May 2018 – RyanHoliday.net

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How Your Daily Routine Can Turn Into Your Biggest Enemy

Routine and ritual are everything, including, if you’re not careful, a dangerous weakness.

A few weeks ago, I got a letter — yes, an actual letter — from an NCAA player who will probably go pro. His question was a simple one: Like many basketball players he was big on pregame rituals and routines, but he was worried that these patterns made him vulnerable to being disrupted. What if the team plane was late and he had to rush his usual warmup? What if his headphones were dead or he forgot to pack his gameday socks?

Would his competitive edge — the comfort and confidence he took from these practices — suddenly turn into a liability?

This is a perfectly reasonable concern. Because while rituals can be a source of strength to an athlete or a writer, they can also be a form of fragility. Take Russell Westbrook, who is famous for his pregame routine, which begins three hours before a game. It starts with him warming up exactly three hours before tipoff. Then one hour before the game, Westbrook visits the arena chapel. Then he eats the same peanut butter and jelly sandwich (buttered wheat bread, toasted, strawberry jelly, Skippy peanut butter, cut diagonally). At exactly 6 minutes and 17 seconds before the game starts, he begins the team’s final warm up drill. He has a particular pair of shoes for games, for practice, for road games. Since high school, he’s done the same thing after shooting a free throw, walking backwards past the three point line and then walking back to take the next shot. At the practice facility, he has a specific parking space, and he likes to shoot on Practice Court 3. He calls his parents at the same time every day. And on and on.

The point is, while this process is likely very calming and reassuring in an entirely chaotic and emotional game, it also reads like a recipe for how one might throw someone off their game. A teammate vying for Westbrook’s playing time, a competitor who will stop at nothing, or just Murphy’s Law could all wreak havoc on that system and get inside his head. All it takes is “accidentally” parking in the wrong spot, or the right insult right before a free throw to send the whole thing sideways. And what if the trainer is sick and can’t make the sandwich? Or what if the arena chapel is closed due to a leaky ceiling?

Any routine junkie can tell you what happens when your routine gets messed up: Your thoughts race. You get frustrated. You feel what is almost like withdrawals. I can’t do this. This isn’t right. Something bad is going to happen. You doubt yourself. Then all of a sudden you aren’t getting warmed up or falling into the zone as easily as you usually do.

This problem is compounded the more successful you get or the more you specialize in a certain feild, because you get used to and feel entitled to have things your way. People enable this dependence because they want you to be your best, which makes it all the more frustrating and surprising if the script is suddenly deviated from.

I came face to face with this reality with the birth of my son in 2016. A few months before he was born I was profiled for the New York Times, and as part of the article, the reporter had me walk her through my fairly extensive set of morning and daily routines (what time I got up, how I journaled, where I sat, what my workout was, etc). She remarked that it would be interesting to see how this would all hold up with a newborn. Confidently, I told her nothing would change.

Ugh.

But of course she was right — because kids are, if anything — wrecking balls for the carefully built order of our lives.

The first couple months of his life, I struggled. It actually wasn’t the lack of sleep that was the problem. It was the unpredictability of that lack of sleep. Some mornings I was up at 5am. Some at 10am. Sometimes there was a baby I was supposed to quietly take care of while my wife slept, other times we were all up, other times it was just me while they slept. Was he napping at 2pm or not at all? Did I need to get home early for his dinner and bath or was the whole schedule blown apart by something that happened earlier in the day?

All of a sudden quiet time every morning, not checking email, going for a long run or swim in the afternoon, writing from 8–12am every day — this was not possible. At least not possible to do in the same way in the same order each day.

I experienced something similar years before when my career took off. I was used to working at home and then suddenly I was on the road a lot. Lot of flights. Living out of suitcases. Meetings and events that I had to go to. But early on I could compensate for this by spacing the trips out, setting up camp in each city for a few days and approximating some version of my normal routine there. As the trips increased and I got older, this became less tenable (even more so after accumulating a wife and a kid), and my reliance on my capital-R Routine became a weakness. A couple days on the road would completely set me back. It would also make me frustrated — even though I had chosen to say yes to these opportunities.

In both cases, my cherished routines either crumbled or were blown apart. But I still had to do my job (writing) and if anything, the stakes were higher than before. Which meant I’ve spent a lot of time thinking routine ever since.

