Some people claim that time is just a construct. If that is true, it is perhaps humanity's greatest creation. Because time is the way we measure the only truly non-renewable resource we have. No one is making more of it. Once lost, it cannot be recovered.
“ It is also an incredibly powerful force, as anyone who has ever watched small amounts of interest applied over a long enough period can attest”. This is a quote from Ryan Holiday's Discipline is Destiny. And I've been on a bit of a reading bender this year.
This year, the year of digital detox for me, I want to spend more time reading physical books, but also books about ancient philosophy, classics, and things from before the digital era. And I've been enjoying Ryan Holiday's series on the four virtues, discipline or temperance being one of them.
In reading Discipline is Destiny, I realized that a lot of these lessons, while they can be applied to pretty much anyone, had some interesting highlights for the Solopreneur, and so I thought today I would talk about the three big lessons I took away from Discipline is Destiny specifically for Solopreneurs.
Hey, everybody. Joe Casaboni here. Welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show where I help busy solopreneurs turn manual tasks into reliable systems so they can take time off, worry-free. And knowing that you'll understand why I opened with that quote about time not being a renewable resource. And so I'm gonna go through the three lessons for Solopreneurs that I took away from Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday. Those three lessons, right at the top, are:
We need to build systems
We need to protect our time
We need to delegate.
So let's dive into lesson one. We need to build systems. In this book he has a quote from, I believe it's John Maxwell, if I wrote that down correctly, that says once systems are in place, once the order is established, then and only then are we able to truly let loose to turn ourselves over to the whims and furies of creativity to push ourselves physically to audacious invention or investment. He talks a lot about sitting in silence and listening to the Muses and getting inspired. And we can't possibly do that if we don't have systems in place.
He also says that order frees you for creativity. Imagine what you could get done if you had the discipline to proactively put everything in order first. If you committed to orderliness and enforced it on yourself, you would realize it is not another obligation or something to worry about in practice. It will free you. Now, you, of course, need to know what you do in order to put everything in place; you need to know what everything is before you put it in order.
But by building the system, by not delaying in building the system, by making the excuse that you are too busy, you will free up your time. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention here that if you're not sure what you do on a day-to-day basis, I have a task journaling system for you. Head over to streamlined.fm/app, and you can download either the iOS app I built with the help of AI or my Notion template that is the daily three task journaling system. I'm telling you this will help you understand what you do so that you can create those systems and build order.
And I want to use two examples from Queen Elizabeth II here, the longest serving monarch of the United Kingdom, and someone who lived, I believe, into her 90s if I'm not mistaken. And she doggedly optimized her days and her time. And so in the examples that Ryan Holiday used in Discipline and Destiny Is Destiny, he said that she innovated in ways that made long obligations more palatable. She spent an average of 4 seconds meeting each person, she removed needless courses from dinner, and she made sure speeches came after the meal instead of before, so she could sneak out. So she wasn't half-assing her obligations. She optimized to maximize her time.
Something else I want to highlight here is that she was known as One Take Windsor because she thought through what she wanted to do and got it right the first time. Never rushing. Which reminds me of something that I think they say in the military. I heard it for the first time on Modern Family. But slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
People say that AI, for example, makes them faster, but faster is not better. Faster is just faster. If you want to be better, then slow down to make it smooth. Because smooth is what makes you fast. So build systems to create order in your life so you have the time and space to focus on the work that matters the most. Because when you are able to slow down and focus on the work that matters most, it will accelerate your business. You will get more clients, you'll be able to focus on more billable work versus just living in sloppiness and living in a reactive business where you're just responding to emails right away and letting people take up your calendar.
Don't let other people control your time. And that is the second lesson from Discipline is Destiny. We need to protect our time. And I want to start here with a lesson that could really be tied throughout. But we want to focus on efficacy.
The person who puts efficiency over efficacy is not very efficient. And this goes right back to how we use AI or how we try to optimize our time, how hustle culture tells us to do more faster, be more productive, be more efficient.
Being more efficient does not move the chains unless it's also effective. And so we want to protect our time, to do our most effective work, which will make us more efficient. And to do that, we need to set boundaries, carve out time to refuel, and make sure we don't overwork ourselves on setting firm boundaries. Holiday says this in a world of instant gratification, we don't respect people who establish and maintain boundaries.
