7 Stoic Strategies for Managing Your Time

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: Seneca talked about how if you stop the average Roman walking about their day and you ask them what they were doing, why they were doing it, they wouldn't have a good answer. They just sort of followed what he called wretched habit. They just did what everyone else was doing. They just did what they always did, and they were paying for this aimlessness with their life, with their most precious resource. The most powerful lesson from Seneca about not wasting time comes with his reframing of death. He says, it's not that we die in the future, like you have however many years you think you have left.

0:41Ryan Holiday: He says, no, death is now. He says, the time that passes belongs to death. We are dying every minute. We are dying every day. The reason you have to stop procrastinating, The reason you have to stop wasting time is that your life is tick, tick, ticking away. Here are seven strategies for how to manage your time better.

1:03Ryan Holiday: If you want to feel amazing, if you want to feel like a king, if you want to feel like you own a city, get up early. Get up early and go for a run. Streets are empty. There's no one out. It's just you. You're pushing yourself. You're challenging yourself. You might not rule over the city, but you are ruling over yourself. And that is, in a way, the hardest thing to do. And how do I know this? Well, Mark Scherlitz talks about it in meditations. He says, when you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, say to yourself, is this what I was put here to do, to huddle under the covers and stay warm?

1:32Ryan Holiday: He says, no, get up and get after it. Go do what your duty demands. Go do what your nature demands. Look, it can be hard while you're doing it. No question. It's not fun to get up early, but you're always glad afterwards that you did it. I went for a nice run this morning in Rome along the river through the empty city streets. I feel empowered. I feel powerful over myself, which is the whole point.

1:57Ryan Holiday: This is not the baths of Diocletian. This is the baths of Caracalla. We don't know if Seneca went to this one. Probably not, but he did go to that one. And we know that he found it unbearably noisy. And that's where his challenge came in. He sought it out because it was noisy, because it was hard. He said, it's so loud here. It makes me hate my powers of hearing, which I love. He said he could hear men getting their armpits, hair plucked, getting pummeled by masseuses. He could hear boxing. He could hear wrestling. He could hear people jumping in the water. But he said, I find even here that I could think.

2:28Ryan Holiday: He sought out the noisiest, busiest place in Rome to train his ability to focus, to train his ability to concentrate, which is a wonderful idea. I heard Malcolm Gladwell works in coffee shops on purpose, makes him focus. We have to understand it's not just the physical part of this that we're training. It's the mental part of it, perhaps more than anything in this noisy, busy, crazy world that we're in, like doing hard physical things might be simpler than sitting down and focusing for 30 minutes, concentrating like a Roman, as Marcus really said. These baths were enormous complexes. The Diocletian baths could hold 3 ,000 people at one time.

3:02Ryan Holiday: There was hot rooms and cold rooms and steam rooms. There was exercise equipment. There was vendors selling their wares. There's also all the noise on the street below. You know, it wasn't New York City construction loud, but it was pretty close. We'd like to think the ancient world was quiet, but it was anything but. And so Seneca, he puts himself in this difficult challenge and he's writing. And by the way, that's not the only noise he hears. His life is falling apart. Nero is insane. Everything's going sideways for him. And yet he's working on his ability to concentrate. That's his challenge.

3:29Ryan Holiday: You could do a marathon. You could lift heavy weights, but can you focus? Can you lock in? Can you concentrate like a Roman, as Marx really said? That's the rare thing these days. That's what we don't see enough of. The The irony is I find when I do these physical challenges, I do some of my best thinking. It's why I take my walks. It's why I go running. It's why I swim. That's where I concentrate. Funny, I was at a gym one time and I got recognized and I was getting out of the pool and the guy said, oh, I just read Ego as the Enemy. I really liked it. And I said, I wrote that book in this pool.

3:54Ryan Holiday: And he's like, what are you talking about? And I did it. That's where I would go. It's not as quiet and serene as my office, but it was the perfect place for me to lock in and focus.

4:07Ryan Holiday: the other line from the stoics that pertains the circus maximus comes to us from epictetus who obviously wasn't sitting in an owner's box as you watch the races probably had no interest in what was happening here whatsoever but he said look if you want to win you should only run in races where winning is up to you right this comes back to the stoic idea of what's in your control and what's outside your control if needing to be first needing to beat other people if needing to get the perfect score from the judges, or in my case, hit the bestseller list. If you're focused on any of the parts of it that are not up to you, that are up to the critics or the scorecard or the other competitors, well then you're vulnerable.

4:43Ryan Holiday: You are needing, hoping, desiring things that are external to you. But if your goal is to do your best, if your goal is to push your limits, if your goal is to learn something about yourself, if your goal is to check a box, then winning is up to you. Then you're going to succeed no matter what. And that's a good metaphor for life. I think about this as an author. My goal is to write the best book that I possibly can to grow from the process to be made better for it. And then depending on where it hits on the list or how many copies it says, that's all extra. Same goes for when I run. Am I pushing myself?

