One of my favorite things is printing out and reading my work. It’s a way to physically interact with what I’ve written. I can take the bound copy anywhere, highlight and jot notes—just like I do when I’m reading a book.
“Don’t be the best, be the only.”
“If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable.”
“The greatest breakthroughs are missed because they look like really hard work.”
“If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.”
“To rapidly reveal the true character of a person you just met, observe them stuck on an abysmally slow internet connection.”
“The best way to advise young people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it.”
“Don’t define yourself by your opinions, because then you can’t change your mind. Define yourself by your values.”
“You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”
“You don’t need more time because you already have all the time that you will ever get; you need more focus.”
“If you’re not embarrassed by your past self, you have probably not grown up yet.”
“Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.”
“If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.”
“Make others feel they are important; it will make their day and it will make your day.”
“Expand your mind by thinking with your feet on a walk or with your hand in a notebook. Think outside your brain.”
“If you ask for someone’s feedback, you’ll get a critic. But if you ask for someone’s advice, you’ll get a partner.”
“Whenever you can’t decide which path to take, pick the one that produces change.”
“Make others feel they are important; it will make their day and it will make your day.”
“The best way to learn anything is to teach what you know.”
“The more you leave behind, the further you will advance.”
“Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.”
“Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love, keep asking them, ‘Is there more?’ until there is no more.”
“Your passions should fit you exactly, but your purpose in life should exceed you. Work for something much larger than yourself.”
“Experiences are fun, and having influence is rewarding, but only mattering makes us happy. Do stuff that matters.”
“The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quality. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.”
“What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.”
“Make stuff that is good for people to have.”
“It is your destiny to work on things that only you can do.”
“You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money.”
“Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.”
“Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript. Start with the action.”
Advice on investing but also life: “Average returns, maintained for above-average periods of time, will yield extraordinary results.
“Occasionally your first idea is best, but usually it’s the fifth idea. You need to get all the obvious ideas out of the way. Try to surprise yourself.”
“Don’t bother fighting the old, just build the new.”
“Do more of what looks like work to others but is play for you.”
“The stronger your beliefs, the stronger your reasons to question them regularly. Don’t simply believe everything you think you believe.”
“The trick to making wise decisions is to evaluate your choices as if you were looking back 25 years from today. What would your future self think?”
“To be interesting, just tell your own story with uncommon honesty.”
“The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff. To let it all go easily, you need to be convinced that there is ‘more where that came from.’ You get that in steady production.”
“To get your message across, follow this formula used by ad writers everywhere: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate.
“Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors.”
“To meditate, sit and pay attention to your breathing. Your mind will wander to thoughts. Then you bring your attention back to your breathing, where it can’t think. Wander. Retreat. Keep returning to breath, no thoughts. That is all.”
“Five years from now you will wish you had started today.”
“To have a great trip, head toward an interest rather than to a place. Travel to passions rather than destinations.”
“It is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving.”
“Try hard to solicit constructive criticism early. You want to hear what’s not working as soon as possible. When it is finished you can’t improve it.”
“There is no perfection, only progress. Done is much better than perfect.”
“Even if you don’t say anything, if you listen carefully, people will consider you a great conversationalist.”
“Art before laundry.”
“To succeed once, focus on the outcome; to keep succeeding, focus on the process that makes the outcome.”
“Being curious about another person’s view is the most powerful way to change their view.”
“If your sense of responsibility is not expanding as you grow, you are not really growing.”
“To write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft.”
“Embrace pronoia, which is the opposite of paranoia. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success.”5
“The first step is usually to complete the last step. You can’t load into a full dish rack.”
“Re-visioning the ordinary is what art, literature, and comedy do. You can elevate mundane details into magical wonders simply by noticing them.”
“The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.”
“Very few regrets in life are about what you did. Almost all are about what you didn’t do.”
My reading goal this year was 5 books a month. I’m not sure why I chose 5. Probably because I knew I could do it but I’d have to stretch myself.
Reading 5 books a month wasn’t exactly easy, but it wasn’t the blood, sweat, and tears I thought it’d be. I only read what interested me. And I made a few tweaks to my routine so I could spend more time reading, but not feel like I was reading all the time.
Here are some things that helped me hit my goal:
1. Having reasons for reading. My reasons were my biggest ally in keeping me going.
2. Reading 2-3 books at a time. I realized that just because I wasn’t in the mood to read a book, didn’t mean I wasn’t in the mood to read any book.
