Mark Manson: “I Didn’t Realize How Out of Control I Was.”

What’s the point of achieving success if you’re burned out, lonely, or exhausted? In today’s episode, Ryan sits down with Mark Manson to talk about how the habits that help you “make it” are usually the same ones that burn you out later. Mark talks about the moment he realized he couldn’t keep living like a maniac, the changes he had to make in his 30s and 40s, and why he no longer trusts himself around certain decisions. Mark Manson is a bestselling author best known for The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k. In it, Mark looks at self-improvement not through avoiding problems or always being happy, but rather through improving amidst problems and learning to accept the occasional unhappiness. Grab Mark’s books: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k Journal, and Everything Is F***ked: A Book About Hope, at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Watch Ryan's episode on the Solved Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvEg37B4DU4Listen to the Solved Podcast with Mark Manson on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Follow Mark on YouTube, and check out more of his work at https://markmanson.net/📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ 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

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It feels like an eternity ago, but back over Labor Day weekend, we were in Southern California. It's my wife's 20-year high school reunion. We saw some friends in LA, took the kids to the Santa Monica Pier. We had like a lovely little trip. And then I ran over and did a podcast with my friend Mark Manson. Actually, we did this huge deep dive into Stoicism that ran on his podcast. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But afterwards, because we just hadn't talked enough, and he hasn't been on this podcast like more times than basically anyone, we talked about some other things that I thought would be fun

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  to talk about on the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've known Mark forever. I've known Mark since before the soul art of not giving a fuck. I've been a big fan of his writing. Actually, I remember we had coffee or lunch or something in Austin when he was thinking about doing that book. I don't think either of us thought it could be this monster that it was. And it was one of the bestselling books in the country for like multiple years in a row. My actually favorite book of his is Everything is Fucked, a book about hope, although it was funny. I sent him a picture when we were in Greece this summer. He did a book before this, before all those, like a self published book on, on dating. It was in this tiny like print shop, like a copy shop where you'd get copies or get office

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  supplies. It's a little shop. They, they had it next to a bunch of Greek titles in Ithaca. So I thought that was funny. But Mark is great. I'm a big fan of his writing. I'm a bigger fan of him as a person because we've gotten to know each other over the years. He's given me a lot of advice on my writing. It's been fascinating to watch him grapple with his success. We talked about this in one of our episodes, the idea of the catastrophe of success. It's been fascinating to watch him get in incredible shape, sort of undergo this transformation that he's undergone. And then it's been fascinating and inspiring and in other ways sort of motivated me to get really on top of my game to watch him

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  just really crush it lately on the stuff he does on YouTube and social media. I think he's a fascinating guy. I think you're really gonna like this conversation. As always, if you haven't checked out The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I don't know, maybe you're like me. Sometimes you see a book that's just like selling like crazy and you're like, oh, well, I don't want to read it. You have that sort of like indie sneer. I usually find whenever I read those books, I'm like, oh, I actually understand now. I'm the one that's wrong. Everyone who liked it is right and I was wrong. There's a journal, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Journal. And then, as I mentioned, Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. He's done some interesting Audible originals as well. You can check those out. You can follow him on all platforms at Mark Manson. And then check out his podcast

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  because it's great. As I said, I will link to his episode and we will get into it. Here's me talking with Mark Manson.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  I've been thinking a lot about this thing you said. You were saying that you want to be careful when you get advice from successful people about balance, because usually they became successful by their fundamental lack of balance.

• 4:25Mark Manson?

  Correct.

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  And then they became successful and then they're thinking retroactively how they wish they used to be, or they're making changes now and then acting as if that is the approach that got them where they are.

• 4:38Mark Manson?

  Yes, there's a lot of, I think a lot of positive lifestyle changes are a result of privilege. And I don't mean that in like a pejorative way, but it's like, you know, once you do have the money to do a sauna every day, or, you know, have your like chia, papaya creatine smoothie in the morning, like that does feel like the most important thing to you. And so I just, I remember how I was coming up, which was I ate Red Bulls and Reese's cups every morning. I fell asleep with my laptop open on my chest and it would wake up in the middle of the night and continue working. So I just recognize the gap between

• 5:18Mark Manson?

  who I am today and who I was when I was starting. And I try to be realistic about that gap and understand that, you know, the, my perceptual biases might try to convince me that the way I am today is the way I should have always been, but probably wasn't realistic back then.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's funny. We were just talking about ancient philosophy and the thing we recorded, but you know, Plato's idea of the cave, like you think what's important when you're in the cave and you come out of the cave and then you're like, whoa, no, no, I had it totally wrong. And there is a good impulse to want to come back and be like, hey, this thing that you're stressed about is not nearly as important as you think it is, or this way that you're doing it, it doesn't actually have to be that way. So there is that good impulse. But yeah, there's a luxury of once you have made it, or once you're good, to be able to be like, yeah, just take it easy, do it slow. It's very rare that you find someone that's done something that's really impressive or big and they did it.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  Not as a maniac. You know what I mean?

