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- [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=0s) - intro
[1:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=88s) - I. find your motivation
[3:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=200s) - II. make it count
[4:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=292s) - III. take risks
[7:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=479s) - IV. do less better
[9:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=596s) - V. develop courage
[12:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=722s) - VI. sweat the details
[13:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=836s) - VII. meet people halfway
[16:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=962s) - VIII. do the right thing
[17:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=1047s) - IX. start journaling
[18:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsmoQpZtu0&t=1117s) - X. train the body and mind
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- Intro
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- i'm framing these shots because uh this is my specialty and when i need advice on writing i call ryan so i feel like here's my opportunity to pay him back [Music]
- i just finished a six mile run and i got a text from my friend @Casey YT guy who i've known forever and he asked if i wanted to go for a second run and there's basically no one i love to go running with more in the world than casey neistat in fact other than ritual i really don't run with anyone running as a solitary philosophical meditative thing for me
- but in honor of going on this run with casey who i met almost 10 years ago we both gave a talk at a castle that google had put on we stayed in the castle everyone left and then it was me casey the director of the king's speech and a couple other uh people anyways we all stayed in the castle and had this crazy experience together and and became really fast friends as a result of it weirdly i think i have learned more from casey than just about anyone i've met in that 10-year period
- i'm ryan holliday i've written a bunch of books about stoke philosophy i'm a runner as i was saying but i also go around and give talks at places like that castle for google in the nba in the nfl sitting senators special force operators that's what i get to do for a living but i'm also on this journey of becoming my best self learning from people that i know and so in today's episode
- i wanted to give you a bunch of life lessons that i learned from my friend casey neistat that have made me a better person a better writer a better artist a better creator a youtuber it was casey's idea to do this youtube channel so here is what i have learned from the one and only casey neistat [Music]
- Find Tour Motivation
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- i remember once i was talking about some financial like project with casey something i was getting paid to do he said you got to remember ryan if we were motivated by money we'd both work at ad agencies and i think about that all the time i didn't get into into writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy for the money of course now that would be insane i didn't get into publishing physical books in 2020 because money is what motivates me so if money doesn't motivate me i have to make sure that my individual choices this project that project this direction this direction whatever that it's not motivated by money because i've already opted out of that race i've already decided not to optimize for that variable you know
- seneca says that slavery lurks beneath marble and gold meaning that the the richest people are often the least free because they have to think about making money they have to think about maintaining their money they're afraid of losing their money they have to do certain things to be in the club that allows them to make the money that they do and so when you opt out of that it's not just freeing but it's clarifying
- why do you do what you do and if you've decided that it's not money there's things that casey could do to make a lot more money there's things i could do to make a lot more money i was interviewed by the new york times once and she said well are you doing this for the money and i said if i was motivated by money i'd be investing in cryptocurrencies crypto would be where i'm at and this was like several years ago before crypto
- i got into ancient philosophy because i love ancient philosophy and i have to remind myself of that because finances money is a part of it you have to make sure it doesn't corrupt you in the small little ways if you've already decided not to let it corrupt you in the big ways and so casey's point that like look if you're really motivated by money you wouldn't be a creator you'd be in the corporate world that's not who i am that's not what motivated me and then when you know what motivates you when you know why you do what you do why you get out of bed in the morning as mark surely says when you do what your nature demands you can do it purely and authentically and clearly not corrupted or tempted by these extrinsic or external motivations
- Make It Count
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- is such a generic platitude that can be attached to anything because it's such a prominent make it count as a video i made 10 years ago and it's about you know pursuing it generically it is my like to a fault how much i romanticize the past how much i embrace seek and nurture nostalgia that gives me sort of the motivation for right now when
- i asked casey about it today he was a little shy and self-effacing but **i think his make it count video is like one of the great monuments** or demonstrations of the sort of memento mori philosophy from the stokes we have one life how are we going to spend it tomorrow is not guaranteed now is now now is this moment in front of you how are you going to spend you get one life you could leave life right now marx really says let that determine what you do and say and think that's one part of it but then another party goes think of yourself as dead now you've come back to life now take what's left and live it properly to me that idea of touring going around the world visiting all these cool places this sort of make it count thing that he's talking about that video is that idea think of yourself as dead think of having gotten a cancer scare think of a coveted scare think of your life flashing before your eyes think of the regrets you have the things you'd want to do you wish you could have done the the things you you kicked yourself for putting off well now you have a second chance he's saying how are you going to spend that and act and decide and live today now while you are lucky enough to be alive with that in mind don't forget it don't take it for granted make it count memento mori to me that's the stoicism of casey neistat and it's also the stoicism of marx realized it's how i try to live my life and it's how i try to make my decisions and i hope you do too [Music]
