At the end of the year, we all think about how the past year went and how we want the new year to be better. When we do this, what we’re really thinking about is habits. The things we did accomplish, didn’t accomplish, or hope to accomplish—these are all a byproduct of our habits.

The Stoics had a word, arete, which means human excellence—moral, physical, spiritual. It’s what the Stoics were chasing. It’s what you’re chasing today. And the only way to get there, the Stoics said, was through repeated action, through habit. Excellence isn’t this thing you do one time. It’s a way of living. It’s like an operating system and the code this system operates on is habit. 

So if we want to be better, if we want to be successful, if we want to be great, we have to develop the day-to-day habits that allow this to ensue. Here are the steps I’m taking. As you stare down the barrel of a new year, my question to you is: if you aren’t going to cultivate good habits now, when will you? 

Think Small

George Washington’s favorite saying was “many mickles make a muckle.” It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. “Well-being is realized by small steps,” Zeno would say looking back on his life, “but is truly no small thing.” Don’t promise yourself you’re going to read more; instead, commit to reading one page per day. Thinking big is great, but thinking small is easier. And easier is what we’re after when it comes to getting started. Because once you get started, you can build.

Use Physical Reminders

A physical totem can make the habit or standard you’re trying to hold yourself to into something more than an idea, and that helps—a lot. The author and minister Will Bowen has a simple system that helps people quit complaining. He provides each member of his congregation with a purple bracelet, and each time they complain, they switch the bracelet from one wrist to the other. This method is simple and straightforward and makes it easy to hold yourself accountable. Over my desk, I have a picture of Oliver Sacks. In the background he has a sign that reads “NO!” that helped remind him (and now me) to use that powerful word. One of the reasons we made coins for Daily Stoic was that when you have something physical you can touch, it grounds you. The coins are made at the same mint where the first Alcoholics Anonymous chips were invented, and they represent the same idea. If you have 10 years of sobriety sitting in your pocket or clasped in your hand, you’re less likely to throw it away for a drink.

Decide WHO You Want To Be

Generally, I agree with Paul Graham that we should keep our identities small, and generally, I think identity politics are toxic. It’s a huge advantage, however, to cultivate certain habits or commitments that are foundational to your identity. For example, it is essential to my understanding of the kind of person I am that I am punctual. I also have decided that I am the kind of person who does not miss deadlines. This also works in eliminating bad habits. In one of the most vulnerable scenes in Miss Americana, Taylor Swift talks about how she feels while looking at a paparazzi photo of herself. Her lifelong habit, she says, is to see what’s wrong with her appearance, to instinctively see that she needs to lose weight. But then she stops herself as she lingers on the photo, drawn toward that well-worn habit and says, “No, we don’t do that anymore.” She identified the version of herself that doesn’t do that anymore. We can decide to be the kind of person who doesn’t do that anymore, or who finishes projects before the deadline, or gets up early to go for a run, or doesn’t lose their temper around their family. It’s up to you—who are you going to identify as?

Create A Routine

The Stoics were big on routine. In a world where so much is out of our control, committing to a routine we do control, they said, was a way of establishing and reminding ourselves of our own power. Without a disciplined schedule, procrastination inevitably moves in with all the chaos and complacency and confusion. What was I going to do? What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? That’s torture. Seneca would call it a design problem. “Life without a design is erratic,” he wrote. “As soon as one is in place, principles become necessary. I think you’ll concede that nothing is more shameful than uncertain and wavering conduct, and beating a cowardly retreat. This will happen in all our affairs unless we remove the faults that seize and detain our spirits, preventing them from pushing forward and making an all-out effort.” The writer and runner Haruki Murakami talks about why he follows the same routine every day. “The repetition itself becomes the important thing,” he says, “it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” 

Lay Out Your Supplies

When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don’t move them, and I write in them. You can use the same strategy if, for example, you want to start running in the morning. Place your shoes, shorts, and jacket next to your bed or in the doorway of your bedroom so you can put them on immediately. You’ll be less likely to take the easy way out if it’s embarrassingly simple to do the thing you want to do.

Associate With People Who Make You Better

The proverb in the ancient world was: “If you dwell with a lame man, you will learn how to limp.” It’s a pretty observable truth. We become like the people we spend the most time with. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the importance of who you surround yourself with. ​​”One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior,” Clear writes. “Your culture sets your expectation for what is ‘normal.’ Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.”

