Sunday Listening - Ryan Holiday
Ryan: What do you do when you first wake up?
Bari: I look at Signal, I look at Twitter, and I look at my email.
Ryan: So you’re starting the day at the mercy of things that you don’t control. Your Inbox is a to-do list put together by other people. You’re not starting the day thinking about what you want to think about, reading what you want to read about, doing what you want to do… you’re starting your day based on whatever happened while you were sleeping. You’re inherently starting the day on your back foot.
— Honestly with Bari Weiss
Ryan Holiday has been talking about how he starts his day by not looking at his phone for awhile now, but it wasn’t until that I heard this exchange with Bari that I clued into why it was so important. I think like most people who rely on their phones (and technology more broadly), I am in the bad habit of looking at my phone to start the day. Checking my work then personal email, checking text messages, and, more often than not, scrolling Twitter or Instagram to catch up on what I missed before getting out of bed.
After listening to this exchange, I realized I had to do better. This morning when I woke up, I left my phone alone. I went to the kitchen, started heating up the water for my coffee, emptied the dishwasher, loaded up the washing machine, and folded the load of laundry that had dried already. When I had poured my first cup of coffee and sat down, it was over an hour since I woke up.
I am starting the day more relaxed than previously. I feel like I have accomplished more already than I normally would have and have freed up more time to do other things today. It’s only one day, but I wanted to get something down as a future reminder of how it feels if I end up getting off track in the future, which is likely going to happen.
The rest of the lengthy conversation (nearly two hours) is quite interesting if you enjoy learning more about how media functions and the changes that have happened over the years from the evolution of new forms of media (Gawker was the focus of the discussion) and the role of Twitter and Facebook today.
On Ryan’s Daily Stoic podcast, he had a good conversation with Edward-Isaac Dovere(writer at The Atlantic) about the US election in 2016 and 2020 and the role the media played.
Both episodes are highly recommended, as are both of their podcasts.