- Take Risks
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- the point of of making the money of of building the platform of choosing to do this what is it i remember he said look the **reason to make money is to do more cool work**
- what has my success afforded me as a writer as a speaker the investments i've made it's that i can fund things like this youtube channel i can fund the podcast i can grow the team the money it shouldn't buy you nice cars although if you could afford it go for it the money isn't about affording fancy things or rare artifacts the point of the money is that it can fund the projects that you've always wanted to do that you feel that you were put here to do
- look when i went to my publisher after i wrote trust me i'm lying and then i did another marketing book and i went to them and said look for my next book i want to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy they were not excited they were not excited at all they thought it was a terrible idea they offered me half for my second book what i got for my first book the obstacle is the way a book that's now sold well over a million copies it's in like 40 languages my publisher didn't want they told me later that they thought that as an idea they hoped it would be something i would try get out of my system and go back to what i was doing so first off it was a big swing it was a big risk i had to take again a significantly less amount of money to do this project i did it because it was important to me because i felt like stoicism really had relevance and i could bring it to a huge audience
- but again this is where casey's advice comes in why do you have the success what was the point of my corporate success what was the point of the success of my first book if it meant that i was not able to do the project that i felt called to do that i really needed to do
- so again the risk taking isn't just like oh i'm i'm going to leverage myself here so i can make more and more money the **risk taking should be and this is what i've learned from casey to do cool projects that you really care about**
- and this thing that he was here in in austin to do this documentary he did about the youtube star david dobrik and his sort of rise and fall casey put millions of dollars of his own money into it because he didn't want other people to have a say because he wanted control of it because he thought it was an important story to tell
- that's what the success should afford you the s**uccess should buy you autonomy to make the work that you want to do to do what you feel like you were put here on this planet to do to do cool stuff** otherwise it's not success it's a form of slavery
- and the stoics talk about this yes there's literal slavery but if you're not free to pursue what you want to do to say what you want to say to make what you want to make you are a slave you're a slave to the system you're a slave to your success you're a slave to what other people think that's not successful at all
- Do Less Better
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- **do less means do the things that you do better**
- let's take on less take on less responsibilities like instead of doing ten things to one do one thing to ten and that's antithetical to my approach 10 years ago when my career was starting to come into focus and the more exploration i did the more aggressive i was in those pursuits the greater the return and now it's the opposite of that it's the more focused the more disciplined i am in my pursuits the greater the return
- a couple of years ago i wrote this piece that casey really liked and we ended up connecting over it and i know there's a very politically incorrect term i'm saying **i have calendar anorexia** meaning like i want nothing going into my calendar i want to have complete freedom over my day as much as possible the reality is as you become successful as you become good at what you do is people want you to do a lot of stuff they'll even pay you a lot of money to do a lot of stuff and there's just cool opportunities that are coming up all the time but you have to get really good at saying no and you have to get really defensive right you have to have really clear boundaries around your space to protect that artistic domain in which you do what you do
- casey's really good at that and he ended up doing a video where he talked about this you have to be comfortable saying no you have to be okay hurting people's feelings by saying no not only can you not hope to please everyone but you can't even want to please everyone
- i know where my obligations lie they go to my family to my immediate community into my work that's what i have to protect and i have to realize that when i'm saying yes to things i'm saying no implicitly or otherwise to other things but **when i'm saying no to things yes that's hard and it can feel selfish but i'm also saying yes to other things that really do matter**
- and so casey and i have connected over this it's an important part of the philosophy that we shared to do good work to be great at what you do and to have any semblance of a happy home life to not get divorced and not have your kids hate you you have to protect that space you have to be willing to say no you have to put the work first you have to be able to ignore all the things that are being thrown at you because they don't matter not nearly as much as people think they matter and you have to focus on what really does matter
- Develop Courage
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- for the stoics courage is the first of the cardinal virtues and it's something i learned from casey believe it or not i don't mean courage of running into a battle or a burning building there's different kinds of courage there's also this is sort of ==day-to-day courage of like being yourself betting on yourself==
