How Will You Account for This Time?

"When Ebola was first spreading, the news would run fascinating stories about the habits of the people who were unknowingly infected. These stories are often as revealing as they are cautionary. First, how clueless people are—how flagrantly they violate warnings and guidelines out of selfishness and dismissiveness. But more interestingly, how much time people waste."Ryan exhorts us to use the time given to us during the pandemic wisely, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  How will you account for this time? When Ebola was first spreading, the news would run fascinating stories about the habits of the people who were unknowingly infected. The same has been true for COVID-19. It always goes something like this: "39-year-old male on a flight back to Seattle from South Korea visited McDonald's three meals a day for a week, went bowling with friends, worked on Sunday, and then cheated on his wife with a girlfriend." Or it's 57-year-old man finished a vacation in England, then went skiing in Italy, then licked the microphone at a condo board meeting after a multi-leg flight home in coach. Or it's 26-year-old female who was feeling sick and told to stay home, attended church, then went to a concert, then to the

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  post office, and then finished with a trip to the beach in Florida. These stories are revealing, as they are cautionary, first, how clueless people are, how flagrantly they violate warnings and guidelines out of selfishness and dismissiveness. But more interestingly, it shows how much time people waste. It calls to mind that story from Seneca who observed the mindless, almost automated wandering of the people in Rome. Nobody seemed to have any idea what they're doing day to day, or why. They were just going from one urge or task to another, unthinking, unaware. And then these same people complain that life is short. Well, thankfully, you are not one of those people.

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  But you are, right now, stuck at home or in some heightened state of awareness. Maybe you're looking at an extended period of working from home, or your travel has been canceled, or a lot of your big projects have been rescheduled for the next year. Okay, so now the question is, how will you account for this time? What use will it be to you? It's worth imagining how our day-to-day existence would look if it were detailed minute by minute by a reporter. It's worth thinking about how proud or disappointed we would be of ourselves if we had to detail to the authorities who and what we encountered over the last few weeks. Were we wasting our time, or were we using it? Were we safe or stupid? Were we mindless or intentional?

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  Again, remember, we don't control the moment we are in, but we do control what we do in the moment. We decide whether this period will be a dead loss or a fruitful investment. We decide whether we will live it or simply live through it. And so, what will it be today for you? Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. You can sign up to get our daily email at dailystoic.com/email. I also encourage you, if you want to take your practice of Stoicism to the next level, to sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which is our members-only program. It's got all sorts of awesome benefits. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.