#301： Why Action is the Answer
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett McKenzie sits down with long-time contributor Kyle Eschenroeder to discuss why inaction can be expensive, how action can sometimes mean not doing anything, and why taking action is the best way to find courage and passion in your life.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well last year
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art of manliness contributor kyle eschenroeder published a piece on the site called meditations
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on the wisdom of action contained 116 short punchy devotional-esque passages on the nature
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and importance of action it was one of my favorite pieces of content in 2016 and i still find myself
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continually thinking about its principles and trying to utilize them in my life the feedback
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we received from readers has been similarly enthusiastic and at over 16 000 words this long
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form article is about the length of a short book so we decided to turn it into one and self-publish
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it and call it the pocket guide to action 116 meditations on the art of doing today on the show
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i've brought kyle on to dig deep into his philosophy on action he shares why inaction can be expensive
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how action can sometimes mean not doing anything and why taking action is the best way to find
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courage and passion in your life along the way he shares tactics you can take today to help shift
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yourself into a more action-oriented mindset if you've been struggling to get started on a project
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or just feeling unmotivated this podcast will light a fire under your rear after the show is over make
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sure you check out the show notes at aom.is action where you find links to resources we delve deeper in
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this topic and you can buy a copy of our book the pocket guide to action 116 meditations on the art of
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doing by kyle eschenroeder kyle eschenroeder welcome back to the show thanks for having me again
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brett all right so it was a few months ago you wrote an ebook long treatise and it wasn't a treatise
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it was like these pithy meditations full of just awesome actionable information it was called the
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meditations on the wisdom of action and you took sort of these 116 or so ideas about action
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and fleshed it out but here's the thing it was really popular got a lot of great feedback from
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it similar to the other content you've published on the site about you know not hacking your life
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you've also written about action before but this one you fleshed it out some more and what's
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interesting about your take on action it's not this sort of rah rah like motivation instagram meme like
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i'm going to take over the world type action but it's more of a lens by which to see the world you
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know a posture you take so it's i mean it's like really a philosophical look at life where it
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involves around action so how is action its own prism in philosophy yeah this is probably one of
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my favorite question because a lot of people read it and they kind of take it as this like you said
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exhortation just me yelling about doing more stuff take action take action take action when in fact
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what it is is a description of action as closely as i could kind of witness it so what happened is
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i consumed a ton of those kind of rah rah blog posts and books that are just yelling at you to take
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action take action just do it you know it's all just an extension of just do it but i kind of got
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exhausted from that like you know that kind of stuff might get me pumped for a day then it got
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exhausted and then eventually kind of embarrassing to me so like you said i wanted to actually look at
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the world through action see if it's a worthwhile goal so where i started from is i took you know what
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happens when i take action and i try to look at it as closely as possible to understand it as closely
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as possible and after working through this for a while the more i understood action the easier it
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became to take more bold actions take action more consistently but then i think even more important
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and what i was not expecting was that i was more discerning in my action right because when we talk
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about taking action we're not using a dictionary definition because that's just everything we do right
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what we're talking about is taking right action doing the things we know we want to do but kind of
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are held back by you know maybe steven pressfield's resistance or some other kind of internal or external
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force pushing against us so you become more discerning in the actions you take when you understand
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the nature of action and when you understand the nature of action it also becomes easy to take the
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actions you know you should so that was a long way of getting to the core idea which is you know the
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lens of taking action is essentially prioritizing reality over stories about reality so that is also
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prioritizing execution over explainable understandings of the world so an example of that is you know we can
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walk more efficiently when we're not thinking about how we're walking if somebody says wow you're walking
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funny you're definitely going to start walking funny because you start trying to understand it you start
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trying to consciously bring to your consciousness something that you do automatically really really
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well so the implications of prioritizing reality over our stories about reality mean that we put our
