The Daily Stoic - You Don’t Get Time. You Make Time. | Solve Problems Early

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wis, perseverance, and the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, really a Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out in the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars.

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I'm excited to see what you all come up with trying inside tracker, inside tracker.com slash stoic, you get 20% off using that landing page. You don't get time. You make time. Nothing illustrates how little control we actively assert over our lives than our relationship with reading. Oh, I wish I had time to read more. Oh, I'll squeeze in a few more minutes of reading before bed. Oh, and the kids are older all. Get back into the habit. Oh, my secret is audiobooks on 2X speed. 2,000 years ago, Seneca talked about how people mistakenly prioritize a million trivial responsibilities, and give the leftovers to philosophy and reflection.

That's how we treat books too. We act as if everything is more important. Only when we're alone or have some unexpected quiet time or literally have nothing else to do, that we finally sit down with a book. It's preposterously out of balance. You read on your phone all day, Facebook posts, Instagram captions, YouTube subtitles, when you can't watch a video sound.

Sometimes you even read articles. At the same time, you read and respond to emails all day, most of which are not remotely important. And at no point during the tsunami of garbage do you say to yourself, I don't have time for another stupid meaning, I've got to get through this volume of history. The opposite? Well, it's just implying. If you want to read, you have to make time.

If you want to get better as a person, you have to make time for philosophy. Harve it out. Make it non-negotiable. Prioritize it. Give the leftovers to the errands or see what errands you can avoid. Gladly pay the grocery delivery fee if it means a few more minutes with Marcus Relius. Cancel the phone call and save for that audio book on regular speed. Put your phone in the drawer and sit down with your journal. Make the time.

DeGalte. Napoleon did Marcus did. You can do it too. Solve problems early. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoke 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly, my co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman. You can get signed copies by the way. And the Daily Stoke store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke in

print now, it's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestseller. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best soloists. Just awesome experience. But hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. Today's quote is from Seneca Moral Letters 116. There is no vice which lacks a defense.

None that at the outset isn't modest and easily intervened. But after this, the trouble spreads widely. If you allow it to get started, you won't be able to control it when it stops. Every emotion is at first weak. Later, it rouses itself and gathers strength as it moves along. It's easier to slow it down and to supplant it. Publilius Cirrus, he was a Roman slave and a stoic philosopher. He said rivers are

Easiest to cross at their source and I think that's what Sennaqa means to the raging waters in deadly currents of a bad habit ill-discipline chaos This function somewhere they began as no more than a slight trickle. Somewhere they are a placid lake or a pond, even a bubbling underground spring. What would you rather do, nearly drown in a dangerous crossing in a few weeks across now? Well, it's still easy. It's up to you. You know, there's that expression you nip it in the bud. That's what I think. I'll give you a somewhat of a personal example. I am not an addict in the sense that I am like in recovery, but I find that it's just about anything I do, I can

do compulsively tend to do compulsively and can very easily develop an unhealthy relationship with. So people ask me like, what did the stoics say about drinking or drugs? Do you do those things? And I don't. I don't do them exactly because the stoics forbid them or that I specifically have a problem abusing them. I just know it's a slippery slope for me. It's a road better not gone down by me. So I nip it in the butt. I just sort of have a bright policy. I don't really drink. I don't smoke. I just don't do drugs. I just don't do it. I keep it away. It's easier for me now. Like, you know, I sometimes joke, I was like, I don't really like the taste because I don't, I don't enjoy the taste of let's say alcohol. And people

go, oh, it's an acquired taste. And I go, but yeah, knowing myself getting over that hurdle is not going to put me in a better position now. Now I have the instinctive, almost child like a version to it. And I want it. And I wanna keep it that way. Cause once I get over it, that buffer's not there anymore. So I like to joke I don't do acquired tastes. The point is, not doing the things at all, not putting myself in a position

where I can abuse or do them to excess has been quite beneficial to me. Another way to think about this would be like, what's the person that really pisses you off or what's the subject matter that you find when you talk to your parents about is always a source of conflict or argument. Well, maybe just steer clear of that altogether, right?

In the way again, like a gambling addict doesn't go to Las Vegas. Cross the things early, knit them in the bud, early. Notice the warning signs, notice the grumblings, notice the aversion and listen to that. Listen to that voice. Head it off at the pass, right? Solve it in advance. Put yourself in a position where you don't need superhuman willpower, where you don't need strength and perseverance and the inner citadel. You don't need that stuff. That's what I think the stoics are talking about. And to me this is a nice

definition of temperance, moderation, sort of having a sense of self-awareness. What you can do, what you can't do, who you are, how you're wired, think about it that way, and then make your decisions accordingly. And if some people think that's weird or lame or unusual or you're missing out on fun, you know, that's their issue. You know yourself, you know what you should be thinking about, what you know you should be doing, the decisions you can make to put yourself in a position to be successful and choose and act accordingly. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast.

Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The app goes away. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key. The leatherbound edition of the Daily Stoke, We have them all in the Daily Stoke store. You can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery

Plus in Apple Podcasts. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs

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