What Do You Do When You Have Nothing To Do? | Don't Let Your Soul Go First

The in-between moments. The extra time you were planning to get. What do you do in these moments? The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge is 3 weeks of ALL-NEW, actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy, to help you create a better life, and a new you in 2025. Why 3 weeks? Because it takes human beings 21 days to build new habits and skills, to create the muscle memory of making beautiful choices each and every day. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge today to sign up. Get The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life📕 The Daily Stoic eBook is on sale for $2.99! Grab yours now at dailystoic.com/discount🎙️ 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 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  What do you do when you have nothing to do? The in-between moments, the lulls, the waiting, the extra time you weren't planning to get. What do you do in those moments? For many of us, these brief windows are instantly filled with what Seneca called busy idleness. We get occupied by mindless and meaningless distractions. We check email, we gossip, we sit there waiting for it to be over. Over on the Daily Stoic Podcast, we were talking to James about one of the challenges in the New Year, New You Challenge, which we don't want to spoil, and you should definitely join. You know the link by now, I'm sure, but I'll link to it. And anyways, it prompted him to say, really interesting,

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  which if you haven't listened to the interview, you definitely should. I'll just, I'll play what he said, because it was great.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I like the idea of having good defaults. You know, I, sometimes the way I phrase it is, what do you do when you have nothing to do? So like, for a lot of people, when they have nothing to do, when they've got a 10-second break while they're standing in line at the store, or when they, you know, have five minutes in between a meeting, what they do is they scroll on their phone. They pull up social media, they look at, you know, whatever. They, they have a default mode that they go into when they have nothing to do. And what I've really tried to do, I'm still working on this, I definitely don't have this figured out. But what I've, what I've tried to do is have a better answer to what do I do when I have nothing to do?

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  In Book One of Meditations, this is one of the things that Marcus said he admired most about Antoninus, that he was, quote, "not prone to be pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things." Antoninus knew what to do when he had nothing to do. He was able to avoid being pulled in all directions because he had his defaults, he had his priorities, and he had discipline. And we encourage you to find yours because those in-between moments, they're, they're not insignificant. They're not nothing. They're your time, time you will never get back. And it adds up, shaping not just our days, but our lives. And again, if you haven't signed

• 2:50Ryan Holiday?

  up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year Challenge, definitely do that. DailyStoic.com/challenge. I appreciate James popping by and chatting, and I think you'll really like the challenge. DailyStoic.com/challenge.

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today, we are talking about the December 27th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. I am holding a cloth-bound one here, although I just signed so many leather-bound Daily Stoics to get out for people for gifts for the holidays. And then this is the window, something like 30 or 40% of all the sales of the Daily Stoic come like this several week period, like the last half of December, first half of January. It's crazy. Everyone is just like, gifts, wanted to get serious,

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  wanted to make changes. I love it. It's really cool. And, you know, we end up discounting the ebook of Daily Stoic in this period. So if you look where you get ebooks, it's probably like $1.99 on Kindle and everywhere you get books. So check that out as well. I'll put a link in today's show notes. But in the meantime, today's quote comes from Meditation 629, "It's a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to." The title of the entry is based on that. "Don't Let Your Soul Go First." Despite his privileges, Marcus Aurelius had a difficult life. The Roman historian Cassius Dio used that Marcus did not meet with the good fortune

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles through practically his entire reign. At one point, he was so sick that a rumor spread that he had died, and matters were made worse when his most trusted general used it as an opportunity to declare himself the new emperor. But throughout these struggles, the years at war, the crippling illnesses, his troubled son, he never gave up. It's an inspiring example for us to think about today if we get tired, or frustrated, or have to deal with some crisis. Here was a guy who had every reason to be angry and bitter, who could have abandoned his principles and lived in luxury or ease, who could have put his responsibilities aside and focused on his own health. But he never did.

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  His soul stayed strong even after his body became weak. He didn't give up, right up until the second that his body finally did, when he died near Vienna in the year 180 AD. Yeah, Marcus Aurelius was a tough dude. I've said this before, but the fact that this guy who buried multiple children, who had chronic illnesses, who experienced betrayal, and pain, and loss, and heartbreak, and disaster after disaster, that he kept going, was a profound statement of hope and resilience and sheer willpower. That, to me, is what Stoicism is.

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  It's not this, "Oh, I don't feel anything nihilism." It's this love of what you do and who you are. That's what he talks about in that famous passage about waking up early in Book V of Meditations. Like, it's these people who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. They just stay at it. They just keep going. They don't quit. And he had so many reasons to give up, so many reasons to not go on, so many reasons to take an easier way out, and he didn't. And I find that very... Very impressive. I actually thought of it briefly. I told you I was at the White House for their Christmas party and Biden came out and gave a brief talk and left my

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  feeling about where we are politically, we don't have to get into and we don't even have to get into the sort of, you know, is there this problem with aging politicians not making room for a new generation? I think there's a lot of validity in that, but you just like the next day I was reading, I was still in DC because I was giving a talk the next day, but he had then flown back home to Delaware where he was laying a wreath at, you know, the gravesite of his wife and his young daughter who died in that car accident in the seventies, right at the beginning of his political career. He had a reason to give up and not keep going just then. Stutter. You know, again, it's sad. We're at a place politically where, again, whatever you think of some of his policies, and if you think