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relationship to reality ahead of measuring reality we put what's important to us over what others tell
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us should be important we put predictions and commitments ahead of justifications and explanations
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and again we actually nasim taleb puts it puts it really really well he says suckers try to win
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arguments non-suckers try to win so again overall the prism is that everything flows from
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prioritizing action over explanation gotcha so read less blog posts business books and spend more time
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just doing stuff that you're reading about right yeah exactly if you read a how-to book you're going
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to feel like you're learning how to do something when you probably would have learned more and gotten
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further if you actually tried doing that thing right and i thought it's interesting too like you know this
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sort of this definition you have of action it's not sort of the this typical definition it also the way
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you argue in your the article that action can also mean being passive sometimes but like but like
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passive in an active way if that makes sense like deliberately being passive right that's that can be
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action as well right yeah and i think in the book i use the example of the spartans like spartan
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warriors were kind of known for waiting for the other army to come charging at them lose their
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composure and basically start flailing around things that we would traditionally see as action
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when in fact they were just losing control of themselves whereas the spartans were waiting as an
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action so if we're waiting out of fear or out of laziness you know that's inaction that's something
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that works against us while waiting attentively waiting for a certain moment is one of the most
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powerful moments we can take a more modern example is warren buffett he makes investment moves very very
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rarely he's always waiting always watching always attentive to find the most powerful most leveraged
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move he can make so he's actively waiting he's not waiting because he's fearful of the markets or he's
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he's scared he's waiting to pounce kind of thing right well speaking of inaction right so there's a
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type of an inaction that can be productive right in the case of warren buffett or the spartans but
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there's also an inaction you say that you say inaction is expensive why is inaction expensive and
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why don't we often realize it's the cost of not taking action so this is i think another key so when we
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take action the costs are immediate and obvious so the rejection we might face the failure we might
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have to accept the money we might lose all those things are immediately painful and they're very
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obvious to us very measurable and the while the benefits of action are delayed so the growth the
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virility the progress the learning are often come later so with inaction it's reversed right so inaction
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costs are immediate benefits are delayed with inaction costs are delayed and benefits are immediate
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benefits primarily being comfort right so if we decide on inaction we feel better right away and then
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later the costs come and not only are the costs delayed they're also kind of hard to measure so the costs of
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inaction tend to be like decay depression and our life generally gets smaller it's harder to find but we become
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smaller when we choose inaction too often right and this plays great to a couple things our need for instant
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gratification right so we get the comfort right away whereas action we have to put in cost right away
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and it also plays to you know what gets measured gets managed we can measure the costs of action it's very
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difficult to measure the costs of inaction but they're undeniable once they've had some time to compound
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your life is just you know like you said it's a smaller no virility yeah so it's kind of this slow
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gradual descent that that makes it very difficult to see day to day but year over year it's painfully
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obvious right so inaction the benefits are immediate so that's hard to get over though because oftentimes
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you have this line in your book and so just for people know we actually took kyle's thing he wrote
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it's like it's not a it's not a post because it's too long to be a post but it's like an ebook we made
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it an actual book we called it the pocket guide to action and it's available for pre-order it's fantastic
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i love flipping through it we'll put a link in the site one of my favorite lines in the pocket guide
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to action is this it's i don't feel like working out until i get my blood flowing i'm too tired to
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have sex until we've begun i don't want to go to the party until i'm there motivation will follow
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you if you have the balls to go without them and it's true like we've i think we talked about this
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last time when you're on we talk about action the thing about action is that like usually don't feel
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like doing the thing that you know you need to do until you start doing it so that's the question
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that was like how do you bootstrap that right how do you get yourself to do the thing you know you need
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to do that you don't feel like doing but you know you're going to start feel like doing it once you
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start doing it i mean so how do you take that first step i think that's what holds a lot of people back
