The #1 Gift You Can Give Your Future Self | Former Marine Elliot Ackerman

Former Marine turned novelist Elliot Ackerman sits down with Ryan to talk about what discipline really looks like in everyday life. From 100-degree runs to cold plunges and daily writing routines, they discuss what helps them stay steady, focused, and consistent even when it’s hard. Elliot Ackerman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054 https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=elliot+ackerman*, 2034 https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=elliot+ackerman*, Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. Elliot’s books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a veteran of the Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Be sure to check out Elliot’s latest book, SHEEPDOGS. https://www.amazon.com/Sheepdogs-Novel-Elliot-Ackerman/dp/059380385X Apple Studios has actually bought the rights to develop the book as a series with Tom Hanks production company. Grab signed copies of Elliot’s books 2054 https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=elliot+ackerman* and 2034 https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=elliot+ackerman* at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=elliot+ackerman* Follow Elliot Ackerman on Instagram and X @elliot.ackerman https://www.instagram.com/elliot.ackerman/?hl=en 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.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 https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am squeezing this in. I'm taking up one last little trip with the family before school starts and the year gets rolling. Went for a nice run this morning, took the dog for a walk, you know, just doing my thing, sitting down, working on some daily Stoic emails while my kids are playing over with their grandparents. I'm very excited about this episode. I've actually had today's guest on a couple of different times, but always remote. And I said, hey, I think you might have the record for the most times you've been on the podcast, but next time you're in Austin, let's do it in person. I've known of his work for a really

• 1:35Ryan Holiday?

  long time. I believe I read his debut novel when I heard it on NPR at least 10 years ago. And then I've read a bunch of his stuff since. As I said, we've had a bunch of different conversations. And I'm just sort of in awe of this person. He's a war hero. He's CIA Special Operations Officer. He did five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you've got the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. And he's a great writer. I'm talking about Elliot Ackerman. He wrote Green on Blue. That's the first novel that I read. He wrote Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, Halcyon, Red Dress in Black. And he wrote two really interesting sort of futuristic novels

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  with my friend, someone I look up to, Admiral Stavridis. And then he has this new book called Sheepdogs, which Apple Studios bought the rights to before it even came out. Tom Hanks is going to be producing it. In addition to all that, he's also been nominated for a National Book Award, nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and he is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a special fellow at Yale. It's a pretty nuts resume across the board, an all-around fascinating guy. I'm going to split this one up into two because we really went into it. But we were talking about this idea of discipline. As I've said before, discipline

• 3:01Ryan Holiday?

  is this sort of gift you give to yourself. You're going to want the results of this thing later. And I think this is true in training, whether you're going to become a military officer. It's true whether you're just going for a run, as I said I did this morning. It's true as a writer. It's true if you're a musician. It's true, whatever it is that you do, you're going to want to be better at this thing later. And so what matters is that you do the reps now. That's what it's about. And I'm fascinated by someone who's really undergone some intense training, you know, to be an Navy SEAL or to be a Marine officer, to be an athlete. How does that apply to something, obviously, I know a little bit more about with just being a writer? So this is a great conversation, and I think you're really going to like it. And I'm keeping

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  this intro short because I'm going to go pick up the kids and take them to get some Legos from the store. So that's how my day is going. I hope your day is going well. And I hope you enjoyed this episode with the one and only Elliot Ackerman. Do grab any of his books. Sheepdogs is really good. It's really funny also, but you can't go wrong. If you want nonfiction, try his book, The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan. And there's another one called Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. Just a really impressive dude.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  You look like you just went for a run.

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, no.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  That's how I dress.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Nice. Well, you're ready to run. I ran this morning and man, it is hot.

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  In Austin?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  You run on Town Lake?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went and got this running app, you know, you just like, you know, I want to run this many miles and they like give you a cool route.

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  I ran there yesterday. I was, I usually run there most mornings. I would have seen you.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  It's great. It was like totally great.

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's one of the, I think it's one of the best in the country.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  But hot.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, a surprising amount of shade.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  No, I'm sure, like it was just reminding me, I'm like, you know, like I'm in my blazer. I'm like, this is the time of the year where it just like, it shifts on you. And it's like, and usually for me, it's like, will be one like sweaty walk through a city.

