How Much Is Left? | The Stoic Protocol for Your Next Zoom Call

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

0:14How much is left? For hundreds of years, it was a glittering, powerful empire. Buildings and statues, rituals, traditions, millions of people, millions of events. And now, well after the decline and fall, how little of it remains? How little is left of Greece or Rome, besides some coins, some ruins, some stories. As the great historian Jill Lepore writes, not just of the ancients, but of the more recent past as well. Most of what once existed is gone, she writes. Flesh decays, wood rots, walls fall in, books burn. Nature takes one toll, malice another. History is the study of what remains, what's left behind, which can be almost anything, so long as it survives the ravages of time and war.

1:07Letters, diaries, DNA, gravestones, coins, television broadcasts, paintings, DVDs, viruses, abandoned Facebook pages, the transcripts of congressional hearings, the ruins of buildings. Some of these things are saved by chance or accidents, like the one house that, as if by miracle, still stands after a hurricane raises a town. But most of what historians study, she writes, survives because it was purposely kept in a box and carried up to an attic, shelved in a library, stored in a museum, photographed or recorded, downloaded to a server, carefully preserved or even cataloged. All of it, together, the accidental and the intentional, this archive of the past, remains, relics, a repository of knowledge, the evidence of what came before this inheritance is called the historical record.

2:02And it is maddeningly uneven, asymmetrical, and unfair. But we are lucky that, say, Mark Surrealis' Meditations survives. Someone kept that in a box and it was not lost to time. Seneca's writings, stories about Cato, fragments from Zeno. And most of all, the tradition of Stoicism continues. This philosophy that's been of use, been practiced almost without interruption, even as those buildings crumbled, even as the wood rotted and wars destroyed. And best of all, we get to continue that tradition. We get to raid that store of knowledge. And in a way, what's left of Stoicism, like what we have today, is if anything more robust than it was in the ancient world.

2:49There are more people today participating, listening to this podcast, getting the Daily Stoic email than perhaps ever existed in human history, maybe even combined. And the community we have with Daily Stoic Life is one I love participating in because it's a continuation of this ancient tradition. And yet, in many ways, it's bigger than ever before. I would love to have you join. You are welcome. I would love to see you in there. If you sign up, you get access to all our courses and challenges. We say annually that's worth seven, eight hundred bucks. You get a really cool hardbound cover of the last year of meditations.

3:31you get a bunch of awesome stuff, including extra messages each week, all ad-free. You can sign up right now at dailystoiclife.com. I'd love to see you in there. We're going to be doing some challenges here coming up very soon. That'll be included as part of your membership if you join us in Daily Stoic Life. So just go over to dailystoiclife.com and I'll see you in there.

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6:18Okay, so one of the positive things that came out of the pandemic is things that didn't actually need to be in person. It didn't happen in person. So more people got to work remotely. We did some things over the phone or virtually that we were previously having to travel for. All that's great. What I've hated, though, is this transition from phone calls to Zooms. I've always done a lot of stuff remote, but I try to multitask. I try to go for walks or maybe I'll do it in the car or whatever. I hate Zoom. I just hate having to be forced to sit in a Zoom meeting because most of them are so bad. So I have a little anxiety when they happen.

6:57I have some frustrations when they happen. I just prefer to do stuff over the phone. That's my personal preference. But maybe you have to do Zoom calls for work or you have to do them for clients or your family has a weekly Zoom call. Maybe you just have some frustrations with this. Well, I think you're really going to like today's episode. Maria Semple, who wrote this amazing new book called Go Gentle. It's Oprah's book club pick. It's a novel with Stoic philosophers in it. Anyways, when she was on the Daily Stoic podcast, we did a deep dive into some protocols she has for going on Zoom calls.

7:30I know this seems crazy how you mix sort of Stoicism up this way. But I thought this was a nice deep dive. And there's going to be a lot of stoicism in here. So here's Maria Semple, read her new novel, Go Gentle. And here's a stoic protocol for jumping on a Zoom call. You sort of apply stoicism in a bunch of situations in your life that I thought some of them, it's funny. It's like they could not have imagined 2 ,000 years later, this is what they would be applying them to. But you're like, here, you laid out some stoic protocols before you get on a Zoom call with someone. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

8:01Walk me through them. Okay. Assume good intent. Okay. You just have to think no one's there to hurt you, which, okay, no comment there. List the positive qualities of who I'm interacting with. And again, even that shift, that's like goes to the optimism thing. I really think that just that shift into like, oh, these are all good people who I want to be spending time with, that can change everything. I get to do this, my favorite, because also that's the thing. You know what? If I'm on a conference call with, you know, Apple about my Olivia Colman project, that's pretty fucking cool that I'm in that situation.

8:37You know, it ended up breaking my heart and it didn't turn out. But still, that's kind of amazing that I got to be in, you know, in the arena. Right. I'm just like, we're in the arena. And they're not all great. It's like, I got a call with legal review. I got a call. There's also the not fun parts, but that's still part of a fun thing. This is the tax that you have to pay. Very much so. On the good thing that you get to do. Yes, very much so. Humility. Understand my place, as we talked about, just that it's not all about me. They all the main character energy is that type of thing. You know, when you write when you write scenes or in any kind of writing, they say, make sure all the other characters have as much intention and stakes going on.

