The Daily Stoic - Don’t Waste Your Days With Thinking | Ask Daily Stoic
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Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom
designed to help you in your everyday life.
But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions
from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do.
Sometimes these are from talks.
Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street.
Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners.
But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more
guidance on this philosophy.
We're all trying to follow.
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Don't waste your days with thinking.
Of course the stoke thinks that's what was demiss, that's what philosophy is.
You think things through, you put every impression up to the test.
You question, you examine, you weigh the options you explore.
But at a certain point, this virtue, like all the others, becomes a vice.
Marcus Aurelius knew this, that's why he occasionally had managed himself to throw
away his books, to put away his journals.
Emerson knew this too. You cannot spend the day in deliberation. He said,
we have to get up and be active. We have to get busy with life's purpose, with the problems of life.
While we can, we have to get to do it.
We must be careful that our love of philosophy, that our discipline application
of the discipline of perception is itself disciplined. Too often philosophers become paralyzed
by their own explorations. They think themselves into circles and become prisoners of their
own considerable brains as a result. We have to be able to make quick decisions in an imperfect world.
As Marcus says, sometimes life is simple.
If there are brambles in the path, go around.
If the food is bitter, throw it away, don't overthink it.
Don't get trapped in deliberation or theory.
Don't get lost in the world of ideas.
Be active.
Be clear.
Be decisive.
I have a chapter about being the decider and courage is calling, but I think what we're really
talking about is that as a leader, you have to make the call. You have to put yourself in the
position to make those calls not to get stuck in all the possible contingencies, but to understand
that you have a limited amount of information that ultimately it's fallen on you to make the call.
We talk a lot about this
about making better decisions in the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. I interview Annie Duke,
whose great book How to Decide is a part of what we teach in the process, but it's a six-week
course based on the Stoke principles about how to be a better leader, how to make better decisions,
how to how to how to be the Decider. Like we're talking about, how to be a leader like so many of
the Stoic's were from Kader to Marx to realize, I'd love for you to check out
the challenge you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash leadership challenge.
And of course, if you're a daily stoke, life memory, get that challenge and
all our other challenges totally for free. So you can sign up there at dailystokelife.com.
But check out in the show notes, how can sign up there at dailystokelife.com. But check out in the show notes,
how to sign up for the daily
stoic leadership challenge.
We'd love to have you.
And I'll see you in the sessions. All right, so we'll just take questions and we'll get into it.
Todd, let's do you first, but while you're unmuting, we have a question here.
Someone's asking my personal definition of stoicism, which I sort of defined stoicism
as this idea that we don't control what happens to us.
We control how we respond.
And stoicism
then is a prescription for that response, the four virtues being the sort of the ideals
for how one tries to respond to all situations. Some situations call for courage, some for
temperance, some for justice, some for wisdom, some for all of the above. But that's this
idea. How do we respond to what life throws at us? So Todd, hit
me with your question. So I've really been tuning to the podcast. I'm kind of new to
stoicism. Yeah. Always built a big fan of just following just wisdom or principles that
could just guide me better than life. But yeah, I just been, I got the meditation book, I thought it was fantastic.
And then I've only heard a Kato,
you talk about Kato on the podcast.
Yeah.
So like, starting off, should I just like,
I guess it was diving with I like first
and I'm kind of just far more along from all.
That's a great question.
And I think it all depends, right?
So the idea of the daily stoic was,
it is hard to know what stoic to start with, right?
Like, do you start with Cetica, do you start with Marcus,
do you start with Epictetus, you know, sort of,
and if you pick the wrong one, does that mean stoicism is not for you?
So one of the reasons I did the daily stoic
and then why I do the email is I wanted sort of a sampling,
like a tasting menu or an appetizer board or something like, you take the
ones you like and then you're like, oh, I'm a fan of that.
I'm going to do more of that.
But if I was sort of prescribing where to go next in Stoicism, if someone had picked up
Marcus, I'd probably do Senica next because he's the most bite-sized
and covers the widest range of topics and is probably the most accessible. So there's a great,
I don't know if I have it here. I don't see it. There's Seneca's letters from Estoic,
which I have here, which I love the Penguin translation.
But there's another short penguin one called
On the Shortness of Life and it's a collection of essays from Seneca. I think it's called the Penguin Great Ideas series
Which is very good. And then there's another recent one
Actually two from from the penguin,
or sorry, from the Princeton University press
that I like, there's sort of little collections
of the Stoics, and one is called How to Keep Your Cool,
and the other is called How to Die.
And so those would be like maybe a few selections
from the Stoics that I might start with.
Oh, cool, I'll start with them.
Thanks, man.
All right, appreciate it.
All right.
Let's do.
Christopher Myers.
Good for you.
So I'm 10.
I only been with what's your name?
Oh, my name's Jack.
Hi, Jack.
I'm 10 years old.
I only been on stars in for a few months.
I read your book.
The boy would be key.
I just want to know any tips you have or kids who are these books.
