Pod Insights The Daily Stoic Premium (🔓) This Is The Part To Love | "I Spent 6 Years Researching The Most Elusive Trait In The World" About this episode It seems insensitive to even suggest that someone “love” their fate. How are you supposed to love a breakup? Love that you buried someone? Love that you lost your business?🎥 Watch this episode on The Daily Stoic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fLpCRbQUs8📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Ryan Holiday? Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.
0:56 Ryan Holiday? This is the part to love. It seems crazy. It seems insensitive to even suggest that someone loved their fate. How are you supposed to love a breakup? Love that you buried someone? Love that you lost your business? Love that you got robbed? Love that accident? Love political dysfunction or even persecution? Well, we can clear that up right now. The Stoics didn't love the fire that swept through Rome. They didn't love the betrayals and the backstabbing. They did not love funerals, or cancer, or losing an election. They did not love the plague. That's silly. No, what they loved was what this demanded of them. They loved the opportunity for virtue and eritae that disasters and troubles and setbacks and loss presents us.
1:40 Ryan Holiday? The part they embraced was not the loss. The part they embraced was what it gave them, a chance to be there for others, a chance to grow, a chance to throw themselves into rebuilding, a chance to start over, a chance to be courageous and decent and kind. That is the part we love. We love that it gives us more of ourselves, that this experience, however unfair, however painful, however avoidable it is, can unlock something within us, that if we do our work, if we hold true, we can emerge better than before, that we can make things better for others. We didn't ask for this, but here it is, a challenge we must rise to. And if there's anything a Stoic loves, it's that.
2:24 Ryan Holiday? A challenge.
2:36 Ryan Holiday? Every day for the last six years, I have been working on a series of books about the cardinal virtues: courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. I'm Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way, The Daily Stoic, and now this Stoic virtues series, Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, Right Thing Right Now, Finally, Wisdom Takes Work. Writing a book is not something that happens overnight. It's not something you do in one pass. Doing a book takes work. It takes consistency. It takes discipline. In this video, you'll see everything that went into writing my last book, Wisdom Takes Work. Let's dive in.
3:19 Ryan Holiday? I guess in the old days, they would call this a sanitarium or a rest cure. But I'm working on some shit on myself in Arizona and had a little time. And so I am going over the first batch of note cards. I've been accumulating the note cards from the Wisdom book since 2019. Some of them are just plain. Some of them are on the note cards I printed up later. I'm just going through them and marking vaguely where they'll go in the book. Normally, this is a process I start in the office, on the big table in my office. But I'm going to do it now here. I just thought I had a little dead time, lifetime dead time. I'm in a good headspace. I wanted to make what progress I could.
4:03 Ryan Holiday? So like these two cards will go in the intro, I think. This is another intro card, so I'm just writing intro at the top. So sometimes I'm writing three for part three, sometimes two or three. These will go into piles and in the different segments later on.
4:23 Ryan Holiday? Stack of note cards. This is week two of laying the book out. I am already running out of space from the table. But hopefully, these will start to come together a little bit more. Maybe I'll have to start using other surfaces. Great. So basically, what I have here are all the uncategorized stuff that I think pertain to part two. So basically, this is a... Think about this in three months' file. This is the intro, so this is very relevant. That's looming. These are all categorized stuff, so I don't know where it's going to go in the book, but a theme is emerging. And then this is part three, so God knows what I'll think about this. But I'm going to put these away because I'm already running out of space on the table.
