Stoic Gems from Tim Ferriss & Ryan Holiday: Applying Stoicism in Life

Hello Curious Minds,

In this week's edition of Curiosity Logs, we're delving into the wisdom of Stoics. This week we will look into a podcast episode instead of regular book highlights.

In recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast (by Ryan Holiday) , Tim Ferriss shares his insights on how stoicism can help. He talks about the importance of approaching challenges as experiments, starting the clock on tasks, and eliminating unnecessary steps.

Weekly Podcast Highlights

Episode : Tim Ferriss On Solving Problems With People And Using Stoicism To Make Better Decisions

Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss are friends who have collaborated on a number of projects together. In this podcast, they discuss stoicism and how it can be used to make better decisions. You can watch the full episode here

About the host and the guest

Here is some interesting quotes from the podcast on life, career and stoicsm

• "The idea of seeing crazy thing as an experiment or as an iterative process as opposed to this is permanently my identity... You can either be intimidated by it and not doing it or being locked into it forever if it's not working."

• "Life tuition experiments... that's how you think about it... You think that the cost of going to business school and you said okay it's $200,000 why don't I just spend $200,000 investing in companies and I'll end up at the same place which is I'll know how to invest in things and with one I'll have a degree and a piece of paper and the other I might have valuable sake in a bunch of companies or it fails in both cases I'll have just $200,000 that I let on fire but I'll have learned something either way."

• "Never let a good crisis go to waste... look at that problem and to really sit down and ideally write out how the problem is based on your assumptions that you have about how things should work or how you should do things."

• "It's not our it's not things that upset us it's our opinion about things the stoics say yeah exactly and to to figure out like why is this a problem yeah is it because your five friends..."

• "I have a top secret stoic life hack... I've just decided when I go out in the world that I'm going to treat everyone as if they have a debilitating disease that affects their like mental and emotional regulation... It just makes it so much easier to deal with everybody."

• "The most neglected step in all of that is elimination... for a lot of reasons... I would say the most neglected stat actually maybe at the top of the funnel to yeah to me and people miss it about the 4-hour workweek... about lifestyle design right like what do you want your life to look like..."

• "...and so I now know from experience I don't like meetings I don't like phone calls I don't like things that take me away from what I like doing right and and that's family and work..."

• "...stoicism is good for survival and self-preservation for the same reason it's good for Success...because stoicism helps you to conserve and best deploy your limited resources."

• "The chief task in life...is finding what's in your control and what's not in your control."

• "...stoicism is like hey what part of this can I influence and what part of this do I have to accept and just deal with and find a way to adapt and get comfortable with..."

• "...the tools are the same...thinking about like sitting down, doing a little serenity prayer and also thinking about the worst case scenario..."

• "...repair is incredibly important and also thinking about not just what thoughts are you going to have what questions are you going to ask what exercises are you going to do in your head that will help in these moments whether it's preventive or repair..."

• "...stoicism isn't never freaking out never going into a down downward spiral never being overwhelmed by your emotions it's hopefully catching yourself before you've done something terrible as a result of those things and hopefully as you get better ratcheting sooner and sooner how fast you can do it..."

• "...at the very top is if there's a problem come to and it needs to be discussed you need to have you need to have at least two options that are ranked order..."

• "...the most neglected stat actually maybe at the top of the funnel to yeah to me and people miss it about the 4our work we why it's such an important book and why I do think it's relationship to stoicism is so important the the subtitle of that book about lifestyle design right like what do you want your life to look like..."

• "...and so you've got to start with like what do you want your life to look at what what are you trying to design for what are you optimizing for and then there's all these great Frameworks for being optimized but you got to know what..."

P.S. I’d love to know: What is the single snippet above that sounds most interesting or impactful to you?

Weekly Curiosity Corner

This week I will introduce two new books which sparked my curiosity. Both looks promising , yet to purchase and read.

1. Feel-Good Productivity - by Ali Abdaal

book is a holistic guide to productivity, balancing work with well-being and offering practical tools to overcome common productivity blockers

1. Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours - by Noah Kagan

book is a concise guide to launching a successful business in a short timeframe. Kagan's approach is focused on simplicity and actionable steps, offering a clear path to achieving a seven-figure business in just two days.

PS : Do you have any interesting books on your book list. Share with Curiosity Community in comments below.