5:13Ryan Holiday: Am I challenging myself? Am I having fun? Am I learning? All that. Then how my time stack up to someone else, how I place if it is in a race, all of that is extra. That's an important reminder from Seneca.

5:29Ryan Holiday: On the road in front of the Forum, there's a bunch of statues of some of the most famous and imminent Romans. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, all the famous emperors. And it would have looked something like this in the ancient world, too. There would have been not just emperors, but senators and generals and patrons of the arts. But Marcus Aurelius wanted to make a point about these so-called famous people, the ones that we look up to. We're told, for instance, that Julius Caesar once saw a statue of Alexander the Great and broke down weeping in front of him because Alexander the Great in that statue was younger than he was in that moment.

6:06Ryan Holiday: And he had already conquered the world. And this made Julius Caesar immensely jealous. But Mark Sewellius actually addresses that in meditations. He says in Book 8, he says, Alexander and Caesar and Pompey, three of the most famous Romans. He says, compared with Diogenes, with Heraclitus and Socrates. He said, the philosophers knew the what, the why, and the how. He said, their minds were their own. He said, the others, the great generals, the people with the statues. He said, they knew nothing but anxiety and enslavement. Enslavement sounds like a pretty strong word, considering there literally were slaves here.

6:43Ryan Holiday: But Seneca makes a similar point. He's talking about Marius, one of Rome's great generals and dictators. he said, you know, Marius commanded armies, but ambition commanded Marius. He says we're all a slave to something, and in fact that idea of ambition, of the need to be powerful, to have the most, to be remembered, to be commemorated, right, to be in the room where it happens, to be in the mix, to be necessary, to be relevant. These are timeless desires and urges. They're also traps. Seneca talks about, you know, old lawyers who can't retire, who are still begging for one more case, one more crack at being the talk of the town.

7:22Ryan Holiday: And so all these things were happening then and they're still happening now. But Marcus Aurelius is saying that philosophy gives us the clarity, gives us the perspective, gives us the truth to break out of this trap to see what actually matters, to see what's actually important, to live a simpler life, a more contemplative life, a more public service oriented life. Not about aggrandizement and achievement and accomplishment, but you know actually making a difference for people you know, actually maybe getting to know your kids, being around, being home. You only get one life. And so to spend it enslaved, to spend it in harness, worst of all, a harness you put on yourself and that you could take off at any time.

8:01Ryan Holiday: The Stoic saw this as particularly tragic and sad and most of all, it was avoidable. We just got back from an amazing vacation in Italy. I'll bring you some clips from it over the next couple weeks. I recorded a bunch of stuff while we were there, although it was as hot as it has literally ever been. It's one of the best family trips we've ever had. And we stayed in this amazing palazzo that we booked on Airbnb. It was like 500 years old. It had all these Roman funerary headstones in it, which is this crazy memento mori thing. It was like staying in a museum. The hosts were incredible. They lovingly restored this place.

8:42Ryan Holiday: They took amazing care of it. And by listing their place on Airbnb, they get to share this amazing experience with people from all over the world and get funds to put towards upkeeping and restoring their place. If you're planning a trip this summer, it's worth considering listing your place on Airbnb can be a great way to help offset the cost of your vacation and earn a little extra money to put towards your next adventure. Your place might be worth more than you think. And all you got to do is go to Airbnb.com slash host to find out more. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've probably heard of today's sponsor, you've almost certainly heard me talk about going to therapy.

9:17Ryan Holiday: And you've probably heard about it on this podcast because I've been going to therapy longer than I've been doing Daily Stoic. And BetterHelp has been a sponsor of the Daily Stoic podcast basically since we started. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. And you can check out the reviews for yourself at betterhelp.com slash reviews to see how amazing their customer reviews are. People are getting better with BetterHelp. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 on over 1.7 million client session reviews. This is feedback from people who have actually used the service.

9:58Ryan Holiday: And if you're ready to give therapy a try for yourself, BetterHelp makes it easy to get started. You ask a couple questions, they match you with a therapist based on your needs, and you can switch at any time if it's not the right fit. Just visit betterhelp.com slash dailystoicpod, betterhelp.com slash dailystoicpod.

10:20Ryan Holiday: When I'm watching the game, I'm present, I'm enjoying it. Maybe I'm learning things. I'm just watching excellence play out. That's great. But when I'm reading the news the week before about who's hurt or what the plans are or what people are speculating is going to happen, that's when I remind myself I'm kind of just totally wasting my time because nothing I learn in the days preceding up to the game is going to change what happens during the game because I'm not the GM or the coach or on the field, right? I think about this with the election. I know what I want to happen. I know who I'm obligated to vote for.

