including emptying the trash). He frames the event through Stoic philosophy—distinguishing what is within control—and outlines a three-part mental response (celebrate progress, accept the mistake and practice mindful patience, and commit to not repeating it). He closes by inviting listeners to treat glitches as quick games to process and overcome.

Questions this episode answers

10:27am Central Time on Tuesday, July 23, 2024.

8:45am (same morning).

Eight of the 15 planned that morning.

Approximately 400 gigabytes.

Yes — he deleted them from the trash as well.

Chapters

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. I'm typing this at 10:27am Central Time on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. At 8:45am this morning, I connected with Tanya on our team to film some plus ones. Let's take a moment to thank Tanya. We have her and her awesome team to thank for all the content we create getting out to you. Let's go. Thank you. Now, after a little over an hour of work, I had filmed eight of the 15 plus ones I planned to film this morning. Then my hard drive ran out of space and I couldn't save the film files locally. So we had to take a break so I could figure out how to clear some hard drive space. Enter Chat GPT for the quick query on how to best do it. Easy day. All I need to do is this, then that, then this and that, and boom. Speed is a force. I just cleared 400 gigabytes of space and in the process, I deleted the files we had just filmed before they had been successfully uploaded to Dropbox. Oops. Insert facepalm emoji and perfect. I seriously had to laugh. We just spent the better part of an hour talking about rule number one of stoicism. Some things are within our control, other things are not. Now, once I had accidentally deleted the files we just worked on, there was, as far as I could tell, nothing I could do to get them back. Yes, I deleted them from trash as well. Now I have to say, I kind of love these moments. Once I do the super quick mental check in on whether I can do something about whatever I'm facing, I either do the thing I can do or I radically accept the reality of the situation. In this case, getting upset about it made zero sense. So I 1, 2, 3'd it by celebrating the fact I was crushing them to get ahead again. And two, I obviously shouldn't have deleted that. Aggressively mindful patience is a force too. And three, I can assure you I won't be doing that again. And that's today's plus one. The next time you hit a glitch, see how fast you can process it, make it a game, and win that game today.