7 Stoic Strategies For Being Creative

Ancient philosophy and creative work are rarely thought analogous. Maybe they should. Creative work of any kind—a book, a screenplay, a painting, an album, a business—really comes down to having something to say and a way to say it so people listen. Ryan Holiday breaks down the Stoic strategies for being creative that have helped him write 12 books in 10 years. The process can be lonely, intimidating, and filled with self-doubt. Stoicism is a tool ready to help. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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,

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  We don't necessarily see the Stoics as artists. I guess that's because we see philosophy as this sort of abstract theoretical thing. We don't tend to see philosophers as doers. But of course, they were. Actually, I saw this, someone say, "Has a Stoic ever made a beautiful work of art, a painting, a play?" Or where is all that? The stereotype was that the Stoics are somehow emotionless. And I was like, "Have you ever seen a Delacroix painting? Or have you read one of Seneca's plays?" These are immensely beautiful works of art. The Stoics were, in fact, not just pretty creative, but Seneca was one of the great creatives of his time. And there's a reason that, if you read one of Ambrose Bierce's short stories,

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  there's been plenty of practitioners of Stoic philosophy who have made beautiful, inspiring, awe-inspiring art in some cases. And so in today's episode, I want to talk about how Stoicism can not just make you more creative, but make you a better creative. Certainly, my creative life has been a fruitful, productive one by your listening to this. And we're going to talk about, talk about all that. So here are some Stoic strategies for being creative and for being a great creative.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have the job or does the job have you? Do you use your phone or is your phone using you? Do you own stuff or does your stuff own you? For creators, do you have an audience or does the audience have you?

• 2:31Ryan Holiday?

  What I love about the Stoics is that they were doers. Seneca is not just a philosopher, not just a political advisor, but he's also a writer. He's one of Rome's greatest playwrights, his most famous playwright. Seneca was so famous as a playwright. There is a line from one of his plays, graffitied on a wall in Pompeii, preserved all these centuries later. And in fact, for many years, historians did not believe that Seneca could have been all these different people. But that's what creative people are. They were multi hyphenates. They could do more than one thing. And I think there's all sorts of great lessons from Seneca about how to be creative in whatever it is that you do, whether you become a writer or a painter, an entrepreneur or a politician. What are the strategies for being more creative

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  and for being a good professional at whatever it is that you do? I'm Ryan Holiday. I've applied these strategies in my own life in the 12 books that I've written, in the talks I've given to everyone from the NBA to the NFL, sitting senators, special forces operators. In today's episode, I want to give you some rules for creativity from some of the great creative Stoics that I think will make you better at whatever it is that you do. Enjoy.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  People ask me what the secret to writing 10, 11 books in 10 years, writing bestsellers. And I tell them there is no secret. I just work every single day, right? I do a little bit every single day. I try to make a little bit of progress every single day. This is a core precept of Stoicism. Xeno says, well, being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Marcus Aurelius says, assemble your life, action by action. No one can stop you from that, right? We focus on what we control, which is, did you show up today? Did you make a little bit of progress? And Seneca says, look, even wisdom is acquired, quote, insight, story, you know, experience by experience. And that's how books are written, too. There's a great rule in writing, just a couple crappy pages a day. I just try to produce work and then I refine and edit later.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  But the main thing is showing up, doing the work, trying to get a little bit better every single day.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  The importance of self-control, of autonomy, of self-ownership for the Stoics is everything. They thought being enslaved, being owned by something, someone, some urge, some passion, some profession was the most shameful thing of all. Your independence is everything, and yet we willingly give it up all the time. We give it up to things that don't matter, that we don't actually even like, including stuff like social media. So you gotta decide who's in control, who owns your life, who's calling the shots, who owns who.