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  I know.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Or like brutal run where I come back, it's just like dead.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  I walked the dog earlier and then I was like, oh yeah, this is why I dress this way. It's because it's like you're switching between roles and it's like, if I'm dressed for like, it's like, why am, why am I dressed for the made up thing that I'm not doing? But what I'm actually doing is chasing children around or walking dogs or.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  How old are your kids?

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  Eight and six.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Four year old?

• 5:22Ryan Holiday?

  Two boys.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Oh wow. Yeah, cool.

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  How far did you run?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It's like an hour or so. I don't know, like.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  You measure in time or do you measure in distance?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny. I've been having my, so I have, I have four kids, two stepkids, two of my own and my son is 13 and he and I have been having a lot of conversations about this. Whether or not it is better to measure in distance or in time.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  So I measure in time. I've always measured in time.

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I feel like it pushes me if I'm doing the same run. It, the same run starts to get longer over time. Whereas if I'm just like, oh, I'm going to go six miles, it's easy for me to be like, you know, whatever, like six miles and you know, in, in 40 minutes versus 43, who cares? I'm doing my six miles. So it like allows me to slack off.

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  But you don't do like a loop where like.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I do out and back.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  So wouldn't measuring it by time?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. I'll go out and back. So I hit, that's only like 30 minutes out, 30 minutes back.

• 6:10Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  So I go 30 minutes out and if I'm doing a consistent run, I'll get to like, I'll know. I'll want to hit the turnaround point from the last 30 minutes. So I'll be like trucking to try to like, because if I don't hit it's 30 minutes. I'm like, man, I totally, you know, like, it's just psychological. So like, I'll hit my halfway and then I'll be coming back.

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you better not come back short. You better like, you better make the 30 back. You know, you better not like, you better not be like one, you know, one hour and you're like,

• 6:34Ryan Holiday?

  In one minute?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And you've got like an eighth of a mile to go. You say it for me, like, it's just psychological. It kind of keeps me honest.

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  That trail around Austin is exactly 10, it's like 10.02 or something. So you can start like, and there's lots of different lots. So it's like, depending on where I am, I pull in here and then you, if I get back to the car and I do the full lap, it's 10. But then you can cross it. There's like, if you cross it this, I've been doing it for 15 years. If you, if you cross it this bridge, it's five. If you cross it this bridge, it's four. You know, like different bridges, you can cut it off or double it or whatever.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  So I'm so like OCD about my out and back thing that I actually went on my running app. And I'm like, all right, because I don't know Austin. I'm like, so like, okay, I'm going to go out here. And, and it gave me like a very elegant loop to do. And I was like, well, I'll just do the loop. And I was like, loop might be a little short. And I'll just like, I'll just like kind of go a little further than out and back. And I got to like five minutes from the halfway mark, you know, where I should like start moving back. And there was like a bunch of construction. I'm like, no way. I'm just going out and back. So I'm like running through the construction like over the, anyway. So yeah, I like, I like out and back and I like time.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting. Yeah, I guess I do miles, but I'm trying to do it in less time. I don't know. The, the question I get all the time is people go, are you training for a marathon?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  And then I'm like,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Well, you look like a marathoner.

• 7:48Ryan Holiday?

  This is the, no, well, they don't just look at me and ask. They, they find out you run. Are you training for a marathon? And my thing is like,

• 7:55Speaker 01

  But you look like the guy who would train for a marathon.

• 7:56Ryan Holiday?

  That's, so I guess that's nice. But I'm, I'm like, though this is, this is the marathon. Doing it for no reason is the marathon.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. Do you run, have you run marathons?

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, I've done, well, I did. So one time on my birthday, I was like, I'm going to do a marathon. And so I did. That loop in Austin, two and a half times. So I just did that. So that's the only time I've done it. But actually this, so I'm going to do the marathon to Athens run.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. When?

• 8:25Ryan Holiday?

  13th of July. Again, just by myself.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So it's not like a-

• 8:30Ryan Holiday?

