You Can’t Forget What You Don’t Put Off | (Dis)integration

We plan to do it. We mean to do it. We just tell ourselves that we’ll do it tomorrow. The problem, as the Stoics remind us, is that we don’t control tomorrow.📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  You can't forget what you don't put off. You didn't mean to lie. You didn't mean to be late. You didn't mean not to do it. It's just that, well, you forgot, as we almost always do. We plan to do it. We mean to do it. We just tell ourselves that we'll do it tomorrow. The problem, as the Stoics remind us, is that we don't control tomorrow. Stuff can come up. We can get an unexpected email. We get bad news from a friend. We wake up to a sick child. Even when things don't come up, distraction does. We delay, we drift, we fail to do what we genuinely intended to do. We do what Seneca warned that fools are always doing, getting ready to start. We forget.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  The solution, then, do it now. You can't forget what you don't put off. You can't procrastinate something that's already done. You don't have to make excuses or apologize if you just get started now.

• 1:22Ryan Holiday?

  Today's entry from the Daily Stoic, disintegration. These things don't go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things outside of your control. Take great care with the inside and not what's inside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher or else with the mob. Epictetus's Discourses 3:15. "We are all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves, conflicting wants and desires and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory. For not careful, all of these forces pushing and pulling will eventually tear us apart."

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  We can't live as both Jekyll and Hyde, not for long, anyway. We have a choice to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside, or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment. If we do not focus on our internal integration, on self-awareness, we risk external disintegration. Obviously, you're listening to me, so you can't see it. But in the book, I have disintegration, the dis in parentheses. One word, but there's the parentheses. And the reason I do that, it's actually something I talk about in the intro, my first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying. And if you've read Trust Me, I'm Lying, you've heard of it. It might seem very different than what I talk about here at Daily Stoic.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  Or if you see a video of me, and then you contrast it with the somewhat ominous, maybe even evil cover of Trust Me, I'm Lying. It might seem as difficult to reconcile. And indeed, it is. And I talk about this in the intro of the book. I was, of course, familiar with Stoicism when I wrote that book. I was, of course, studying Stoic philosophy before I even got into marketing. And, you know, I've read Marx's Ruse many times in those years that I worked for those controversial clients. Was it hypocrisy? Was I a bad person? I mean, I don't get to say that. But what I think about it, and as I reflected on it when I wrote that book, is that I was not integrated. I had these two different parts of myself that were very not aligned.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  Does that make sense? Like, it's funny, we use the word disintegration to mean like comes apart, right? But really, what it would mean, dis and integrated means not integrated. And that's what I was. I was not integrated. I had these different spheres. I had this part of me that really liked philosophy, that really believed in these ideas and Stoicism, and was trying to apply them in my life. And then I had my actual occupation and day job, where I was, you know, pulling these marketing stunts and, you know, living, I want to say, an unphilosophical life, but certainly not a life fully in accordance with the philosophical ideas. I don't think I was making the world a better place. And that's partly why I wrote the book, partly why I changed. The philosophy helped me get there. But for a long time, these, these things were compartmentalized.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  They were not integrated. And so I think that's what Epictetus is talking about. It says, "You must be a unified human being. You can't be these different things." Seneca was not a unified human being. He was a brilliant artist. And a ruthless power broker. He was a philosopher who also coveted wealth and status and influence, wanted to be on the inside of things. And that disintegration, some would call hypocrisy, I would just say was was not the integration he needed. And he got closer to that integration as he got older. He ultimately leaves Nero Service and dedicates the last few years of his life to getting there. And that's where I think a lot of his best work is from. But that lack of integration is a problem for all

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  of us, right? You say you love your spouse, that your family is really important. And then, you know, you spend all your time at the office, or maybe you're having an affair. Or, you know, you say you care about the environment, but then look at some of your personal decisions, right? You claim to be a good person, but then look at how you treat people who are close to you, right? Hypocrisy is one thing, but I think it's often that we have trouble just applying what we believe, or applying it fully, or seeing, in fact, that the way that we're acting, which feels normal, or appropriate, or necessary, given our profession, is actually not in accordance with our values, or as the Stoics would say, not in accordance with nature, not who we're supposed to be, what

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  we're capable of be. So this integration is the work that we need to do, both in studying the philosophy, maybe it's going to therapy, maybe a relationship helps you get there, maybe just long conversations, a lot of self-awareness. I think ultimately, not to reference another one of my books, but it's our busyness, our franticness, our yearning, or or push for things that keeps us so busy and preoccupied that we don't notice the disintegration. I think that's largely what it was for me. I was just trying to get ahead, doing cool things as they came up. I was young, had a million things

• 6:30Ryan Holiday?

  going on, didn't want to let certain people down. And so that that lack of awareness about my disintegration was largely rooted in just not having the time, not having the space to reflect, not having literally a minute to do it. And I think part of the reason we keep ourselves busy is so we don't have to do that. Because when we do it, it's painful. When we do it, it demands change. So I'm urging you, I guess, to take a little time to think about whether you're integrated, to think about where you're not a unified person, to think about where you're focusing on things outside your control. Because inevitably, it will tear you apart. It does not end well. And it can make you do things that you're ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  later regret, or have trouble explaining, all of which are true for me, to a certain degree, and true for, I think, anyone as you get older and wiser and better. I'm wishing you much integration and the stillness required to get to that integration. I encourage you to do that work.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say, thank you.