5:11 Ryan Holiday? So I was down here in Florida in August of 22, working on part one, the early stages of part one of the Justice Book, which I wasn't sure if it was going to come together or not. I wasn't sure how it was going to go. The book was still, you know, in pieces, the instruction manual not clear. I wasn't sure how the book was going to work. So here I am now in March of 24, and I'm in the exact same spot on the Wisdom Book. I was here for a week. I wrote maybe two and a half chapters, or I got the starts of two and a half solid chapters. And so I'm just trying to remind myself, like, it'll come together. Because the funny thing is, I was also, even though it was spring break for my kids,
5:56 Ryan Holiday? I also had to sign 2,000 of the 15,000 tippins that I'm doing for the Justice Book. And so the idea is, I've got the final bit of the Justice Book in my hands as I am in the same place, literally and figuratively, as I was in the last book. And that's sort of the process that you remind yourself of. You remind yourself it's a process. It comes together. You do the work. You don't think about the outcomes. You just keep your head down, keep chipping away at it, and it starts to come together.
6:27 Ryan Holiday? I'm working on the book and this crazy thing happened yesterday. Like the first, I think I'm on chapter four, chapter five. They're all male examples, like just it's smidge many male examples. And I thought it'd be awesome if the next chapter that I wrote was built around a female example. That's just vaguely what I was thinking. And so I decided to work on the commonplace book chapter. I've showed you like how I, all my, all my books are from note cards, right? And so I pull out this note card and it says Joan Didion did note cards. There's a mention of it in this book. I pull it up, sends me down a rabbit hole. I had totally forgotten that in Slashing Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion writes an essay called, "On Keeping a Notebook."
7:10 Ryan Holiday? Basically, everything that I want to build the chapter around is in this really awesome essay, which she wrote in the sixties. That's what I was working on yesterday. That's what I'm working on today. But the irony, the, the part that made it just feel so magical and cool. I don't know if you can hear this, is sweeping chairman. This is Joan Didion's chair. And I never met Joan Didion. I came to her writing a little bit late. Maybe she would hate what I do, but I think it's pretty fucking cool that I am sitting in the chair of one of the greatest writers of all time and writing about her in one of my books. So anyway, there's that. What changes when you hit number one on the New York Times list? Literally nothing. Back to work this morning.
7:55 Ryan Holiday? I am going through John Stuart Mill's autobiography, which according to this note, I first read in November of 2010. That's pretty cool. I'm doing a chapter on John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown, brought on by studying and thinking too much. And presenting it as kind of a cautionary tale. So that's the project now. It is Thursday, June 20th. Still had to drive my kids to school. Still, I had to feed the animals last night. Still, regular fucking person, nothing changes. You just do what you gotta do. You get back at it.
8:44 Ryan Holiday? Usually as a writer, I'm not a big believer on changing locations. I think you should be able to do your work where you are. The idea of traveling, going somewhere else and finding a good spot to write doesn't tend to work out. But last summer, I did a chunk on the Justice book in LA. This summer, I did a chunk on the Lincoln chapter here in Australia. And it's worked out okay, not as well as I wanted, but I got some, I got some stuff done.
9:15 Ryan Holiday? It is 7:00 PM on August 6th, I guess, in Australia. I am going home tomorrow early in the morning. This is the second place we stayed. This is in Bondi. I got a decent amount done on the Lincoln chapter, not as much as I wanted. I had this fantasy that I would come back with like the whole chapter done. And it doesn't always go that way. I made some progress on some other stuff and I have an idea, but I forgot my journals. So I was using this little kid's notebook I got in a museum. I think what I'm gonna have to do when I get back, I bought two extra books about Lincoln and I'm just gonna have to do more reading. I need more material. And then what I'm gonna do, and I did the same thing on the Justice book and on the Discipline book. Sometimes you stop making forward momentum.
9:57 Ryan Holiday? And my advice, when you stop making forward momentum on a project, is to go where you will have forward momentum. Go towards something that you have wrapped your head around. So actually I had some ideas for the next chapters I'm gonna do in the book. So I'm gonna put this Lincoln thing on pause while I do some more reading and just go back and focus on that. And see if I can't get a better sense of what I need that chapter to do. And then come back and backfill it. Just what I've written and the material I put down alone is 7,500 words. So almost certainly everything I need is there. It's just how to connect it all together and the point I want to make is not there. All in all, the very successful trip.