Develop the Muscle

My wife hated that I chewed gum. I didn’t go anywhere without a pack of gum. Gum is probably the least bad habit you could possibly have, so I never considered quitting it. Then as part of one of the Daily Stoic challenges, I wanted to quit using social media so much. The challenge email talked about flexing the quitting muscle—starting by quitting something small to prove to yourself that you are the kind of person that can decide to stop doing things that you don’t want to do anymore. So I started with gum. I was able to flex the muscle, to prove that I could quit something just for the sake of quitting it. And every time I see gum, or I think about wanting to have gum but don’t give in—that helps reinforce that identity. In time, the thought of me quitting social media didn’t seem so impossible. So if you want to become a person that can do something hard like giving up alcohol, start by doing something easy like giving up gum. The logic applies to good habits. If you want to become a person that writes books, for instance, start by becoming a person that writes in a journal for 15 minutes every morning. 

Free Up Precious Resources

One of the reasons I’ve talked about watching less news and not obsessing over things outside your control is simple: resource allocation. If your morning is ruined because you woke up to CNN reports of another ridiculous tweet-storm, you’re not going to have the energy or the motivation to focus on making the right dietary choices or sitting down to do that hard piece of work. I don’t watch the news, I don’t check social media much, and I don’t stress about everything going on in the world—not because I’m apathetic, but because there are all sorts of changes I want to make. I just believe these changes start at home. I want to get myself together before I bemoan what’s going on in Washington or whether the U.K. will figure out a Brexit strategy. “If you wish to improve,” Epictetus said, “be content to be seen as ignorant or clueless about some things.” (Or a lot of things.)

You Can Binge on Good Habits Too

I read a lot, but I sometimes go days without reading. For instance, in the two weeks I spent driving an RV across the country and back to do some media for Courage is Calling, I was in a reading funk. Trying to force myself to read every single day (or for a set amount of time or a set amount of pages) would not have been productive or enjoyable. Once back home, I got rolling again and finished a stack of books in a week. Binge reading may not be the right thing for everyone, but not every good habit has to be part of a daily routine. Sprints or batching can work too. What matters is that the results average out.

Join A Program

In 2018, we did our first Daily Stoic Challenge, full of different challenges and activities based on Stoic philosophy. It was an awesome experience. Even I, the person who created the challenge, got a lot out of it. Why? I think it was the process of joining a program. It’s the reason personal trainers are so effective. You just show up at the gym and they tell you what to do, and it’s never the same thing as the last time.  Deciding what we want to do, determining our own habits, and making the right choices is exhausting. Handing the wheel over to someone else is a way to narrow our focus and put everything into the commitment.

Pick Yourself Up When You Fall

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and slipping and tripping is inevitable. You’ll forget to do the push-ups, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter, or you’ll complain and have to switch the bracelet from one wrist to another. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’ve always been fond of this advice from Oprah: If you catch yourself eating an Oreo, don’t beat yourself up; just try to stop before you eat the whole sleeve. Don’t turn a slip into a catastrophic fall. And a couple of centuries before her, Marcus Aurelius said something similar:

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 on going back to it.

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect. No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2022, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more importantly, when are you planning to do it?

I’ll leave you with Epictetus once more, who spoke so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer…

The 2022 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge is open for registration! Join me in this year’s challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best wisdom in Stoic philosophy.

I read for a lot of reasons. I read for self-improvement. I read for entertainment. I read to make sense of this crazy world we’re living in. And I read professionally—as a writer, if I’m not reading, I can’t do my job. 

Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have read and recommended in this email list down to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the best of lists I did in 2020 (video), 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.)

The only difference between this year and past years is now I’m the actual owner of a bookstore (read about that here) and I have the extra benefit of having handed these books to people in real life and been able to see how much they helped them too. I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.

Enjoy!

Meditations (Annotated Edition, translation Robin Waterfield) by Marcus Aurelius

The fact that Marcus Aurelius was writing during the Antonine plague, that he may well have died of the Antonine plague created a different way for me to see and understand what Marcus was writing about. When he says “you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think”—he was talking about that in a time when you really could leave life right now. When he talks about how there’s two kinds of plagues: the plague that can take your life and the plague that can destroy your character—he was talking about the things that we’re seeing in the world, that we saw on a daily basis in 2021. He was writing about a fracturing Rome, a contentious Rome when people were at each other’s throats, when things looked uncertain, when an empire looked like it was in decline. So I got a lot, as always, out of reading Meditations (the Gregory Hays translation), which I keep by my bedside table (here’s what mine looks like these days). But I was VERY excited this year because a new edition has come out, a fully annotated edition by Robin Waterfield, where for almost every passage, Robin provides the necessary context, gives insight into what Marcus was referencing, draws connections to other passages, etc. If you have not read Meditations, Robin’s translation might be the one to start with. I also did a two-hour interview with Robin, which you can listen to on the Daily Stoic podcast (Part 1, Part 2). But whichever translation you go with, the amazing thing about reading Marcus is, year after year, he feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless. There’s a reason this book has endured now for almost twenty centuries. 

