We Can Give This to Each Other | Be Stingy With Time

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56We can give this to each other. In what is almost certainly his greatest piece of writing, On the Shortness of Life, Seneca is writing to his newly retired father-in-law, Polinus. The good news, Seneca writes, is that Paulinus will have time to produce the balance sheet of his own life rather than that of the grain market. The grain market, what was he referring to? Well, Paulinus was the longtime supervisor of Rome's grain dole. What was that? The Roman Empire was at that time enormous with the population of some 45 million citizens. Jobs were scarce. Unemployment was high. rapid expansion and economic stagnation had led to a sort of economic recession, something that might sound familiar today.

1:38And in response, the upper and ruling classes came together and instituted something called the care of the grain. Basically, the government distributed free grain to the poor and the suffering, ensuring that everyone had enough to eat, doing their stoic duty to care for the common good. And continuing until the last years of the empire, this was one of the most lasting and impactful of all Roman government programs. And it's actually an inspiring legacy that lives on to this day. And in fact, it's one that we've tried not just to speak to here at Daily Stoke, but to act on. As we've said before, right, there's this Roman Stoke named Hierocles.

2:12He spoke of our circles of concern. He said we obviously have to care of our mind and our bodies and our immediate family and our extended family. But then we also have to care about our community, our country, our city, our empire, and the world. We have to draw these outer rings inwards. and basically saying that the people in the outer circle need our help. It's mind-blowing to think that nearly a billion people around the globe go to bed hungry every night. More than 47 million people in America are food insecure, including 14 million children. And just as the Romans saw themselves as obligated to help those in need, we have to step up today.

2:49We have to illustrate those virtues of courage and justice towards and for and through others to help people from going hungry to alleviating someone else's worry and fear. Put food on their table. And we can do this together. Today is Giving Tuesday. I don't know if you know what that is, but Giving Tuesday, basically coming off the excess of Cyber Monday and all that, people come together and they try to give instead of just trying to get. And we are raising money for Feeding America. We talked about this yesterday. And on Friday, instead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this is what we focus on.

3:21we try to have a big day on giving tuesday because that actually matters we're trying to raise three hundred thousand dollars that'll provide three million meals we just crossed the two hundred thousand dollar mark which is incredible thank you to everyone that donated which is absolutely amazing and i would love for you to kick in if you could i put in the first 30 000 that's 10 of the goal and then i'm just hoping that this community of roughly one million people can come together. If everyone just gave a few cents, we would get there very quickly. And a dollar or two can provide as many as 10 meals for people in need.

3:57So let's do that. Let's be good stoics today. Let's give here on Giving Tuesday and fulfill that obligation as we were talking about. That's dailystoic.com slash feeding. And let's get after it.

4:15You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

4:54Over 150 ,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than$2.5 billion over the last several years, and research suggests that these donations will save over 300 ,000 lives. I myself am one of those donors. I donate to GiveWell every year. It means a lot to me. And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if 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.

5:29To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from The Daily Stoic, and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org, code The Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock, and I transferred him from the car seat to the bed, and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a 8 Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is 8 Sleep's best product.

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7:17Be stingy with time. That's what we're journaling about in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from. One of the most common sayings we hear, and you might have said this yourself, is that life is short. And it is, but as Seneca remarked, it's pretty long if you know how to use it. And the first step to that is not giving so much of this time away to other people. Being miserly about our time is a powerful exercise which can keep us from squandering the one truly non-renewable resource. What in your life consumes a lot of time for no good purpose? What amusements or desires consume our time without giving us a good return?

8:04As you review that list, make a commitment to doing something about it. life is short after all and you don't have much to spare seneca says we're all the geniuses of history to focus on a single theme they could never fully express their bafflement the darkness the human mind no person would give even an inch of their estate or the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay yet we easily let others encroach on our lives worse we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person would hand out their money to a passerby, but how many of us hand out our lives? We're tight-fisted with our property and money, and yet we think too little of wasting time.