What I’ve come up with might not seem that profound but the impact has been enormous for me: It’s not about having a routine. It’s about having routines.

I no longer have a writing routine or a morning routine. I have several. I have a routine when I get up early on the farm (We go for a walk, then I write until breakfast, and then resume writing). I have a routine for when I am on the road (run or exercise early, slot writing/work in as the top priority between whatever the scheduled events for the day are). I don’t have one shirt I wear each time I give a talk, I have a set of 3–4 that I choose from. Depending on what city I am in and what time of year, I have different mornings and plans that I’ll do. When I fly, I either read, answer old emails from starred folder, or sleep. I don’t eat before I perform, but if I do, I eat the same thing. If I get interrupted and can’t journal the way I want for a morning or two, so be it — but I’ll make sure I quickly resume my old habit. And on and on.

Depending on circumstances, I have strategic flexibility. I’m not winging it, but I am not such a creature of habit that I am flustered when disrupted (or can I really even be disrupted since I am indifferent to Plan A, B, C, D, E). Think about musical scales — the notes themselves are fixed but they can be played in a limitless amount of combination. This allows the musician to improvise while still maintaining a base they can return to and derive confidence and comfort in. That’s how you want to be with your routine. Not so rigid that you can’t respond to the moment, not so free that you can do everything in the moment.

There is a line from the Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh about how most individuals are like water, they naturally seek out lower ground. By that he meant that without discipline or order, we are not our best selves. Ultimately, this is what routine is about: creating practices and habits and rules that force us to be better.

Without a routine of any kind, Resistance is given too much room to operate. Doubt, chaos, laziness — if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Routines are essential in that battle.

In creative or athletic or entrepreneurial fields, the uncertainty and stress of the endeavor makes us crave simplicity and dependability. When Russell Westbrook was asked the reasons behind his many specific, very detailed practices, he replied, “No particular reason. I just do it.” Actually there is a reason. The reason is reassurance. As a player, Westbrook is emotional, chaotic, intense. The game he plays is random, difficult and overwhelming. Doing the same things the same way at the same time, creates comfort and order as well as superior performance.

We can get addicted to that. In fact, it may actually take more discipline to be moderate in your discipline than to be insane about it. There is an interesting Michael Lewis article about the NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri who actually works at making sure he doesn’t wear the same socks twice or having too many rituals because of how easily this can descend into superstition and thus psyching oneself off. But without this work, we end up beating on ourselves for falling short.

It’s better to remember Marcus Aurelius’s line…

“When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep ongoing back to it.”

In a way, this is what I’ve worked on most with my routines lately. Can I purposely disrupt them? What happens if I change things up? Am I still me? Am I still able to do what I do well? I want to be sure that the tail is not wagging the dog, that I am in control of the routine and not the other way around. Because the last thing you want to do is become ossified and unable to handle change.

Because life is change. Murphy’s Law is real, and you will drive yourself insane thinking you can simply outwill or white knuckle your way through the inevitable tendency for things to go exactly the way you’d rather they not go.

Discipline is a form of freedom, but left unchecked becomes a form of tyranny.So the key is the ability to rotate from routine to routine, discipline to discipline, according to the needs of the day and the moment.

Otherwise you’re not only going to be miserable…you’re an easy opponent to defeat.

This was originally published on Thought Catalog.

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May 28, 2018 by Ryan Holiday

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The Most Successful People Are The Ones You’ve Never Heard Of (And Why They Want It That Way)

The vast majority of successful people who ever lived are people you’ve never heard of. If we are to drill down further and consider happy successful people, it’s almost certain that we haven’t heard of them.

The reason for that is something called the survivorship bias. Only a very small number of stories and identities make their way into the history books or into legend, and by definition, those that sought fame and fortune beyond what any human could possibly enjoy, are often overrepresented among them.

Even my own writing is guilty of this. I tell stories about Rockefeller and Grant and Alexander the Great. I don’t talk about the people who were talented but had a better sense of what was enough. Or the ones who were happy to let others get all the credit while they played for the love of the game and the craft.

This is true of the Stoics too, who I have helped to popularize. It’s only possible to write about the extremely successful ones — the emperors and the writers, the playwrights and the generals — because those are the ones whose names were etched into the record. But given the popularity of Stoicism in Rome and throughout history, the vast majority of Stoics would have been ordinary people living ordinary lives of discipline and virtue. Fathers, mothers, businessmen, diplomats and blacksmiths. There would have been literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Stoics, over the last 2500 years, and many of them were arguably better and more admirable than Marcus Aurelius. Or Seneca. Or Cato.

