Don’t Be Always Working | A Hard Winter Training

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  Don't always be working.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  Today, in the United States, it is Labor Day. In today's world, Labor Day seems a bit paradoxical. We honor work by not working? How could that possibly be right? It's an idea that seems particularly out of step with the glorification of long hours and hustle that has come from the startup world. We're supposed to be working 80 to 100-hour weeks, coming into the office on weekends, dedicating ourselves exclusively to our careers or our businesses, moving fast and breaking things. We're supposed to, as even Marcus Aurelius himself said, "find something we love and wear ourselves down doing it." Just look

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  at the reaction to Simone Biles, who created global controversy by withdrawing from the Olympics, prioritizing her mental health over athletic performance. She was called selfish and a quitter and a shame to the country, and proof that we are raising a generation of weak people. In fact, the relationship between work and leisure, working hard and taking it easy, hustling and relaxing, is ancient and essential. It was Aristotle who believed that virtue was the result of balance, of finding a middle ground. And it's no coincidence that he also said famously that this is the main question, with what activity is one's leisure filled?

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  The word leisure in Greek was skole, that is, school. In antiquity, leisure meant freedom from the work needed to survive. It was the freedom for intellectual and creative pursuits. It was learning and studying and the pursuit of higher things. It was Marcus's own warning to not be all about business. It was Seneca reminding his friend Lucilius that the mind must be given over to relaxation, for it will rise improved and sharpen after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced, so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. This warning is all the more crucial in a time when digital devices and working from home make work so ubiquitous.

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  Who has time for leisure, for a book, for a long bike ride, for an afternoon with friends and family? Emails and Zoom calls beckon, responsibilities call. This client needs you, that coworker wants you to check Slack. But what kind of shape will we be in if we do this without respite? If we stigmatize and shame people who prioritize their long-term mental and physical health over the short-term gain of tasks completed, meetings attended, emails returned, and conference calls joined? If we don't heed that ancient advice to not be all about business? Your brain is not meant to be constantly connected. You need to relax, to recover and restore. You need to celebrate Labor Day.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  You need to honor work by not working. You need not be all about business. And actually, my favorite chapter in the new book Discipline is Destiny, which you can preorder now, dailystoic.com/preorder, is about Greg Popovich and his pioneering tactic of load management, which stored, rested his players for the offseason, which has ensured the longevity of the dynasty and the players in that dynasty. I actually talked to R.C. Buford, who I've had on the podcast before, about this. He gave me a bunch of really cool insights that are in that chapter. I hope you check it out, dailystoic.com/preorder. Discipline about our self-discipline is important, or discipline about our drive is important. And it's one of the things I talk a lot about in the book. I hope you enjoy Labor Day.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  Check out the new book, Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, at dailystoic.com/preorder.

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  A Hard Winter Training.

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  The art of living has three levels of discipline: study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics or listening to them, that's study. Trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epictetus liked to use the analogy of the Roman army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter, so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they returned to battle in the spring. Seneca would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher-than-usual conditions. He too used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came. So what are you

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice? And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living," by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed, personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. But this idea of keeping the thoughts at

• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  hand really ties into this week's entry. We've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca. "We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared." That's Epictetus in his Discourses. Here's Seneca in Moral Letters 18. "Here's a lesson to test your mind's mettle. Take part of the week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantily in shabby clothes, and ask yourself, 'This is really the worst you feared.'" It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead. For when fortune is kind, the soul can build up defenses against her ravages. So it is that the soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight,

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  and exhausting themselves under no attack, so that when it comes, they won't grow tired. And then finally, Epictetus says, "When a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer." Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat. I think that no one has a better challenge than yours. If only you would use it like an athlete would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple of things here. One, I sometimes get this question, "Should I seek out adversity? If adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out?" I say, "Look, for the most part, life is gonna give us most of the training we need. Life's gonna throw most of the adversity we need at us."

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  So you don't need to go, like, getting yourself into trouble, so you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying, "Look, instead of bemoaning the adversity when you do feel it, go like, 'Hey, this is good. This is training I needed. I'm gonna use this.'" So I think about it that way. The pandemic, obviously, being a great example of this. The other part is, how are you, though, actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, more mentally tough, more physically tough? So to me, this is where, like, a strong physical practice comes in. It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Because I love working out, but still, every time, I have to convince myself to do it, right? I love running. It's almost painful not to run. But there's still lots of days when I don't wanna do it, and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time. But every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself, right? I usually do some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me, and I really do have to push myself to do it. And that training Though the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with, that's not fun, that challenges me, this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  What it really does is make me better at overriding that impulse that I don't want to do something because it's hard, or that I'm afraid, or that it's going to be exhausting. Again, I'm in the middle of a book right now, and you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it, I don't want to do it, it's hard, what if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? Will anyone know? Well, I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent. I have, as Steven Pressfield talks about, I know the resistance well. I have built up a lot of muscles that make me stronger than the resistance, and that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness in life. And so I hope you have some sort of active practice.

• 9:40Ryan Holiday?

  Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well.

• 10:00Ryan 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, 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.