• 6:16Mark Manson?

  Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think fundamentally to achieve extreme success, you cannot be a balanced person. Like, that's just, that just strikes me as obviously true.

• 6:27Ryan Holiday?

  And yet, it's very hard to sustain success as a maniac or as an unbalanced person. And so that's the transition of like, especially if you do it and you're like, no, no, no, my goal isn't to get in and get out.

• 6:39Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  I want to have a long career as a baseball player, or I want to write books my whole life, or I want to not go through five marriages, you know, like, then, then all of a sudden, you realize a lot of those habits or practices that were adaptive for one set of goals, which was like, go big or go home, you know, get rich, die trying. Well, if you keep trying, you're gonna die.

• 7:02Mark Manson?

  Right. These days, I kind of think of it as volatility. So, early on, volatility works in your favor. So if you have nothing,

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Mark Manson?

  you want as much volatility as possible because i- if things go south, well, you have nothing to lose. So who cares?

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Mark Manson?

  But things can go north very, very easily, right? But then, once you're on that trajectory and you are, you've kind of achieved escape velocity, you don't want volatility. Like, you don't want, you don't want wild swings in your fortune.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Mark Manson?

  Or your mood or your health. Right. When everything is going great and you've built this amazing career and financial security and family and everything, like, you want to minimize volatility so, so you can maintain that trajectory. So I think that, that those biases are apparent on both sides. It's the same thing. It's like, startup founders are always talking about how you should be a maniac.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Mark Manson?

  Which makes sense because to get a startup off the ground, you have to be

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:02Mark Manson?

  out of your mind and work all the time.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  Then they become investors and then they, I think they, they have a vested interest in you being a maniac.

• 8:09Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  Because they don't want a founder prioritizing their marriage or their relationship with their kids over this investment they've put in.

• 8:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Ryan Holiday?

  So there is a little bit of something of like, yeah, who is this, who is this sleep at your desk, sleep when you're dead, you know, like, burn the candle at two ends, hustle, culture, myth? Who is it benefiting?

• 8:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  Not the individual, for the most part, but like, the people who are trying to harness the power of said individual.

• 8:38Mark Manson?

  I like in my own life, I like the fact that I I know I can go there if I need it. Right? Like, so if I have a stretch, like, let's say I so like this year, I I started in a second business like a maniac.

• 8:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Mark Manson?

  But I know I have that that on button, right? It's like, OK, I can do this for six months. I've been there before. I've done it a few times in my career. Like, I can work like a crazy person and sacrifice a lot of balance in other areas of my life. So I think it's useful like to have it as a skill. But you need to like be able to turn it off when when you need to.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I heard in the Robert Carroll books on Lyndon Johnson, he talks about, he's like, I got it, but I have it on a leash. You know, like, you have to have that, like, killer instinct. But if you're like all killer instinct all the time, you'll probably kill yourself.

• 9:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  But I feel like a couple of years ago, like, kind of at the height of your success, not that you're not more successful now, but like, you could do anything you wanted, you'd done it, you kind of made a bunch of changes. You did that cliche thing a little bit, not that you were giving cliche advice, but you were like, no, no, no, I'm, I'm not going to keep living this way. What were the changes you feel like you made?

• 9:45Mark Manson?

  There were significant changes, both in terms of lifestyle and, I guess, professional changes. I'll start with the lifestyle because that's more straightforward. I was a very volatile person when I was younger, right? So there were very few parties that I would turn down. There were, you know, if you ever wanted somebody to join you for an exciting night out, I was your guy. I was always the last person to leave the dance floor. You know, I was pretty much up for anything at any time, which I think served me well when I was young. A, because, you know, you have the energy, but also B, because I think novel experiences are more valuable.

• 10:19Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 10:19Mark Manson?

