Don’t Waste Your Days With Thinking | Ask Daily Stoic

✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  Don't waste your days with thinking.

• 1:01Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, the Stoic thinks that's what wisdom is. That's what philosophy is. You think things through. You put every impression up to the test. You question, you examine, you weigh the options, you explore. But at a certain point, this virtue, like all the others, becomes a vice. Marcus Aurelius knew this. That's why he occasionally admonished himself to throw away his books, to put away his journals. Emerson knew this, too. "You cannot spend the day in deliberation," he said. "We have to get up and be active. We have to get busy with life's purpose, with the problems of life while we can. We have to get to the do it." We must be careful that our love of philosophy, that our disciplined application of the discipline of perception is itself disciplined.

• 1:46Ryan Holiday?

  Too often philosophers become paralyzed by their own explorations. They think themselves into circles and become prisoners of their own considerable brains as a result. We have to be able to make quick decisions in an imperfect world. As Marcus says, "Sometimes life is simple. If there are brambles in the path, go around. If the food is bitter, throw it away. Don't overthink it. Don't get trapped in deliberation or theory. Don't get lost in the world of ideas. Be active, be clear, be decisive."

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  I have a chapter about being the decider and courage is calling. But I think what we're really talking about is that as a leader, you have to make the call. You have to put yourself in the position to make those calls, not to get stuck in all the possible contingencies, but to understand that you have a limited amount of information and ultimately it's fallen on you to make the call. We talked a lot about this, about making better decisions in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. I interviewed Annie Duke, whose great book, How to Decide, is a part of what we teach in the process, but it's a six-week course based on the Stoic principles about how to be a better leader, how to make better decisions, how to be the decider, like we're talking about, how to be a leader like so many of the Stoics were, from Cato to Marcus

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  Aurelius. I'd love for you to check out the challenge. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/leadershipchallenge. And of course, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get that challenge and all our other challenges totally for free. So you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com. But check out in the show notes, how to sign up for the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. We'd love to have you and I'll see you in the sessions.

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  All right. So we'll just take questions and we'll get into it. Todd, let's do you first, but while you're unmuting, we have a question here. Someone's asking my personal definition of Stoicism, which I sort of define Stoicism as this idea that we don't control what happens to us, we control how we respond. And Stoicism then is a prescription for that response, the four virtues being the sort of the ideals for how one tries to respond to all situations. Some situations call for courage, some for temperance, some for justice, some for wisdom, some for all of the above. But that's this idea. How do we respond to what life throws at us? So Todd, hit me with your question.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  What's up, brother?

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Hey.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  So question. So I've really been tuning into the podcast. I'm kind of new to Stoicism.

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Always been a big fan of, you know, just following just wisdom or principles that could just guide me better in life, but. Um, yeah, so I just been, I got the meditations book. I thought it was fantastic. And then I've only other heard, uh, Kato, you talk about Kato on the podcast.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  So like starting off, should I just like, I guess just diving what I like first and then kind of just follow along for more?

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  That's a great question. Um, and I think it all depends, right? So the idea of the daily Stoic was it is hard to know what Stoic to start with, right? Like, do you start with Seneca? Do you start with Marcus? Do you start with Epictetus? You know, it's sort of, and if you pick the wrong one, does that mean Stoicism is not for you? So one of the, one of the reasons I did the daily Stoic and then why I do the email is I wanted sort of a sampling like a, you know, like a, a tasting menu or, or a, you know, an appetizer board or something like, you, you, you take the ones you like and then you're like, oh, I'm, I'm a fan of that. I'm going to do more of that. But if I was sort of prescribing like where to go next in Stoicism, had, if someone had picked up Marcus,

• 5:38Ryan Holiday?

  I'd probably do Seneca next because he's the most bite sized and covers the widest range of topics and is probably the most accessible. So there's a great, um, I don't know if I have it here.

• 5:53Ryan Holiday?

  I don't see it. Um, there's a, there's Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, which I have here. That's which I love the Penguin, Penguin translation. But there's another short Penguin one called, um, On the Shortness of Light. And it's a collection of essays from Seneca. I think it's called the Penguin Great Ideas Series, which is very good. And then there's another recent one. Uh, actually two from, from the Penguin, or sorry, from the Princeton University Press that I like. They're sort of little collections of the Stoics and one is called How to Keep Your Cool. And the other is called, uh, How to Die. Uh, and so those would be like maybe a few selections from the Stoics that I might start with.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Uh, I'll start it though. Thanks, man.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  All right. Appreciate it. All right. Let's do, uh, Christopher Myers.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  So I'm 10, I've only been with-

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  What's your name?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Oh, my name's Jack.

