“Not Much” Adds Up | Circle of Control

Ryan explains how to be productive at a high level, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. Go to Givewell.org to read more about their research or donate to any of their recommended charities. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you. 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  Not much adds up. We all have something difficult we're trying to accomplish. Whether it's starting a business, or losing weight, finishing a creative project, or building a barn, the mammoth task sits before us. The very thought of its enormity is overwhelming. The thought of completing it, we can't even fathom. The light at the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight. What should you do? Do what the great and prolific author Rich Cohen does. On the Daily Stoic Podcast a while back, Rich explained how he's been able to so consistently be productive at such a high level. Nine books so far, many of them bestsellers. He said he approaches a big project like he approaches a cross-country road trip. The way you deal with long road trips, he said,

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  is you set yourself a minimum number of hours a day, no matter how you feel. The point is that not much adds up if you do it a lot. And that's what Marcus meant when he said, "Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. All you have to do," he said, "is stick with the situation at hand." He talks about how you assemble your life, action by action. No one, he says, can stop you from that. But this metaphor of the road is a good one, because excellence is a road. And there is a road to being a successful writer or entrepreneur, to that promotion, or to that award, the road to finishing this task or that project. How do you travel a road? Travel a road in steps, a certain number of miles or hours per day.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Excelling at anything is a matter of taking one step, then another, after another, one foot in front of the other, even when you don't feel like it, even when it feels like it's not making much of a dent. Because it is, you're getting closer. Eventually, you will arrive, and it will be wonderful. And that is what Zeno meant when he said, "Well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing."

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  The Circle of Control. And I'm reading to you today from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of The Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. Spent more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks, on the bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. "We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on that moral will. What's not under our control are the body and any of its parts,

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  our possessions, parents, siblings, children, country, or anything else with which we might associate." That's Epictetus's Discourses 1:22. "This is an important enough entry that it bears repeating. A wise person knows what's inside of their circle of control and what's outside it." Remember, this is the very first entry in The Daily Stoic, which, again, saying that it's worth repeating, I think I will. "The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and what have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself."

• 4:10Ryan Holiday?

  To the choices that are my own. The good news is that it's pretty easy to remember what what's inside your control. According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing, your mind. That's right. Not even your physical body is completely within your control. After all, you could be struck with a physical illness or an impairment at any moment. You could be traveling in a foreign country and thrown in jail. But this is all good news because it drastically reduces the amount of things that we need to think about. There is clarity in this simplicity. While everyone else is running around with a list of responsibilities a mile long, things they're not actually responsible for.

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  You have just got that one item list. You've just got one thing to manage, your choices, your will, your mind. So mind it. And I I said this in my talks so many times, but I think about the circle of control as a kind of resource allocation issue, right? If you've got 100 energy points, where are you going to spend them? Are you going to spend 50 of them on what's in your control? And then 50% of them complaining about how you got there, wishing things were otherwise, trying to change things you don't control? Or are you going to spend all your energy on what you do control? Right?

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  So so if if the typical ratio of a person is 50 50, and that's probably being generous, if we're being perfectly honest, and you can get to a 60 40, that's a huge advantage. I mean, God forbid you get to, you know, 90 10. I don't know how possible that really is. But if, again, just any, you can move from one category to another category. It's not just saving the energy from beating your head against the wall that will will not budge or wishing thing something that that did happen hadn't happened. But you're moving it to the category where it does make a difference, towards something where that energy does make progress.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  So it's a huge, it's it's it's it's more than a one point shift. It's an enormous shift and you have to think about it that way. And again, taking it as stipulating that the vast majority of people struggle to do this, they're not even aware that they're doing it, right? You think about how basic the serenity prayer is, right? If you think about how basic something like the serenity prayer is, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," right? They say that in Alcoholics Anonymous, these are people who've lived their entire life, some of them are very successful, some of them have tried literally every other thing on the planet,

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  but this, right? And I think, to me, that's just a humbling reminder of how much time, energy, life force is spent on things that we don't control, right? We care about what other people are doing, we care about the weather, we care about, you know, external results. I just, I try to remind myself of this as a writer over and over again, I control the work, I control what I write today, I control that I showed up, I control what I do, my choices, my mind, what I put in it. Everything else that comes after might be nice, might break my way, but it's not up to me, that's not what we're talking about.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on moral will, what's not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything else, anything with which we might associate. And again, this is, it's a humbling, it's a little depressing reminder as you stare at where the world is on this day. But think about what that was for Epictetus, what was happening in Rome or Greece as he was saying these things. So instead, he focused on his mental freedom, on his choices, on his actions, because that's all he could do. And in so

• 8:28Ryan Holiday?

  doing, he made himself one of the most powerful people in the world, even though he was very powerless inside, you know, the Roman hierarchy. He made himself so powerful that his words echo down to us today, all these years later. I hope you take them to heart, I hope you focus on what's in your control today, and I hope you have a great week, insofar as you focus on things that are up to you.

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.