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people know they need to work out and they know once they start working out it's not going to be so bad
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and they're going to enjoy it but they just they don't feel like working out at that moment is it
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is it just brute force discipline or do you have psychological ideas that can help you get over
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that hump or beat that resistance yeah so i think there's a million little tricks for this i personally
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have to avoid relying on brute force discipline just because i don't feel like i'm incredibly
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disciplined so i mostly have to trick myself into doing something and and really it's whatever works
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for you there's like you know this is one of those things there's a million blog posts out there and
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they all give you like a little trick to get going i think just trusting in the quote that you just read
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like trusting that once you start you'll like it you'll you know you'll gain momentum i think knowing
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that and it takes a little leap of faith each time but just knowing that helps get the ball rolling
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but probably the most consistently effective tactic that i use is to trick myself into kind of minuscule
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steps towards the thing so something that i'm doing right now is getting back into cold showers and
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it's almost impossible for me to talk myself into getting into a cold shower because it's just so
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uncomfortable right away right it immediately puts my body into shock it's like it's not fun for the
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first 30 seconds at all so while my mind is running all these like negative things and like trying to
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you know making me flinch away from the water i'm taking kind of rebellious tiny steps in the direction
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that i decided on which is you know cold shower so i'm turning on the water and i'm making it cold i'm
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opening up the door and each time i'm not committing to taking the shower i'm just committing to a tiny
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step towards the thing so then finally i'm there you know nude in front of a cold shower and you know
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what am i going to do now i have to retreat now it takes more effort for me to turn on the hot water
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and i feel bad about myself right so you get yourself set up so retreat feels bad the same thing another
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example you know going to the gym right so if i'm just getting back into the habit of going to the
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gym then i have to just put on my gym clothes or just show up at the gym right and because once i'm
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there i'm going to feel really guilty if i just walk in and walk out so i just commit to the tiniest
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easiest possible thing that might have a chance of making me feel guilty for not doing the right thing
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and i think you know both of those things like working out and taking cold showers once you do it
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then you you're like amazed that you ever had any kind of aversion to that thing but of course like
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at the gym you're literally ripping your muscles apart so it's not pleasant if you're not used to
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it but once you you know get in the habit then it feels great so yeah that's my my biggest trick is
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just making you know lowering the bar so far that you can kind of roll over it right right now that's
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that's a great point we've had ramit sadie on the podcast he talks a lot about you know making micro
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breaking down your goals into micro steps tim ferris talked about when you're trying to create a habit
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if you're having a hard time with it you probably need to redesign it like how you're approaching that
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usually means making the habit smaller yeah a lot of great advice there okay so you just said
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something when you were talking about action and your kind of approach to action you talked a lot
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about the importance of experiencing things firsthand right experience is the best teacher and i'm a big
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believer in that like i think the best way that i learn is when i get my hands dirty with something
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and mess up and learn from those mistakes etc but at the same time and i know you are you've read some
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charlie munger yourself what i love about charlie munger is like you know he's a big believer in reading
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and you read so you can learn from the mistakes of others so how do you balance that how do you balance
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learning from experience you know at the same time reading from and learning from the mistakes of others so you
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don't commit those same mistakes yeah it's so funny you mentioned munger because the when you said the
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question the first thing that i thought of was a quote from charlie munger that he likes to repeat
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you know and by the way i i don't know if you mentioned this but munger is warren buffett's kind
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of legendary investment partner that totally changed the way buffett approached investing early on and
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allowed him to get as huge as he became but he has he he has this thing that he's been repeating for
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decades and he says all i want to know is where i'm going to die so i never go there and that is you
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know some of the best advice you can get like you said he's looking for mistakes other people have made
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so he doesn't have to make them so and i and i do think that we can avoid you know avoiding terrible
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things is the best way to a good life more than anything positive it's kind of this via negativa
