Here’s What The Everyday Is Reading:

Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday:

Made me rethink and re-frame what I’m doing with the podcast.  My mistake has been to create it as I would a radio show, when podcasts seem to be more like audio books and should be as evergreen as possible.  This also pushed me to put together an email list, which is in progress.   Like all of his stuff important ideas are made into an accessible read.

The Force, Don Winslow:

At one point, towards the end, Malone asks: “Do you believe in karma?”  And then it hits me.   Life is the drip, drip, drip.  It’s a snowflake, joining another snowflake, forming a snowball, and eventually an avalanche.  One decision, another decision, another small decision, and you go from good cop to…

It’s all about the day-to-day, isn’t it?  The missed workouts add up (this is the thing I need to get a handle on and do consistently). You drink everyday and one day your liver is done.  You spend all those minutes and hours and days and late nights on Facebook or with games and then…you wonder where the years went.

Your entire life is compound interest.  This is both good and bad.  Make the tough decisions, focus on the good habits, cut out the sugar and the bad stuff, and eventually it’ll be a decade down the line and you can be in a good place.  The flip side is Malone.   Karma here is not the “what goes around comes around” version (although partly true) or the  “living the sum of your past lives” version.  It’s a mix of the two.  It’s a culmination of your life.  The seemingly little decisions add up.

The book is cinematic, and would fit well on HBO.  One thing that got me, near the end, everything got such a build-up…then it’s BAM! BAM! BAM!  The reversals from chapter-to-chapter gave me whiplash.   Taking it another way, though, and it reminded me of what a professor saw in “Goodfellas.”  The early scenes have smooth edits and long shots (he pointed to the Copacabana entrance, which is incredibly one shot).  Then the cuts and edits become choppier as things break down.   So maybe, in The Force, it’s a similar pacing technique.

And for listening in the car:

The thing I hate about audio books in the car is I get distracted by all the driving. (I kid…)  So you’re in the middle of a great chapter and someone cuts you off and you’re dropping F-bombs for the next 15 minutes and not focused on the book.  That’s what I do, at least (need more stoicism and meditation, it seems).   And anyway you miss out on things so the book feels incomplete.   The beauty of listening on the way to work is that it primes my day (if that makes any sense), and I can just repeat to fill-in any road anger induced gaps.

Previous reads:

The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene:

It’s a great strategy book, but also worth checking out if you’re a military history buff. I picked this up after reading Mastery and 48 Laws of Power. 48 Laws is a life-changing book. All are worth reading.