3. Getting up an hour early to read.
4. Quitting books that weren’t holding my interest. (If I sensed my disinterest was because I wasn’t in the right headspace, I’d come back to it a few weeks or months later.)
5. Reading for 30 minutes to an hour before bed.
6. Varying the book length. If I was reading 2 or 3 longer books one month, I’d squeeze 2 or 3 shorter ones in the peripherals.
7. Consistently growing my personal library. As soon as I finished one book, I’d start another the same day.
I’ve found that I get the most out of reading when I go back through a book and take notes. It’s a simple process: after I read a book, I set it aside for a few weeks. Then, I’ll come back to it, read through the parts I underlined or highlighted, and if there is something that I still think, after a few weeks, is especially interesting, I’ll copy the quote/passage/idea/anecdote/insight onto a notecard.
These notecards are the building blocks of these emails. More importantly, they’re the building blocks of my understanding of the world. So even if I didn’t write, I would still go back through each book and take notes. Why? Because I can’t and wouldn’t want to remember everything I read. But if I can grab a few nuggets of wisdom from each book, if I can write down the insights, if I can keep them close to me and use them to grow as a person…well, other than hanging out with family, I can’t think of a better use of my time.
Anyway, I made a list of my favorite books I read this year. I feel like it’s cliche to say that it was tough to narrow down the list, but it’s true, so I’ll say it: it was tough to narrow down the list.
If I had to pick 9* books (I couldn’t whittle it down further than 9) that I got the most out of, it would be these:
Made up of a few chapters from 3 of my favorite books on Stoicism—Enchiridion, On the Shortness of Life, and Meditations—this book helped me come to a breakthrough during a frustrating time. Commit once and for all.
I didn’t realize how much I got from this book until—no surprise—I went back through it to take notes. Murakami lays out his writing career: how and why he got started, what’s worth caring about, how he gets ideas for his novels, how he writes his novels, and how he balances life and writing. I took so many notes and lessons. If you’re a writer, read this book.
A 365, one-page-a-day guide to take you from step one of your project to, and through, the finish line. (I read it straight through though—no way was I waiting a year to get to the end.) It’s a distillation of the best advice from Pressfield’s books, podcasts, newsletters, blogs, workshops, interviews, stories, and emails. There’s new writing as well for context and clarity. I just love Steven Pressfield. His writing is straightforward, self-deprecating, kind, and encouraging. At the same time, his message is DEEP and spiritual. If you do any kind of creative work, you’ll want to read this and the rest of his books.
A short book that I got a lot out of. A favorite: change the word envy to admire.
I was hesitant to read this because I wasn’t sure how transparent it would be. But then I saw that Isaacson referred to Musk as a man-child, and I dove right in. Wow…this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It made me see Musk in a new light. It’s a long book but with the pictures at the beginning of each short chapter, you’ll fly through it. Add the personal and international drama, plots, subplots, lessons, and an inside look at Elon Musk and what drives him, and you get an incredibly difficult book to put down.
I chanced upon this book in a used bookstore and wow. I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard of this book before. A gem of writing advice from the master himself.
I had a revelation of sorts while reading this. Specifically, the part on Transcendentalism. Matousek describes Transcendentalism as a spiritual rebellion against religious establishments with hierarchical, sexist natures. Its aim is a more direct relationship with God. It “teaches that spiritual intermediaries are unnecessary for maintaining a close connection with God.” Wow. I finally have a name for something I’ve long felt but could not put into words. I’m eager to learn more about Transcendentalism and very grateful to have found this book.
This was the first Michael Lewis book I’ve read, and I’ve since bought a few more. This dude is hilarious. In Going Infinite, he tells the story of the aloof, bankrupt FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Lewis’s descriptions of Sam are gold. For instance, when Sam was placed on house arrest, his parents bought a guard dog from Germany that could kill on command. The only people who knew the command were his parents. Sam didn’t care to know the command because he didn’t care to know much of anything outside of his businesses. That he lived in his own world would be an understatement. As Lewis writes, “It would be very Sam Bankman-Fried-like to be killed by his own guard dog.” This book made me laugh and was a pleasure to read.