It might also be said that the ones we’ve never heard of — those were the lucky ones. It wasn’t fun to be the head of state. It wasn’t fun the be executed by a head of state either. It wasn’t as fun as you think to be Rockefeller or Kennedy or Lance Armstrong.

In a famous profile in The Atlantic on Saddam Hussein, Mark Bowden wrote that “one might think that the most powerful man has the most choices, but in reality he has the fewest. Too much depends on his every move.” This is true not just for dictators, but for anyone in a position of power, influence or responsibility.

For instance, the now standard prescription for an American president after he leaves office — the former most powerful person in the world — is sign a book deal, relegating them, no, obligatingthem, to slock it on television shows and an endless series of hostile interviews. Then they have to raise the money for their own monument to their own honor, the Presidential Library. And it’s all downhill from there. See: Bill Clinton, the most powerful man in the world a couple terms removed, as just another lame guest on Pittsburgh’s 96.1’s Morning Freak Show with Mikey and Big Bob.

Listen to a CEO answering dumb questions from shareholders during conference calls with resigned disdain. Watch celebrities gain the love of the world only to lose the ability to ever be in a loving relationship with one person. See the endless reunion tours and un-retirements of athletes and artists who just can’t walk away. Now, it doesn’t have to be like that — there’s no law mandating the story go that way — but the fact that it almost always seems to, tells us something. It’s what Seneca, a man who knew power and wealth in many domains, meant when he said that “slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.”

Along with extreme success comes extreme costs — it is often an all consuming drive that draws one to the spotlight…and inevitably to dark places as well. Alexander the Great died at age 32, after he’d driven himself and his men to the ends of the earth. Joseph Kennedy, who created a multi-generational legacy of powerful, brilliant children…also lobotomized his own daughter because she couldn’t quite measure up. And what of the countless successful people who lost their privacy, spouses, or youth in the pursuit of dominance in some sport, or in business, or politics? What of those who kept reaching and reaching after they had success, and destroyed everything they had built with the final overstretch?

What does this have to do with you? Isn’t there someone whose status and success you envy? Someone who has gotten more recognition, who has sold more books or widgets or real estate, who has won more medals or set more records? And when we think of these people, we think, “Oh, they’re the lucky ones. They got what I should have gotten.”

But is that really true? Maybe the lucky ones are the hidden figures. The people who don’t suffer the burdens of a public office or a clique of hangers or the anxiety of a reputation to uphold or the chorus of critics, they’re the ones who were deprived? Please.

Most people with a public persona tell you that the downsides outweigh the upsides. They have a target on their back from critics. They have less creative freedom. They feel irresponsiblewhen they turn down opportunities because they know other people would kill for the chance. It’s not all bad of course, but there are real problems that go along with fame and fortune.

Meanwhile, several studies have shown that there are diminishing returns to happiness the higher you get in the income tax bracket. Once your basic needs (and then some) are taken care of, money may actually make things harder. You know the song lyric: Mo’ money, mo’ problems. But the same is true for other forms of success. A mayor doesn’t usually see their hair turn grey as fast as a president. A working character actor doesn’t have to deal with being typecast. The creator who never quite becomes the next big thing might actually have a longer, more enduring career than the debut artists who is feted about town.

It’s why a few years ago the notoriously private, but still wonderfully popular musician and songwriter Sia, would write, “If anyone besides famous people knew what it was like to be a famous person, they would never want to be famous.” There’s an old joke along those lines: The best way to punish someone is to give them exactly what they wish for.

The key then, when you find yourself wanting more, feeling inferior because you don’t have more, is to think about that. Don’t give the fantasies more weight than they deserve. See them for what they are. When you find yourself pining for fame and recognition, stop and consider what it might actually feel like when you get it — why you think you’ll be the exception to the rule and will find happiness in what nearly everyone else in history has found to be a chimera.

The motto of the philosopher Epicurus, which was taken up by the great essayist Montaigne as well, was lathe biōsas. Live in obscurity. The French saying, Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés: “In order to live happily, live hidden.”