  You know, you you learn more about who you are and what type of people there are in the world and what you like. But as I got older and the responsibilities and obligations of my career started to stack up, that just started, those sorts of decisions became more irresponsible over time. So I really just. Have buttoned up my personal life quite a bit. Like, I stopped drinking, I don't really go out anymore. I moved to California. I now drink papaya creatine smoothies every morning. And I don't necessarily like recommend everybody do that all the time. Cause you know, there are different seasons of life, but it has had a very positive effect in terms of like dulling the volatility. On the professional side, you know, there's this funny transition that happens in your

• 11:04Mark Manson?

  career and you never know exactly where it's going to happen. So early in your career, you, you need to say yes to everything. Cause you don't know what's going to work and you don't know what's going to help you break through. Late in your career, or once you've become successful or achieved a certain amount of success, you need to say no to most things. But that inflection point, it's very unclear where that inflection point is. You're never sure if you're actually nailing it. So I, I hit a point probably around the pandemic where I was like, I need to start saying no to things or I'm going to lose my mind.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Mark Manson?

  Cause this is just way too much. So I would say what I've gotten much better at the last few years is, is just being very conscious of the projects I choose, the things that I commit myself to, the things that I invest my time and money into, and really, really making sure that it's like a fuck yes before I do it. Instead of just being like, oh wow, that's a big number. Sure. You know, and then six months later, regretting.

• 12:02Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny because you, you wrote that article a long time ago.

• 12:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Ryan Holiday?

  I find this all the time where like you write something, you say something and obviously you meant it.

• 12:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Ryan Holiday?

  And obviously you were, were applying it at some level. And then you go, it's not that I didn't know what I was talking about. I definitely knew what I was talking about. I just didn't fully integrate what I was talking about. Like, and, and now it's like, oh, now I have to really do this.

• 12:24Mark Manson?

  It's funny because we just recorded a long podcast on Stoicism for my podcast right before we started recording this. And we were like, one of the last things you and I talked about was how if philosophy is not just something you read and understand, it has to be a daily consistent practice. And that, that's actually the hard part of it.

• 12:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:41Mark Manson?

  Like it, reading a book is not the hard part. I think this is just another example of that. In the case of the fuck yes or no thing, you know, the, which for people listening who aren't familiar with it, it's the simple adage that if it's not a fuck yes, it should be like any significant decision. If it's not a fuck yes, then it should be a no. I wrote that article 10 or 12 years ago. I wrote it in the context of dating. It was useful in a lot of kind of simple, you know, oh, should we buy this couch? It's really expensive. Well, it's not a fuck yes, then I guess not. What I, what I didn't realize at the time is that as your life kind of levels up, the sexiness of the things you should say no to also level up.

• 13:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:23Mark Manson?

  Right? So there are things today that you and I should say no to that our 25 year old selves dreamt of.

• 13:32Ryan Holiday?

  It seems irresponsible to say no to them.

• 13:35Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly. I guess the higher up the mountain you climb, the more difficult those no's become. And I didn't anticipate that.

• 13:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Mark Manson?

  So I, in my head, I'm like, oh, I got this no thing down. And then, you know, subtle art blows up. Bunch of new book deals come in, movie deal comes in, Will Smith shows up, like, I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And, and I basically had to learn that lesson all over again.

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, you're, you're just learning it. It's like you're playing high school basketball and then college basketball and professional basketball, and then you're playing in.

• 14:10Mark Manson?

  The Olympics or something.

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the playoffs and then the championship.

• 14:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, it's the same game, but just the, the stakes are higher and the other people are better.

• 14:20Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 14:20Ryan Holiday?

  The thing, the problems you're solving in that game are different.

• 14:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it feels irresponsible to say no to some things. It feels ungrateful to say no to certain things. And I think humans are really bad at calculating opportunity costs.

• 14:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I know if I don't do a speed game, I know exactly how much money that costs, even though it doesn't actually cost any money. But I know what I'm not getting.

• 14:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 14:46Ryan Holiday?

  There, there's no way to know what the individual toll of one thing is on a marriage, is on

• 14:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Ryan Holiday?

  a relationship with a friend, is with your health, is with your overall productivity, is with the burnout that you are slowly, steadily progressing towards. That's the trap of it.

• 15:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like you said, I think to a certain extent, you have to make a lot of those mistakes to develop that awareness. I do feel like I am a little bit better at having that awareness of, you know, so like I took a speaking gig overseas a month or two ago. I do not, I do very few speaking gigs these days for exactly

• 15:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:21Mark Manson?

  the reasons that we're talking about. And it's funny because I had checked in the hotel. I'd been, maybe been in the hotel for an hour before I was like, I'm an idiot. I should, I should have stayed home. I should never have said yes to this. Like, what am I doing here? I just flew 13 hours to get here. So it is a lesson that keeps coming up time after time, but I, I do feel like the calibration gets better.

• 15:45Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have any good systems or rules? Like, to me, it's often about saving me from myself.

• 15:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 15:50Ryan Holiday?

  You know, like, if I think I can do it, if nobody is saying that's a bad idea, I'll probably do it.