  We're going on vacation. This is like the thing I'm asking that like, I'm like, hey, I'm going to skip one day and I'm going to go do this.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  When was the battle fought? It wasn't 13th of July? No, I'm like, the date.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I should find out when it was. Yeah, yeah. They defeat them in marathon. And then the idea is the show of force by making it back to Athens in time.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I thought it, but it was the, no, it was the messenger had to run back to Athens.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  I thought the whole group did it.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  No, I think it was one guy and he passes out dead. Like that they need to get the news of the battle back to, I don't know, somebody could Wikipedia.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. I, where I remember the stories, they defeat them and then they make it to Athens in time. I thought it was the whole group, but maybe, whatever. That's where it's from. I'll have to do some reading. Have you read what I talk about when I talk about running?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  The marathon book? I haven't read it.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, we go walk through the books after this. I'll give you it because it's one of my favorites. But he does it in that, in that thing. And so I've always wanted to do it. So that's like, that's the one I'm going to do. And, and they do, they do have that as a marathon, like every year.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  I had a good buddy of mine who, who's sort of the uncle. I mean, he's not, but he's the Uncle Tony character in the book. And we were kind of younger in the Marines together. And I came back off a deployment and he was turning, I think he was turning 34. And we had to catch up. He's like, hey, man, turning 34, 34 miles from my 34th birthday. You want to come with me? And we woke up at like four in the morning or whatever it was. And we just ran around DC. We hadn't seen each other like, you know, better part of a year. And, and we just caught up and ran 34 miles together.

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  That's what I was trying to do on my birthday.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  That was great.

• 10:18Ryan Holiday?

  Probably turning, I think I was turning 30. And then what happened is like, I-

• 10:23Ryan Holiday?

  This is, I think is a good sign slash bad sign. I was like, okay, uh, we'll do it on Thursday, right? I said this to my friend who lived here and, uh, like my birthday was actually like on Wednesday. So like anyways, we got the date wrong. So we both had to do it ourselves, like differently.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Separately?

• 10:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. I've always found it like, one of my rules is like, if you don't regularly completely lose track of time, your job sucks. Like if you don't love what you do to the point where you're like, what day is it?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:52Ryan Holiday?

  You probably have a shitty.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I'd say that's a good rule.

• 10:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. But anyways, I run there and then Barton Springs is right there on that trail too. So I usually swim there. Do you know what Barton Springs is?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  Barton Springs is like this, I think it's the best pool in the United States. It's

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Like a natural?

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  It's a natural spring, like millions of gallons of water every day just come up from the ground. In like the, the depression, the Works Progress Administration turned it into a swimming pool. So they just put like

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So it looks like, so it looks like a swimming pool.

• 11:23Ryan Holiday?

  Sort of, yeah. But when you get in, it's 20 feet deep and it's rocks and turtles and fishing in. And it, but it's always the same. It's always 71 degrees and it's in, it's an eighth of a mile long.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  That's amazing. When I used to live in Istanbul, there was a floating barge in Galatasaray, which was their big university that would churn water from the Bosphorus. And so it was a swimming pool, basically like made out of Bosphorus water.

• 11:45Ryan Holiday?

  Whoa.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Which was awesome. And you could swim. I used to go run. I mean, this is my favorite ones I'd ever do. I would, when I lived there, I would go down, I'd like run on the Bosphorus, you know, do my out and back thing to my apartment, finish, take off my shirt, my shoes, my socks, put them on the side and I go swim in the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is, you know, it's not like a stinky river. It's like, it's the ocean. So, um, and that was like amazing.

• 12:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. In Berlin, they have a floating swimming pool you can swim in too.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Ryan Holiday?

  I think the ones in Sydney are the greatest, probably the greatest pools in the world though.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:13Ryan Holiday?

  The ones like on Bondi Beach that are

• 12:14Speaker 01

  A building in Sydney was when I was a little kid. I want to go.

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  It's the best. Anyways, I haven't run today yet. I'll probably do it this afternoon.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  That's a good time in summer to run.

• 12:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Well, so I grew up in Sacramento and I went to school in Riverside.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  And so I can basically run on the like surface of the sun.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  And like I just, and then I've lived here for almost 15 years. So yeah, I just, I try, I just don't think about it.

• 12:35Ryan Holiday?

  And I don't let that like determine.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  To bother you.

• 12:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Although I was talking to my wife once about, we were talking about like destructive habits. And she was like, that's a destructive habit. She was like, that's cutting yourself. You know, like you deciding that you're gonna, you want to go for a run at 110 outside. You can't judge someone who has another destructive habit. And I was like, I guess that's true. It's the worst part is it seems like a healthy habit.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I can do it in the cold.

• 13:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  In that way.

• 13:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  But I think in the, in like the really brutal, I mean, if I need to, but in the really brutal heat, it's just so bad.

