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The Daily Stoic

Mel Robbins Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

19 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

19 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Relationships, Leadership, Software Development

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Collaborative writing process: Holiday and his daughter Mel Robbins co-wrote Let Them with her 26-year-old daughter over eleven months, which transformed their relationship by forcing daily emotional work through creative collaboration and acceptance.
  • Research-driven book development: Robbins' daughter produced a 28-page spreadsheet in thirty-six hours identifying that the Let Them concept made readers lonely without a second part, leading to the Let Me framework addition.
  • Note card writing system: Holiday uses color-coded note cards for all book projects, circling different book titles on each card to simultaneously research and organize material for multiple books at once.

What It Covers

Ryan Holiday gives Mel Robbins a personalized book tour through his bookstore, selecting titles across fantasy romance, children's books, philosophy, and nature writing based on her interests.

Key Questions Answered

  • Collaborative writing process: Holiday and his daughter Mel Robbins co-wrote Let Them with her 26-year-old daughter over eleven months, which transformed their relationship by forcing daily emotional work through creative collaboration and acceptance.
  • Research-driven book development: Robbins' daughter produced a 28-page spreadsheet in thirty-six hours identifying that the Let Them concept made readers lonely without a second part, leading to the Let Me framework addition.
  • Note card writing system: Holiday uses color-coded note cards for all book projects, circling different book titles on each card to simultaneously research and organize material for multiple books at once.

Notable Moment

Robbins describes holding an injured barred owl in her lap for forty-five minutes on her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, calling it a deeply spiritual experience despite the owl later dying.

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Episode Transcript

One of the things I try to do towards the end of the year, it's something my parents taught me, is, like, things slow down, you finally can think about things for a minute. I wanna pick something or someone to be consciously generous to. When we're out we're traveling on Christmas day, I love to tip big. But one of the things I love to do with my family is we pull up GiveWell, and we find a highly effective charity, and we donate money to it. Right? Sometimes when you're doing charitable donations, like, does it help? Does it make a difference? You donate to this fund or that fund. But one of the things that's so empowering about GiveWell is they put a number on the effectiveness. Right? You know that it's making a difference, which is why over a 150,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than 2 and a half billion dollars, and rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save over 300,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more, which is why when I'm thinking about making a charitable donation, I check GiveWell first. You can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor that research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut of your tax deductible donation when you give it to one of the recommended funds. This is your first gift through GiveWell. You can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. And to claim your match, you just go to givewell.org and pick podcast, and enter The Daily Stoic at checkout. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from The Daily Stoic to get your donation matched. Givewell.org, code the daily stoic to donate or find out more. So on Monday, I had a talk. I was flying to Florida for a talk, but I took the kids to school. I worked at the office, and then I picked them up from school. We went to Whole Foods, did our weekly grocery shopping as, the boys and I do every week, and then I drove. We met at a parking lot near the airport. I handed my wife the kids and all the groceries, and then I flew to Florida, flew home. And then, when I got back the next night, I made myself a sandwich from the groceries that I had just bought. And actually, the week before, I I took them to Whole Foods for a weekly thing, and I had a phone call I had to do. They played upstairs on the, on the playground. The the Whole Foods headquarters here in Austin has a second story playground. They played on that while I did my phone call, and then together, we went and did all our grocery shopping. I love Whole Foods. I don't have to worry about what I'm feeding my …

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Books

  • Let ThemBy guest

    by Ryan Holiday

    Holiday and his daughter Mel Robbins co-wrote Let Them with her 26-year-old daughter over eleven months, which transformed their relationship by forcing daily emotional work through creative collaboration and acceptance.
  • Let MeBy guest

    by Ryan Holiday

    Robbins' daughter produced a 28-page spreadsheet in thirty-six hours identifying that the Let Them concept made readers lonely without a second part, leading to the Let Me framework addition.

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