We’ve Been Tested. Did You Pass? | Quality Over Quantity

“The last half-decade has tested us in many ways. A pandemic. Corresponding outbreaks of conspiracy theories and magical thinking. A booming economy...then a collapsing one. Civil unrest. Illiberalism. The passions of the mob. Authoritarian leaders. Natural disasters. Slow-moving crises.”Ryan asks you to think about how you’ve faced modern trials, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  We've been tested. Did you pass? The last half-decade has tested us in many ways. A pandemic, corresponding outbreaks of conspiracy theories and magical thinking, a booming economy, then a collapsing one, civil unrest, illiberalism, the passions of the mob, authoritarian leaders, natural disasters, slow-moving crises. We've been exposed to extreme temptations on both sides. Some people were radicalized, others apathetic. Some grew fat and lazy, others overworked and overstressed. It's been a lot. Almost every day, something new, new but also timeless.

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  We have seen in just a short span all the hallmarks of the ancient world: plagues, political violence, chaos, dysfunction, decadence. Seneca would say that adversity is the fire that forges gold, but you could also say that it is the means by which gold is tested, whether it is revealed to be real or counterfeit. The conservative writer David French expressed this well recently when he wrote, "In fact, there are ways in which the principal sins of the last four years are partisan mirror images of one another. I've seen conservative Christians commit or rationalize grievous sins in the pursuit of virtuous causes, and I've seen their opponents engage in terrible wrongs in their quest to..."

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Defeat an unfit and cruel man. Not every person has failed every test, of course. As we've learned who people really are, as their values have been put to extreme tests, there are those who have withstood the storm. They've exhibited great virtue at great cost. The Stoics didn't run away from difficulty or prosperity because they knew that on the other side of that experience was a verdict, a statement about who you are, a statement about what you're capable of, proof of whether you really believe what you say you believe. The last few years have given us temptations and trials, adversity and advantages. Did you squander them? Did you give in to them? Do you hide from them? Did you rise to the occasion? How would you grade yourself?

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  Where could you have done better? Are you ready for a rockier as well as a more rewarding future? Think about that.

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  Quality over quantity. This is the May 20th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. I guess eventually, we're doing this once a week. We'll have read the whole book. It'll be quite some time from now, but it is fun to go back through and read this book. We've got an audio version of it. We've got ebook version of it, physical edition. There's even a leather bound edition of it in the Daily Stoic store. But today's quote, today's entry comes to us from Seneca's On the Tranquility of Mind, 9:4. He says, "What's the point of having countless books in libraries whose titles could hardly be read through in a lifetime? The learner is not taught but burdened by the sheer volume.

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's better to plant the seeds of a few authors than to be scattered about by many." You know, there is no prize for having read the most books before you die. Even if you were the most dedicated reader in the world, a book a day even, your collection would probably never be bigger than a small branch library. You'll never even come close to matching what's stored in the servers at Google Books or keep up with the hundreds of thousands of titles published on Amazon each year. What then if, when it came to your reading and learning, you prioritized quality over quantity? What if you read a few great books deeply instead of briefly skimming all the new books? Your shelves might be emptier, but your brain and your life would be fuller." And you know,

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  I get this question a lot. People go, "How many books have you read?" Or, "How many books do you own?" And the question, the answer is, "I don't actually know, because this isn't what I think about." And sometimes you'll read about some historical figure, or some rich person. "I have over 30,000 books," or "He amassed a library of 5,000 books," or whatever it is. I just don't think about it that way. It's not, "Who cares how many you read?" Seneca has a great line somewhere in one of his letters where he talks about, "So you drank a bunch of fancy wine, you just acted like a sieve or a sponge. It went right through you." Right? And if you're thinking about quantity, you're missing the point. The point of reading is, one, to absorb and retain and become better for the information.

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  But, two, the point is to get better as a human being. And it may well be that rereading, Seneca talks about lingering on the works of the master thinkers. This is really important. And it was hard for me, it was only a few years ago, that I really started making the conscious effort to not just read more, but to reread more. The reason we reread is that we're getting something out of the book that wasn't there the first time, that we didn't see the first time. It's probably a lighter ecological impact, too. But the point is, by rereading, we are getting better. But, you don't get an extra book to put on the shelf. You don't get to go to the bookstore and pick something up.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  You have to sit with something you already have, and you have to really enjoy it. Thinkers, focus on getting better. Focus, don't, it's also not about speed reading, just trying to churn through as many books as possible. It's about the experience. I talk about this, too, when people ask me about speed reading. It's like, nobody tries to have sex faster. Nobody tries to get through their meals faster, right? Nobody tries to get through their kids' childhood faster. No, important, powerful, meaningful experiences you want to enjoy. You want to slow them down, you want to savor them. And I think reading is that as well. So, take your time, don't rush through, don't get caught up in ego, don't think that this is some sort of race. It's probably...

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  You know, a bit gauche to even talk about how many books you have. I honestly don't know. I know I have more than I need. I know I have more than I've read. I know there's lots more that I want to read, but that's as far as I'm going to get as far as quantity goes. I am much more focused on quality and so should you. By the way, we do talk about sort of being a better reader in our Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge. As Truman says, "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers." You can check that out at dailystoic.com/reading. But anyways, get out there, get reading. Just don't think of it as a race. It's not a race. It's about doing it well, not doing it the most or doing it the best. It's about doing it well for you and keep reading.