• 13:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the cold, you can make, you can take precautions again.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can bundle up and then you're warm and you warm up and you're fine. Yeah. I mean, when it's really hot and you're like, I mean, I've been in situations where I've like been doing, you know, like physical exertion to the point where like, I'm going to have like a heat stroke. Like I've been on the margins of, that is not fun. And you get like, yeah, that is just not, uh.

• 13:27Ryan Holiday?

  This is going to sound patronizing, but I feel like you are unusually productive for a novelist. There's something about novel where they tend to take a very long time and do a very few amount of books. What are you at like 10 now?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Eight. That's my time.

• 13:41Ryan Holiday?

  That's a lot.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know.

• 13:43Ryan Holiday?

  Do you identify that way or no?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I don't identify that way, but I think, um, I've recognized that I guess it is comparatively. But like, I have always just sort of worked at the pace that I work.

• 13:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Right. And I'm like, okay, like, I mean, so I don't, you know, like, oh, I have an idea for like a book I want to do. Oh, this would be cool. Yeah. I think this could work. Like, okay, I'm gonna like, you know, sit down today and like take a crack at the opening, you know? And like take a crack and like, all right. And then, you know, and then when I'm working on something, kind of like, like my out and back running. You know, I sort of have like my, you know, my, whatever you want to call them, my, my pathologies of the, this is how I set myself up.

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  So I have like, you know, the work count I do every day, the times of days that I work, you know, like the, you know, what I do on weekdays versus a weekend and how I kind of like, my, you know, my process.

• 14:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And so that's like my pace. And I guess the pace has wound up being, I mean, I've had about a book a year for the last 10 years. Yeah, I mean, you're obviously you're not doing like huge, thick, like sort of.

• 14:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right. It's not like, you know, I'm not like writing like Ron Chernow's Twain biography or.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  He was just here. Oh, was he? Oh, cool. Very cool.

• 14:49Ryan Holiday?

  Um, we should talk about that, but, uh, but you're not doing short books. You're not doing like a series of novellas.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:54Ryan Holiday?

  But like there.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  That would take a really long time.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  It is. It's interesting, though, you like, you'll talk to someone and they're like a novelist and then they've been working for seven years and then it's this. Yeah. And I'm like, where is the seven years? I don't, I don't want to, I'm not being judgmental. I'm just saying I'm not seeing the seven years. Like, it's not, it's not Gatsby.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  They're doing other stuff. I mean.

• 15:16Ryan Holiday?

  That's what I think they're doing.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're doing other stuff, you know, and they're, everyone's different, you know, like my wife's a writer.

• 15:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Uh, and she writes, she does a lot more stuff in Hollywood than I do. Um, so that's a significant chunk of her kind of creative time. But when she, when I'm working on something, it's like, I'm like a coal miner. I'm like going down into salt pits every day. And I think most mornings I wake up, I'm like, and I always say something like, you know, gotta go make the donuts, you know, like I kind of, that's sort of my mindset. Uh, and usually if I'm working on something, I'm like staring at my computer screen until I figure it out.

• 15:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And I've noticed my, my wife, who's a beautiful writer and writes great books, like she will kind of be going about her business, doing whatever she's doing in a day, you know, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily writing, you know, but she goes. And I'll know she's, you know, working on something because she'll allude to it. She won't necessarily tell me everything that's going on. And then it's a certain point, she'll just sort of, you know, announce that within the last like two weeks, she's, you know, written a hundred pages of something. And what I've realized and recognized now of having, you know, lived with her so long, it's like, she's, she works it all out, like in her head.

• 16:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  She rolls it over and then like, then it's finally ready. And for her, it's just this matter of like dictation of everything she's already figured out.

• 16:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. You sometimes you, if you're like, oh, that's what it would be like to not have the compulsions that I have.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, exactly.

• 16:36Ryan Holiday?

  For you, maybe it's not like this sort of relief thing.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:40Ryan Holiday?

  You're enjoying it and it's more balanced and healthy. Whereas like for me, if I don't do it, there's guilt or frustration or.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:48Ryan Holiday?

  Like some sort of distress.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, uh, or, you know, as everyone's, I mean, like I said, an interview with Sorkin, someone asked him like, how long does it take you to write a play or a TV show or whatever? He's like, well, it takes me like 18 months to two years, but you know, about a, a year to 15 months of that looks like me sitting on the couch watching ESPN.

• 17:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you're like, oh yeah, I run sometimes. And I go, what?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I don't get. That I don't get.