• 15:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So in the case of speaking, you know, I initially had fuck yes or no, but then it's like every speaking opportunity, especially if there's a bunch of money attached, it feels like a fuck yeah. When you get the email, you're like, fuck, yeah. I'll go, I'll go hang out in this country and get paid for it. So then I created a rule. I was like, okay, it needs to be, it needs to be a speaking opportunity that I would be interested in or enjoy, even if I wasn't getting paid for it. Like, that became the rule for a while. But then I noticed that I was still convincing myself like,

• 16:27Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:27Mark Manson?

  like, oh yeah, of course, I'll go.

• 16:29Ryan Holiday?

  I've never been there, even though you could go there for any reason at any time.

• 16:32Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly. Or I have a friend that lives there. I haven't seen in four years. Like, I could have dinner with them. Meanwhile, you're not processing that you're like, you're going to fly to London and have dinner with a friend.

• 16:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. Also, you haven't texted or called that person.

• 16:44Mark Manson?

  In four years.

• 16:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes. You could do something about it right now, but now you're like, yes.

• 16:48Mark Manson?

  Exactly. And so that failed. And then I realized that like, I still couldn't trust my brain. And so now my process is, uh, my, I've told my head of operations to literally not show me any speaking opportunities unless she believes that they could fundamentally change my career.

• 17:08Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 17:08Mark Manson?

  So that is the current rule.

• 17:10Ryan Holiday?

  And then, and then the irony is you don't miss the things that you don't know about.

• 17:14Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 17:15Ryan Holiday?

  The dilemma is only there because someone told you about the thing. Like for me, again, these are all privileged. I understand if people are like rolling their eyes, but like I, it was later in my career that I realized I don't have to blow up my day because some random radio station read something I wrote and the host wanted me to have me on. And they have a slot at 2:15 Central time. Do I want to do it?

• 17:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  And, and the ease at which I would be like, well, I had all these plans, but this is, this is the job. You should do it. And then just to the ability to be like, well, I'm not going to do it. That takes a certain amount of discipline, but just getting rid of press request thing on my website just meant I don't get the requests anymore and I don't know what I'm not doing and I'm fine.

• 18:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Ryan Holiday?

  And if it wasn't happening, you would be fine.

• 18:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah. To, to bring this back, to, to bring like a much simpler example that also from my personal life. So as part of that, like getting my lifestyle in order, I lost a ton of weight.

• 18:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Mark Manson?

  As you know, between 2020 and 2024, I lost about 60 pounds and struggled quite a bit through that period. You know, there were a lot of plateaus and rebounds and, you know, it was a very jagged line down. And I struggled a lot with the eating part of it. And it was funny because it was a very similar process in that, okay. Initially, you know, I'm like talking to my health coach and like, okay, these are the calories. These are the macros, like don't eat desserts, don't drink too much, don't whatever. I'm like, got it. This is easy, right? Well, you, you go out on a weekend or, you know, do a quick trip with the wife, or maybe it's your anniversary or something. And like there's this quick, very quickly,

• 19:04Mark Manson?

  you find that there's almost always a reason of like, well, what's one little dessert tonight? Or, you know, I had one glass of wine, but what's the second glass of wine? And so you, you like make these little, what's the word I'm looking for?

• 19:16Ryan Holiday?

  Concession.

• 19:16Mark Manson?

  Concession. You make these little concessions that feel like a one-off to you. But you're actually making them like almost every single day.

• 19:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Mark Manson?

  And so of course they end up to you not losing any weight. So eventually I was like, okay, you know what? I need to have like rules for myself. So I had rules of no desserts, no, no alcohol on weekdays. Like created all these rules for myself. Well, even then I would still start finding like reasons of like, well, you know, I haven't seen my brother in six months. And, you know, he just got married last year and we're having a great night. And so, ah, like, who am I to spoil this evening or whatever? Anyway, long story short, I, I literally got to the point where I'm like, I just went to my wife. I said, I'm not eating at a restaurant for the next 30 days. Like period.

• 20:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Mark Manson?

  Because I know if I'm in the environment, my brain is going to start lying to me. And I'm going to make up all these stupid reasons to like, start eating a bunch of crap that I shouldn't be eating. Whereas if I'm at home, I'm stuck to the stuff that's in the fridge, I'm okay. And I think of this as like knowing when not to trust myself.

• 20:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Mark Manson?

  So there's, you know, there's this cliche of like, trust yourself.

• 20:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:24Mark Manson?

  You know, you, you know, best, whatever. That's true in some cases, right? But, uh, I mean, I, I've learned in the case of accepting speaking gigs and in the case of eating desserts or drinking alcohol, I can't trust myself.

