Ryan Holiday

This right here is just fine →

Published November 13, 2023  ·  All posts on Nov 13  ·  ,

There are only two things which seem to work for me: Plain old discipline, and regular, high-intensity exercise. Make a plan. Work the plan. Follow through. I don’t have to finish it all. (That used to be a huge problem too.) Each day, make a plan. And yes, some days the plan is, “today there’s no plan just follow your nose.” Where the mental freedom to believe that’s a good plan is banked during the days with a more plan-looking plan. The exercise acts as a baseline reset.

The result? An inevitable sense of disappointment. A sense that other people are doing better than us. We feel guilt. We feel pressure. We think “Oh, if only I had more money, or a better job, or lived in France where the child care benefits were different, if I had more custody, then things would be good…”

~ Ryan Holiday from, When You’re Too Busy Aiming For It, You Miss The Moments In Front Of You

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Slowly, daily, my false sense of urgency ratchets up. It’s not healthy, but going out and doing something high intensity resets my personal brand of insanity. Every time I’m in the worst of moods, all I have to do is head out and just start running like I hate myself. (This is rare, but frequent enough that it’s useful to have a strategy ready.) I can go just a couple minutes running like I stole something, and then my crazy-brain starts bargaining… okay, uh, if we can just slow down a bit, I promise to stop acting crazy. I’m pretty sure that’s not the best way to deal with things, but it’s definitely a coping strategy that works well. And the side effects are awesome.

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Ancients’ philosophy →

Published September 1, 2023  ·  All posts on Sep 1  ·  ,

Clear communication is a sign of understanding. Understanding the idea to be communicated is necessary, but not sufficient, for clear communication. I think in language (I point this out because I wonder if some people don’t think in language) and that leads me to word-smithing. I’m often searching for just the right word or phrase, and then delighted with myself if I find it. Having such labels for larger ideas is a check-point for myself, internally, that I actually have understanding.

Gregory Hays, one of Marcus Aurelius’s best translators, writes in his introduction to Meditations, “If he had to be identified with a particular school, [Stoicism] is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been ‘Stoicism’ but simply ‘philosophy.’”

He then notes that in the ancient world, “philosophy” was not perceived the way it is today. It played a much different role. “It was not merely a subject to write or argue about,” Hays writes, “but one that was expected to provide a ‘design for living’—a set of rules to live one’s life by.”

~ Ryan Holiday from, 19 Rules For A Better Life (From Marcus Aurelius) – RyanHoliday.net

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Just because I have a label for something—Stoicism in this case—doesn’t mean I label myself as that. The obvious reason is that my label has a lot of other context attached (in my mind) and chances are little to none that any of that context is present for another person. Labels are useful as shorthand, but only if we have the shared understanding.

Life is short. There are ends—things I have done which others can observe. There are the means I’ve chosen to those ends. And then there’s justification. I don’t have the time (nor the inclination) to explain everything—and frankly no one wants to hear that much from me (or from anyone.) I just find it interesting when I discover something I do (or say or think) for which I’ve not really thought through the labels… thought through the justification.

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Who we are →

Published May 1, 2023  ·  All posts on May 1  ·  

The Stoics believed that, in the end, it’s not about what we do, it’s about who we are when we do it. They believed that anything you do well is noble, no matter how humble or impressive, as long as it’s the right thing. That greatness is up to you—it’s what you bring to everything you do.

~ Ryan Holiday from, Discipline is Destiny: 25 Habits That Will Guarantee You Success

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Depending on where you are on your own journey, this could be the greatest 25-item list you’ve ever seen, or it could be 24 items of hogwash. How great is that? For me, it’s the one about being kind to oneself which I need most to let sink in farther. Every absolute rule, every simple guideline, and every pithy virtue becomes problematic when taken to the extreme. It’s almost as if *gasp* life is complicated, and I’m a complex person.

I feel like I’m living in the negative. My life isn’t a passing timeline of “this is nice” punctuated with some stuff that qualifies as work, chores, and maintency-things. Instead, I feel like any time I’m in a span of “this is nice”, I’m on borrowed time. It’s is always “this is nice, but…” followed by something I feel I should be doing just as soon as I’m done loafing. It’s as if my personal demon is relaxing, just out of sight at the bar as I loaf here on the veranda, but still dutifully keeping track of exactly how long I’ve been loafing. I continuously feel like things will go better for me (in the way mobsters would say that) if I choose to stop loafing rather than waiting to see how long I can get away with it. That’s not healthy and thus my awareness of the need for self-kindness.

