It Doesn’t Take Long to Do This | Mark Manson's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

It was a bad year. You picked up some bad habits. You let some good habits slip. You wasted time on stuff that didn’t matter. But just because that’s true doesn’t mean things have to continue that way. 👉 Make 2026 the year where you finally bring yourself closer to living your best life. No more waiting. Demand the best for yourself. The Daily Stoic New Year New You https://join.dailystoic.com/nyny26/ challenge begins January 1, 2026. Learn more and sign up today at dailystoic.com/challenge http://dailystoic.com/challenge. Get The Daily Stoic New Year New You https://join.dailystoic.com/nyny26/ & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life |dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 📚 Books Ryan gave Mark: Die With Zero https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/die-with-zero-getting-all-you-can-from-your-money-and-your-life?_pos=1&_sid=c1a21534b&_ss=r Range https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/selfhelp17?_pos=1&_sid=3798164b0&_ss=rGoing Infinite https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/going-infinite-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-new-tycoonMontaigne https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/biography17?_pos=1&_sid=fd6bff463&_ss=rPontius Pilate https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/pontius-pilateConundrum https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/conundrumThe Daily Drucker https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/daily-drucker-366-days-of-insight-and-motivation-for-getting-the-right-things-done 🎥 Watch Ryan give Mark book recommendations at The Painted Porch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR-j9QxyQdc 🎁 This holiday season, give the gift of Daily Stoic Premium | https://dailystoic.supercast.com/gifts/new 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://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.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  It doesn't take long to do this. It was a bad year. You dropped some balls, you picked up some bad habits, you let some good habits slip. You wasted time on stuff that doesn't matter. You made plans for a creative project, but no progress on them. But just because that's true doesn't mean it has to continue that way. As Marx Reels writes in Meditations, "Now they see you as a beast, a monkey, but in a week they'll think you're a god if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the logos." A week! A week is all it takes to turn it around. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but the point is, it doesn't take long

• 1:40Speaker 00

  to get going in the right direction again. It doesn't take long to turn things around, to pick up the balls you dropped, to replace one bad habit with a better one, to recommit to your principles and begin acting like the person you know you can be. And that's what we built the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge around. It's just three weeks, 21 days, to start the year right, to create momentum, to transform you from whoever you are right now to who you're capable of being in 2026. 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges, one per day, to help you be what you're capable of being.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  You could be one way, one thing right now, but it doesn't have to stay that way. And it doesn't take much to get going in the other direction. If one week is all it takes, imagine what you can do in three weeks. I know that I have personally been transformed by the challenges we do each and every year. This is almost the 10th year of the challenge. I have habits and practices that I do each and every year because of the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, and I'd love to see you in there. And just a little note, if you want to do this challenge or any of our challenges or courses throughout the rest of the year, I just sign up for Daily Stoic Life as part of this. You get all the challenges for free, so you could sign up there at dailystoiclife.com

• 3:02Speaker 00

  or just go to dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up for the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there and I can't wait for us to start on January 1st. dailystoic.com/challenge.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  What have you been reading or what do you like?

• 3:31Mark Manson?

  Dude, everything, so speaking of podcasting, like most of my reading is just whoever's coming up next.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That is nice because it forces you to read new books that you probably ordinarily would take like a long time to get away from.

• 3:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so I just went back and read some of Cal's stuff, read his new one. And then I'm doing, interviewing Noah tomorrow, so I just.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Noah Kagan?

• 3:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so I'm.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  We had that around, he was here. He did like a thing at the store.

• 3:55Mark Manson?

  It's down here, it's the bright green.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Oh, there it is.

• 3:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I actually need to finish.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Have you read Die with Zero? I've been raving about that lately.

• 4:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, actually, my wife's reading that right now.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Really?

• 4:05Mark Manson?

  And it's blowing her mind.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's fantastic. Gets you thinking about a lot of interesting stuff.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  He's gonna come in. Did you end up going? So people don't know, we were in sort of writing group that met before the pandemic that was Shane Parrish.

• 4:22Mark Manson?

  James.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  James Clear, before he'd done any books.

• 4:25Mark Manson?

  Tim Urban.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Tim Urban.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Nier.

• 4:30Mark Manson?

  Nier.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  His book is here, Hooked.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  Steve Cam, you, me, I think we're forgetting some, oh, David Epstein.

• 4:40Mark Manson?

  Oh yeah, David, yeah.

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  For Range. Did you go?

• 4:43Mark Manson?

  No.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 4:44Mark Manson?

  It's actually this coming weekend.

• 4:46Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, right, right, right. That's why I'm not going. Yeah, it's spring break. Shane's book is good.

• 4:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I still need to have him on.

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he came out, he did it.

