Here’s How To “Not Be All About Business”

"Marcus Aurelius had workaholic tendencies. Even if he hadn’t had the most important job in the world, we get the sense that he would have treated his work that way. He was one of those all-in types. When he discovered philosophy, he slept on the floor and practiced poverty to his mother’s frustration. When he found an author he liked, he dove deeply into their work. And when he became emperor, he was available around the clock, he hardly ever took extended time off, and his idea of leisure was attending philosophy lectures. 'People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it,' he wrote, 'they even forget to wash or eat.'"Find out how Marcus countered these tendencies and how you can do the same in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Here's how not to be all about business. Marcus Aurelius had workaholic tendencies. Even if he hadn't had the most important job in the world, we get the sense that he would have treated his work that way. He was one of those all-in types. When he discovered philosophy, he slept on the floor and practiced poverty to his mother's frustration.

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  When he found an author he liked, he dove deeply into their work. And when he became emperor, he was available around the clock. He hardly ever took extended time off, and his idea of leisure was attending philosophy lectures. "People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it," he wrote, "they even forget to wash and eat." Yet he also seemed somehow to know that this was unhealthy, because in another spot in meditations, he says that in life, "you can't be all about business." He knew that we needed balance in our lives, outlets for our stress and our passions, whether they were sports, or hunting, or journaling, or taking walks outdoors. Even meditation or reflection was a way to do that, a way, as he said, "to reach utter stillness."

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  The comedian Nate Bargatze has talked about this. He said, "There's nothing I can do that can shift my brain from stopping work, except golf." He said, "It's how much focus has to go into golf. It's the only time I feel like I'm not thinking about comedy or career. You just go out there, you almost forget you have a phone, you forget everything. It's unreal." As discussed in Stillness is the Key, elite performance is best when balanced out with hobbies and leisure. Churchill found solace painting and laying bricks. For William Gladstone, Prime Minister of England, the generation before Churchill, was chopping down trees. For Seneca, it was writing philosophical Letters to friends and family members. For Epictetus, perhaps we can infer it was lifting weights.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  For Marcus Aurelius, it was hunting and possibly wrestling. For John Cage, it was mushroom hunting. For David Sedaris, it was walking backroads and picking up trash. For Herbert Hoover, it was fishing. Reading, boxing, swimming, puzzles, coding, journaling, golfing, whatever it is, you need to have something that takes your mind off work. You can't be all about business. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.