9:17the scene as like your character. Who's the person I want to be? That's a really big one, which is like what? And it's not like manipulative, but it's because really the person I want to be is like a reasonable, collaborative, pleasant person to be around. And I can do that. Yeah, I go and it's like, hey, I am not going to lose my temper. No. Even though I'm pissed, I'm going to handle it. I'm going to be calm the entire time. That's the person I want to be. I want to be. And that's what I want to be. And that's totally in your control. What virtues will I employ? I go to the, if it's like talking less, that's usually what it is for me.

9:51Courage, discipline, justice. Yeah, so it's like, but then the subsets, it's like talking less. Okay, which leads to listen, don't interrupt, speak less. Two ears, one mouth, as Zeno says. Oh, okay, okay, that's great. Okay, this is big for me. Be open to where it goes. This is a fresh experience. Don't try to put it into past patterns, you know, which is like being the present. Don't like just be in the past about this. Don't just say they always do this to me. Don't have like some story about it that you're bringing into it because it just closes off all of this possibility to actually make it a good experience.

10:24I know how this call is going to go. I know what they're going to do. I know that they're just going to say this. And you're like, no, you know, why don't you just take this as a new experience? It's about being in the present. Always okay to say, let me think about it. See, that's big for me because I have like anxiety. Don't give an answer in the room, as they say. Okay. They say, I'm sure you know about business, but is that what they say? Well, that's one of it. It's like, you don't have to decide on the spot. You have more control than you than you might feel in the moment. Interesting, because in the moment, like if they're like, oh, well, what if what if you write a second script before we pick you up?

10:59I'm like, OK, you know, like, why don't I just agree to that? No, they said they'd pick up my show after one script and have to write a whole second script, you know, and you go, yes. But it's always so that to me is, again, like a breaker on just like don't let the anxiety. And then the last one is, which is a really big one, ascent to reality. Take seriously what I hear. Write it down. Because I can have my imagination, you know, you hear one little thing. You hear the thing you want to hear, and that's what you think the Zoom call was. But maybe it was just someone being nice, and there's a lot of things you don't want to hear, you know?

11:34Here's two I'm going to add. Okay, please, please. I refuse to do any Zoom calls sitting down. I only walk. I go, sorry, they were doing construction in my office or like, sorry, you know, I'm on the road. So you're in fresh air. And I'm just, I'll just walk. And so it's like, at the very least, I got a 45 minute, like the call could have been an email as 95 % of the time they could have been. But I at least got a 45 minute walk in. Oh, that's amazing. That's how I think about that. And then the other one I would add, though, this is Seneca's thing, which, you know, he says, you know, it's not that life is short, it's that we waste too much of it.

12:07I would say be aware of the time. Like, people get on Zoom calls and they're like, it's going to take as long as it's going to take. And it's like, no, no, no. I scheduled this Zoom call for 35 minutes and I'm getting off at 30. So be open to where it goes, of course. But I also think it's like you are paying for this Zoom call with your life. Right. And I do I do try to go, hey, guys, I got to run. Right. OK, good. Or if I'm not that important in the thing, I'm like, yeah, I dropped off. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Oh, yeah. Well, there's a lot that you don't need to sit and be there for.

12:39Exactly. And so so I think sometimes people get like I remember I was looking at someone I know's schedule and I was like, did you spend six hours today on Zoom? I know you felt like that was work, but you understand that you didn't work for those six hours. That's right. Right. Right. Like be diligent of the most important resource you have, which is your time and be willing to to have the courage and the self-discipline to stand up for that time and cut it off when it needs to be cut off. That's good. Well, I would I always like to be running the meetings. I don't want to be in a meeting that someone else is running, you know, like just to be.

13:13And so that to me is like why I like being a showrunner, for instance, and not just on the staff, because I don't waste other people's time and I don't waste my time. And only so much can you say on a Zoom call of like, OK, you guys, we do this another time. I don't need to be here for this. Can we go to the thing that I need to be here for? And you do that sometime else. So it's good to when you're a boss, then you can just like do what you need to do on the call and get off. But I think deciding, hey, I'm going to be the boss of my own life here and not just passively allow people to consume endless amounts of my time.

13:44And by the way, I would say the way that you can say I get to do this, to be present for it, to be open for it, like on that Zoom call. is by first not being on 95 % of the Zoom calls that like you might have otherwise been on. So by, but Mark Shrews talks about this in meditations where he says, you know, ask yourself, is this essential? Like, does this actually need to be happening? Right. And then, because most of it doesn't. Yeah. And if it doesn't need to be happening, you eliminate it. And what that allows you to do is actually be present and contribute and not be resentful of the ones that you are on.

14:19Right. Like if I only rarely get on the phone, when I get on the phone, I'm going to be like, hey, this is one of the times I have to be on the phone. So I'm going to be there for it. Right. As opposed to phoning it in literally because I agree to way too many of these. That's right. That's right. No, I think that's really good. And it's just always, and I think that's really what I do every day when I start out. That's what the stoicism does for me. It's just like, what am I going to fit into the day that's the best for me in terms of just like flourishing, right? I think I'm meant to write novels.

14:50I love writing novels. I want to write novels. That's what I want to do. How can I arrange my time and my to-do list and everything so that I can really crush what I'm here to do? When you're saying yes to this, you are not writing novels. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.