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approach to a good life is if you avoid doing all of the terrible things people do to make life worse
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you're going to have a good life so at the same time i believe that to really grok something to
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to really understand something deeply you have to experience it so i think what munger is doing and
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what we're doing when we decide to avoid the mistakes of others is we just decide that we
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don't really need to understand everything right so if i'm avoiding you know if i could have avoided
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touching a hot stove when i was a kid my mom told me and i trusted her and i could have avoided i would
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have avoid getting burnt once but i would never have a true understanding of why like what does it feel
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like to have your fingers burnt off so i think when we go with this it's just kind of you have to
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there's certain things that you don't want to understand all the way you know um so there's
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certain drugs that are so addictive i there's you know i don't need to know the experience of having
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that drug because i know it's going to end in a bad place now that doesn't mean i can have full
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empathy with people who have gone through addiction and um you know suffered through these things but i
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have a good enough understanding that i need to move forward and to make decisions in my own life
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and so we can make you know we we can avoid certain things but i don't even think you know certain mistakes
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mistakes have huge consequences other mistakes are completely avoidable but the cost of making
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certain mistakes is worth making a mistake so in my example let's say i i used to trade money right i
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used to be a day trader i used to run a small fund so when i made the transition from paper trading
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trading to trading real money there was no you know the theory was the same and most of the practice
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was the same but the psychological effects were completely different so i had to make a similar
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set of mistakes that i did with paper money with real money i had to lose real money to really understand
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what trading method i needed to use and then the same thing happened when i started trading other
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people's money so first i was trading mine then when i started trading other people's it you know
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say again same theory but whole new set of mistakes psychologically that happen when you're dealing with
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other people's money right so it's a different texture of same mistakes and you need to make those
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mistakes like you need to lose money at least a little bit in order to not lose a ton later on
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right does that make sense in this context okay i think that makes sense i mean it's yeah it's it's
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about being smart about certain things and like there's like some things you just should just stay
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away from completely but there's some things that you need to figure out on your own because that's
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the only way you're going to learn it's it's basically taking an aristotelian approach like
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be smart about like like make the right mistakes for the right reason the right time
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right that sort of moderation idea exactly yeah it's like that yogi barrel line in theory there's no
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difference between theory and practice but in practice there is right so you can have a great
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working map of your surroundings but until you actually go and investigate the territory you can't
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fully understand what the map is saying so one of my favorite ideas you talk about in the book
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is that some actions have more leverage than others so what does it mean for a certain action to have
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extra leverage and what are some examples of that i think even before we go into them you say the these
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are actions that should be prioritized right and i i consider leveraged actions to either automate or
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eliminate the need for future actions so a couple types of actions that automate actions are creating
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habits you know and so that's you know habit of working out the habit of meditating it's something that
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you can do it automates a habit another way is creating an environment right so if you shape
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your environment in a way that shapes future actions you're essentially automating future actions
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an example of this i used recently is my girlfriend and i were eating out quite a lot just because we
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we weren't in the habit of cooking our own food for a while and so to kind of ease us into cooking our
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own food we subscribe to blue apron right so blue apron we're paying for it food's going to get
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here for the week and if we eat out too many times and we're going to waste a bunch of food that we
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already have in the fridge so that was a way of shaping our environment to shape and automate future
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actions no we're fans of blue apron too by the way nice they are a sponsor of the podcast oh i had no
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idea but they're so they but just to know you know yeah kyle this was not like kyle was not paid to
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blur this at all it might just happen that they are one of the sponsors on this episode but i thought
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yeah i love blue apron because you're right it does create this habit of cooking when you don't
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have it right yeah it makes it super easy and then you know for us we were on it for you know two months
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and then started going to the store and it was easy like it was easy to start cooking from total scratch