• 20:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. What, uh, I heard the definition of an addiction is when you have lost the freedom to abstain. Like when you no longer can be like, I don't want to.

• 20:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Ryan Holiday?

  That's a problem. And I think we all have those things. And then that's where the discipline is not, well, just try harder not to do the things.

• 20:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Ryan Holiday?

  It's how do you outsmart the part of yourself that is failing to not?

• 21:01Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. I've always said like, if you're relying on willpower, you've lost.

• 21:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:05Mark Manson?

  It's over. Like you shouldn't even put yourself in the spot where you're having to make a decision between the dessert and the salad, or flying to Dublin, or staying home with your kids, right? Like if you're in that, if you're in that spot and struggling to make that decision, you've, you've failed yourself to a certain extent.

• 21:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's all easier said than done. And then it's like, it's the day to day-ness of it.

• 21:39Ryan Holiday?

  I've sort of been practicing this thing of like more often than not, like more often than not, am I making the right choice, right? So it's like, with the exception of the things that are like, obviously such destructive things that you can have, none of them in your life. But like, how am I just, how am I getting better or more often than not deciding to do this thing that's like consistent with the person that I want to be or the values? Does that make sense?

• 22:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Ryan Holiday?

  Like, am I saying no more often than not? Am I saying no to the dessert more often? Like, how just consistently can you get better at doing it? And that's progress. Now, obviously, sometimes you have these hard rules, but just like, like going like, hey, I'm trying to just get better at doing it. You're never going to be perfect at the thing.

• 22:17Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 22:18Ryan Holiday?

  The thing is, how over the course of your life, do you get better at this really tough thing? That, by the way, most people are not even aware of as like a battleground.

• 22:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Ryan Holiday?

  They're just doing whatever.

• 22:30Mark Manson?

  I would say the more often than not is, that's like the healthy place to end up. It's funny, because as you're saying that, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, 2019 mark.

• 22:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Mark Manson?

  If you told me like, oh, just doing more often than not, like, I'm drunk three nights.

• 22:43Ryan Holiday?

  That's the problem.

• 22:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm drunk almost every night.

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Mark Manson?

  Whereas today, I do operate on the more often than not, you know, with the, with food and exercise and everything. And it's, and it's working, it's okay, but I had to go through that period of hard rules and basically treating myself like an untrained dog.

• 23:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Mark Manson?

  It's like, once the inner dog is trained, then you can let it loose and off the leash, but until it's trained, you have to keep it.

• 23:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the interesting thing is that it's because you spent the first 30-plus years training yourself to do the thing.

• 23:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 23:19Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And just desire outcome, desire outcome, or, you know, offer, accept, offer, accept.

• 23:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Ryan Holiday?

  And then it's, it's, it's hard to turn on a dime, be like, no, no, I'm actually the person that like, doesn't jump on opportunities now. Yeah. Like, I got here because I'm that person.

• 23:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 23:36Ryan Holiday?

  So your identity's tied up in it. And then I think, you know, it's interesting, you're saying about like, the habits you can get away with when you're younger. I think a big part of it is also like, as you get older, you realize, oh, you can't just brute force this anymore.

• 23:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:52Ryan Holiday?

  There's things that like, I think like habits and routines. This isn't just me as like an older person, a person with success and whatever, to be able to be like, oh, I'm just, I'm describing something unattainable. It's more like, no, no, no, no. Early on, I could write on the back of a crowded bus or, you know, I could write with no sleep. I could just do the thing on sheer energy. And now it's like, no, no, no. If I am like not taking care of sleep and not taking care of food and I'm not controlling environment. It's not that your ability declines, but your raw willpower declines. And so to continue to perform at the same level, you have to find other areas to elevate what you're doing or you won't, you'll fall off.

• 24:34Mark Manson?

  I think the age thing is a really good point. I don't, I don't know if it's that the willpower declines. I would say the, the margin for error declines, right? Like when I think back to my 20 year old self or 25 year old self, yeah, I could go out. I could drink all night. I could party and I could sleep three hours and then wake up and bang out a whole day of work.

• 24:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Mark Manson?

  And it was no problem. Today I would be dead. Like it would, it would be absolutely impossible. In fact, today, if I just don't sleep quite right, I, I'm like, I feel it the next morning. And so I, I think, and maybe this comes back to why I don't totally trust people after they're successful. Because usually after they're successful, they're like in their 50s and they are really cranky about their sleep and their nutrition and their exercise. And they think it's a really, really big deal and they, like, you don't remember that when you're 23, you're fucking indestructible. You can kind of get away with anything.