How The Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

We are going through a racial reckoning across the globe. There’s a lot of people that are trying to capitalize on this. People who want us to be divided. People who don’t understand their history. There’s, of course, people who want to stick their heads in the sand about this too, choosing to ignore the history that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable. My understanding of America’s history of racism and slavery comes from a deep study and reading of great minds like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Malcolm X. Last year, I re-read Ellison’s Invisible Man and was profoundly impacted by Taylor Branch’s epic three-part series on Martin Luther King Jr.—truly life-changing for me. But if I could get everyone to read one book to understand the legacy of racial divisions in this country, How The Word Is Passed might be that book. Clint goes and visits the most controversial monuments, plantations, slave pens, markers or moments in American history—from Monticello to the Whitney plantation to Confederate battlefields and cemeteries—and he explores what they mean, how they came to exist, the lies we’ve been told (or told ourselves about them). As it happens, my book store’s building in Bastrop, Texas, dates to the Reconstruction period and is down the street from a particularly odious Confederate statue. Bastrop is actually a town that voted against the secession. But then in the early 1900s, they put up a monument that was designed to celebrate, as one observer said, “the noble white-souled Southland.” And one of the things I’ve been active in is exploring why it’s there and what its actual history is— not the propaganda that it was designed to represent. And when I went down and spoke in front of the Texas historical commission about removing the statue (you can watch that clip here), Clint’s book influenced what I said. I also interviewed Clint on the Daily Stoic podcast. Put your political predispositions aside, put your fatigue with or outrage about the issue aside either way, and read this book. It hit me very hard, and it’s changed how I think about a lot of things. I think it will do the same for you.

The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eger

Dr. Edith Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes the one and only Dr. Viktor Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering, but to find meaning in it. She went on to become a psychologist and survives to this day, still seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. I had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger and the joy and energy of this woman, this 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, was incredible (you can watch our interview here). Of course, another incredible must-read in this category is Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. It’s one of my favorite books—one of the greatest works of philosophy ever produced. I wrote an article this year for The Economist about an idea in this book. The idea that while the Statue of Liberty is wonderful and beautiful and inspiring, there needs to be a corresponding statue on the west coast: the Statue of Responsibility. You can read that piece here. And then, mind-blowingly, a delightful gift from the heavens: there was a new book from Frankl this year. How? A set of never-before-published lectures and essays was discovered and published with the incredible title, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything (with a nice introduction from Daniel Goleman). And really, I think that’s what Dr. Eger did, that’s what Victor Frankl did, that’s what Marcus Aurelius did in the depths of the Antonine Plague and throughout what was an incredibly difficult and painful life—they said yes to life, in spite of everything. The world is hard, the world is unfair, the world can be horrendous—and certainly 2021 illustrated that in so many ways—but we say yes. We make the best of it. We choose our response to those conditions. It’s the last of human freedoms.

Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford

I have raved before about Weatherford’s book on Genghis Khan (which I used in Ego is the Enemy), but I didn’t know this book existed until I saw it mentioned in Sebastian Junger’s Freedom. Then at the ranger station in Big Bend State Park in June, I saw the book in the gift store. It’s not the most politically correct title, I will grant you that, but this book is INCREDIBLE! It’s about the First Peoples, Native Americans, the people who were here first (in North and South America) and how our civilization has been shaped by their insights, by their ideas, by their innovations—all of which most of us completely take for granted. It’s very rare that I read a book where there is nothing in it that I at least hadn’t heard about before, but that’s what I felt was happening on page after page of this book. Weatherford talks about their breakthroughs in agriculture, their breakthroughs in building, their breakthroughs in hunting, animal husbandry, all these things that you didn’t know about. For instance, Benjamin Franklin gets the idea of a joining of all of the different colonies together from the Iroquois Confederacy at that time. How crazy is that? The idea behind the innovation that we in America take credit for actually belongs to the people who were here first. I sure didn’t hear about that in school…Anyway, Weatherford is a master of making poorly understood (or misunderstood) cultures inspiring and relatable. Read this book for sure. 