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so those are two ways we can automate future actions right and then another great way to have a
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leveraged action is to eliminate future actions you can do that with experiments so if you set up
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an experiment then you're paying attention to the results of a certain action or series of actions
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close enough that you're going to minimize repetition so you won't have to do the same or similar actions
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over and over again because you know that that's not working right so another another type of elimination
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would be like hiring in a business right if you have a set of of tasks or whatever you can eliminate
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future actions by by hiring right no it's it's a very aristotelian approach aristotle was all about
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you create habits like you not only want to be able to not have to think about doing the thing
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like you're you're wanting to do but you want to make it even like to the get to the point where you
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enjoy it right like you actually yes doing the thing and that takes work like it takes a lot of
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psychological emotional and mental sometimes physical work to get to that point amen yeah and
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but it's it's interesting it's again to me that goes back to you know delayed it's what do you want
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up front and what do you want later right so you want to want to do the hard thing but in order to
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do that you have to suffer through doing the hard thing when you don't want to do it you have to earn
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the right to want to do the hard thing so another idea that i love was that right action is not reactive
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it's proactive and i like this thought because it's something i've thought about nearly every morning
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when i wake up and i look at my phone on my dresser and think of checking it and try to decide not to
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start the day in a reactive way right where i'm like reacting to my phone what are some other ways
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that we set ourselves up for making reactive decisions and why is that why is that so detrimental
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to us i think the example you gave is so perfect for outlining this idea in total so if you think
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about you're waking up you're reaching over to this you know i don't know just this source of
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information you have no idea what you even want from it you just want whatever's there and then you
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open it up and you start scrolling through twitter or i don't know what your your thing is instagram
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reddit so i my mine are like reddit and twitter that's where i go to if i if my brain's turned off
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and i just want to be fed random stuff i go to twitter reddit and so you're starting the day asking
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for the world to tell you what to think right now essentially right instead of starting the day you
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know proactively doing the thing that you most need to get done today or thinking the thoughts that
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you most want to lead the day with right you're going for a total crapshoot just by opening up
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your phone first thing in the morning so i think essentially like if we are taking a posture of
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action part of that is being engaged enough with the thing that we're doing to know whether or not
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that's the thing we should be doing right so having a priority if you have a priority if you're engaged
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in action you're you're automatically proactive or at least will self-correct to being proactive but
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a couple like very common examples of setting ourself up for reactivity is you know checking
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your inbox with no purpose or outside of like a defined time frame you know if you you know finish
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task if you know you have a task to do but then you open up your inbox for some reason just to see
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what's there you're asking for other people to demand your time right again super common nothing
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interesting here another one is surfing the web with no aim right so there's a thousand companies that
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are a b testing headlines to capture your attention to essentially biologically force you to read their
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content and to trap you as long as they can with clickbait and whatever provocative headlines
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they have so you're just setting yourself up for reactivity if you're just going to go surf the
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web and not that surfing the web is a terrible thing we should just be conscious of okay i am
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submitting myself to these forces right to me the antidote for these things is just to ask myself what's
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the best thing i can do right now and if i'm trying to get entertained and i want to spend time on reddit
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then i'm there but i also should know that i'm setting myself up for reactivity right the the opposite
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would be you know the proactive use is i'm going to reddit to get entertained or i'm reading this news
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story because i want to know this specific fact or if this specific thing is true right so that's a way
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of consuming as an act of action right it's conscious we're engaged with it it's purposeful one thing i've been
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thinking about though lately is that it's it's hard it takes a lot of mental bandwidth not to be
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reactive because it involves a lot of restraint and you see your phone you want to grab it you want
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to check it you have to restrain yourself from checking your phone you have to like fight that
00:26:47.480
urge and one thing i've been thinking a lot about lately and it came up to mind while you were talking
00:26:51.760
it's a while back go ahead ian bogost on the podcast i don't know if you read his book play anything