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hi, Jack.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  I'm 10 years old. I've only been a stoic student for a few months. I've read your book, The Boy Who Would Be King.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  I just wanted to know any tips you have for kids who are in this.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  That's awesome. You are already well ahead of the curve and I'm very impressed. And it's kind of incredible to think, obviously that book is fictionalized, but Marcus was not that much older than you when he was selected to be the emperor of Rome. And so he undergoes this training that sets him up for his whole life. And so as you're thinking about this stuff, it's not just, it's fun and it's interesting and it's great. But you're also making, it's like, I'm sure your parents have talked to you about a bank account. You know, you put money in a bank account and the interest compounds over time. Like, all these books that you're reading now are gonna shape you for the rest of your life.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  And so you're, it's not just that you're ahead of the curve, but this will pay off for you over the course of your life. I guess earlier someone asked about my definition of stoicism. I think this idea of like, I focus on what I do in response to what your parents say, you know, to what your teachers say, to what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do, to the situations you find yourself in. This idea of like, most people spend a lot of time and energy talking about, complaining about, resenting the things that happen that are not up to them. And if you can decide really early on in your life that you're gonna focus on things that are up to you,

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  again, this is also a huge advantage that compounds over time, right? So every minute that you don't spend complaining about the weather, that you don't, you know, spend complaining that you have to wear glasses and other kids don't have to wear glasses, or, you know, that you live here instead of here. All the time that you spend focusing on the parts that are up to you as opposed to the parts that are not up to you, that's energy that you're spending productively instead of unproductively. And so that would be the big thing that I'd think about at your age. But, good for you and keep reading and I'm really impressed.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. Um, all right. So let's see what else we got here.

• 9:19Ryan Holiday?

  So someone's asking some recommendations and general things to be aware of as far as getting the most out of the course. I would say this idea of like, just do it with a beginner's mind. See it as like, you know, sometimes you have training and then you have to go in and do retraining or with the vaccine, right? You get the vaccine and then they make you go get the booster shot. See this as the booster shot of a reminder of all the things that you've heard of, that you're familiar with, but it's, it's a, it's a doubling down on it. That would be the big thing. But the other thing is, I would just check it every morning. I think the earlier you check it, the beginning, and maybe spend some time, you know, obviously, we talk a lot about journaling, but as you're thinking about

• 10:02Ryan Holiday?

  what to journal about in the morning, what to talk about, what maybe just the Epictetus talks about how it's, you take these thoughts and you write about them, you read them aloud, you talk to others about them. I think a big part of this is really engaging with the material in some form or another. So don't just glance at it at your, on your phone, let it go sort of in and out of your mind, but, but take a minute to kind of meditate it on it and stew on it, find some use for it. And I think that would have, I think that would have a great, a great impact. So let's do Wendy, I'm gonna unmute you here.

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  It looks, it looks quite nice where you are, Wendy.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  It's beautiful. Hi. How are you? It's great to be here. I live right outside of Yosemite. So it's a lovely, yeah. So when you gave the, you showed all the different philosophers and, and when they were philosophizing, Porta Cato, the iron woman, I had never heard of her before. So where do I find her? And does she have any writings or has anybody written about her?

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  So I have a whole chapter about her in Lives of the Stoics.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:17Ryan Holiday?

  And there isn't too much about her, unfortunately, although I would argue there were many, many Stoic women over the centuries, especially Musonius Rufus famously says that men and women should both be taught philosophy. The problem is they just, they just weren't recorded, right? They just weren't written about a lot. So there's not a ton about Porcha Cato, but there, she does come up in Plutarch's essay about Cato the Younger, which is one of the sources we have. There's obviously the chapter about her in Lives of the Stoics. Let me see if I can show it to you. This is, uh, this is it.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:55Ryan Holiday?

  And, uh, but then she also appears in Cato, or sorry, in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. She's a character. Um, but other than that, there, there isn't unfortunately a ton about her. Um, so, so we're kind of, we're trying to, kind of guessing a little bit, but it was very important to me to have a female Stoic in the book, at least a historical one. Um, and I, I thought she was just, you know, a complete badass.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Well, I appreciate you including her. And then the second thing is, on the commonplace book, how much are you putting, are you, I mean, I'm, I'm inspired by a lot of things. So do I put everything or am I more discerning?

• 12:39Ryan Holiday?

  So the short answer would be do whatever you want, do whatever feels right to you. I, I, I try, I try not to answer the questions about the commonplace book too much as far as like, what's the right way or wrong way to do it? Because the way I do it is obviously for me as a person, but then also my job is to use a lot of the stuff that I write down. So, so I, I always have an eye as I'm writing stuff down, am I going to use this in some way? Right? Um, so like the book. The book that I'm working on right now, or sorry, I'm working on a series on the four virtues. So my note card, I do it on the note cards, but then I have courage, temperance, justice, wisdom.

• 13:21Ryan Holiday?

  And then at the top of each card, I underline what virtue this thing pertains to. So like, right now, most of the research that I'm doing is specifically to find stuff to use for one of those four books. Right? So, um, but, but generally, and I've been doing it for a long time. I try just to write stuff down that's interesting. If, if I feel like it's getting too much, I usually, I just take a break because I don't want my fatigue in the moment to cost me something that, you know, 10 years from now, I'll really have enjoyed or, or want, want to, to reference or know about.

• 14:03Ryan Holiday?

  The other little trick that I'll do is sometimes I'll just write to myself in shorthand. Like I'll just go like, really good story about X, you know, page 23, you know, insert book here. And so, um, I'm not going to take the time to write it down, but I am just putting like a little breadcrumb that, uh, you know, if I go back through, maybe, maybe I'd need it.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Oh, I like that. I like the referencing. That's great. Thank you so much. I love being part of your community. I really, really enjoy it.