More…

I can’t leave it at just four books. I’ve always loved the “daily read” format, I’ve recommended some of my favorites here before, I’ve been lucky enough to publish one of my own, and this year I was even luckier to have been able to help Robert Greene bring The Daily Laws into existence. People ask me all the time, Where should I start with Robert Greene? This book is where (also we have a bunch of signed copies of his other books in the store too). I loved Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham by Agnes de Mille. My rule is that the older the biography, the better. New biographies tend to be trendy, they tend to be politically correct, they tend to focus less on what makes the person and more on a bunch of facts and details that don’t really matter. Martha is an in-depth exploration of Graham’s inspiration, of her excellence, of her practicing, of her obsession with craft. Next—I’m not a huge boxing fan, but I loved Victory Over Myself, the autobiography of Floyd Patterson—the first heavyweight champion to lose the belt and then win it back again, a civil rights activist, and someone who comes across as just a real stand-up human being. Reading Victory Over Myself then reminded me of another boxing book and another favorite, The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg. I’d read it at least two other times. The way I remembered it, when I read it the first time, I decided to quit my job in marketing, write my tell all book about it and become a better person. But as I re-read it, I went back to check when I actually bought it…it was in 2008. I stayed at my job for THREE MORE YEARS. I guess life does imitate fiction and growth is always more gradual than we’d like. As the Stoics talk about, it’s not enough to know what’s right, it’s not enough to talk about what’s right—ultimately, you have to do what’s right. Which brings me to my last recommendation. This year I put out Courage is Calling, which I think is my best piece of writing but also, it’s about exactly what Schulberg talks about. Courage isn’t just running into a burning building or fighting it out on the battlefield. It’s the courage to make that lifestyle change, to speak up about something that you know is right, to get involved, to do the hard thing, to do the unconventional thing. That’s what Courage is Calling is about. 

Children’s Books

And as far as kid’s books go, we read quite a few that really stuck with us. Her Right Foot, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Outside, Inside, and What Does It Mean to Be an American? This was our second year of reading A Poem For Every Day of the Year by Allie Esiri. And it was one night as we were getting ready for bed that my oldest asked me to tell him the story of Marcus Aurelius. This is something I had been thinking about for a long time because a lot of people ask me how they should teach Stoicism to their kids. I started to tell my son a story that we came to call, The Boy Who Would Be King. 

You can pick up copies of many of the books recommended above at The Painted Porch*, Amazon, your local independent bookstore. But it doesn’t matter to me how you get these books, I just care that you read them, that you put the time into reading. And if you want some advice on how to be a better reader, how to really dig in and get the most out of the books you read, check out my video on how I break down books, take notes to remember everything I read, and use what I read in my own writing. 

*If you do buy online from The Painted Porch, your books will be packed and shipped by us here in Bastrop, Texas! Just remember, we’re a small shop…be patient and kind.

One of the wonderful perks of having a platform is getting to share stuff that has improved your life with other people—knowing that it may well improve theirs. In fact, pretty early on in my writing career, I decided I wasn’t going to be precious about my own work but instead be an active cheerleader for stuff that I loved. 

Who cares who made it? 

If something is good, it deserves an audience. 

Anyway, I decided to put together a list of recommendations that hopefully answers some of the most common questions I get about the best books, podcasts, products, etc. 

– I can’t tell you how hooked I am on Ramit Sethi’s podcast about couples and their financial issues. Sometimes it’s a couple crawling out of debt, sometimes it’s a couple worth $8M who comparison shops for deals on strawberries. It’s riveting and also super educational—because we all have scripts about money (usually not helpful or healthy ones) and seeing other people wrestle with theirs helps us with our. I find pretty much every episode is, in the end, about communication…Highly recommend this show!

– I’m going to give you three narrative non-fiction books that will rip your face off. The first is The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant. Every person I have told about this book has loved it. If you haven’t read Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne (a gripping, unbelievable story about the clash between Comanche Indians and white settlers in the late 1800s over an empire of millions of square miles) then you are punishing yourself. It is SO good (we also have some signed copies at the Painted Porch). I also love, love, love The River of Doubt by Candice Millard (Teddy Roosevelt’s insane exploration of an Amazon river after his presidency) and interviewed her about it a while back. 