It’s incredible how calm, with literal bombs dropping all around them, these people were. Their calm inspired my own; while in the thralls of this book, I distinctly remember a noticeable absence in place of the tension I normally felt in my chest at the sight of an “urgent” email. The best thing that I got from this book though was in the Sources and Acknowledgments section at the end. Larson tells us why he decided to add another book about Winston Churchill to the public collection, what he was curious about himself, and how he made this Churchill book different from all the rest.
Here are some others that I read for the first time that I especially loved:
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks
An Emotional Education by The School of Life & Alain de Botton
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Painting As a Pastime by Winston Churchill
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Feynman’s Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
An Emotional Education by The School of Life & Alain de Botton
The Pocket Epicurean by John Sellars
How to Have a Life: An Ancient Guide to Using Our Time Wisely by Seneca
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Dead Wake by Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Same as Ever by Morgan Housel
*Note: the 9 best books list doesn’t include 3 of my favorite books that I reread this year: Ego is the Enemy & The Obstacle is The Way by Ryan Holiday and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
About a month ago, a new policy was announced at work.
It wasn’t anything crazy, but I was annoyed, and I complained to Courtney and my parents. The more I thought about it, the more miserable I made myself.
A few weeks later, I was notating Epictetus’s Enchiridion.
“You want to win at the Olympics? So do I—who doesn’t?” Epictetus said to a student. But before you jump in, reflect on what that entails: you’ll need to adopt a strict diet, a brutal exercise regimen, and submit completely to a trainer. Your ankles will likely swell. You’ll sustain injuries and swallow mouthfuls of sand. Oh and after all that you still might lose.
If, after considering everything you’ll have to do, you still want to be an Olympian…then do it wholeheartedly, he said. Don’t pause to think about it or you will end up jumping from one infatuation to the next. You’ll be like a child; one day they want to be a gladiator, the next day a musician, the next an actor, and so on. Give your pursuit sincere attention and commit with all your heart.
He then applies this lesson to life.
You claim to want serenity and freedom and peace, but are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to change the way you eat and drink? Are you willing to put up with nights of pain? To be criticized? To forfeit status and power? Willing to moderate your desires and aversions? To be okay with getting the small end of the stick in even the tiniest matters? In a word, are you willing to live as a philosopher?
If you’re unwilling, don’t go near it, he says. Walk away. You can’t be a philosopher one day and someone else the next. You can only be one person. Make your decision, and commit once and for all.
This struck me with a force that’s hard to describe.
You say you want freedom, yet here you are, troubled.
Commit once and for all.
Every day the next week, I wrote, “Commit once and for all” on the back of my hand. I took a thick, black Expo marker and scrawled the phrase on the bathroom mirror. I needed reminders. I had been using philosophy in some parts of my life, but clearly not in others.
One of my favorite passages from Epictetus is where he says if people truly grasped how short life is, they would never entertain miserable thoughts. He didn’t say they would never entertain a miserable thought unless something seemed unfair, or unless a situation felt overwhelming, or unless someone pissed them off. They just wouldn’t entertain those thoughts, period.
It’s important to note that he wasn’t talking about negative thinking, which we know can be used, paradoxically, to increase positivity. He was talking about thoughts that do nothing but make you feel miserable.
Epictetus spent the first 30 years of his life as a slave. One day, his master, feeling especially cruel, grabbed Epictetus’s leg and began to twist it. “If you keep doing that,” Epictetus told him, “you’re going to snap it.” The master kept twisting. Epictetus’s leg snapped. “See,” Epictetus said calmly. “I told you that would happen.”
It’s not that Epictetus didn’t feel pain. Of course he did. But his philosophy said things outside of his control could not harm him. That his leg is broken? That is objectively true. That he’s harmed by it? That was up to him. And his commitment to his philosophy was greater than his broken leg.
Seneca had a respiratory illness that sometimes made it hard to breathe. When it flared, he would spend days in bed, in a state of near suffocation. Writing about these experiences to his friend Lucilius, Seneca said that even though his body was in anguish, his mind was at ease. “Even while suffocating,” he reflected, “I did not stop resting serenely in brave and cheerful thoughts.” The Epicurean philosopher, Epicurus, was in excruciating pain on what he knew would be (and was) his last day on earth. Still, he wrote that he felt a “gladness of mind” by recalling pleasant memories of conversations with friends.