• 5:00Mark Manson?

  Did you read the Michael Lewis one?

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  Of Going Infinite?

• 5:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Ryan Holiday?

  So good.

• 5:04Mark Manson?

  Is it?

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  I think people, people gave him.

• 5:08Mark Manson?

  So much shit?

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he fillets the dude. He comes off as a complete clown.

• 5:13Mark Manson?

  Really?

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, totally. The only thing, his somewhat contrarian argument is, like, okay, first off, he spent about $5 billion in investments.

• 5:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  And one of them, he invested in, was it Ethmorphic or what, the big AI company that's now worth like a trillion dollars?

• 5:36Mark Manson?

  Right, right, right.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  So like, that one investment?

• 5:38Mark Manson?

  It's gonna make us for, yeah.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  So, so like, it's hard, his argument is like,

• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

  at the end of the day, there may not be that much fraud there.

• 5:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, which is, which is not in any way a clearing him. It's just that it's not, it, like, $40 billion didn't evaporate, or whatever, that, it's a little, it's a little different. But he comes off as a great example of a person who's very smart, but also a moron.

• 6:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  Like, he doesn't read, he thinks he knows everything, he doesn't think personal or soft skills matter, he's actually a horrendous manager, he's not on top, like, so he comes off as someone who,

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  yeah, I thought, I thought the book was really interesting. I liked it. And then it's all, you're just watching one of the greatest of all time, just, I would, I would, he could write about, there's a Malcolm Gladwell blurb where it's like, if I found out Michael Lewis wrote a book about staplers, I would read that book. And like, it's true, I would, I would read him about anything.

• 6:40Mark Manson?

  I, uh, he got, Lewis got destroyed because he gave a 60 Minutes interview and defended SPF on it and, and.

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  The interview was not great.

• 6:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  But it's not the book.

• 6:50Mark Manson?

  It was a bad look. I actually just read a news story recently that said that SBF has been giving his prison guards crypto trading advice and the prison guards are already up like 10x.

• 7:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's hilarious.

• 7:03Mark Manson?

  I was like, that's awesome.

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating.

• 7:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  I thought it was good. I thought it was good. I'm gonna use him in the wisdom book as like an example of a smart student person. Musk being another great example of that.

• 7:16Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Of a person whose brain is apparently so open that, or whose mind is so open that their brain falls.

• 7:24Mark Manson?

  Well, it's also, Musk is a great example of like domain brilliance, right?

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, of course.

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  What else? Did that Montaigne book come in yet? Do you know, Tristan? We don't?

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  So the weirdness of the bookstore is that a lot of the books that I really love are not super popular and so they are constantly out of print. And it's hard to get them. Like this, I've been raving about this book, which I think you would like as a, it's a biography of Pontius Pilate.

• 7:58Mark Manson?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  Which like you don't think of as a guy who had a shitty job.

• 8:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah, right.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  He's just the governor of a province of the Roman Empire and there's like a troublemaker in it. And we don't know that much about him.

• 8:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  But like she does like, she's the obituaries editor for The Economist. So she's like a really interesting writer and it's like one of the greatest biographies I've ever read in my life.

• 8:21Mark Manson?

  Really?

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  So good.

• 8:25Ryan Holiday?

  Like, and it's a good example, like multiple times he tries to do the right thing, but it would have required just like 10% more spine.

• 8:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Ryan Holiday?

  Like he kept trying, like, because basically at the end he says like, you guys decide.

• 8:41Mark Manson?

  He tried to let Jesus go.

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, but then at the end he goes.

• 8:45Mark Manson?

  All right.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  You guys do it. You know what I mean? He says, I wash my hands of it.

• 8:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  Right? That's what the expression comes from. But like he, if he had had just, if he just said like, my job is to make the decision. That's my job.

• 8:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  And a good chunk of people are not going to be happy with the decision. Like all of history might have turned out differently.

• 9:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  And then at the same time, she does talk about it, which I don't think about from a biblical standpoint, which is like.

• 9:08Ryan Holiday?

  Or is he the fall guy? Because the prophecy was that he would come and be put to death, right? So somebody had to do it. So he actually didn't have a choice.

• 9:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  Like, he, he was just the guy. Like, his number came up and God said, you have, like, you know what I mean? Like, so the other, the other way is that, like, it couldn't have happened any other way? And so, I don't know, it's really interesting. I love that book. I think you'll love, you'll like it. Trying to think what else.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  What else have you, what have you been into? Or have you read any of these recently?

• 9:48Mark Manson?

  What have I read recently?

• 9:50Ryan Holiday?

  Ooh, okay. Talk about the best way to understand the present is to read from a long time ago. Do you know who Jan Morris is? So Jan Morris was, fuck, what's his name? What's his actual name? Is it, oh, James Morris?