That's awesome.
You are already well ahead of the curve and I'm very impressed.
And it's kind of incredible to think.
Obviously, that book is fictionalized, but Marcus was not that much older than you
when he was selected to be the emperor of wrong.
And so he undergoes this training
that sets him up for his whole life.
And so as you're thinking about this stuff,
it's not just, it's fun and it's interesting
and it's great, but you're also making,
it's like, I'm sure your parents have talked to you about a bank
account.
You know, you put money in a bank account and the interest compounds over time.
Like all these books that you're reading now are going to shape you for the rest of your
life.
And so you're, you're, it's not just that you're ahead of the curve, but this will pay
off for you over the course of your life.
I guess, earlier, someone asked about
my definition of stoicism, I think this idea of like, I focus on what I do in response to what
my parents say, you know, to what your teachers say, to what you're allowed to do and not allowed
to do to the situations you find yourself in. This idea of like most people spend a lot of time
and energy talking about, complaining about, resenting the things that happen that are
not up to them.
And if you can decide really early on in your life that you're going to focus on things
that are up to you, again, this is also a huge advantage that compounds over time.
So every minute that you don't spend complaining about the weather, that you don't, you know,
spend complaining that you have to wear glasses and other kids don't have to wear glasses
or, you know, that you live here instead of here, all the time that you spend focusing
on the parts that are up to you as opposed to the parts that are not up to you, that's
energy that you're spending productively instead of unproductively. And so that would be the big thing that I think about at your age.
But good for you and keep reading and I'm really impressed.
Thank you so much. Of course. All right, so let's see what else we got here.
So someone's asking some recommendations and general things to be aware of as far as getting
the most out of the course.
I would say this idea of like just do it with a beginner's mind.
See it as like, you know, sometimes you have training and then you have to go in and do
retraining or with the vaccine, right?
You get the vaccine and then they make you go get the booster shot.
See this as the booster shot of a reminder of all the things that you've heard of that
you're familiar with, but it's it's a it's a doubling down on it. I think that would be
the big thing. But the other thing is I would just check it every morning. I think the
earlier you check it, the beginning, and maybe spend some time, you know, obviously we
talk a lot about journaling, but as you're thinking
about what to journal about in the morning, what to talk about,
what maybe just the epictetus talks about how it's you take
these thoughts and you write about them, you read them, allowed
you talk to others about them. I think a big part of this is
really engaging with the material in some form or another. So don't
just glance at it at your on your phone, let it go sort of in and out of your mind.
But take a minute to kind of meditate it on it and stew on it, find some use for it. And I think that would have, I think that would have a great,
a great impact. So let's do Wendy. I'm going to unmute you here.
It looks, it looks quite nice where you are do Wendy. I'm gonna unmute you here.
It looks quite nice where you are, Wendy. It's beautiful.
Hi, how are you?
It's good to be here.
I live right outside of you, Semite.
So it's a love.
Yeah.
So when you gave the you showed all the different philosophers
and when they were philosophizing,
Port, a chattel, the iron woman, I had never heard of her before.
Yeah.
So where do I find her and does she have any writings or is
anybody written about her?
So I have a whole chapter about her in lives of the Stoics.
OK.
And there isn't too much about her.
Unfortunately, although I would argue there were many, many still at women over the centuries,
especially Musoneus Rufus famously says that men and women should both be taught philosophy.
The problem is they just, they just weren't recorded, right?
They just weren't written about a lot.
So there's not a ton about Portia Cato, but she does come up in Plutarch's essay
about Cato the Younger, which is one of the sources we have. There's obviously the chapter about
her in Lives of the Stoics. Let me see if I can show it to you. This is it.
And, but then she also appears in Cato, sorry, in Shakespeare's play, Julia Caesar, she's a character.
But other than that, there isn't unfortunately a ton about her.
So, we're kind of, we're trying to, kind of guessing a little bit, but it was very important
to me to have a female stoic in the book, at least a historical one.
And I thought she was just, you know, a complete badass.
Yeah, right.
Well, I appreciate you including her.
And then the second thing is on the comments place book,
what are you putting, are you, I mean,
I'm inspired by a lot of things.
So do I put everything or am I more discerning?
So the short answer would be do whatever you want, do whatever feels right to you.
I try not to answer the questions about the commonplace book too much as far as like what's
the right way or wrong way to do it because the way I do it is obviously for me as a
person, but then also my job is to use a lot of the stuff that I write down.
So, I always have an eye as I'm writing stuff down, am I going to use this in some way, right?
So, like the book that I'm working on right now, or sorry, I'm working on a series on the four virtues.
So, my note card, I do it on the note cards, but then I have courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. And then at the top of each card,
I underline what virtue this thing pertains to.
So like right now, most of the research that I'm doing
is specifically to find stuff to use
for one of those four books, right?
So, but generally, and I've been doing it for a long time, I try just to write stuff
down that's interesting. If I feel like it's getting too much, I usually just take a break
because I don't want my fatigue in the moment to cost me something that, you know, 10 years
from now, I'll really have enjoyed or want to reference or know about.
