My latest book, Wisdom Takes Work, is officially out and you can get a copy wherever you buy books! Thank you to everyone who has picked up a copy. The support has been incredible—and honestly, a little overwhelming. Our small team here at The Painted Porch is working hard to get every order out the door as fast as we can. If you’re still waiting on yours, we really appreciate your patience. Believe me… I have been working on this series for 6 years—I can’t wait for you to read the new book!

In the summer of 2019, my wife and I took our two sons for a hike in the Lost Pines Forest in Bastrop, Texas. 

It was a Saturday or a Sunday. 

I had a bunch of articles to write, but I put it aside and decided to spend some time outside with the kids in the shade of the prehistoric loblolly forest about thirty minutes from our house. 

It was a lovely afternoon, despite the heat. I always love Lost Pines because it’s a freak of nature. The tall prehistoric loblolly pine trees appear here in the middle of Texas, hundreds of miles further east than most of their counterparts. Much of the forest still shows scars from two 2011 wildfires that burned tens of thousands of acres—one of them the worst in Texas history—only adding to the mystique and making parts feel like a haunted elephant graveyard. 

As we wrapped up the hike and took the kids to the playground, suddenly, it hit me. It was a feeling that creative people experience from time to time. You’re in the middle of not working–you’re in the shower or your drifting off to sleep or you’re in the middle of sweeping the floor–and boom, you get hit with an idea. I have run many hundreds of miles in Lost Pines so it was a familiar feeling—I’ve sold business problems and writing problems and personal problems on the trails there. 

As I was carrying my son in the backpack, my mind had drifted briefly to the fact that my book Stillness is the Key would soon be released and it would mark the end of what had become a three-book trilogy. What would I tackle next?, I thought. This was 2019. The political situation was a mess. There were wildfires, earthquakes, wars dragging on, terrorist attacks. There was chaos, upheaval, and uncertainty. “A book about courage would be cool,” popped into my head. I shared the idea with my wife. We talked it over along the trail, and by the time we were loading the kids in the car, an idea for one book had become an idea for a series on the four virtues, starting with courage!

And like that, my next creative mountain had been laid out in front of me. 

I’ve been thinking about this story lately because here I am, six years later, coming to the end of that series, as the fourth and final book, Wisdom Takes Work, came out last week.

There was a period a couple of years ago where I didn’t think I would be here having completed the series. It was around the halfway mark, working on the second book in the series, Discipline is Destiny, and I hit a wall. 

Coming up with the idea for a book—or in this case, a series—is a fun, creative act. Actually creating those books is a work of excruciating manual labor, sitting in a chair, grinding out each consecutive sentence—a process not measured in hours or days, but months and years. It’s a marathon of endurance, cognitive and physical.

For me, in the last decade, I have run not just a couple of these marathons but twelve of them, back to back to back. That’s roughly 2.5 million words across titles I’ve published, articles I’ve written, and the daily emails that I produced in the same period. 

During that time, there was a destabilizing, devastating global pandemic. There were fires, floods, and freezes. Demagogues and wars. Market crashes and inflation. Technological disruption. My kids growing up. My wife and I opening and running a small town bookstore.

So I was tired. Just really tired. 

I’m not someone inclined to believe in divine intervention. But I needed help . . .

On a sweltering-hot day in Texas, I was sitting at my workroom table in my office above the bookstore. The air conditioner wasn’t working and I wasn’t sure if we could afford another one for the building. It was my 34th birthday. Sweating, exhausted, and on the verge of a crisis of confidence—that I had the wrong topic, I didn’t have the material, and contemplating whether to call my publisher and ask for a delay—I went through boxes that contained thousands of note cards of research. As a whole, they overwhelmed me—what they contained, the way they might fit together to produce a book, seemed impossible to comprehend. I reached out and grabbed one.

It had just two dozen words scrawled in red Sharpie. When was it written? Why had I written it? What had prompted me? All I know is what it said.

Trust the process. Keep doing my cards. When I check them in June—if I have done my work—there will be a book there.

It wasn’t exactly a miracle . . . but defying space and time, I had traveled from the past into the future to deliver a reminder of self-discipline.

And guess what? It was exactly what I needed.