8:47The one thing we should all be the toughest misers about. That's Seneca on the shortness of life. It is not that we all have too short a time to live, Seneca says, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it's given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it's poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it's employed to no good end, we're finally driven to see that it has passed by without us even recognizing its passing. So it is. We don't receive a short life. We make it so. Or as I've also heard it rendered by Seneca, it's not that life is short, It's that we waste a lot of it.

9:32And this all comes from his wonderful essay on the shortness of life, which you should absolutely read. It's a very powerful essay. It's worth rereading a couple of times a year, to be quite frank. But I was thinking about this recently. I had sort of two good examples. Number one, I'm trying to get this television delivered and it was supposed to come and then it didn't come. So I messaged the people and then it was supposed to come the next day. So I messaged the people. Then I had to contact Amazon about it. and then they said they were going to do it but I got passed her. Anyways, I'm spending time after time after time.

10:04And then at some point someone promised me a$200 credit on this TV, which is, you know, I'm free$200, not bad. But it occurred to me that one, I'd already objectively spent more than$200 of my time on this thing. What an hour of my time is worth. But also if you just asked me, hey, would you spend$200 more on the TV and not have to go through this, I would have taken that option as well. And I had to wrestle with how much energy am I going to spend trying to get this$200 credit that may or may not ever exist, the TV from these people may or may not ever exist, to chase down. And so, of course, if someone stole$200 from me, I'd be very upset, right?

10:48If they'd overcharged me$200 for this TV, I'd have been upset. But I'm willing to spend$200 of my time to either get this credit or to get this TV, right? And that's what we do. We waste our time. We value money and property, as Seneca is saying. But time is this thing that we assume we have an unlimited amount of because no one, I don't know, it's just crazy. And then I think about this with the bookstore, which I love and I'm so proud of, but people come by and they want to say hi. And I think sometimes people think it's rude that I won't run downstairs to see everyone that's here. And I can't do that, right?

11:27Because not only do I have work, but if I did that for every single person, I would never have time. I'd use up all my time. I could spend almost the entire day doing that. And so when Seneca talks about being a miser, miser, if you're not familiar with that word, miser is like someone who's tight-fisted with money. It's like a cheap person. But he's saying you have to be cheap with your time. You can't give it away. Yes, you should be kind and treat people well and not be rude about it and not be self-absorbed. But you have to be a bit of a miser with your time because you're going to have to hurt people's feelings or not give them everything they want.

12:08When you say no, you're going to have to say no sometimes. And that's not fun. But I always try to remind myself who, when I'm saying no to one person, I am also saying yes to something else. And conversely, when I'm saying yes to some inquiry, I'm also saying no to someone or something else, right? And that's just the struggle that we're on. And if you have kids, if you have a spouse, if you have work that's important, if you you have potential you're trying to fulfill, if you're just trying to get better at yourself, it's gonna mean being tight-fisted with your time. It's gonna mean saying no to people.

12:45And that's just how it goes. That's just how it goes. And so I would urge everyone to take a minute, try to think about what an hour of your time is worth, right? Try to think about things that you can take off your plate so you can get that time back. but then think about what you are frivolously spending your time on and if that's worth it what are the rote tasks the things that you do the things that you go oh you put off you dread doing them what are those things why are you still doing them do you need to be doing them and at the end of your life when you go man that flew by i wish i had just one more day to do X, one more hour to do X, right?

13:31Are you going to look back and be like, well, I am glad that I spent X many hours doing this. Think about your commute, right? How many hours you're going to spend doing that? Think about how many hours you spend in meetings. Think about how many hours you spend on ridiculous trivialities, right? I think what I like to point out, Liseneca's thing about neighbors is like, yeah, if your neighbor's encroached on your property, you would object. But if your neighbor came over and just wanted to gossip about nonsense, you would indulge that, right? And that's not a good idea. You have to be miserly with your time, not selfish, not cruel, not indifferent to other people's time, of course, but a bit miserly with your own time.

14:14And be stingy with it, as they said. And I'll cut this episode short so I'm not taking up too much of your time, but you get the point.

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