– The daily read/daily devotional genre was a game changer for me. It’s just something to chew on in the morning, an intention, an inspiration. Three favorites I pick up every day: A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. A Poem For Every Day of the Year by Allie Esiri (we read this one as a family). The Daily Laws by Robert Greene. People ask me all the time, Where should I start with Robert Greene? This book is where. 

– Another everyday favorite—my wife and I take a scoop of AG1 by Athletic Greens in the morning. It’s got a ton of vitamins and minerals and other good stuff (it’s basically a multivitamin, multimineral, probiotic, and greens superfood blend). I first met Chris the founder like 11 years ago? It’s been a part of the routine for a long time. I reached out and they said they’d offer a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase.

– There is no blog I have read longer or more consistently than Marginal Revolution. Tyler Cowen is one of the G.O.A.Ts. If he’s not in your life, you’re missing out. 

– To me, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the greatest book ever written. I’ve read it a couple hundred times. For me, it was what Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book”—shaking everything I thought I knew about the world. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. Usually I introduce people to Marcus through Gregory Hays’ translation, which I think is lyrical and beautiful, but a recent annotated edition by Robin Waterfield is right up there. With almost every passage, Robin provides the necessary context, gives insight into what Marcus was referencing, draws connections to other passages, etc. If you have not read Meditations, Robin’s translation might be the one to start with.

– Speaking of Marcus, in my left pocket, I carry a coin that says Memento Mori, which is Latin for ”remember you will die.” On the back, it has one of my favorite quotes from Marcus: “You could leave life right now.” I firmly believe the thought of our mortality should shadow everything that we do.

– In my other pocket, I carry a medallion with a custom-designed seal with four elements representing the four Stoic virtues: Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom. 

– My three favorite novels of all time: What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg, Ask the Dust by John Fante, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you don’t read a lot of fiction, these three are the place to start. They teach you just as much as any non-fiction book.

– Another “book” I pick up each day is a journal. It’s a small blue gold leafed notebook called the One Line a Day journal, and it has spots for five years. I’m four years into the journal, where I write about what happened yesterday, so I can see what’s been going on for four years. It’s great. After, I pick up The Daily Stoic Journal, where I prepare for the day ahead by meditating on a short prompt, then set an intention or a goal for the day—just something to give myself something I can review at the end of the day, that I can evaluate myself against.

– With two young boys, I also pick up a kids book every night. Our favorites: What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Her Right Foot, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Most People, and Here We Are. And it was one night as we were getting ready for bed that my oldest asked me to tell him the story of Marcus Aurelius. This is something I had been thinking about for a long time because a lot of people ask me how they should teach Stoicism to their kids. I started to tell my son a story that we came to call, The Boy Who Would Be King. 

– I’m a big fan of newsletters, as well. Here are some that I subscribe to: James Clear’s “3-2-1 Thursday,” Mark Manson’s “Motherfucking Monday,” Tim Ferriss’ “5 Bullet Friday”, Maria Popova’s “The Marginalian”, Emily Oster’s “Parent Data”, Matt Levine’s “Money Stuff”, and Billy Oppenheimer’s “SIX at 6”. 

– Some of my favorite social accounts to follow are: HilariousHumanitarian, TankSinatra, Jessica Yellin, bigtre1000, DailyStoic, DailyDad, and DailyPhilosopher.

– I’m not a big fan of the “solve a device problem with another device” logic, but the Apple Watch has substantially reduced the amount of time I spend on my phone, and helped me curb the desire to always have it near me. Airpods too—they are as magical as anything Apple has ever made.

– MagicSpoon Cereal. LOVE this enough to have invested in it. My favorite dessert is MagicSpoon + wild blackberries we pick on the farm. My father in law is hooked on them too. (use code RYANHOLIDAY at checkout for $5 off).

– Something I use and have used daily and weekly for going on three years: ButcherBox. ButcherBox delivers high quality, grass-fed meat to your doorstep once a month—my wife and I basically haven’t bought meat from the store since we started using it. 

– Sad that I have to put this but…here we are, two years into a pandemic with a new, hyper contagious variant. If you’re still using a cloth mask, you’re doing it wrong. You need an N95 or KN95. You can get them basically anywhere at this point, but it’s good to check the manufacturer with Project95 to make sure you’re not getting scammed. Considering Marcus died of the plague, I think it’s safe to say he’d wear a mask…Also these at-home COVID tests we use when getting our employees together or meeting people who have been traveling, etc. $12 a test roughly…it’s not cheap but if you can afford it, safe is better than sorry (and it helps others too).