This is not to say you must be poor or a failure. You can still be extraordinary. You just don’t have to be the most extraordinary. You don’t have to strive to beat out all the other broken people, to be the most well-known out of everyone who ever wanted to be known. Because what is that actually worth in the long run? Do you think you’ll appreciate your fame and money after you die? You think Alexander the Great knows that Alexandria is still standing?

So that’s the recalibration. There is a big difference between having enough that all your needs are met and being a billionaire. Between being Taylor Swift, the global superstar, and Sia. And those differences are not all good. In fact, many of them are objectively not good.

The next time you feel screwed that you haven’t gotten your big break, or watch as some potential life-changing opportunity to level up escapes your grasp, ask yourself if that’s really the case. Is it really bad luck? Or has Fortune done you a kindness?

On the contrary, the life just below that top, the middle class life, the just-enough-success-but-not-too-much? That’s the real blessing.

This was originally published on Thought Catalog.

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May 21, 2018 by Ryan Holiday

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13 Life-Changing Habits To Try And Do Every Single Day

Why does one day matter? Why does what you do today matter in the scheme of your whole life?

Because our life is made up of days. Days like today.

The poet Heraclitus said that “one day is equal to every day.” By that he meant that every day is the same length, comprised of the same amount of hours, the same sunup and sundown. Yet, he also meant it in the sense that philosophers have always meant that same idea — that if you can get one day right, you have a shot at getting your life right (and that you should try to get todayright, because tomorrow is no guarantee). Or as my friend Aubrey Marcus put it wonderfully in the title of his new book, own the day, own your life.

Earlier this year, I published “12 Questions That Will Change Your Life.” In the vein, here are 13 things you should do and think about every day to change your day — and by extension, your life as well.

Some are easier than others, but each one matters.

[*] Prepare For The Hours Ahead — Each morning you should prepare, plan and meditate on how you aim to act that day. Don’t wing it. Don’t be reactionary. Have a plan. Marcus Aurelius rose in the morning and did his journaling — preparing himself for what he was likely to face in the hours ahead. He thought about the people he was likely to face, difficulties he might encounter (premeditatio malorum), and what he knew about how to respond. The morning is the perfect time to journal and to use the pages in that journal to set yourself up for a successful day. Remember: If you do the tough planning in the morning, nothing can happen during the day contrary to your expectation or too tough for you to handle.

[*] Go For a Walk — For centuries, thinkers have walked many miles a day because they had to, because they were bored, because they wanted to escape the putrid cities they lived in, because they wanted to get their blood flowing. In the process they discovered an important side-effect: it cleared their minds and helped them make better work. As Nietzsche would later say: “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” You should go for a walk every single day not only for exercise but for the philosophical and psychological benefits. Experience nature. Experience the quiet of the world around you. Take a break. If you’re too busy, multitask: Take a walking meeting. Do your phone call on the move around the parking lot. Get out of doors and move.

[*] Do The Deep Work — So much of our day is spent at the surface. Skimming this and that. Vaguely paying attention to this conversation or that one. This is not what we were put here for. You must make time — preferably an hour or more a day — for what Cal Newport calls the “deep work.” The type of intense concentration and cognitive focus where real progress is made — on whatever it is that we happen to do, be it writing or thinking or designing or creating. Elite work takes deep work. The amount of deep work you get done is on you. It starts by closing your browser (after you finish reading me, of course) and getting to it. If you don’t make time for this — if it’s not a box you check every day — it won’t happen.

[*] Do A Kindness — The Boy Scouts motto was to do a good turn every day. Seneca wrote that “Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness.” Yes, even rude people. Even people you’re in competition with. As well as the people you love and are connected to. Your co-workers are a chance for kindness. Your spouse is a chance for kindness. The mailman is a chance for kindness. It will make you feel better to take advantage of that chance. It will make your day better if you do. It will make the world better if you do. Only a saint or a sage can fully meet every opportunity and every encounter with kindness. So don’t whip yourself if you can’t muster that. Start with one. Practice one kindness every day. See what happens.

[*] Read. Read. Read. — Pick up a book every day. Even for just a few pages. As Emerson says, every book is a quotation — of other books, of experience, of the humans and civilizations that came before it. How could you not expose yourself to this? And yes, you do have time! Meals, before bed, on the train, in the waiting room, even on your phone or desktop. Read a few pages, read a whole book, but make a real and unending commitment to reading. Because there is so much out there that you can benefit from: Biographies. Little-known gems. Life-changers. Philosophy. The classics. Self-improvement. Books about war. Fiction. Even marketing and business books. All of these will widen your perspective, help you with problems, give you inspiration and let you benefit from the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the centuries.