Like Epictetus, Seneca and Epicurus were not immune to pain. In fact, their empathetic natures probably amplified their pain at times. But here they were, nearly suffocating and dying, still committed to their philosophy, still not letting outside things harm them, still feeling “gladness of mind”. Not in a “toxic positivity” way—they weren’t smiling and saying, ‘Aw gee, shucks, isn’t this great?’—but in the contented way that comes from soberly processing negative emotions and calmly accepting what they could not control.
These were people who were committed. This is who they were; the situation wouldn’t change them.
Commit once and for all. This was my wake-up call and a reminder that I can’t pick and choose where I use philosophy. Like an Olympic athlete, I must be totally committed.
So a policy changed at work? And? Why are you thinking about it now anyway? It doesn’t take effect until next year. Besides, think of how lucky you are to have this job and the wonderful people you’ve met because of it.
You’ll find a way to use this to your advantage. You’ll see it’s for the best.
P.S. It turns out the new policy won’t change things that much. This brings to mind another stoic principle I had disregarded: don’t suffer before it’s necessary or you’ll suffer more than is necessary. But more on that another time.
P.P.S. Courtney woke up to my mirror reminder. She sent me this pic while I was at work, saying it had scared the shit out of her.
-I loved The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It’s a story about the Chicago World’s Fair, the architects who built it, and the serial killer who used it to lure his victims. What makes it even creepier is that it’s true.
–How To Do the Right Thing by Seneca was great. It’s part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, a collection of books that take individual philosophers’ works and piece together writings on a narrow topic. Other books of theirs I’ve enjoyed: How to Be Free, How to Keep Your Cool, How to Be a Leader,How to Be a Bad Emperor, How to Give, How to Be Content.
-I loved Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money, so I preordered and read his newest book Same as Ever, a collection of stories about what doesn’t change. I found some great reminders: the better story wins, risk is what you don’t see, the magic of compounding. Other topics that made me think: the importance of imperfection, the short lifespan of competitive advantage, and the simplicity of most things (and how and why we complicate them).
-I was hesitant to read Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson because I wasn’t sure how transparent it would be. But then I saw that Isaacson referred to Musk as a man-child, and I dove right in. Wow…this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s an up-close view of how one of the most wildly successful entrepreneurs operates and makes decisions. It made me see Musk in a new light. I had a hard time putting it down. A very hard time. The short chapters and loads of pictures made it a fast read too. I didn’t want it to end.
1. We don’t need more time, we need more focus. We all have the same, fixed amount of time in a day. But with a little mindfulness, we can expand our time. Think about all the things you can do in 15 minutes. You can read a few pages of a book. You can call your mom. You can help your spouse prepare dinner. Now think about all the ways 15 minutes can slip by without notice. Scrolling through newsfeeds, small talk, zoning out in front of the TV. Seneca put it best when he said that time doesn’t slow down to let us know it’s passing by. It’s our responsibility to mind it. We can’t create more time, but we can put the time we do have to good use.
2. The best way to show someone respect is by doing your best.
3. Donald Miller said, “A good movie has memorable scenes and so does a good life.” I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially when I’m out with family and friends. What’s a little extra something we could do to make this more memorable?
4. Don’t let your days become one chore after another. Life requires balance. And space.
5. Setting time limits can relieve stress. For almost a decade, I’ve had the same system for notating the books I read. After I finish a book, I put it in a “to-notate” pile. Later, with notecards and pen in hand, I systematically go back through them and jot down the parts I marked. Recently, I was overwhelmed by the ever-growing stack of books in the “to-notate” pile. This was supposed to be fun, not stressful! So, I decided to impose a time limit. I don’t allow myself to take notes for more than 2 hours a week (or roughly 10-20 minutes per day). Putting this limit on myself made the process fun again and allowed me to enjoy my free time more. Plus, the time limit forces me to write down only the best stuff from each book. Then, on to the next.
6. Getting up early is the key ingredient to living a better life. Ernest Dimnet said, “An hour in the morning is worth two.” I’ve thought about that for years now, and it’s true.