00:26:56.580
but he had this idea about constraint versus restraint and he says we spend a lot of time
00:27:01.820
restraining ourselves and it just backfires because like we only have so much bandwidth
00:27:05.720
mental emotional bandwidth today to say no to things so instead of restraining ourselves
00:27:10.680
he argues for putting up constraints in our lives and this kind of goes along what you were saying about
00:27:15.760
shaping your environment to make action easier so he says instead of having to worry about
00:27:20.920
restraining yourself you offload that to your environment so you have these constraints you have to work
00:27:25.980
within so that might mean you put some sort of blocker right on your smartphone where you can
00:27:31.660
only check certain apps at certain time so you no longer have to think about restraining yourself
00:27:35.640
you have that constraint there if you go to check your phone at the not the right time well you can't
00:27:39.940
check your thing and it just it's amazing when i do that whenever i put constraints in my life
00:27:44.840
how much smoother things go how much more i get done compared to when i'm constantly trying to
00:27:51.120
restrain myself from being reactive oh yeah amen and i actually i really like that that podcast you
00:27:57.780
had with ian it was a really fun conversation but totally so i guess i should have mentioned that
00:28:02.940
you know when i'm on reddit i also have stay focused running which is a program that i have set for like
00:28:08.720
20 minutes a day so i have 20 minutes between twitter and reddit each day that i can kind of scroll
00:28:14.820
through and then it blocks me automatically and so i used to have facebook blocked but i can't because of
00:28:20.720
business so i removed the time my timeline right so the distracting part of facebook is you know
00:28:27.360
seeing all the stories in the center i don't have that there anymore how do you know shaping
00:28:31.540
it's this app called oof i can give you a link okay uh but it's a it's just a plugin for chrome and
00:28:39.800
it's yeah man it's it's so good because you don't see there's you know the people that you actually care
00:28:46.320
about that you hear about their life news in texts or emails or through another friend or family
00:28:52.900
member but yeah most of the stuff on facebook especially around election time you know with
00:28:58.140
politics as it is now it's not informative and it's just really it makes you lose respect for
00:29:04.020
a lot of the people you you like so i think it's funny so i've been off facebook for a long time i got
00:29:10.960
back on for a reason i needed to check something something was going on with a buddy but i got on
00:29:14.780
the timeline and i was like boy these are people like i i when i'm around them normally like they're
00:29:20.620
they're great people but now you see the stuff they post you're like man i don't know if i like you
00:29:24.100
people anymore so yeah completely so i get out because i want to like these people because they're
00:29:31.460
good people no i hear i hear you on that yeah absolutely but yeah i'm i'm 100 about you know shaping
00:29:38.280
environments first before i even try to exert my willpower you know because i think my my level of
00:29:44.880
willpower is even lower than most yeah all right so let's talk about this you talk a little bit about
00:29:51.460
this in the meditations on action is about probabilities a lot of people the reason why
00:29:57.100
they don't take action or they think they're taking action but they really are taking action
00:30:01.180
they sit down they plan things out and they try to think of all the contingencies that could happen
00:30:06.700
the chances of these different contingencies happening so basically trying to figure out how
00:30:11.180
probable success going to be and if the probability is high then they will take action do you think
00:30:16.660
probabilities are useful to look at when deciding whether or not to take action yeah this is a really
00:30:23.000
good question and i think statistics are getting you know more and more attention in the mainstream which
00:30:28.860
is i think really good but we as a general rule we are terrible at predicting just about anything you
00:30:36.500
know the best mathematicians the smartest people in the world created systems that gave us
00:30:41.740
probabilities that enabled actions that created the 2008 crisis right at least in part right there
00:30:48.660
were incentives created primarily by bad probabilities and so in our personal lives we're really really bad
00:30:56.560
at knowing the probability of something so especially the probability of success because there's so many
00:31:04.140
factors in success so to answer your question more directly i think there's certain domains in which
00:31:10.200
probabilities are really useful right so in health for instance if there is just overwhelming evidence
00:31:16.200
that says cigarettes will cause health issues then you shouldn't probably smoke cigarettes there's
00:31:22.280
there's just a lot of a lot of evidence that's like there's you know two percent of people might live to
00:31:28.020
a hundred and smoke a cigarette every day but 98 chance you're gonna fail your body by smoking a cigarette
00:31:34.480
so there's also studies that say that 80 percent of restaurants fail within the first five years
00:31:42.200
that does not mean that if you start a restaurant you have an 80 percent chance of failing because
00:31:49.360
that is taking all restaurants into consideration and regardless of you know we don't we don't know what the
00:31:57.240
economy was like at the time we don't know anything about the people that started i mean restaurants
00:32:00.840
tend to be started there's a lot of people that just think it would be this ideal life and would
00:32:05.860
be easy and fun to have a cafe when the reality of actually running a restaurant hits them they
00:32:11.120
fold so it's taking into account just all sorts of things that statistic knows nothing about your
00:32:17.380
network your skills your level of grit and the current economic situation so you may have an 80
00:32:23.500
chance of succeeding if you start a restaurant peter teal is a silicon valley investor started
00:32:30.340
paypal just very smart guy in most fronts and he has this saying that is aimed at entrepreneurs he
00:32:36.980
says you are not a lottery ticket you don't start a business and then once it started you have x percent
00:32:42.180
chance of winning you have a million decisions to make every day you have decisions about how much
00:32:47.880
energy you invest how safe you play it how hard you hustle for sales a probability is you're never
00:32:54.320
going to have a good probability there's also another investor and x startup guy named ben horowitz
00:33:00.980
one of the co-founders of a16z and tereson horowitz a big venture capital fund has a saying he basically
00:33:08.960
says as a startup founder your job is the same whether you have a hundred percent chance of success or a
00:33:16.220
one and one thousand percent chance of success you have to find the path to winning right yeah it doesn't
00:33:23.520
matter it doesn't matter your your chance of success and so an example that i think kind of brings these
00:33:30.260
two uses of probability together is shown in edward thorpe this is a guy who he's run hedge funds for 20 years
00:33:39.760
but he got really famous for being the first guy to really he wrote the book beat the dealer which is
00:33:46.660
what inspired 21 all these blackjack movies and books he used probabilities to beat the casino right so
00:33:56.380