• 14:34Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you. The, the other thing I would recommend, um, there's a great tool out there that's sort of a digital version of the commonplace book. Again, I do mine all by hand, but there's a company called Rome Research, R O A M. And, and theirs is like, it's, it's very cool. There's some cool videos about it. But if you're looking for a more digital version, I might check that out as well.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Okay, cool. Thanks, Ryan.

• 14:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Uh, let's do Lance.

• 15:03Ryan Holiday?

  Think Lance might have frozen.

• 15:07Ryan Holiday?

  All right, John, you've got a question?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yes, I do. So question for you in regards to the circles of control.

• 15:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Do you have controlling what you control? You posted a really good diagram on the Daily Stoic Life Facebook group.

• 15:25Ryan Holiday?

  So, so I accidentally mistyped that this morning. It's circles. One way to look at it would be circles of control. I think what he's really saying though is circles of concern. So these are the people that you so, so your first concern is obviously your stuff, what you control. And then he says, you know, after that, there's like your spouse and your family, then your extended family, then your community, or you know, your neighborhood, your community, your town, your city, your state, your country, the world. Right? Um, so it's the idea that that there's these sort of concentric circles of, of, of people we're concerned about. But he, this is Herioclis, one of the later Stoics, who unfortunately isn't in Lives of the Stoics, because other than this one thing, he, we don't know anything else about him.

• 16:09Ryan Holiday?

  And the point of Lives of the Stoics is the Lives of the Stoics. Um, but this idea of circles of concern, it's not saying like, oh, I'm, I'm the smallest circle at the center. I'm the most important. What he's saying is that you're, you're trying to draw the outer circles into the inner circle. And Billy, maybe could you link to this circles of concern thing in the chat so people can see it? Yep. But, but the idea is you're supposed to try to consider, ideally, you want to have as much impact for the, the circles closest to you as possible. But the idea is you want, you want to get to a place where you think about the community, the world, the planet, the nation, whatever.

• 16:55Ryan Holiday?

  Almost at the same way that you care about members of your own family and you're, you're supposed to be expanding that circles of, of concern, if that makes sense.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 17:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Sure. Um, kind of follow that up. I mean, how would you recommend doing that? Like, is it the idea of just putting yourself in the other person's shoes? Or do you have another technique that you use to do that?

• 17:16Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so the reason I was posting that is there was a New York Times article this morning about the struggle to get to herd immunity in the United States with the vaccine. And the primary. There's obviously some people who are convinced that it's bad for you, or they're scared of needles, or whatever, or that this is all a giant hoax. But the main impediment seems to be young, healthy people, or people who have already gotten it, who are saying, "Why do I need this? I'm fine," right? And so when you think about the circles of concern, the idea is to go, "Look, I'm in my early 30s. I've got a good immune system. I'm young, I'm healthy. I don't spend a lot of time around people. I probably don't need to get the vaccine," right?

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  "The purpose of getting the vaccine, though, is not for me." The idea isn't about creating a wall around yourself to protect you from COVID. The idea is that if everyone collectively contributes their little part of the wall, then we get a wall around everyone which protects the vulnerable. So I think, you know what? I just love the idea that 2,000 years ago, the Stoics were struggling with this idea. And then here, in the modern world, in the midst of this pandemic, we had the perfect illustration of that idea. But the idea is, how can you start to think about the way that your individual actions, you know, impact other people? So as an example with the Daily Stoic, right?

• 18:45Ryan Holiday?

  Let's say the coins that we make, right? So, you know, you think it's just, "Okay, I'm gonna make this physical product, and I'm gonna sell it," right? Now, what's best for me is obviously to sell it, to manufacture it for as little as possible, because then there would be more profit in it, right? And then, you know, we were buying them from this manufacturer that put them in a little plastic bag. And the little plastic bag was free, so what do I care that he puts it in a plastic bag, right? So, two decisions there.

• 19:18Ryan Holiday?

  For me, mean one thing, but for the world, mean another thing. And so this idea of thinking about, so it's like, okay, I could make them in China, but perhaps they're being made with slave labor, or perhaps they're being made, you know, in some unethical way.

• 19:35Ryan Holiday?

  And then I'm also having to ship them from across the ocean. So the decision to say manufacture in the United States at a company that pays its workers a fair wage and offers them benefits, et cetera, in one sense, that comes at my expense. On the other hand, if I do the cheap one, it comes at the expense of someone else. You know, covering them in these plastic bags, I don't live in the ocean, so it's not a problem for me, but you know, I'm trying to think about the environmental impact of those decisions. So I think the circles of concern become relevant to us as we make decisions as individuals, as citizens, as business people, as countries, et cetera. How do our, how does our impact ripple through the world?

• 20:19Ryan Holiday?

  That's what the circles of concern is about.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  That's great. Thank you.

• 20:27Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The obstacle is the way, he goes the enemy's stillness is the key. The leather bound edition of the Daily Stoic, we have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.