10:37 Ryan Holiday? It's funny, as I was doing it on stage, I talked in the talks that I did at Sydney Town Hall and Melbourne Town Hall, I started a tour of all the books and I talked about the fourth book and I said, "I wish I could give you a good definition of the, the fourth virtue, the virtue of wisdom, but I can't because I'm currently writing about it."
10:56 Speaker 01 No, by that, I mean, I'm still figuring it out.
10:59 Ryan Holiday? And then I said, but maybe that's the point. You're supposed to be working on it. You're never supposed to actually arrive. As it happened, like literally live on stage, I flipped open meditations and I started to read some things that Mark Schriller said he learned from Antoninus. And it gave me a sense of what I want to say in the chapter. So who knows? We'll see. I've got this manuscript to read on the plane to finish. I did about half of it on the way here and we'll go from there. It is 5:00 a.m. on August 8th. Again, the day coming back, none of us slept. The kids woke up at 2:00 in the morning. I am back in the office and I am going to work on first chapter, part three.
11:39 Ryan Holiday? It is Christmas Eve. I spent the morning with the family and now I am doing a little bit of editing. When I turned this in at the beginning of November, it was 99,000 words. I just got edits back from Julia, who did a nice pass on it. And I'm down to 81,225. I think I can get another 2,000 words out and then I may call it. I don't know.
12:06 Ryan Holiday? Listening to Gang of Youths. It's a good day. This is my Christmas present to myself. I just fucking love doing this.
12:19 Ryan Holiday? I did about an hour on the manuscript today, maybe a little more. I might come back to it later, but I'm now at 80,715 words. So I'm chipping away at it. This is the work. I spent about a month doing this in LA in July of 23. And I took the justice book down about 10,000 words. And I think it was better for it. That's what you have to tell yourself. It's painful, but ultimately you're better for it.
12:51 Ryan Holiday? It's a Saturday morning. I'm down here in Florida. It's raining, so we didn't get to do our normal walk this morning, but I sat down to work on the manuscript. My wife went out with the kids for coffee, and it's gonna be a big moment. So, the book is currently 80,479 words. I took a while. I knew for a while I was gonna have to cut this, but now I am going to cut it. And I'm gonna cut this chapter in part three that... Here, this is what, this is what the editor said. This chapter's pretty much just summarizing what the book is about. And so to keep it doesn't really make sense. It's not adding anything new. There's a little piece I'm gonna move probably to the afterword, but anyways, alright, let's do it. So 80,479 words. Let's hit delete here.
13:33 Ryan Holiday? 79,684 words. We did it. There's probably a little bit more, but, but we are now officially under where we wanna be.
13:50 Ryan Holiday? Alright, it is 3:12 PM on the 31st, and the manuscript is going in.
14:08 Ryan Holiday? It's now February 17th, and I got an email which I was both looking forward to and dreading this weekend, which is from my publisher. The copy edits back on the Wisdom Book, which I now have to go back through and do, not just those edits, but I have this many note cards that I have to add into the book, which is gonna require some cutting to make room for. So I have a bunch of work to do before this thing goes back. The publisher took six weeks to do the copy edits, and then I have like three weeks to get them back. So I may have to ask for more time, but that is the next step in the process. One of the more excruciating ones.
14:52 Ryan Holiday? So it's just gonna be notes on notes. See all these notes?
14:59 Ryan Holiday? So already a dispute with the copy editor. I have this quote, "Of all the virtues, wisdom is the most elusive. But it's something to which you aspire, something that you attempt to one day acquire." I say, "Yet we approach that we will almost certainly never get there, and that at best, true wisdom is something we can only approach. Despite a lifetime of work, it exceeds our grasp each time, slipping with each step further into the distance like the horizon that can never be reached." And he said, "Don't you mean escapes? The cliche is about a person's reach exceeding their grasp, not the goal exceeding their grasp." No, I'm referencing this exact quote from Robert Browning.