But keeping the main thing, the main thing is impossible if you're not capable of saying no or pushing back when others put too much on your plate. Booker T. Washington once said the number of people who stand ready to consume one's time to no purpose is almost countless. And it's true, especially in a social media world where that instant gratification exists, where we get more public credit for talking about doing the thing instead of doing the thing.
But as Holiday says here, in order to keep the main thing, the main thing, we need to actually do it and not worry about the instant gratification of saying we are going to do it. We also need to avoid overwork. He says. You might think you're getting ahead by taking on more or pushing through the pain, but John Steinbeck called this the indiscipline and overwork of overwork and the falsest of economies because it leads to rushed work, bad decisions, career-ending injuries, and burnout. He says no one is having less fun than the overextended, overcommitted person.
When you overwork, the quality of your work goes down, and that is overall going to hurt your business. And it's either going to hurt your business because you are not able to focus on the best work, or you're unable to do your best work, or you're outsourcing it to AI. And AI is churning out mediocre at best work, which means that you also need to carve out time to refuel and rest in yourself.
A couple of examples here. Martin Luther King Jr. was once asked what he would do with an entire week off, and he scoffed at the idea. But then he talked about the importance of being able to refuel and reflect. He recognized the urgent need for even an hour to get away, to withdraw, to refuel intellectually and spiritually.
Holiday then goes on to say, " What would you do with a week, with a day, with an hour? What would you be able to do with the time and space that creates? And time and space. That's the thing that resonated with me the most. That's what I've been saying for years, is that we don't need to do more. We don't need tools to help us 10x our productivity.
We need the time and space to focus on the things that matter most. I want to end here with another quote, one that is actually John Maxwell's. I incorrectly attributed a quote earlier to John Maxwell, and that is procrastination parades as productivity. This is something we all know well. Right. Oh, I'm going to move everything to this tool. This tool will fix all my problems. Oh, oh.
If I just get the perfect prompt, it's going to do all my work for me. This can write my emails for me so I don't have to write emails. I'm going to spend a bunch of time setting it up. But the truth is, you're churning out lackluster work. You are procrastinating. You are not being productive. The way to be productive is to protect your time. And this brings me to the third and final lesson that I took away from Discipline is Destiny " as it relates to solopreneurs. I strongly recommend this book. I will link to the book in multiple places in the show notes. None of those will be affiliate links. I just really think that a lot of people should read this book.
And the third lesson here is that we need to delegate. He says in the book, it takes discipline not to insist on doing everything yourself, especially when you know how to do many of those things well and have high standards for them. Even if you enjoy doing things like mowing your own lawn, writing your own speeches, and making your own schedule, you must resist. We need to delegate.
Plutarch said something similar. The Roman biographer, he said, “ While a leader must know how to do anything, they cannot conceivably do everything. It is neither physically nor mentally possible”. So often, as Holiday says here, the best way to manage the load is to share the load. A leader must sweat the small stuff, but must also know what stuff matters only to small people. He must, or she must, avoid trivial exhaustion.
The book says, " Woe is the person who wears themselves out on trivial matters and then is out of energy when the big moment comes”. Delegating the things that you don't personally have to do helps you create the time and space to build the system to protect your time.
And I will end with this. In the book, Holiday says, " Woe is the person who is so mentally exhausted from taking everything upon themselves that they have no slack or cushion to absorb additional stress when things go wrong”.
A glutton isn't just someone who eats or drinks too much. Some of us are gluttons for punishment, and if we refuse to delegate, if we insist on doing everything ourselves, we are gluttons for punishment. I know this from personal experience. Because I refused to build systems and delegate for so long, I ended up having a panic attack, crying on the floor in my kitchen, leaving my three-year-old to have to take care of me. It was a serious moment of reflection for me, where I felt I failed as a father, and I vowed to not let that happen again.
These lessons, had I heard them then, maybe I would have taken them. I certainly take them very seriously now, and I hope you do too. We need to build systems, we need to protect our time, and we need to delegate again.
If you want to read Discipline as Destiny, I will have a link in the show Notes. If you want to check out that app I mentioned earlier, the task Journal, you can go over to streamlined.fm/app.
But that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.