7. I’m always thinking about how short life is. Or rather, I’m highly mindful of how I spend my time. Or, perhaps more precisely, you could say I’m obsessed with weeding out the inessential from my life. (Sometimes to a fault). Why would I accept a promotion if it meant less time with my wife? Why would I allow my schedule to be too packed to see my parents every week and help them when they need it? Why would I spend an hour at the grocery store when I can spend an hour outside playing with my dog and have the groceries delivered? Why would I go to a gym when I have the equipment at home? I can imagine someone reading this and thinking, gee whiz, just live your life. But to me, this is living my life! Hanging out with my wife, helping my parents, playing with my dog, creating space for spontaneity—that’s the stuff that makes life worth living (and makes me the luckiest person)! That’s how I want to live my life, surrounded by what’s most important. The 2 quotes I read this year that have really shaped my thinking on this:
Epictetus: “If we keep in mind constantly how short our life is, we will realize there is no room for excess.”
Seneca: “We don’t have enough time for what’s necessary, let alone what’s unnecessary.”
8. What if we replaced the word envy with admire? We can be quick to shut down thoughts of envy. But, Alain de Botton says, if we take a moment to explore this feeling, we may find what lies beneath is not envy, but admiration. And we usually don’t envy someone’s entire life. Usually, it’s just a part that we envy (admire). And once you’re clear about what you admire, you can work to incorporate it into your own life. Let’s say you envy a successful entrepreneur’s life. You dig a little deeper and realize you don’t actually envy her life—it’s too hectic. What you envy, or admire, is her flexible schedule. Knowing precisely what it is you admire—her autonomy—gives you a clearer vision of what you’d like in your own life. You can then take steps and, say, make a career change to have more flexible work hours. You can repeat this process on multiple people, taking bits and pieces you admire, and fitting them together to create your ideal life.
9. With anything you endeavor to do, the whole point is to have fun. Do the things that you find most interesting.
10. Richard Feynman on happiness: “My rule is when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it? You’re probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you’d just spoil it to know it.”
11. A contented state of being is the most sustainable form of happiness. Epicurus placed pleasure into two categories: active and static. Using food as an example, active pleasure is the pleasure you get from eating. Static pleasure is the pleasure of no longer being hungry. Epicurus believed static pleasure to be superior. When it comes to eating, the ultimate goal is not more pleasure from more food (active), but the contentedness of not being hungry (static). Active pleasures create a desire for more, meaning there’s never enough. Static pleasure is at total peace in and of itself.
12. I’ve been thinking about a quote of Stephen Marche’s every time I want to end my workout early: “Without struggle there is the struggle of no struggle.”
-I read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and wow. Wow, wow, wow. In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were mysteriously killed, one by one. It’s a shocking true story of greed and betrayal. I audibly gasped a few times while reading. Like the book Dead Wake (see below), it’s the perfect mix of history and suspenseful storytelling.
–What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I LOVED this book. It’s a memoir centered on running and how it facilitates his writing. Making a living as a novelist for more than 40 years takes an incredible amount of stamina. Most authors write a novel or 2, then move on to something else; life as a novelist is too hard to sustain. Murakami credits his career longevity to the physical limits he pushes himself to through running. I found the book inspiring and a kick in the ass to push myself harder during my runs.
-After reading The Splendid and the Vile last month, I became an Erik Larson fan. This month I bought and read Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, and oh my gosh, it was so good. One of the things I love about Larson’s writing is the anecdotes he uses: a person’s frivolous yet telling quirks, the personal struggles of famous men and women, etc. Maybe the best of what he includes is the stuff he personally found most interesting. Like all good writing, his works center on the people, not just the events. On the why behind the what. This book also reads with such slow-building suspense that I had difficulty putting it down.
–Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was skeptical about reading this book, but I’m glad I did. It centers around this idea: be useful. Whatever you’re doing, be useful. If you don’t know what to do next, be useful. Your definition of being useful may be different than someone else’s, but that doesn’t matter. Be useful. Another message I got: you don’t have to always default to paying your dues. Sometimes you have to make a giant leap. (When he was just starting in movies, Arnold didn’t go for little parts here and there, he went for the starring role. In politics, he didn’t run for mayor or city council; he went straight for governorship.) Another message I liked: “Break the mirror”. Know the face of your neighbor better than your own. Focus your attention outward, on helping others. Inward focus is important too, of course, but the underlying reason to become personally successful (a reason I also firmly believe), is not so you can buy a larger house or take more vacations, but so you can do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. This is the best reason for wanting to succeed.
-I loved Haruki Murakami’s book on running and writing so much that I decided to read another book of his, this one on just the writing: Novelist as a Vocation. I loved it. LOVED it. He writes so candidly and honestly that reading him feels like you’re reading a letter from a friend. And it’s filled with wisdom about writing.