he used statistics and learning about probability to learn how to beat the house in the actual game of
00:34:04.480
blackjack but then in deciding his path and deciding whether or not he should try to beat the house in
00:34:12.660
blackjack he could not use probabilities because everybody thought it was impossible this was in
00:34:17.540
1950s early 1960s everybody told him it was impossible to beat the casino right because otherwise why would
00:34:25.880
they exist why would they be so profitable and he didn't even know his chance of success right he didn't
00:34:32.080
consider the probability that he could beat blackjack but he used probability to beat the house i love
00:34:39.220
that but really like the peter teal quote that you're not a lottery ticket yeah right it's a sense of
00:34:45.580
probability and this is yeah exactly exactly and i think what you were really getting out with the
00:34:49.880
question is people use probability to rob themselves of agency in this world they use a statistic as a
00:34:57.260
reason to not try and that is in every case baloney you heard here it's baloney okay
00:35:03.460
you also talk about how action has a sort of a magnetic effect it creates things like passion and
00:35:10.320
courage right once you start taking action you start building this momentum but you even say it
00:35:14.160
attracts forces bigger than ourselves i mean this sounds very much like steven pressfield territory can
00:35:20.260
you tell a little bit more about what you mean by action creating this magnetic effect
00:35:23.740
absolutely i think the whole action book you know the pocket guide to action was really inspired by
00:35:30.040
pressfield and some other people but especially the format of the book i almost see it now is like
00:35:35.620
the positive to his resistance right steven pressfield wrote in war of art about the resistance describing
00:35:42.740
it and to me action is focusing on the thing that overcomes it every time not saying that this is on the
00:35:49.540
same level as pressfield but this idea yeah absolutely at the end of i think it is at the
00:35:54.940
end of war of art he talks about you know how action essentially calls down the assistance of
00:36:00.500
angels and mysterious creative forces to me you kind of witness it it's the same idea that my mom was
00:36:06.580
talking about when i was a kid when she said god helps those who help themselves when people say the
00:36:12.040
more i work the more lucky i become so i think a big piece of this is that people respect
00:36:18.720
those who take action and so are willing to help more often right so if you're confidently taking
00:36:25.880
action or if you're just consistently taking action with a certain aim and you show grit people
00:36:31.460
will eventually begin to help you and so a lot of times these are the unseen forces right it's just
00:36:38.620
people that saw you trying who you didn't know saw you who later show up with assistance another thing
00:36:46.600
that kind of feels magic but maybe isn't is that action allows for emergence of new perspectives
00:36:53.820
in an article i used the example of walking in new york city right so you're walking down this kind of
00:37:00.700
grid of skyscrapers and around each corner something new emerges and there's a pattern right you go past
00:37:06.980
one building you look to the left there's just a bunch more buildings but then eventually you walk
00:37:12.460
past the skyscraper you look to left and then you see trees you see central park you see nature so
00:37:18.700
up until that the previous 90 blocks of walking you should be able to extrapolate out from that
00:37:24.480
and predict okay i'm just going to walk through skyscrapers the rest of my life but no now there's
00:37:30.080
this whole new potential and so the same thing happens when we're taking action there's a possibility
00:37:35.660
when we take action for an entire new perspective for an entire new piece of knowledge that helps us
00:37:42.880
move to the next level in a way that was impossible for us before because we just saw the world
00:37:49.500
differently or we're missing this one piece of information to me those are just two examples
00:37:55.080
of hidden benefits that happen when we take action that feel like they're coming from the outside they
00:38:03.420
feel like it's something bigger than us and that's just me playing it safe you know there's a lot of
00:38:07.680
things anybody who is you know really gone for it really committed to something taking consistent
00:38:13.700
action after it has noticed new powers within themselves right so inner commitment action is proof
00:38:19.860
to yourself that you are willing to do what it takes and so a lot of the kind of self-defeating
00:38:26.540
pieces of yourself fall away when you prove through action to yourself that you're going to keep moving
00:38:34.480
right that also feels like you know the sky is opening up the angels coming to assist you because
00:38:40.440
parts of yourself that were not engaged before now are right it can absolutely feel like magic
00:38:47.200
that's awesome going back to things that keep people from taking action we talk about probabilities
00:38:52.680
using statistics to stop taking action you argue in the book that another thing people do that
00:38:58.260
prevents them from taking action is asking questions particularly bad questions the time
00:39:03.280
wasters that keep them from getting going actually doing something so what are some of these bad
00:39:08.400
questions people waste their time on these are all based in you know we're taught that if there's a
00:39:13.380
question then there's an answer and that may be true but there's certain questions that i think
00:39:19.300
break logic or that we expect too much from and the four bad questions that i i pose in the book
00:39:25.520
belong to that category so the first one being am i happy so i think happiness is something that is
00:39:32.540
usually had obliquely it's it's something that kind of follows when we're taking action in a certain way
00:39:39.160
it's not something that we can look at identify and say okay yeah i've got it right um so i think that
00:39:46.060
that is a bad question that ends badly for most people another one that is answerable for a few
00:39:51.360
people but i don't think honestly is answerable for many at all is what is my purpose in life i hate
00:39:58.840
to bring in to leb again he's been a big force in this conversation but he has this perfect quote
00:40:04.340
that deals with this he says life is more about execution than purpose and at first that seems kind
00:40:10.280
of like sterile or um you know afraid of purpose or something but in my experience the only true
00:40:18.500
purpose that i've ever experienced has been when i'm dedicated to taking action when i'm focused on
00:40:26.900
the actions that i'm taking there's that book start with why i think if you start with an abstract why
00:40:33.480
you're going to end up with a really beautiful mission statement or a really beautiful you know
00:40:39.940
poetic vision of your life but it's not something that's going to hold up when you're trying to take
00:40:46.300
action it's not going to hold up when you're struggling right because you can argue against a
00:40:53.100
beautiful written abstract sense of purpose true purpose to me is something that is felt and probably only
00:41:02.020
only explained later so another bad question is do i love this person right and as soon as you try
00:41:08.500
to answer that question you're not loving them love is a verb in my view and so once you start to answer
00:41:15.460
that question you're not taking the action of loving the person you are separating from them and abstracting