It didn’t save me from the work, of course, but from myself. From giving up. From abandoning the system and process that had served me so well on all those books and articles and emails. In one of the best passages in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, almost certainly in the depths of some personal crisis of faith, reminds himself to “Love the discipline you know, and let it support you.”

That’s what my note said to do.

I listened.

I began showing up at the office earlier each day to work with my material. Card after card, I sorted them into tiny little piles. Looking for connections, for threads I could follow, for the key that would unlock the book.

Instead of worrying, I used the calm and mild light of the philosophy I have written about in my books. I went for long walks when I got stuck. I tried to follow my routine. I tuned out distraction. I focused. I also sat—just sat—and thought.

I’d love to be able to tell you that shortly after this the book just clicked. But that’s not how writing, or life, works. What actually happened was slower, more iterative, but also in the end, just as transformative. 

As I walked that long hallway of doubt and despair, as I kept doing my cards, light began to creep in. Lou Gehrig and Angela Merkel stepped forward from the shadows. After nearly four thousand pages of biographies, Queen Elizabeth entered as a portrait of temperament. Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and King George IV jumped out as cautionary tales, stunning examples of self-inflicted destruction. One character after another slowly, painstakingly, chapter by chapter, became discernable. 

The book was there, as my note promised me. Now I had to write it.

While a book requires many, many hours of work, these hours come in rather small increments. If I get to the office at eight thirty, I could be done writing by eleven. Just a couple hours is all it takes. Just a couple crappy pages a day, as one old writing rule puts it. The discipline of writing is about showing up. No delays, no procrastination, no digital distractions. Just writing.

The seasons changed. World events raged and spun as they always do. Opportunities, distractions, temptations, they did what they do too—popping up, pinging, nagging, seducing. 

Day after day, I kept after it. I trusted the process. I loved the discipline I knew. I let it support me. 

As I finished the book, I was still tired. Every writer is tired when they get to the end of a book. Yet, I also felt wonderful. I thought it was to date some of my best writing, but what I was proudest of is who I was while I wrote it. A less disciplined me, a younger me, would have been wrecked by that period where it felt like the book might not come together. I would have acted out. I would have been consumed. But the work had been working on me—as I worked from home on the final pages of Discipline, my five-year-old looked up from his art project and said, “I’m sorry you lost your job writing books, Dad.” Apparently things had been so much less crazy and my boundaries had been so much better that he thought I wasn’t working anymore! 

But I was, of course. I was in the process. Doing my cards. Trusting the discipline I knew would lead to the next book, Right Thing Right Now, and the final one, Wisdom Takes Work. 

As a result, here I am—having read over 500 books of research, made 10,000 note cards, published 300,000 words (with tens of thousands of additional words cut) and 1,400 pages—drawing the series to a close. 

When Edward Gibbon finished ​The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire​, he noted his sadness at taking “everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion.”

I don’t feel that way, though, because of everything I learned during these past six years spent working on the series, the clearest lesson of all is that virtue isn’t something you take leave of. It’s not something you ever fully possess. It’s not something you commit to just for a little while, but for a lifetime.

There’s still a long way to go, but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. I’m proud of what I have put to the page in each of the four books. And I’m proud of how I’ve improved both as a writer and a person through it all. I am calmer. I am quieter. I argue less. I get upset less. I admit I am wrong more often. I’m a little wiser, a little more disciplined, just, and courageous than I was on that hike in the summer of 2019.

I close the virtues series, but the ideas are still working on me. I am doing my best to live up to them. To be more community-minded. To be braver, stronger, kinder, wiser. 

Day by day. Page by page. Struggle by struggle. 

I hope you do the same.

…and now I go onto my next project. 

If you haven’t checked out Wisdom Takes Work , it would mean so much to me if you could. It came out last Tuesday. Here’s me talking about it on The Daily Show and on The Breakfast Club .

We still have some signed first-edition copies of Wisdom Takes Work left—and will be extending our preorder bonuses for folks who buy the book this week. Bonuses include cut chapters and the annotated bibliography with all purchases, or a signed manuscript and even dinner with me if you buy more copies.

If you’re interested, grab your copy now before it’s too late.