You Can Seize This Moment

This is an email we weren’t expecting to send, but sometimes sudden events call for sudden responses. Right now you, and much of the world, are locked down, doing your part to fight the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps you’ve already been trapped inside for weeks. Perhaps you just got back the test results and now you are in complete isolation. Perhaps your job has furloughed you and you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. Things seem serious now, but the truth is, it’s only going to get more serious. All of us are looking at the potential for some serious lost time. Dead time, as Robert Greene calls it. But do we have to be? A Stoic knows that while we don’t control what happens, we do control how we respond. So that’s the real question: How can we use this time to get better? To grow? To be of service and use? To create “alive time” where we’re actively getting better. With that end in mind, we have been scrambling to put together what we’re calling the Daily Stoic Alive Time Challenge: Resilience, Productivity and Service in the Time of Coronavirus. It’s 14 days—the length of the suggested quarantine—of Stoicism-inspired challenges, practices and reading that will help you grow and help you help others. If you’ve done any of our other challenges over the last two years, you know we pack them full of great content, actionable advice, and strategies to make the habits stick. This one will be all that… and incredibly timely. We’re taking our best material and the best insights from the Stoics and organizing it to help you make the most of this time we have. Why shouldn’t you emerge from this process having at least wrested from it some real advantages? Why would you kill time when you could be seizing that time? Why not use it to create better habits and a better perspective? Since there is little time to lose, we are putting the challenge on sale right now and starting it this coming Monday (March 30th). The more of us doing it together, at the same time, the better (people who sign up late can still do it, but they’ll miss some of the fun). We’ll create a Slack channel for sharing and holding each other accountable. And we’ll do a wrap-up call at the end to discuss keeping these good practices going. More important, we’re giving $5 of every sale (20% of all proceeds) to Feeding America. By doing this challenge together we can create what Marcus Aurelius calls a double bonus—doing good for ourselves and the people on the front lines fighting to keep us safe. Sign up today. See 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. You can seize this moment. This is an episode we weren't expecting to put out, but sometimes sudden events call for sudden responses. Right now, you and much of the world is locked down, doing your part to fight the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps you've already

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  been trapped inside for weeks, perhaps you just got back the test results and are now in complete isolation, perhaps your job has furloughed you and you've now got a lot of time on your hands. Things seem serious now, but the truth is, it's only going to get more serious. All of us are looking at the potential of some serious lost time, dead time, as Robert Greene calls it. But do we have to be? A Stoic knows that while we don't control what happens, we do control how we respond. So that's the real question. How can we use this time to get better, to grow, to be of service and use, to create a live

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  time where we're actively improving, rather than simply passive and resigned and resentful? With that end in mind, we've been scrambling to put together what we're calling the Daily Stoic Alive Time Challenge: Resilience, Productivity, and Service in the Time of Coronavirus. It's 14 days, which is the length of the suggested quarantine, of Stoic-inspired challenges, practices, and reading that will help you grow and help you help others. If you've done any of our other challenges over the last two years, you know we packed them full of great content, actionable advice, and strategies to make habits stick.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  This one will be all of that, as well as incredibly timely. We're taking our best material and the best insights from the Stoics and organizing it to help you make the most of this difficult time we are in. Why shouldn't you emerge from this process having at least rested from it some real advantages? Why would you kill time? You could be seizing that time. Why not use it to create better habits and a better perspective? Since there is little time to lose, we're putting the challenge on sale now, and it's starting this coming Monday, March 30th. The more of us doing it together at the same time, the better. Although people who sign up late can still do it, you'll just miss

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  some of the fun. There'll be a Slack channel for sharing and holding each other accountable, and we'll do a wrap-up call at the end to discuss and keep these practices going. We're going to give you exercises that help make you tougher, more resilient, more community-minded, more productive. We're going to give you perspective. We're going to focus on improving your environment, improving your house, improving the way that you think, improving the way that you eat. We're going to make you more prepared for things like this in the future, and we're going to help you. We're going to push you to help make other people who are struggling, who are experiencing the brunt of this worse. We're going to help you help

• 3:35Ryan Holiday?

  them. And more important, we're giving $5 of every sale on this challenge, that's 20% of all proceeds, to groups who are either supplying medical supplies to people fighting this virus on the front lines, or groups that are supporting people who are suffering and need aid right now. So by doing this challenge, we can create together what Marcus Aurelius calls a double bonus, doing good for ourselves and the people out there doing really important work. We really want to have you do this challenge with us. I'm going to be doing it every step of the way. I know I get a ton out of the challenges every time I do them. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/alivetime.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  That's dailystoic.com/alivetime. The challenge is cheap, but you will get so much out of it. Everyone does. Whenever we do them, it's going to be thousands of Stoics alongside each other, helping, pushing each other, using this experience as time, this unfortunate circumstance, to derive some benefit or good, to improve ourselves in it and to make the world a better place in the little ways that we can. So I strongly urge you to check out our Daily Stoic Alive Time Challenge, Resilience, Productivity, and Service in the Time of Coronavirus. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/alivetime. You've got to move fast because this starts next Monday, March 30th. I'll see you soon.