What Would You Do More Of?

Ryan talks about why you should think about how you actually want to spend your time. Grab a Memento Mori pendant necklace from the Daily Stoic Store to remember this message. 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.

• 0:06Ryan 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.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  What would you do more of? Yesterday, we talked about that indictment from Marcus Aurelius. None of us want to die, yet we spend so much of our time on things we hate doing. And the power of memento mori is the clarity that it offers. By thinking, by imagining that we have just been given a few months to live, we can see immediately what we should stop doing. We realize that we don't have time to waste. And before you know it, there is this urgent, emergent need to do the things we love, replace the things we hate. This is the positive side of memento mori. Not, "What would I stop doing?", but rather, "What should I start doing? How would I spend the limited time I have left?

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  Where would I find meaning and purpose and joy?". To the uninitiated, the unfamiliar, the skeptical, this is... There is a certain nihilism to memento mori, but that's a mistake. Memento mori isn't nihilistic at all. It's the opposite. In Marcus's last days, he tried to prepare his son for power, just as Antoninus had done for him. He cheered up his friends. Cato's, last night alive, he had a long dinner party where philosophy was discussed for hours. Then he retreated to his bedroom and read one of Plato's works, twice. In our interview with Kate Bowler for the Daily Stoic Podcast, as well as in her wonderful book, "No Cure for Being Human", she talks a lot about how she spent her suddenly

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  very finite-feeling time when she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer in 2015. She finished an academic book she'd been working on, and even encouraged her father to do the same. She spent time with her son and her husband. She laughed, she traveled, she did stuff that ordinarily she would have put on the back burner or told herself. She'd get to later. The truth is that none of us know whether we will get to it later. And of course, the tricky part is that we don't know that we won't either. So we must use this as a test. If you knew you were dying, what would you do more of? What would mortality prioritize for you? Do more of that today because you are mortal. Because you are dying, fast or slow. Nobody knows which.

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, new Memento Mori Pendants in stock now in 14 karat gold. Remember, you could leave life right now. So make the most of every moment while you can. Check it out at dailystoic.com/store.