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Shoes on your feet →

Published April 19, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 19  ·  

A degree on your wall means you’re educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you’re walking. It’s a start, but hardly sufficient. […] Just as you can walk plenty well without shoes, you don’t need to step into a classroom to understand the basic, fundamental reality of nature and of our proper role in it. Begin with awareness and reflection. Not just once, but every single second of every single day.

~ Ryan Holiday

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Bitter or better? →

Published March 31, 2023  ·  All posts on Mar 31  ·  ,

The Stoics would agree that the world can be ugly and awful and disappointing. They would just remind us that what we control is what we do about this. We control what difference we try to make. We control whether it makes us bitter or makes us better—whether we complain or just get to work.

~ Ryan Holiday from, Why I Pick up Trash at the Beach

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My grasp is failing. My ability to keep track of this, and make a plan for organizing that, is waning. Each year I more quickly become frustrated at unforeseen twists and foreseen complexities. Believing I’m successfully juggling just two things, I’m surprised to discover one has already hit the floor. I’ve moved beyond having a to-do list long enough that many items are below the fold; the regularity of adding items near the top means the items below the fold will never get done. Instead, I have multiple systems piled up in sedimentary fashion. Entire segments of my life, which I thought were integral to my identity, have fallen below the fold.

And every day my life gets better. I wish I’d learned the lesson sooner.

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Our numbered days →

Published January 19, 2023  ·  All posts on Jan 19  ·  

Because we don’t exactly know how may days we’ll be alive, and because we try our hardest not to think about the fact that someday we’ll die, we’re pretty liberal with how freely we spend our time. We let people and obligations impose on that time, only rarely asking: What am I getting in return here?

~ Ryan Holiday

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Take some time to reflect →

Published December 26, 2022  ·  All posts on Dec 26  ·  

On your deathbed, you would do anything, pay anything for one more ordinary evening. For one more car ride to school with your children. For one more juicy peach. For one more hour on a park bench. Yet here you are, experiencing any number of those things, and rushing through it. Or brushing it off. Or complaining about it because it’s hot or there is traffic or because of some alert that just popped up on your phone. Or planning some special thing in the future as if that’s what will make you happy. You can’t add more at the end of your life…but you can not waste what’s in front of you right now.

~ Ryan Holiday from, 35 Lessons on the Way to 35 Years Old

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This blog started initially as a place for me to post a eulogy, and then it grew to serve many more purposes. It’s now solidly a way for me to reflect, and to work with the garage door up. Discovery, reflection, and efficacy are pretty frickin’ important to me and keeping up with the ‘ol bloggin’ forces me to keep up with daily discovery and reflection. I’ve a bunch of other processes beyond this blog.

It’s a rare post where I both have a point and state it explicitly: Whether you go off to Holiday’s article and follow that thread, follow my links in this email or this post, or my series teaching daily reflection matters not. It only matters that you take time to reflect.

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Understanding hope and fear →

Published December 20, 2022  ·  All posts on Dec 20  ·  ,

It’s not about overcoming our fears but understanding that both hope and fear contain a dangerous amount of want and worry in them. And, sadly, the want is what causes the worry.

~ Ryan Holiday

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I have a problem →

Published November 13, 2022  ·  All posts on Nov 13  ·  ,

If you find yourself wanting to speed up the reading process on a particular book, you may want to ask yourself, “Is this book any good?”

~ Ryan Holiday from, 13 Strategies That Will Make You A Better Reader (And Person)

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Long-time readers will be well aware of my self-diagnosed problem with books. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about reading about books, but this list by Holiday made me think about a few things in a new light. Yes, of course; It’s a post by Holiday so it’s going to have some ancient Stoic philosophers in it. Schopenhauer had a sublime lament about time for reading. Holiday’s strategies won’t help you there. There’ll preserve some of your reading time for, well, more reading. But I still think the hardest part about reading is making it a priority. (Recall: “I don’t have time to…” is bullshit.)

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Quite nice →

Published October 29, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 29  ·  , ,

[T]oday, let’s seek to be better than the things that disappoint or hurt us. Let’s try to be the example we’d like others to follow. It’s awful to be a cheat, to be selfish, to feel the need to inflict pain on our fellow human beings. Meanwhile, living morally and well is quite nice.

~ Ryan Holiday

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