• 25:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. It's funny, I did this book a couple of years ago with Chris Bosch. He was telling me this story about flying with LeBron James and they're all on the heat. And LeBron is like doing yoga in the aisle of the team plane and they're all laughing at him. And, and this was like still like three or four years ago that he's telling me this. And he's like, we're all making fun of him and busting his balls about it. And he's like, he's the only one of us that's still playing.

• 25:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so there, it is, it is true that some of these are things you can't understand until you're, you're older. And yet also this element of the earlier you understand them, even just partially, even if you're, if you're just paying lip service to them or only partly investing in them. They have profound returns later. It's the same. It's like, I don't know, same putting money in your retirement account.

• 26:12Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 26:13Ryan Holiday?

  Putting a hundred dollars in when you're 20 is just profoundly different than putting a hundred dollars in when you're 30.

• 26:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Ryan Holiday?

  Because of the power of compounding interest in time.

• 26:22Mark Manson?

  It's an interesting analogy because yeah, I think if we're talking longevity or like sustained energy over time, then it makes a ton of sense to me.

• 26:31Ryan Holiday?

  When it's like asking yourself, am I doing something that is a short term sprint? Or am I trying to do this thing for a long time? And oftentimes there's parts of it. It's like you might be running this company, but you're in this industry for a long time. Or you might be working on this, but then you're in this marriage for a long time. The conflicting, contradicting incentives of the short term of one and the long term of the other, that's the balance you got to figure out.

• 26:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I agree with that. That balancing act really becomes more apparent down the road. So yeah, I guess if you do get good at it early, you will be more prepared. Cause I had to go through a very ugly and painful transition, you know, through my 30s into my 40s to kind of get my shit together. So I guess it's, I guess what I'm saying is the advice that quote unquote, successful people give to aspiring people. It's not so much about how to be successful. It's about how to prepare yourself to stay successful over a long period of time.

• 27:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. You see this too, like another example of it, and this might be too inside baseball, but like people are like, you're listening to a successful person give you the math on self-publishing or self-funding or bootstrapping or whatever. And it's like, this is only their experience in light of having succeeded. And you don't know how it's going to pan out for you now. And so actually what the best path is, is very different. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, it's very clear. Once it's worked.

• 28:02Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:03Ryan Holiday?

  What you should have done.

• 28:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Ryan Holiday?

  But you don't know if it's going to work. And so it really is like, what are the sort of just more foundational, general best practices? Not like the, the person just wishing they could have done it slightly differently.

• 28:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Also just think that like people, the advice people want to, like that's the advice people want to hear.

• 28:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:21Mark Manson?

  Let's see.

• 28:22Ryan Holiday?

  They want the inside baseball.

• 28:23Mark Manson?

  Well, no, no, no, no. What I, sorry, I'm referring to the other thing, right? So it's like, if you're a startup founder and you're completely lost and you're, you've tried like multiple iterations of a product. You have no customers, nothing's working, you're running out of money. Like, there's a piece of you that wants the answer to be, wake up at 5:30, get some sunlight.

• 28:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Mark Manson?

  Drink a papaya smoothie. Like.

• 28:44Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 28:45Mark Manson?

  That's what's gonna work.

• 28:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Mark Manson?

  You know? So I think there's a demand, there's just a massive demand for that message. And in this day and age, any, any message that has a demand is gonna be met by somebody.

• 28:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, right. No, like, uh, aspiring writers want to know what fucking program to use.

• 29:03Mark Manson?

  What font to write in.

• 29:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what pencils or how do you find an agent? And it's like, because the advice of like, you have to make something that's really good that people want.

• 29:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Ryan Holiday?

  Is so obvious. And then also like, obviously the main thing they're struggling with.

• 29:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Ryan Holiday?

  And it's more fun to fiddle at the margins.

• 29:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Ryan Holiday?

  You know, literally, like, it's like, wow, you know, like, what, you know, what is your screen looking like? And it's like, that's not, that's not what, there, there's not a market in delivering that.

• 29:31Mark Manson?

  I mean, if only the right pen or the right font, you know, determined that.

• 29:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So how have you thought about this lately? Cause you seem to really be into video and social and stuff. Now, how are you thinking about, cause again, you could just peace out. What gets you excited about this?

• 29:50Mark Manson?

  You know, it's funny, I went through a little bit of a, I guess, identity crisis, you would call it. Well, let me back up. So the, the, the short answer to that is like, I'm really enjoying scaling out the kind of online media side of this career. And it's funny, cause I'm actually enjoying it a lot more than I enjoy writing books. And that was a little bit of a, an epiphany for me a couple of years ago. I think what happened, I, I'd forgotten that I started my career being an internet guy, right? Just posting a bunch of blogs and shit on Facebook and seeing what stuck. And I loved it, I lived it and breathed it. And eventually, as part of that process of growing that online audience and that online following, uh, I did a book deal.