- one of the things i learned from casey is taking big swings i'm a college dropout but casey is like a high school dropout casey bet on himself in a huge way he came to new york with nothing i moved to la with a job i eased my way into the creative life and he sort of jumped in with both feet but
- a couple different times on projects i've i've watched casey do or been involved with in some way i've watched him take huge swings he started his company beam a couple years ago and he left behind millions of dollars in advertising and youtube revenue to bet on himself to do this company and people thought it didn't work people didn't like it people were critical of it but he ended up selling it to cnn for like a huge amount it was a big project but it only happened because he bet on himself and the vlog the thing he became so well known for it was a byproduct of doing that casey and i said as the huge youtuber that people know him as today would not exist had he not tried to do this crazy thing
- that was starting to be but then what he was in austin for this documentary he did was premiering at south by southwest but casey invested like millions of dollars of his own money in it he could have gone out and raised money or he could have not done it at all because it was prohibitively expensive but instead he bet on himself he took a huge swing to me one of the things that i've taken from casey but i also take from the stoics is that **it's not that you believe in yourself it's that you have evidence in what you're capable of** and you don't care what other people say you don't care what other people think you don't care about the odds you care about whether you know that you have what it takes to do it and you're willing to take those risks i**f you're not scared by what you're doing you're not taking enough risks if you never get that like pit in your stomach** like wow this is the biggest scariest thing i've ever done you're probably not gonna put yourself in a position to do something really cool or that hits really big
- so you have to take risks you have to be brave fortune favors the bold as the expression goes and i think casey's work is a good example that the decisions he's made in his life are a good example of that too
- Sweat the Details
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- one of the things that's always been remarkable to me about marcus aurelius is thinking that meditations this book he wrote which is in greek not latin he's writing in a second language it's so perfectly done every phrase is perfect every metaphor is perfect every image is perfect and yet **he never expected anyone to see it he was doing it entirely for himself the journal was just for him**
- i think one of the things that i've admired about casey's work that's inspired me is that when you look at what people were making as far as vlogs in like 2014 they were not good and marc maron has this great joke about you going on youtube and being assaulted by lack of talent and i feel like unfortunately a lot of the really influential big people on youtube kind of half-assing it you know here's a video of me eating cereal it was just not good and i think what casey brought to youtube and continues to bring to youtube is just like real craftsmanship and professionalism and i've seen him make these videos and i see how he thinks about every shot and every cut even on this run we went on it he was like no you gotta wait for the lighting and he's just a pro
- you have to be a craftsman at what you do even if the market will reward you not being a craftsman i think about s**teve jobs and this advice he got from his dad about caring about the back side of the cabinet** that's why even though the customer won't see it the inside of an apple computer is beautiful
- people are watching casey's videos for a lot of different reasons maybe most of them didn't appreciate or even understand the full amount of craftsmanship or effort or professionalism that was going into every frame every cut every thought but he did it because he was doing it for him
- right just as mark surrealist was writing meditations for him and when i write my books of course i want them to do well of course i do think about the audience but mostly i think about my own standards am i living up to it and make sure that i'm not cutting corners i sweat every tiny little detail you have to care about these things you have to care about them far more than the market or your audience or your editor or your advertiser or your client ==you have to care about it because it's a reflection of who you are how you do anything is how you do everything== you have to sweat these tiny little details you have to do them right you can't phone it in
- Meet People Halfway
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- **you have to meet people where they are** one of the things i've realized like of course i'm a writer i love books i love the written word i think books are sacred holy objects but i realize that not everyone feels that way part of the reason i make youtube videos and casey inspired me to do this and pushed me to do it for years is that millions of people watch videos millions of people listen to podcasts millions of people get their information from social media **you have to meet people where they are you can't be holier than now you can't be condescending you can't be elitist about it** you have to make stuff for people where they are
- when you look at casey's videos i was saying like the craftsmanship is indisputable and the care in them is undeniable and they're so well done but his thumbnails are like just like all the other youtube videos and they're clickbaity because you have to draw people in you can't wow the audience if they're indifferent to you if they never click on it in the first place you have to grab that attention it's a battle for sure and so
- for me even the journey to youtube was something that casey inspired he was just telling me how powerful the platform is i didn't do it for a long time but i'm so glad that i did it we've reached literally millions and millions of people as a result on it