The other little trick that I'll do, sometimes I'll just write to myself in shorthand, like
I'll just go like really good story about X, you know, page 23, you know, insert book
here.
And so I'm not going to take the time to write it down, but I am just putting like a little
breadcrumb that, you know, if I go back through maybe I'd need it.
Oh, I like that.
I like the reference.
That's great.
Thank you so much.
I love being with your community.
I really, really do it.
Thank you.
The other thing I would recommend, there's a great tool out there that's sort of a digital
version of the commonplace book.
Again, I do mine all by hand, but there's a company called Rome Research, R-O-A-M.
And there's this like, it's very cool.
There's some cool videos about it, but if you're looking for a more digital version,
I might check that out as well.
Okay, cool.
Thanks, Ryan.
Yeah.
Let's do Lance.
Think Lance might have frozen.
All right, John, you've got a question.
Yes, I do. So question for you in regards to the circles of control.
Yes.
And do you have controlling what you control?
You posted a really good diagram on the daily stoic life Facebook group.
So I accidentally mistype that this morning.
It circles one way to look at it would be circles of control.
Okay.
I think what he's really saying, those circles of concern.
So these are the people that you, so your first concern is obviously your stuff, what
you control.
And then he says, you know, after that, there's like your spouse and your family, then your extended
family, then your community, or your neighborhood, your community, your town, your city, your
state, your country, the world, right?
So, it's the idea that there's these sort of concentric circles of people we're concerned
about.
But this is Heriocles, one of the later Stoics,
who unfortunately isn't in lives of the Stoics
because other than this one thing,
we don't know anything else about him
and the point of lives of the Stoics
is the lives of the Stoics.
But this idea of circles of concern,
it's not saying like, oh, I'm the smallest circle
at the center, I'm the smallest circle at the center.
I'm the most important.
What he's saying is that you're trying to draw the outer circles into the inner circle.
And Billy, maybe could you link to this circles of concern thing in the chat so people can
see it?
Yep, I'll go.
But the idea is you're supposed to try to consider the idea that you want to have as much
impact for the circles closest to you as possible.
But the ideas you want to get to a place where you think about the community, the world,
the planet, the nation, whatever, almost at the same way that you care about members of
your own family and you're supposed to be expanding
that circles of concern, if that makes sense.
Sure.
Yeah.
Sure.
Kind of followed that up.
I mean, how would you recommend doing that?
Is it the idea of just putting yourself and the other person?
Choose or do you have another technique that you used to do that?
Well, so the reason I was posting that is there was a New York Times article this morning
about the struggle to get to herd immunity in the United States with the vaccine.
And the primary, there's obviously some people who are, you know, convinced that it's
bad for you or they're scared of needles or whatever, or that this is all a giant hopes.
But the main impediment seems to be young, healthy people or people who have already gotten it who are saying,
why do I need this? I'm fine. Right? And so when you think about the circles of concern,
the idea is to go, look, I'm in my early 30s. I've got a good immune system. I'm young. I'm healthy.
I don't spend a lot of time around people. I probably don't need to get the vaccine, right?
The purpose of getting the vaccine, though, is not for me.
The idea isn't about creating a wall around yourself
to protect you from COVID.
The idea is that if everyone collectively
contributes their little part of the wall,
then we get a wall around everyone
which protects the vulnerable.
So I think, you know what, I just love the idea that 2000 years ago,
the Stokes were struggling with this idea.
And then here in the modern world
in the midst of this pandemic,
we had the perfect illustration of that idea.
But the idea is how can you start to think about
the way that your individual actions impact other people?
So as an example with the Daily Stoic, right?
Let's say the coins that we make, right?
So, you think it's just, okay,
I'm gonna make this physical product
and I'm gonna sell it, right?
Now, what's best for me is obviously to sell it,
to manufacture it for as little as possible
because then there would be more profit in it, right?
And then, you know, we were buying them from this manufacturer
that put them in a little plastic bag,
and the little plastic bag was free,
so what do I care that he puts it in a plastic bag, right?
So two decisions there, for me, mean one thing,
but for the world, mean another thing.
And so this idea of thinking about,
so it's like, okay, I could make them in China,
but perhaps they're being made with slave labor
or perhaps they're being made in some unethical way.
And then I'm also having to ship them from across the ocean.
So the decision to say manufacture
in the United States at a company
that pays its workers a fair wage
and offers them benefits, et cetera.
In one sense, that comes at my expense.
On the other hand, if I do the cheap one,
it comes at the expense of someone else.
Covering them in these plastic bags,
I don't live in the ocean,
so it's not a problem for me,
but I'm
trying to think about the environmental impact of those decisions.
So I think the circles of concern become relevant to us as we make decisions, as individuals,
as citizens, as business people, as countries, etc.
How does our impact ripple through the world?
That's what the circles of concern is about.
That's great, thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast.
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