– I run just about every day. I have different loops I do depending on where I am and La Sportiva’s have been my main shoe for the last 5-6 years. I usually push the kids in a side by side running roller on our walks and run but even though I have 3 of them…I wouldn’t recommend any enough to give you a name (you’ll see why here). 

– My two favorite charities are Feeding America (we just raised almost $200k for them) and Against Malaria (which can save a life for $3,340). I also love GiveWell, which helps you rate and evaluate the ROI of various causes. Another cause close to my heart is the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which has been at the forefront of drawing both resources and attention to the plight of millions of people in Xinjiang. I had Uyghur activist Ferkat Jawdat on the Daily Stoic podcast—if you don’t know about the horrendous situation in Xinjiang, give that conversation a listen.  

– One decision I’ve eliminated from my life is what to have for lunch. Across the street from The Painted Porch is Base Camp Deli, and if I am not bringing something from home (usually leftovers)I get a Turkey & Havarti sandwich or the Chicken Pesto, and salt & vinegar chips with a Topo Chico.

– Whenever someone visits us in Bastrop, I like to take them to dinner at Store House Market & Eatery, which is just down the street from The Painted Porch. With eighteen 18-wheelers, Chef Sonya Cote and her husband David Barrow moved their Eden East farm from Austin to Bastrop. We love to start with the butternut queso and the pork terrine & pickles, then I always get the Grass Fed Burger or the steak.

– When I find a song I like, I listen to it over and over again. Alone in my office or on my phone, I play songs on repeat over and over and over again. Loudly, as my wife and anyone who works for me can unfortunately attest. Here’s some all-time favorites I picked when I was a guest DJ recently on KUTX. 

– Instapaper is how I save and read articles.

– Being able to wear and dress as I please is important to me—at least the freedom of it is. So I am in a T-shirt most days. I basically live in an American Apparel Power Wash Tee, which is the standard American Apparel T-shirt but treated so it mimics a shirt that has been washed roughly 50 times. If I’m not wearing one, I usually wear vintage concert t-shirts, either that I bought myself or I found on Etsy.

– We shoot everything for Daily Stoic’s YouTube Channel on a Sony A7 III with a Rode VideoMicPro as well as two more Sony a6400’s when recording a video podcast. When I’m traveling I always bring along a couple of the GoPro HERO9’s to shoot b-roll, also most of the clips I record for TikTok are using one of these.

– When I’m recording for the Daily Stoic Podcast or the Daily Dad Podcast I use a Zoom H6 with a Shure SM7B running through a Cloudlifter for some added gain. When I do virtual podcasts or online talks, I use a Rhode USB mic and Sony MDR7506 Professional Large Diaphragm headphones.

– My kids are obsessed with Brent Underwood’s ghost town YouTube videos and we watch one before bed each night. 

– I don’t drink coffee, soda or energy drinks. Neuro mints are my go-to caffeine substitute. (My wife likes SuperCoffee, I will add). 

– For years, I’ve advocated keeping quotes on your desk. Something to chew on. A thought to guide the day. Now I keep the Daily Stoic page-a-day calendar on my desk, so I can have a new quote for every day of the year. 

– Everything I do, I do on index cards. They are the building blocks for my whole life. Notecards are where I sketch out ideas. They’re where I record quotes that I want to save for later use. It’s how I outline my own writing and where I take notes. They’re where I jot down stories, and where I workshop points I want to make. They’ve helped me create talks and articles. For a while, I used generic ruled 4-by-6 notecards. But now I print my own specific to the project I am working on. 

– I carry books, notecards, and pens everywhere I go. I use this Carhartt bag that is actually a tool bag, but also happens to be perfect for the tools of my craft. 

– Nothing. Is there anything better than sitting down, doing nothing, holding nothing and just being? Sometimes the best things are the things you get rid of or say no to. Remember...the things you own should not own you. 

***

I’ve written before about one of my favorite quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson: To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom. I make a point to find the stuff I like and stuff that lasts (it’s a basic thing you can do to reduce your footprint, if you care about the environment) because when you stock your life with things you can depend on, it frees up precious resources. 

But I also always like to remind myself with all of these things that—much like existence—they are transitory. The Stoics talk a lot about not getting too attached to anything, loosening the hold that possessions have on us, embracing the truth of uncertainty, having the ability to enjoy whatever is in front of you. “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver,” Seneca wrote, “but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware.”