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  he did a bad job as president, or you think he should have left the presidency earlier, this is a tough dude. This is a dude who life knocked around, who could have spent his golden years not in public service, could have just cashed in on the speaking circuit or the memoir circuit or any number of things. And again, I think it's negative that we only look at it as, oh, you know, clinging to power. I'm sure that's a part of it. That's what draws everyone to politics. This is like, I have many reasons why I do what I do, some more selfish than others. But he also clearly had policy aims that he wanted to accomplish. He also clearly thought he could do a good job and he stuck with it.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  And for the Stoics, this idea of a long life of public service, a long life of being committed to your ideals, being involved in the thick of things, not taking the easy way out, not retiring in indolence, even if it's much deserved. Certainly Biden would relate to the idea of a troublesome son and, you know, didn't always, didn't always get it right. Certainly Marcus didn't always get it right as history shows us. But these things, you know, again, right or wrong decision, it's exhausting. It would take so much out of

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  you. Yeah, I just thought about that as I saw him up there and some element of it was also. You know, it just seemed crazy that he thought I could go another four years. But maybe that's sort of the point is you think you have more in you than you do. Marx realist dies on the job. And then when it sort of snuck up on him, he said, uh, go to the rising sun for I am setting. You know, inevitably, we'll all be that setting sun at some point. And, um, the idea, I guess, to quote the, the famous poem is that we don't go quietly into

• 9:37Ryan Holiday?

  the, into that good night that we push, we stay at it. We don't give up before our time because you know, there was another moment, the, the betrayal that Cassius Dio tells us about involving Avidius Cassius, his general who declares himself emperor. Marcus was sick and supposedly near death and he had been written off. It had been assumed that he had nothing left, that he had expired. But he had, in fact, many years left. That's what we're, that's what we're talking about. And we mean this in, in the big ways, like in the presidency, but also in the small ways, you know, to make time for your grandchildren, to make time for your children, to be a resource,

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  to be an ally, to be a mentor, as long as you've still got the juice in you, you know, to keep doing good. I think of Jake Seliger, who, who died this year, uh, my friend who we had on the podcast. I mean, he was writing and publishing up until his last days and that work was meaningful to him, I'm sure, but it was meaningful to me and it's still there and people are still discovering it and it means something. And I think that's what Marcus is talking about here. As long as you've got a little left in you, do what you can with it, stick around, make a positive difference, tough it out.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  This is what we're training for, preparing for. This is what, one of the things that philosophy helps us with. And that's my message. So again, look, this comparison isn't to imply that anyone is like Marcus Aurelius. Anyone is a king, anyone is a philosopher king. That's not what I'm saying. I was just struck by the timelessness of that story of people in power. And the way life takes its toll on us. And at some moments, maybe we still feel young, we still feel like we've got it in us. But it has unmistakably worn us down. But that spirit inside us has to stay there, has to keep going. And, and yeah, look, I do think he's a consequential president. I think he accomplished quite a bit.

• 11:44Ryan Holiday?

  I think he ironically did probably more for what we would call the working class in this country. And then watched, watched as those were precisely the voters who abandoned him. Again, a timeless idea. Marcus Aurelius talks about being a leader is to earn a bad reputation by good deeds. I think history will come around. We're in it now, probably end up being judged like a Carter or a Truman. Unpopular when they left office, but not in the George Bush sense of the word where, you know, a disaster well in the making continues to get worse and worse and worse. I think it'll be the opposite. We'll start to see the payoff of some of these things as time goes by.

• 12:29Ryan Holiday?

  And certainly the, the fundamental decency and sincerity and commitment to public service. Tragedy of being painted as somehow corrupt by one of the most corrupt politicians in American history is again, a tragic irony. And look, as the transition of power comes here in the next few days, I don't think we need to worry about anyone leading a coup against the US government. He'll be in the audience at the inauguration peacefully handing over.

• 13:04Ryan Holiday?

  Power and there's something noble and stoic about that, even though I'm sure he has a number of doubts, probably better information than most of us do about, you know, the handoff that he's having to make. But this is, there is something, I think, lowercase stoic about all this. Certainly as a practicing Catholic, he'd be quite familiar with all those cardinal virtues, courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. I don't know, I'm, I'm losing the, the thread on this. It's, it's late in the evening now. I've just signed like a bazillion books. I just went for a run. So I'm getting a little tired. I hope you had a good Christmas. If you celebrate, hope you're ready for the new year. Don't get

• 13:44Ryan Holiday?

  too crazy. And I hope I can see you in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which is built around challenges to toughen you up and build some of that will and to explore some of these ideas from the Stoics. And you can sign up for that at dailystoic.com/challenge. We're just putting the final touches on it now. I think it's awesome. I think it's our best one yet. We do a new one each year. We spend the good chunk of the year coming up with the days, fine tuning and workshopping and building out resources. And then we get all the tech behind it and everything. It's our biggest production. It's a huge part of what we do here at Daily Stoic. I think it's gonna be awesome. And by the way, you can get all our challenges for free, including the New Year, New You Challenge as part of a Daily Stoic Life membership,

• 14:26Ryan Holiday?

  which you can grab right now at dailystoiclife.com. And I hope to see you in it on January 1st. Just sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge and I'll see you there.

• 14:39Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.