11:01Ryan Holiday: Watching the news play out in real time, every late-breaking development, every gap, every disaster, every frustrating thing, all that's doing is making me crazy and not changing the outcome in any way. In fact, what it's doing is taking me away from my actual family and my actual job and things that I might do in the real world to bring about that outcome. So I think enjoying things, watching things, whatever, as long as it doesn't become this kind of pseudo reality that it's so easy to live in. To me, that's my relationship and the way that I think about those things, right? I will say Marcus Aurelius did not enjoy the gladiatorial games, and he was often seen writing his philosophical meditations at the Colosseum to the chagrin of most Romans who were, you know, rather bloodthirsty.

11:53Ryan Holiday: I think there's a difference between that and, you know, what we watch on the pitch or the field or the court.

12:01Ryan Holiday: So this is the Kessilis family tomb. They came to Bastrop in the 1850s and they built a little building on Main Street, which housed a shop that he owned and he built a house down the street. His son, Will, who this is him, that's the father, this is Will, carried on the business when his father died in 1901. Well, I own that building now. The building has changed hands dozens of times in the decades since it left the Kessilis family, which by the way is what happens to all our possessions. The things you love, the things you care about, eventually someone is going to possess them. That is to say if they don't throw them away.

12:40Ryan Holiday: There's a story about Epictetus. He had this lamp that was stolen and you'd think he'd be upset. Instead he goes, look you can only lose what you have and he goes back and he replaces it the next day with something cheaper. But the funny part is that after he died one of his students bought it for a lot of money. He wanted to possess something that Epictetus had possessed. Of course totally missing the point of the lesson. Now again, the lesson isn't you should never have anything and you shouldn't care about anything, you should give away all your possessions like a monk. No, it's just a reminder that as the Stoics say, we only own this stuff in trust.

13:10Ryan Holiday: We have it temporarily, not just the job, not just the house, not just the place we currently stand or operate, but everything in our life is only ours for as long as we are lucky to have it. I heard someone say and i think about this with the where i live on this ranch out not far from here he says the bank is just letting me make payments on it like you don't even own it you have it temporarily and if you can think about it that way you're not only going to be more insured against the ups and downs in life you're going to know the proper perspective on things it helps me relax with my children i don't have to take everything so seriously i don't have to stress about everything i don't own it we We remind ourselves that we don't really own this stuff, that it's only ours temporarily.

13:54Ryan Holiday: So the day when we have to give it up, whether it's while we're living or at the end of our life, we're okay with that. We're okay giving it back. I actually had a friend of mine who died not that long ago, and he wrote about this saying, I'm ready to give the gift back. That's what he was saying about his life itself, ready to return the gift. And that's a very stoic idea. All of it, it's only temporary. We only get it for a little bit.

14:20Ryan Holiday: As we wrap up here, I wanted to give you, I think, what the most important practice of practice I always try to leave people with from the Stoics, which is this idea of memento mori, right? Remember that you are mortal. The Roman emperor had someone whisper this in their ear at their highest moments. Remember that you are mortal, that you are not a god, that you are a human being. I carry a ring with me. I'm wearing it right now. It says memento mori, and on the inside has a quote from Marcus. He says, let that determine what you do and say and think. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

14:57Ryan Holiday: Of course, we all know we're going to die on some level, right? Obviously, everyone who's ever born will die. That's the one prophecy that's never failed. And yet, the Stoics would say, we get it wrong to think of death as this thing in the future, right? It's not some distant thing that will happen to you when you're old. I mean, it can happen to you at any moment. But Seneca would say we have to see death as something that's ever-present, right? In the midst of life, we are in death. Not just because people can die, things like plagues or pandemics can happen, tragedies can happen. But he would say that the time that passes belongs to death.

15:30Ryan Holiday: That once time passes, it's dead to us forever. As we kill time, time kills us. He says we're dying every minute, we're dying every day. So the reason we have to say no, right, the reason we have to design our lives, the reason we have to be conscious of where we're going and what we're doing, so we don't know how long we have, don't know how long we have. The Stoics say we have to balance the books of life each day to make sure we're spending this time wisely. We're making a positive difference with it. We're using the gift for what it is. It's a gift. And I was in Waverly Cemetery today. Look, if that's where you go when you die, I guess there's worse things that could happen to you.

16:11Ryan Holiday: But all those people, right? All those people, they saw death as something that would happen eventually, inevitably. And then it came to them one day all too soon, as it does to all of us. It comes as a surprise, even though we know it's always going to be there. Maybe we thought we were too healthy, too important, or we thought we're working on something that's going to outlive us. It doesn't do Marcus Aurelius any good that we're talking about him, you know. He says people who long for posthumous fame forget that they won't be around to enjoy it. And he says the people in the future are also stupid and annoying and, you know.

16:46Ryan Holiday: The point is Marcus really survives and endures not because that's what he chased, but because of what he did with the time that he had and who he was with that time. And that has to be enough. We're dying every minute, we're dying every day. You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think.

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