You Can’t Put Things Off

Ryan explains why you must create a sense of urgency and clarity in your life, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  You can't put things off. Do you know what one of the last things Abraham Lincoln ever said was? As he sat in a box at Ford's Theater as he waited for the play to start, Lincoln turned to his wife and said, "Oh, how I should like to visit Jerusalem sometime." Within minutes, an assassin would fire a bullet into his brain. Within hours, he would be dead. Now, of course, there were many reasons why this great man never found time in life to visit Jerusalem. He had to teach himself to read. He had to work himself out of abject poverty. He had to conquer depression. And then the gravest threat to freedom yet known in the United States. He freed the slaves and made sure democracy would not perish from the earth. And these are all reasons why he had to put off that

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  trip till a later date, just as you have many reasons why you're waiting to do this or delaying doing that. And yet, life has a way of stripping all our reasons bare, of humbling our plans and assumptions. We must live, as Marcus Aurelius said, "as if death hangs over us," because it does. "We cannot put off till tomorrow," he said, "what we can do today, whether that's being good, our highest priority, or telling people we love them, or going places we wish to go." No one knows what the future holds. No one knows how much time we have left. So do not delay. Do not wish. Do not wait. Do it now, while you still have time, while there still is a chance.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  All of the future is uncertainty, Seneca said. So live now, live immediately. Or as Marcus says in the challenge coin I carry with me everywhere, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. This exercise of memento mori from the Stoics, it's not about being morbid. It's about creating a sense of urgency and clarity and priority. That's why the Stoics practice memento mori. That's why I carry this challenge coin with me. I have a memento mori, a piece of a tombstone that I keep in my bathroom mirror that I look at on a daily basis. Memento mori, it's so powerful. It gives so much clarity. Find some way to practice that. If you want ours, you can check it out at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  But just find something that reminds you that you should not delay. You cannot wait. Do it now.