[*] Find True Quiet — Every single day you should find a way to disconnect and unplug, even for a few minutes. I try to swim as often as I can, not only for the exercise but because nothing can get to me there. I don’t have my phone. There’s no noise. Just calmness and peace. Ask yourself: How often am I unreachable? The answer is: Not often enough. Build some of this time into your daily practice. You’ll be better for it. And the world will not notice, I promise.

[*] Make Time for Strenuous Exercise — It’s become a cliche to say this but when scientists consider exercise to be the ‘single thing that comes close to a magic bullet, in terms of its strong and universal benefits,’ and it’s Richard Branson’s #1 piece of advice to entrepreneurs, it can’t be overstated. We need it — far more than you think. Don’t put it off. Do it. Be in shape and be healthy. And what I personally find is that it is important to have goals with your exercise. Why? So that no matter what happens that day — at work, at home, in the economy — you can have something that went well. You improved your mile time, you swam three more laps than usual, you squatted a new weight.

[*] Think About Death — Shakespeare said that every third thought should be of our grave. Perhaps that’s too much. One thought per day is plenty. The point isn’t to be morbid, but to remember that you are mortal. How much time do we waste on things that don’t matter? And why? Because we think we can afford it! Memento Mori. You will die. Live while you can. Live your life as if you have died and come back and all of this is extra. I keep a coin in my pocket to remind meof this and touch it at least once a day. Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this.

[*] Seize the Alive Time — What does every day seem to be comprised of? Too much dicking around. People are just killing time (remember Raymond Chandler’s line “and it dies hard.”) We get to where we were going and walk into the lobby and check our watch. It says we’re a few minutes early, so we reach into our pocket to grab our phones. Is this act not the expression of so much of what’s wrong with modern life? The entitlement. The resignation of it. How much better we would be and the world would be if we never did this again. If we chose alive time over dead time. There’s so much you could do in those few minutes. Face fears. Reach out and connect with someone. Do something you’ve been putting off. Expose ourselves to sunlight and nature. Be still and empty. Prepare for what lies ahead. Or just live because who knows how much time we have left.

[*] Say Thanks — To The Good and Bad — The Stoics saw gratitude as a kind of medicine, that saying “Thank you” for every experience was the key to mental health. “Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,” was how Marcus Aurelius put it, “that things are good and always will be.” Say thanks to a rude person. Say thanks to a bungled project. Say thanks to a delayed package. Why? Because for starters it may have just saved you from something far worse, but mostly because you have no choice in the matter. Epictetus has said that every situation has two handles: Which are you going to decide to hold onto? The anger or the appreciation? The one of resentment or of thanks?

[*] Put The Day Up For Review — We prepared in the morning, now we reflect in the evening. The best way to improve is to review. So, each evening you should, like Seneca did, examine your day and your actions. As he put it, “When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” The question should be: Did I follow my plans for the day? Was I prepared enough? What could I do better? What have I learned that will help me tomorrow?

[*] Find a Way To Connect To Something Big — The worries and anxieties of daily life seem to fall away when we stand next to the ocean or walk through a beautiful park. We shouldn’t wait for our annual vacation to get this kind of relief and perspective. We need to get it every single day. The Stoics had an exercise for doing this. Marcus Aurelius would look up at the stars and imagine himself running alongside them, he’d see them for their timelessness and infiniteness. Try that tonight or early in the morning and try to make it a daily practice. A glance at the beautiful expanse of the sky is an antidote to the nagging pettiness of earthly concerns, of our dreams of immortality or fame. But you can find this connection from many sources: A poem. A view from the top floor. A barefoot walk across the grass. A few minutes in a church pew. Just find something bigger than yourself and get in touch with it every single day.

[*] Get Eight Hours of Sleep — “Sleep when you’re dead,” we say. Like it’s some badge of honor how little time we allot to it. Bullshit. The body needs its rest. Schopenhauer said that sleep is the interest we pay on the loan of life. Be glad to pay it. It’s what keeps us alive. Guard your sleep carefully, it’s an obligation. All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don’t have the energy and clarity to do them.

P.S. If you want to get more practical about these things, check out Aubrey’s book Own The Day, Own Your Life.

This was originally published on Thought Catalog.