- seneca in one of his letters he says that you should be on the inside different on the outside exactly the same as everyone else i think what he's saying is you gotta play the game a little bit right you can't expect it to be this necessarily this meritocracy you can't just expect that your work of staggering genius will just be appreciated will be discovered in casey does that
- then videos where he's flying in a private jet or a fancy plane or goes to some crazy water park he's done stuff and you can tell he's doing it to reach a new audience to bring them in to then see what's really different about his work that means understanding the platforms that means producing the amount of work to fully take advantage of those platforms also means playing the game on those platforms
- marx really says you can't go around expecting plato's republic this is not the golden age of whatever where hemingway and fitzgerald were household names again **it's a street fight to get attention you gotta work for it man you gotta put yourself out there you gotta find out how that attention economy works** but the main thing is **you gotta do it you can't be bigger than it can't be too good for it** you gotta put yourself out there and if you don't and again that's your choice you have to understand that you are leaving potential people who could be impacted by your work on the table and that's a shame
- Do the Right Thing
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- on all of casey's cameras and his journals and whatever **he writes if found please do the right thing** and then he puts his phone number i do myself now i put it on my journals it's actually in the front page of the daily stoke journal it says if found please do the right thing
- well as we were filming this video he set down his phone and we were walking and then he left his phone and we couldn't find it we were frantically looking around for it i wasn't filming because i was looking for the phone but as it happened a family found it and they were trying to get in touch with him to give him his phone back
- he posted this great tweet about it and he was saying like look there's still good people out there anyone who's been robbed had gear it's very easy to become jaded and cynical about other people to give up on other people to lose your faith in people but there are good people out there general mattis has this great land that cynicism is cowardice
- giving up on other people is the easy thing to do and there are moments in meditations where marcus realized clearly flirts with that even the opening of meditations he does this you know people are going to be jealous and angry and they're going to steal and they're going to do all this stuff but he says i can't let them implicate me in the ugliness they just aren't as informed as i am
- and so the idea is you can't give up on people you can't let them make you cynical you can't make them lose your faith in humanity and i love this just little reminder because it reminds me when i find stuff putting that on my stuff reminds me that **when i find other people's stuff i gotta do the right thing i gotta try to get in touch with them** i gotta give it back because i want someone to do that for me thank you to the people that found his phone he wouldn't have been able to catch his flight without it and it's just a great reminder that there are good people out there and we can't be cynical or give up on people
- Start Journaling
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- maybe six seven years ago i was at casey's studio in new york city and i walked by and on the shelf **he has like years worth of journals years of them** and i asked him about she's like oh i've been doing that from high school he had like all his journals more than a decade of journals honestly i was so jealous i was like i want to have that i want to be able to look back at what i was thinking i want to practice that habit and that is what got me seriously started on the habit of journaling
- i've done it off and on intermittently before but when i saw like the output when i saw like what that actually looked like i was like i'm gonna do that and you know there's that expression like **the best time to have started something was 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago but the second best time is now** and i started it and that was six or seven years ago and i have a huge stack of my own journals now to show for that which is i think the ==most stoic habit journaling is stoicism stoicism is journaling==
- if you didn't start then like i'm sorry if you didn't start when casey started i'm sorry but you can start now and tomorrow you'll have some in 10 years you'll have some right you should journal for yourself right the day-to-dayness of it is good you should journal for your future self that's really good and you should journal for posterity for your kids for your grandkids but you should do it and you should start now in casey you taught me that
- Train the Body and Mind
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- so i ran six before i saw casey i ran five with casey then we walked a mile and then i ran two miles back so i am exhausted but that is my final lesson from casey one of the things that i think was so inspiring about the vlog he did like the sheer prolificness of his output doing one of the highest quality pieces of content on the internet every day for more than a year or a row two three million people watching each video i was just inspired by the sheer force of will and determination and fortitude that it takes to do that which is kind of the track that i've been on this is more than 10 books in less than 10 years
- and where does that come from i think the stoics say it comes from the physical practice from the training the run that we just did is the microcosm of the marathon of the work itself so you have this physical activity you have this physical domain the training that you do the physical domain is actually helping you in the spiritual and the creative domain center talks about **treating the body rigorously so it's not disobedient to the mind** and i think casey helped me up my game physically which is me our mutual friend ritual does the same when you see people who are just crushing it putting themselves out there they're just strong mentally and physically to me it inspires me and it reminds me of what it takes to do this work casey has inspired me in that way