15:39 Ryan Holiday? "Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for?" So, no, you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. But this is what copy editing is. Like, one time out of 10, they're correct, and then all the other times, you're just like rolling your eyes at it.
16:03 Ryan Holiday? Alright, here it is.
16:10 Ryan Holiday? A manuscript of the new book came. Well, this is the first past pages.
16:17 Ryan Holiday? Uh, this is six years in the making, the final book in the series.
16:24 Ryan Holiday? I mean, you wanna see? You wanna check it out?
16:31 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, it's not that far.
16:40 Ryan Holiday? The secret to finishing big projects is to do them a little bit at a time. I have thousands of these tippins. That's the first page in the new book, which takes work to sign. And how am I doing all of these tens of thousands of pages? A little bit at a time. That's what a lifetime dead time is about, too. I'm waiting for my food in a restaurant, and so I'm signing a couple of these pages. Sit here.
17:05 Ryan Holiday? And then these get bound up, put in the book.
17:11 Ryan Holiday? I can't have given a talk about courage, a talk about discipline, and a talk about justice, and then talk to these future commanders of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and fighter jets about the idea of wisdom and not address the fact that you're removing books from a fucking library a few yards from you.
17:44 Ryan Holiday? I think this is the manuscript. Oh yeah, these are the second half pages. With the back. These are like my notes in the margins. I'm gonna record the audiobook office tomorrow.
18:04 Ryan Holiday? Well, that is it. I've been at this audiobook for almost a month. Did it in smaller chunks this time so I could keep the energy up and my interest up. I finally did it. This is, I think, the fourth audiobook that I've recorded here in my studio next to the painted porch. And Wisdom Takes Work is now in the can. It will go to editing, and then it will be out on October 21st. As I'm doing the audiobook, I am still making changes at this very late phase, which I'm sure my publisher's gonna be pleased about.
18:41 Ryan Holiday? Wisdom, the final virtue, what the final book in this series is about, is an elusive virtue. All right, it is finally, finally here. Six years I have been working on this series. Actually, since I was on a hike in Bastrop State Park and I had the idea. And then I did Courage, Discipline, Justice, and now, for the first time, I am holding in my hands
19:11 Ryan Holiday? Wisdom. This is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtues series. And this is literally the first time I have gotten to hold it, and I am very excited.
19:25 Ryan Holiday? I just got back from a very wet, very stormy, pre-dawn run for a very full day of press for the book. I did 6.2 miles. My phone was going off in the middle of it. There was like a pre-evacuation alert for mudslides and flooding. You know, it was very wet, but also enormous palm fronds were falling all around me as I was running. So was this wise? No, it was not wise. It was the opposite of wisdom. But before a very full day of press, you gotta do whatever it takes to get regulated. So that's what I was doing. And a little bit of crazy is a good thing. All of this is a little bit crazy. So you gotta balance it out.
19:58 Speaker 01 My next guest, my dear friend Ryan Holiday argues that one way to deal with these changes is to cultivate wisdom. In his new book, Wisdom Takes Work.
20:07 Speaker 02 Wisdom Takes Work. Wisdom Takes Work. Wisdom Takes Work.
20:10 Ryan Holiday? I'm heading to The Daily Show now. It is 5:09 PM. It should be fun. I did The Daily Show once, maybe three years ago. Hopefully it goes well.
20:21 Speaker 02 Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is the creator of Daily Stoic and a bestselling author whose latest book is called Wisdom Takes Work. Learn, Apply, Repeat. Please welcome Ryan Holiday.
20:38 Ryan Holiday? I think it's hard to subtract justice from any of the other virtues. And at the same time, wisdom is the most essential in that it tells us what is or isn't just, how to bring that justice into the world, what to be courageous about, what is the moderate, the temperate, or the disciplined amount of something. What's too much, what's too little? The new book Wisdom Takes Work is now out wherever you buy books. This is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue Series. If you want me to sign it, you can head over to dailystoic.com/wisdom to grab it.
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