• 17:13Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly. Like, what do you mean? You don't do it every single day?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm happy. Like, my work brings me joy. So if I'm not working, like, I'm not happy. And so, uh, and so I'm always like noodling on something, working on something. And, um, and one of the things I love about writing or just being a creative person is that like, it's, you know, it's on you. So it's just, you know, I, I've got an idea. I want to go do it. I've got to kind of like, set a pathway of how I'm gonna create this thing that I have a notion that I want to, to, to execute and bring it to the world.

• 17:53Ryan Holiday?

  So you, you measure in time, but you measure your writing in word count?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  In words, yeah.

• 17:59Ryan Holiday?

  That's interesting.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're kind of opposite.

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  They're very opposite.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I would never measure my writing in time.

• 18:06Ryan Holiday?

  See, I would think time, you're like, hey, I put in the work. Sometimes it's good. Like, sometimes the inspiration struck. Sometimes I pulled it off. But what mattered is that, like, I made the space to do it. Whereas word count to me feels, I don't like word count because it feels arbitrary in a way that like, time on a run doesn't, or a pace on a run doesn't feel arbitrary, which is like, you could have a thousand shitty words.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and often you do.

• 18:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  For me, it's all about like, holding your self accountability.

• 18:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Right? So if I'm running my hour out, I guess you could say, uh, and, and it's also like self knowledge because I know myself. I would never tell anyone else that they should do it the way that I do it. I'm like, okay, but given my psychology, I know myself well enough to know that. I am running out and back. And like, my turn away point today is like, a half mile short of my turn. I'm gonna be so filled with self loathing. That like, I'm gonna run faster. I just, well, I'm not gonna let that happen.

• 19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Um, and actually, one of the reasons I like, you know, Running in cities where I've never been or running places I've never been is because I'm like, well, I'm not going to have this like moment of like, you didn't get to as far as you did last time, Elliot, like, you know, like I can enjoy the run a little more because I like, don't, you know, I mean,

• 19:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And I think with, with writing, for, for whatever reason, for me, being like, listen, my work today is, is these thousand words, or, you know, even if I'm revising something, it's, I'm going to revise these 20 pages or whatever it is. It's like whether the thousand words are good or bad doesn't matter. Like you got them down. And then what I always do the next morning is I, you know, I reread, or, or actually I do it in the afternoon.

• 19:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  I, I read what I've done.

• 19:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  And then I'm merciless and I read it like someone else did and I'll chop up and delete half those words, but it doesn't matter because I did write them in the first place.

• 19:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  So I feel like to get the good words, you gotta write the bad words. If you're only trying to write good words, you're probably not going to write that much.

• 20:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I, I just tend to see like sitting in the chair as, as an equally valid proxy. Cause I mean, like, sometimes you're, you're thinking and that still counts as sitting in the chair and doing, doing the thing. I, I don't know. I, I don't do word count as much because, I don't know, I just never like, even, even like in the contract, you know, you sign a book contract and it's like 70,000 words. It doesn't matter, you know?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter.

• 20:25Ryan Holiday?

  The book is the book. So I've, I've just, I, I have a sort of an aversion to word count. And maybe it's also because I think that's one of the things you hear from like, either amateurs or people who suck is a, is a lot of focus on word count.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:39Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Where they're like, I wrote, like, how many words a day do you, like, as if it's an impressive number.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 20:45Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Is it so, it's so ultimately not tied to the main thing. Like I never-

• 20:50Speaker 01

  You're also, you strike me as someone who's less distractible than me.

• 20:52Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, no, I don't know about that.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, the thing with me is like, I gotta do it because otherwise I'll get, I'll get distracted or I'll not, like, I gotta, I don't know. I just feel like I want to- You know, I know, like, I know every day where like the story's going. And I know what the next day's work is gonna be. And then I just sort of like, alright, I'm gonna keep going. And you know, and by the, and oh, by the way, it always winds up being almost the exact same amount of time.

• 21:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Each, each day, you know what I mean? So.

• 21:18Ryan Holiday?

  Is fiction different than nonfiction for you? Like, is it, is it the same approach?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, in terms of like word count and how I think about things and just, you know. I mean, and it's, and oh, by the way, it's also like, I will write my, you know, it's not like I get to a thousand words and it's done. I'll get to like roughly there and then I write words that I give myself for the next day. If that makes sense.