• 30:34Mark Manson?

  And then that, that book deal turned into just like an absurdly mega bestseller. And, and I think what happened then is because the most successful thing I had ever done was write a book. I assumed, oh, I must be an author.

• 30:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. This is narrative and identity are very tricky and deceiving.

• 30:51Mark Manson?

  Yes. So it was what the world was rewarding me for. It was what everybody knew me for doing. It was the thing I was most validated for, the thing I was making the most money doing. So I'm like, I guess I'm an author now. So I wrote a bunch of books and they went well. They did very well. But it, I burned myself out and I struggled a lot mentally during that period. And so then I came back to the kind of doing the online stuff a few years ago and I loved it. I'm a dog just chasing a car. I'm like, yeah, show me the numbers. Let me go viral. I want to see the numbers go up. So I'm having a blast doing it. I actually canceled a book deal. It was funny. I actually went to my publisher and I said, you know, I want to like launch a podcast and I want to do a lot more video content.

• 31:36Mark Manson?

  So I want to push the book back a year or two, but I'll have a much bigger audience and I'll be able to test ideas and stuff. And they were like, oh yeah, that sounds great. And then they threatened to cancel the contract. And so I said, yeah, sure. Here's your money and no regrets. So yeah, what I'm enjoying now is actually, it's very much the, I would call it the business media side of this career.

• 31:58Ryan Holiday?

  This is really important. I actually, I was just giving this talk at EO and I was talking about like, you have to find out why you got into the thing you got into. And what's the thing you like doing? So if you're like, if you really love to cook and then you start a restaurant and then you spend all the time in the back office of the restaurant, looking at vendors or whatever, or dealing with critics or then like the rewards for you succeeding where you don't get to think, to do the thing you like doing. Now, it might be that actually you didn't, you love the energy of being in the restaurant and running the restaurant and actually cooking wasn't your main thing. It was just a means to getting there. You have to know that too. You have to know like, what is the part of the thing that you actually like to do?

• 32:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Ryan Holiday?

  And then you have to hold on to that thing real tight as you succeed because everything is going to be conspiring and incentivizing to make you not be able to do that thing as much. So for me, it's like the writing is the, writing of the books is the thing I love the most. And so I To be careful on the other things that I go, hey, did I like I just told my wife the other day I walked. She was like, how was work today or whatever. And I was like, I'm not getting the middle of this book. I fucking love it. Like, I was like, I don't, I'm dreading continuing in the sense that I know at some point like I'll get. This is the part that I love. Like, I'm figuring it out and I'm like, I'm in the middle of it and I want to stay here. And so I was like, okay, the decision for that is like, I'm not going to rush it. The publisher was like, so when do you want this?

• 33:22Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, they were trying, I was like, I'm not going to give them a date that means I get less time to do the thing. Like, I'm just gonna, I'll do this as long as I want to do it. Cause that's what the reward for succeeding at your thing should be, that you get to not rush through it. But you have to know what that thing is, and then you need the discipline and you need the confidence to go like, no, no, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, not what you think I'm supposed to be doing.

• 33:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it, it's hard. Like, it's, it kind of comes back to the speaking thing, right? Like, it's, it's hard, especially when there's like financial incentive, especially when there's a lot of social validation, social pressure to, to, to say yes to certain things or do certain things. So that's been my big realization is that I'm, I'm an internet guy. And I always have been. And I will write another book, but it will be in the service of kind of the online media career, not the other way around.

• 34:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and it's so easy to essentially punish yourself with success. So the success means you don't get to do the thing you love anymore. And then you wonder why more and more success isn't.

• 34:30Mark Manson?

  Making you happy.

• 34:31Ryan Holiday?

  Making you happier. It's because it's actually taking you away from what you like. It's like, you're a coach. I just love working with athletes. And it's like, okay, but you just took this promotion and now it's actually your assistants who are doing the part of the job that you like. And to have, like, I remember my dad, I think about this all the time. My dad was a police detective and he got promoted. He took the sergeant's test, he became a sergeant. And like, the way it would work is your promotion is like, you then start at the bottom of the totem pole of the new thing. So it's like, he's the sergeant, but he's not supervising police detectives. He's a sergeant at the jail, like the shittiest place. And he was like, what have I done? He's like, they make TV shows and movies about detectives.

• 35:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Ryan Holiday?