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  "Life without design is erratic." That's from Seneca. So to me, it's all about routine for me. So every day looks almost exactly the same for me, whether it's the weekend, or it's a holiday, or it's a hard-working day. So my day is with a couple of key things. I wake up early. I don't use the phone for the first 30, 40, 50 minutes I'm awake. I do my big creative task first. I spend some time with a journal. I only have three things scheduled in my calendar every day, right? No more tasks are allowed to be scheduled in the calendar. Then I do some form of hard strenuous exercise. I try to be done with work and at home with my family by 5:00. At the absolute latest, we do dinner with the family every day, kids in the bath every day, and I read my kids to sleep every day, and that's the perfect day.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  You have to stop putting stuff off, right? You just have to stop putting stuff off. Marcus Aurelius says, "You could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow." Epictetus asks, "How much longer are you gonna wait to demand the best from yourself?" Stop putting stuff off. There's this great Latin expression, it just translates to "do it if you're gonna do it." It's like the Nike slogan, "Just do it. Don't put it off. If it matters, if it's worth doing, do it now." Because the truth is, now you have for certain. You don't know that you have tomorrow. It's arrogant to think that you can get to this next year. It's arrogant to think you'll do that when you retire. Now is now. Do it now. Don't put it off. Do it now.

• 6:30Ryan Holiday?

  Are you putting in the work? That's the question. You hear people say stuff like, "I'm gonna trust my gut on this one," or "I'm gonna trust my instincts." But the Stoics would say, "Have you actually done the work to trust those instincts? Have you put in the training and the study and asked the questions and learned from the masters enough that you deserve to do that?" Right? A lot of people's instincts lead them to very dark, screwed up places. So it's not simply a matter of trusting your gut. It's about training and putting in the work so your gut is worth trusting. Epictetus says, "The key is to get to a place where when something happens, you go, 'Ah, this is exactly what I trained for.'" Right? A lot of people don't get there. They just wanna be able to trust their gut. They just wanna go with their emotions. They just wanna justify what they're thinking about doing anyway by saying, "Ah, this is

• 7:15Ryan Holiday?

  what the universe wants." No, you have to put in the work. You don't just magically get there. And it's a lifelong journey. It has to be, or else anyone would do it.

• 7:26Ryan Holiday?

  It'd be wonderful if you could just get your dream job right now, if everything you wanted was handed to you. But that's not how life goes. Marcus Aurelius is chosen to be emperor, but first, another man is adopted first, Antoninus Pius, who is set to train Marcus Aurelius. And the idea was that he would live for a few years, set Marcus Aurelius up for the job, and then Marcus would take over. Well, that's not how it went. Antoninus Pius lived for 23 more years, two and a half decades. Marcus Aurelius has to live in the shadow of this man. Training, though, learning, being prepared, it always takes longer than you think, but it's good that it takes longer than you think, because it's preparing you for what you need to do. It's setting you up to be who you want, if you choose to learn from it, if you choose to listen, if you choose to have your heart and your mind open, if you are truly egoless,

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  if you are actually willing to learn, if you are actually willing to be made better. And that's what made Marcus Aurelius so great.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, the biggest book project I ever sold, I wasn't trying to think of my next project, I wasn't trying to make money. I was actually on a hike with my family, with my kids. I had one in a backpack, my wife was holding the other. We were outside, we were out in nature. I wasn't thinking about work at all. And suddenly, the idea for my next series, actually, is a series of four books. Popped into my head. And I've been working on that now for two years. It was lucrative, but more than that, it was creatively fulfilling and challenging. It's all these things. And that came because I took a few moments of stillness. I decided to go on the hike. I put work aside and as it happened, work popped into my head. I'm out looking at the sunset on my farm and can hear the frogs and all of this. It's moments like this when you're actually not working, when you're consciously not thinking,

• 9:05Ryan Holiday?

  that sometimes your best work, your best ideas pop into your head. That was true for the Stoics. It's true for the great artists of all time and it's true for you and I and normal people. So you gotta have time for stillness and reflection and peace. Seneca talks about taking wandering walks, about giving the mind over to relaxation. It's more important than you think. And in fact, it may be where the biggest breakthrough of your life comes from.

• 9:30Ryan 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.