• 21:37Ryan Holiday?

  Like you leave some, oh.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  So like, I'll hit, I'll hit like a thousand and then I'll be like, alright, I'm gonna get, you know, but I'll be like, oh, I gotta finish this idea, you know? And I gotta kind of, but then I'll like, and this is actually, if you really wanna know, it's, it might be boring, but like, I'll write in all caps the words that over that are like my starting for the next day.

• 21:53Ryan Holiday?

  So you're like priming the pump for tomorrow?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Priming the pump for tomorrow so that when I show up, I'm not cold, like, well, these ones count for today. And then I just keep going.

• 22:00Ryan Holiday?

  You're already 10% done?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. I'm like 10% done, like, oh, this feels great. I didn't even have to do anything. It's like the gift I give myself from yesterday.

• 22:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Hemingway talked about how, you know, if you, if you stop in the middle of a sentence.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:11Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, I think there's something to that.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  There is, actually, I mean, I stole, and I stole, but like, I've heard him, I was like, that makes sense. Like, it gives you so you don't have a totally cold start. You can, you know, you have like two or three sentences.

• 22:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  That are yours to, you know, it's like, you sort of fire, it's like your little bit of kindling. And then you're like, alright, those two or three, and then I'm gonna keep going, so.

• 22:32Ryan Holiday?

  The idea that discipline is a gift that you're giving yourself tomorrow is an interesting way to think about it, right? So like by doing extra work or by doing, not eating the thing you shouldn't eat, or eating the thing you should eat, or pushing yourself a little bit further. You're like, this is, this is something, future me, can you, I think about that as, as with research, right? Because everything I'm doing now is a result of work that I did a while ago. And then so. I'm I'm sort of haunted by the question of like, what am I going to be withdrawing from a year from now?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  I absolutely think that way. I think discipline is like, it is, it is gifts you're giving to your future selves.

• 23:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, it's time travel.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Cross category. Yeah, it is. It's like a form of time travel. And I don't know. And I find I'm the happiest when I'm, I mean, it sounds very unromantic to say, but I found like, being a Marine and having this background, it was like fantastic preparation for being a writer.

• 23:25Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Because you learn the discipline.

• 23:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  You know, and you learn that like, things just suck a lot of the time. And you're just like, gonna have to be comfortable with things sucking. And like, you know, the world not always like shining in your face and just sort of being miserable.

• 23:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  So it's like, it's actually, it's, it's pretty great. And then, yeah, but then that idea of, yeah, just this sort of like, the grind, you know, there's a real, there's a real value in just kind of grinding work that I feel like we don't talk about as much because it's not very romantic. What people want to hear about is that like, you know, you know, you like, go into the desert like Jim Morrison and have like, a little, you know, dance party and you come out and there's like.

• 24:08Ryan Holiday?

  You sit at a typewriter and bleed?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Or whatever it is, you know. So I think it's more like, just kind of, a lot of times, just grinding.

• 24:15Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's a job like any other job. And you have to put in the hours and the work. And I do, I do think people that were attracted to it first and foremost as a sort of an art or a symbol or something have trouble developing the discipline. But if you come to it from the discipline first, or you, you have some analogous discipline in your life, like, this is what Merakami is talking about when he's talking about running, is that, like, by having this thing that sucks most, like, I'm never, I have not enjoyed many runs, but I'm almost always glad after.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Always.

• 24:49Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And like, the same goes for sitting down and writing. The same goes for, like, the decision to sit down and go through a book I've read to break it down, like, to do the research stuff that, like, I'm not going to get the benefits of what I'm doing for many years from now. Or pushing through, reading a book that sucks. You know, but you know, you need it for something like so. If you have something in your life where you're like, I do hard things.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:15Ryan Holiday?

  Even though I don't want to, and even though they're not fun while I'm doing them. But afterwards I get benefits. I think cold plunge is a perfect metaphor for this. I've said.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:22Ryan Holiday?

  I think that given the people that talk a lot about cold plunges and the utter pseudoscience that they also believe in.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Have you done it?

• 25:30Ryan Holiday?

  I have one. Yeah, like I am more and more convinced that there are zero health benefits to it. Like that it's total nonsense. But I do it anyway, because I think its primary benefit is that it is unpleasant and you don't want to do it. And you're developing the skill of doing an unpleasant thing for a amount of time you've committed to doing it. And then feeling the invigoration and the pride and self command after you have done it.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Totally. And I would say one thing I have tried to always cultivate in my life, which can at times feel sort of antithetical to this kind of, you know, the the rigor of discipline and routine is like, and I'm going to respect the cold plunges is like being very open. Be like, when something lands in your lap.