  And he just realized like, oh, I liked doing this thing, but because, you know, obviously you take the next thing. You rewarded yourself with the thing that less people want or that you yourself don't want. And so knowing what that thing is, is like the whole game.

• 35:28Mark Manson?

  It's funny, I've, I've experienced something similar to your dad, but in reverse. So for all the 2010s, especially when the books were taking off, everybody kept telling me, keep your team as lean as possible, you know, don't hire a big team, don't do all this crazy stuff. Like just keep it simple, outsource everything. You don't want to be a manager, you don't want to have to deal with people. And I was like, okay, yeah, I don't want to have to deal with anybody. So I kept a super lean team, super small. We didn't, we didn't do anything crazy. And then a couple of years ago, when I decided to start scaling up this side of the business, I started building the team. And now we're up to like 21, 22 people. Dude, I fucking love having a team.

• 36:10Ryan Holiday?

  I had a very similar experience.

• 36:11Mark Manson?

  It's awesome. I've like, this is so much fun. I wish I did this 10 years ago.

• 36:16Ryan Holiday?

  It can be hard sometimes when you're like, wait, did I just have to deal with like three HR issues this week? Or what? There's, there's definitely, there's downsides to everything, but yeah, you're like, wait, I was just taking this out of me. Like someone was still doing and worrying about all the things. It was just me.

• 36:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Ryan Holiday?

  And that book, Die With Zero, he talks about like this idea, he's like, you're stealing money from your poorer self that your richer self won't care about.

• 36:41Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:41Ryan Holiday?

  You know, his point is like, if you're a doctor, you're not going to make a lot of money your first couple of years. But if you're like living very lean, you're kind of being an idiot because you know for a fact that in the future you're going to be all right. And you should be able to, to, to be able to make reasonable decisions about like, you don't need to drive this clunker car. If like in the future, you know, and so yeah, sometimes you're like, well, I don't know. And you're like, you're just, you're playing it too safe. And really the, the savings there are just coming out of your sanity, connections you could have had, cool work you could have done that you didn't know about.

• 37:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Ryan Holiday?

  And, and also like Casey Neistat said to me once, he was like, you do work not to make money, but you do work to do more cool work.

• 37:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And so it's like, wait, isn't

• 37:27Mark Manson?

  This is the whole point.

• 37:28Ryan Holiday?

  The whole point. Point is to work with cool people and do things that you're proud of, hopefully at a bigger level than you were doing before. And, and sometimes I think, yeah, I do think we over celebrated the kind of lean solo, no strings attached. It's like, I like that my success means other people can buy their first house. Or, you know, we're able to like, do X, Y, or Z. Like, that's cool. That's also success.

• 37:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Again, it comes back to your point of just like knowing who you are and what you want. Cause now there's this, this whole movement around solopreneurs and whatnot. And I totally get it. There's some people that that's the optimal way to do it. Like, you don't want to have to deal with anybody else. But, yeah, I, I, looking back, I think I was just maybe intimidated or brushed it off. I wish I had been a little bit more aggressive in the past with that.

• 38:23Ryan Holiday?

  I think I agree with that. Well, cool, man. This is awesome.

• 38:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Ryan Holiday?

  Do another short one sometime.

• 38:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I'm asking this purely of selfish ego, egotistical reasons. Am I the most frequent guest on Daily Stoic?

• 38:34Ryan Holiday?

  I don't know, cause I think we've done it remote once or twice. And then in person, maybe once or twice.

• 38:40Mark Manson?

  I think this is four or five.

• 38:41Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's somewhere near the top. I usually have set the record on most people's things because I've done the most books. And it's like, kind of uncomfortable to even ask, be like, hey, hey, Richel, can I come on for the seventh time? You know, and it's like, so usually I have the record on everyone's things.

• 38:59Mark Manson?

  Well, I'm gonna.

• 39:00Ryan Holiday?

  But I, I think the model of like, oh, I already had them on is weird.

• 39:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Ryan Holiday?

  You know, unless your podcast is like, I get their life story. I want to hear what's going, like, I've been doing this kind of shorter. And look, maybe the people can tell me they hate them, but I, I, I think the shorter ones where you're just like checking or shooting the shit about a few things. I think it's better. And I think most podcasts are not, even though we just did a three hour one. But I think like 40 minutes is also good.

• 39:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Ryan Holiday?

  And 20 minutes can be good. Like, not everything needs to be this fucking marathon.

• 39:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:30Ryan Holiday?

  Cause I usually make myself, I get like 20 or 30% of the way in. And then something new comes out and I never go back to the one I was listening to. Well, cool, man.

• 39:38Mark Manson?

  Awesome.

• 39:44Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.