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  Is the journalist who climbs Everest with Hillary. He is the great historian of the British Empire. And then in, like, nineteen, what year is it? I don't know, nineteen sixty, nineteen seventy?

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  Gets gender reassignment surgery, like?

• 10:23Mark Manson?

  Super early, yeah.

• 10:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. But so, so it's a memoir of what it is like to be trans. But from, like, three generations or multiple generations before any of the things that are now made that discussion toxic. You know?

• 10:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Ryan Holiday?

  So you're like, oh, this is just what, like, you know what I mean?

• 10:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:43Ryan Holiday?

  So you're just like, oh, this is what it's actually like and how hard it would be and

• 10:51Ryan Holiday?

  what you would feel and all of these things.

• 10:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  But none of the political, none of the culture war stuff. It's ju, and, and you can't possibly say that, like, this wasn't a dude.

• 11:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I mean?

• 11:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  Who, like, this was like a man's man who's in the army, like, all this stuff. But, like, deep down, knew he was someone and something else. I, I thought it was incredible. It's one of the best books I read last year.

• 11:13Mark Manson?

  I've been reading a lot of business shit lately.

• 11:15Ryan Holiday?

  Because of the podcast?

• 11:16Mark Manson?

  I've been hiring a lot.

• 11:18Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 11:18Mark Manson?

  So I'm, like, hitting that point where I'm like, sure, I should, like, kinda know what I'm doing when I, like, when it comes to...

• 11:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like, people?

• 11:26Mark Manson?

  Right, yeah, dealing with people, managing.

• 11:28Ryan Holiday?

  What do you, what have you liked? Because that's a section I don't have a lot of great books.

• 11:32Mark Manson?

  I, so...

• 11:35Mark Manson?

  I just finished Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

• 11:37Ryan Holiday?

  That book's great.

• 11:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I really liked that one. I read some of Drucker's stuff.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read The Daily Drucker?

• 11:43Mark Manson?

  I have not.

• 11:44Ryan Holiday?

  That was the inspiration for The Daily Stoic.

• 11:46Mark Manson?

  Really?

• 11:46Ryan Holiday?

  My agent Steve did that book.

• 11:48Mark Manson?

  No shit?

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you go like, people know Peter Drucker is a leadership expert, but like, they're like, where do you start?

• 11:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:54Ryan Holiday?

  And there isn't like a class, it's not like, like if you're like, I want to read Jim Collins, you read Good to Great, that's just a classic book. There isn't one for Peter Drucker.

• 12:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Ryan Holiday?

  And so you could, you could get the wrong one. And so he was like, why don't we just do one page a day of the best stuff?

• 12:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Ryan Holiday?

  And it was a huge hit. And so that's, when he suggested The Daily Stoic, that's the model he was using, because he had done it as a publisher.

• 12:14Mark Manson?

  Wow.

• 12:15Ryan Holiday?

  So it's pretty good. You might like that.

• 12:16Mark Manson?

  Nice.

• 12:22Ryan Holiday?

  I, I don't flip through it enough, but I should.

• 12:28Ryan Holiday?

  No asshole rule is good.

• 12:29Mark Manson?

  Is this a...

• 12:32Mark Manson?

  Is this like bonus footage of you pitching me books to buy from your bookstore?

• 12:39Ryan Holiday?

  So we do this, it's so funny, we do this every time, like, the whole point of the bookstore is like, I love all these books. Like, these aren't like, like, we should have, if this was like a regular bookstore, none of these books would be in it, probably. And, or some of them would be, but most of them would not be in it. And we'd have way more books.

• 12:52Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 12:53Ryan Holiday?

  A bookstore this size should have 15,000 books in it.

• 12:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, like titles.

• 12:57Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 12:57Ryan Holiday?

  Not inventory.

• 12:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  And so, so it's mostly like, I just, I love all the books. So I could, you could ask me anyone, I'd tell you why it's amazing.

• 13:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Ryan Holiday?

  But, so we do this, like, we just go, like, we just started doing a recommended, and then they'd like walk, they'd walk up at the end and try to pay. And I was like, I did not just trick you on camera into buying seven books or whatever.

• 13:15Mark Manson?

  I didn't, I didn't think you were gonna make me pay for it.

• 13:17Ryan Holiday?

  No, when Admiral McRaven was here, he was like, no, no, no, I'm gonna pay. And I was like, well, but I wasn't picking the books based on like, what I think you should buy. I was just saying, like, I was just picking all my favorite, like, I maybe wouldn't buy this one if I was paying for it. Like, because I think you just might get one thing out of it. So, yes, I'm not, this isn't me on camera bullying you into buying.