• 26:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  And it's like unexpected, you know, I mean, and there, and if there isn't a really good reason to say no.

• 26:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  You are obligated to say yes, like the universe has brought, has brought this to you.

• 26:28Ryan Holiday?

  Like an editor said, hey, you want to write a thousand.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Do you want to write this? Yeah. You want to do something on this and you know, your reaction should be yes, unless there's a compelling reason to say no. Or like, so an incident that happened with me was a, a, a very good friend of my wife's. He like just had, he has like just weird health problems and he was sort of trying to figure out what was going on. And someone would be like, well, you should go do like a Wim Hof thing.

• 26:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  You know, and he was into it and he was going to, and I knew he was doing this. He was telling me he was going to do it with an old friend of his. And that friend had like a conflict that came up and the guy who was like the certified Wim Hof instructor was like, well, if we lose him, there are enough people in this thing to even do it.

• 27:02Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And so they're like, so my wife's like, do you think you'd ever want to go do this? And I looked at my calendar and I had this like chunk of like six days of white space and I was like. I really think I should, you know, and so I knew nothing about this. And anyways, wound up like going up and I was wanting to like the tippy tip of Scotland and like say it was and spent like a week like, you know,

• 27:22Ryan Holiday?

  Do you still do that stuff?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Sitting in frozen, you know, in frozen streams.

• 27:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  I don't, not because I'm like against it mainly because like I just don't, I'll do like the cold shower in the morning or I'll like fill my bath up cold in the winter, you know, and the like the tap, you know, is chilly and I'll do it. And I totally buy that there are, here are the health benefits I think probably, you know, exist, right? Like, I think, okay, we did like, it was really effing cold.

• 27:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, like brutally.

• 27:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Um, like the first time I did it with this guy and our, our instructor was like a total character. But he was like, I'm not going to tell you what we're doing. We're just going to do it. You're never going to know. It's like, you know, it's like Navy SEAL hell week, but like, you know, Wim Hof, um, at least for how he organized things. Like I went like 30 seconds the first time. Like this is brutally cold. Like this just seems totally miserable. And then, you know, like you go up and I think by the time we were at the end, we were like, you know, like approaching like five minutes sitting there in the cold and shivering.

• 28:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  But, um, so what? You get a lot of adrenaline.

• 28:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Out of it. You jump your, the water's brutally cold.

• 28:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  And you get out and you get this huge rush of endorphins. I think the combination of like the adrenaline and the endorphins, like it clearly boosts your metabolism a little bit.

• 28:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know. That's probably good for you. I mean, I don't think it's going to like save your life necessarily, but I think it's not bad for you.

• 28:32Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's definitely not bad for you. I just, I just think.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And inflammation and, you know, stuff like that.

• 28:36Ryan Holiday?

  I, I think about it with running too. Like if you told me actually that running was at this point bad for my health.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:41Ryan Holiday?

  I would still do it.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I would.

• 28:43Ryan Holiday?

  Because it's good for my mental health.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I worry about this when I get older, actually.

• 28:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  I worry I'm going to like kill myself on the treadmill or something or like I won't, I won't be able to, I'm going to have to go through a process of.

• 28:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Convincing myself that it like, you know, like having, you know, like letting go and being like, you gotta now, what was once your hour run is going to be a 30 minute doddering walk and that's okay.

• 29:05Ryan Holiday?

  I think you, uh, this to me, this is why I, I tried to, I do some biking and then I try to swim.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  I did, I cross turn shit like that.

• 29:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Just to, let's, let's swap one day on the knees for something very low impact.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  But you will be 87 someday probably.

• 29:20Ryan Holiday?

  But when you're swimming, you see a lot more old people in the pool than you do like on a

• 29:27Speaker 01

  On a run, yeah, on a trail, for sure. No, I have my things out. I do. I do a lot. I do not run the way I ran when I was like 22.

• 29:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  I like switch it up with other things.