00:41:23.020
your relationship which is a really easy way to talk yourself out of loving anybody and then the fourth
00:41:29.740
and probably the heaviest of them is why live like why stay alive and camu albert camu even said
00:41:37.940
the only serious philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide if you want to take that
00:41:44.380
challenge you're going to be really frustrated people have been doing it for thousands of years and
00:41:49.800
coming up with a lot of different answers and if you want to stick with logic i don't think anybody has come
00:41:56.200
up with an airtight answer but that doesn't mean the question is relevant or hard to answer at all
00:42:03.240
it's just hard to answer in the abstract when we pay attention to the actions we're taking when we're taking
00:42:10.720
earnest action that question just can't exist right that's not a question that anybody asks that's trying to do
00:42:20.060
something if you're in the middle of playing a game of football or or doing any kind of challenging task
00:42:25.900
you're never going to ask yourself why even live that only happens when you're living in a purely
00:42:31.120
abstract place so to me action is always an obvious answer to the affirmative of that question so like i said
00:42:38.140
all of those are just kind of this breed of questions that ask too much from logic and don't respect its limits
00:42:45.360
no that question what's my purpose in life it made me think of victor frankel it's been a while since
00:42:50.480
i've read victor frankel but then i forgot what i was listening to maybe want to revisit and i forgot
00:42:55.960
like that frankel talked about this he talked about like he thought that asking about what your purpose
00:43:01.560
in life was was a dumb question he thought it didn't matter what we expected from life but he said
00:43:06.600
rather we should be focused on what life is expecting from us and then try to answer that question that
00:43:12.000
question is being asked to us daily hourly what's life his answer wasn't you know you don't respond
00:43:17.480
with talk and meditation but it's right action right conduct in order to answer that question that life
00:43:23.080
is asking you you know what life is expecting from you at that moment basically yeah and it's never a
00:43:28.500
romantic answer right like it's never going to sound world changing it's never going to sound like
00:43:34.180
something that you want on your bio it's going to be something really simple really specific probably
00:43:39.800
but it's going to carry a lot of weight and that questions can be like my purpose right now is to
00:43:44.640
help my crying kid who's being really annoying i'm going to do this thing get it done but like be
00:43:50.660
patient and calm in the process like that's that thing it's very grounded in action amen you also say
00:43:56.880
that action both makes things harder and easier the way we've been talking about action makes it sound
00:44:02.200
like oh just opens these doors you get these creative forces that come help you you develop passion by
00:44:07.700
taking action but how can action make things harder as well there's a trade-off here and i think it's
00:44:12.600
one worth making a lot of times people say well here's an answer and it's like obviously easier and
00:44:18.560
everything will work out if you take this stance i think what we're talking about there's a whole host
00:44:24.560
of benefits that make focusing on taking action worthwhile but it also i think makes life significantly
00:44:31.780
more difficult because you end up taking on more challenges which means you end up taking on bigger
00:44:38.060
challenges right so once you face the things that are immediately in front of you your problems don't
00:44:43.440
usually get smaller they tend to get larger in scope you're just growing enough to handle them so
00:44:50.020
you're dealing with more pressing situations and putting more skin in the game right so when you're
00:44:56.100
taking more action when you're focused on action you generally have more immediately at risk so your
00:45:03.540
skin's in the game and you're engaged probably in some version of the strenuous life that that you wrote
00:45:10.700
recently really beautifully about your article on the strenuous life i think in a lot of ways
00:45:15.680
talks about the harder aspects of a life of action and so you're under more strain you're under more
00:45:24.100
pressure you're more committed right but you're more engaged you're more alive you're more virile
00:45:29.320
but life also becomes easier so as you take on these bigger challenges as you're more engaged and pushing
00:45:36.700
against more things that means that you're not ruminating right you're not leaving as much space
00:45:43.620
to drain yourself of energy while talking yourself in circles you're not justifying your decisions or your
00:45:51.500
life to people who don't matter you're acting i think more in line with nature because you get out
00:45:57.940
of your head and into reality where there's ties between actions and consequences you're not breaking
00:46:05.620
yourself to fit into a mold or checking off boxes that you think you're supposed to you're becoming
00:46:11.560
more self-reliant i would say so you know things get harder i would say physically not strictly
00:46:18.100
physically but they get harder and there's more strain probably there's more pressure but easier
00:46:23.940
and that more of that strain more of that pressure is coming from the outside coming from challenging
00:46:30.180
situations you're putting yourself in and less self-harm and kind of less respect for obligations
00:46:37.300
or invisible obligations that society might be putting on you i love it well kyle there's a lot more we
00:46:42.420
can talk about the pocket guide for action is available for pre-order the art of manliness store
00:46:47.280
it's pretty cool both kyle and i've been working on this thing for months we've self-published this
00:46:51.980
thing and that was some action that was hard as kyle can uh attest to but uh we learned a lot in the
00:46:59.520
process but it turned out really great and we're really excited about so you can buy that on the art
00:47:03.300
of manly store but kyle you've also set up sort of an accompanying online course that people can take
00:47:08.840
with the pocket guide to action right yes you can see some of the details at the action course.com
00:47:14.340
it's also you know the urls in the book i think on the book page it takes the ideas from the pocket
00:47:22.740
guide to action and puts them in practices that you can apply immediately so there's about 20 lessons
00:47:31.980
that have you know five to 20 minute practices that will help you kick start this perspective
00:47:39.000
of this habit of taking action awesome well kyle eschenroeder thank you so much for your time it's
00:47:44.340
been a pleasure thanks a lot brett my guest today was kyle eschenroeder he's the author of the pocket
00:47:48.440
guide to action 116 meditations on the art of doing it's available at the art of manliness store
00:47:53.040
at store.artofmanliness.com you can also find more information about kyle's work at kyleeschen.com
00:47:58.320
that's k-y-l-e-s-c-h-e-n.com and also you can check out our show notes at aom.is
00:48:03.740
slash action where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:48:07.300
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:48:22.520
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this
00:48:26.540
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00:48:29.300
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00:48:37.400
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