• 29:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that and that's my wife's point about like, okay, so what is it? You think you're keeping the discipline up by running when it's 110. But like, what is the actual effect on you and the body that, you know, I the trade off of like, having the discipline now at the expense of yourself later, I think that's that's something that kind of keeps me up at night a little bit. It's like, how do you, if there's a part of you that's always going and will always push, how do you keep that within sustainable bounds, even with writing, right? Like you could, you know, like, the market can only support, like, I could probably write more than the market would be interested in, in the short amount of time. So spacing them out is a decision.

• 30:18Ryan Holiday?

  Giving them room to breathe is a decision. And then also just like burnout, like the decision to go like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually exert the discipline here to not do than to do more. That is sometimes harder.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that can be harder. I think you've got to, um, you know, you, I think it's important to sort of get into the paradigms that work for you and support your goals. Like, you know, like when I was in the military for a long, long time, and I thought about my fitness in like very specific terms, like the tests I needed to pass, the courses I was going to, and you know, it wasn't, there weren't like wild shifts in how I was training, but I was very cognizant of like, you know, I gotta hit these metrics. And then I got out and I was like, okay, well, what are my metrics I'm gonna hit?

• 31:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  And I sort of landed on a very basic metric, which was, all right, when I am 90 years old.

• 31:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  I don't want to be fat.

• 31:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I don't want to be broken. Yeah. And I was like, all right, so everything, all my fitness goal, and oh, by the way, these two are like connected.

• 31:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  So, you know, you know.

• 31:21Ryan Holiday?

  But maybe even attention, attention.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. But so I was like, all of my fitness goals should be leading to this like long-term goal of like being that, you know, like I have a friend who's a family friend who's, I mean, he's, he's about to turn 90 and he still skis.

• 31:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  And not like, like, yo, he barely, he really goes out and he skis every winter. I'm like, man, I want to be that guy.

• 31:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Like, and of course, you know, genes and other things factor into that. But, you know, some of it is just like good life choices. Like, you know, so I stopped like, you know, I don't clean press above my head much anymore.

• 31:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  You know, and I'm not going to like tell someone, oh, you can't ever do that safely. But like, you know, my random sampling of people I know who've done a lot of clean presses over their heads, like for years and years and years, like, it doesn't get you to being 90 years old and not broken.

• 32:02Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  So.

• 32:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, I need to start stretching.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yoga, I do, you gotta do yoga.

• 32:08Ryan Holiday?

  I hate it.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I do yoga once a week for an hour.

• 32:11Ryan Holiday?

  Okay. See, that's an, that, that might actually be more an investment in being what you want to be when you're 80 than the running is.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  So I started doing it. I had always been a runner in the military. And then my same good buddy who I ran with on his birthday, he got into what the eight, where I worked at the agency, like, you know, different, there's different corporate cultures where you go, like some places they golf, some people, places they surf. Here it was like it was ultra marathoning.

• 32:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And so I was like, oh, you want to come run this ultra? I'm like, actually, I kind of don't. Like, well, all the big ones are going to be there. I'm like, all right, I guess you should probably go run this ultra marathon. So you invited me to come run this ultra. I'm like, well, I had done a couple of marathons that I, I've been really good trips. You know, I could probably just cold run this marathon and it won't be a total disaster. And I got in a way, it's like, so if there's one ultra, like, you know, I do need to like.

• 32:54Ryan Holiday?

  That's a bit further.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I need to train for this properly. And someone gave me advice. It's like, you know, for injury prevention, like make sure you're doing really good yoga, like one day a week and you won't get injured. And so I started doing that like. Guys, I mean 15 years ago now, once a week. And it is like, I swear by it. And I do the same video. And it is, it's on YouTube. It's Brian Kess Power Yoga 3.

• 33:16Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  You can Google it. And it's like from 1989.

• 33:21Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  He does the entire hour-long session wearing like cutoff jeans, no shirt, like a dream catcher thing around like his bracelet around his sort of upper arm and like long hair. It's like, but yeah, it works.

• 33:36Ryan Holiday?

  I did this book for Chris Bosh a couple of years ago. And he was telling me this story about when they all went to the Heat. They get on the plane and they're flying after a game. And LeBron James starts doing like yoga in the aisle of the plane. And they're all laughing at him. You know, this is like quite some time ago. They're all laughing like it's lame. It's weird. What are you doing? And then he's like, he's the only one of us that's still playing.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Still playing, I know. I can tell, I can tell like if I have to miss it or I haven't done it. Like I can totally tell the difference. Yeah, I really, I swear by it.

• 34:11Ryan 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.