A few years ago, I was really stuck. I had accepted a one-year consulting contract that required me to commute from Austin to Los Angeles. It paid very well, but the gig was a disaster.

Everything was in chaos. No one could get anything done. We were at the complete mercy of a Wall Street hedge fund and a bunch of lawyers who were battling for control of the company.

I was frustrated. After I ran into a brick wall multiple times, it was like learned helplessness. What could I do? What was the point? I decided to just sit there and collect my checks while I waited for my contract to end.

Then I remembered a piece of advice I had gotten from the author Robert Greene many years earlier. He told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing.

Robert knows a lot about alive time and dead time. Although most people think of him as an incredibly productive and accomplished writer of amazing books, they don’t know about the 20 years he spent in obscurity, working something like 80 different jobs — most of which he hated—where he was at the mercy of horrible bosses.

As he said, “The worst thing in life you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.”

This does not mean you should quit your job immediately if you don’t love it. What Robert did during those years greatly influenced his writing. He wasn’t dead in those dead-end jobs; he was alive — researching, learning, studying, and observing the forces he would document in 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.

So I decided I would make the absolute most of every moment while I was stuck in L.A.

I could not control what was going on with the board of directors, but I could choose how to spend my days. I decided to make the next several months a kind of work-study program. I was going to learn everything I could about people, about myself, about the factors that had created this crisis. I was also going to fill every nonworking second with productive reading and research.

Here is my desk and the books I read in that time (compare that to a shot from earlier that summer):

Here is the notebook I filled, writing a daily note to myself (I decided I would open the journal every day before checking email).

Here is the box of notecards I filled. I am most proud of the second box because these notes became my book, Ego is the Enemy.

As frustrated as I was with that consulting gig, it was actually the perfect place for me to research and meditate on that book I was thinking about writing. (You could say the obstacle was the way.)

Life is constantly asking us, Is this going to be alive time or dead time?

A long commute. Are we going to zone out or listen to an audiobook?

A delayed flight. Are we going to get in a couple of miles by walking around the terminal or shove a Cinnabon into our face?

A tour of duty or a contract we have to earn out. Is this tying us down or freeing us up?

That’s our call.

In Ego, I told the story of Malcolm Little. In 1946 he was arrested for trying to fence an expensive watch he’d stolen. In his apartment, police found jewelry, furs, an arsenal of guns, and all his burglary tools. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He could have served his time simply counting the days. He could have planned his next crime spree. Instead, he started reading. He literally copied the dictionary word for word. Every minute he wasn’t in his bunk, he was in the library. That was how Malcolm Little was transformed into Malcolm X.

Why did Malcolm X wear glasses? Because he literally wore his eyes out reading in prison.

But the trade-off was worth it. Those five years he served were some of the most productive of his life. He breathed in every second while his fellow prisoners rotted away.

So many people are busy thinking about the future that they miss the opportunities right in front of them. We think the future is something that happens, rather than something we make.

We think, This is just a job; this is just a crappy couple of [months, minutes, weeks]. It doesn’t matter. We tell ourselves that we’re just doing this to pay for school or because we have to. That no good can come out of it, except the direct deposit every two weeks.

I carry this medallion with me everywhere I go…

Like Robert says, if you’re going to think like that, you might as well be dead. Your mind apparently is.

We have to choose to make every moment a moment of alive time. We have to decide to be present. To make the most of whatever is in front of us.

Might it be better if we were totally free; if we weren’t stuck in traffic or at the airport or on some dumb assignment from our idiot boss? Sure. But we aren’t.

So what are we going to do about it? We are going to find some advantage.

Pick up a book. Pick up a pen. Pick up the phone.

Open your eyes. Open your ears. Open your mind.

There is plenty you can get out of this. Plenty you can do to make this productive, purposeful time—even if the situation is not completely in your control.

Resist the temptation to let silly politics or wanderlust distract you. Resist the resentment or the despondency. These things won’t help you. Only hunger and determination will.

In the 1960s, French political protesters used the slogan Vivre sans temps mort(live without wasted time). That’s what great leaders and artists have done, even in terrible conditions like a prison sentence, an exile, a bear market or a depression, military conscription, even being sent to a concentration camp (see Viktor Frankl). Through their attitude and approach, they transformed their circumstances into something that fueled greatness.

They asked themselves, alive time or dead time? They answered with their actions. Can you?

As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?

WATCH: Ryan Holiday talks about his everyday carries

One of my favorite quotes is from Robert Louis Stevenson: To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom. He also says it’s the beginning of being old, but I ignore that part. 

The point is I make a point to find out what I like and stick to it. While I am generally pretty minimalist—the Stoics were not big on extraneous possessions—I do have a handful of things that are of great utility (or meaning) to me and I carry them with me. And that’s the purpose of today’s piece: to show you what is in what you might call my “everyday carry.”

Some of these things are cheap. Some of them are not. Some of them are replaceable, others are not. To Seneca, the key was to be able to live—and act—as if all one’s possessions were equal, to live without worry of losing. I can’t say that I’m there yet, but I try to be. 

I also try to know what is best so I don’t waste time and energy with flawed design or products that make my life worse. 

Apple Watch — Our lives are tick… tick… ticking away. I like having the reminder on my wrist. At the same time, I don’t use it for any form of alerts or messaging. Honestly for me, it’s just an expensive pedometer/run tracker. It has actually helped me swim better because I don’t have to count laps. I post my swims/runs on Instagram and people ask what kind of watch it is all the time. Literally the most popular watch in the world!

Wedding ring — I have to be honest, I don’t wear my wedding ring everyday. Not because I don’t love my wife, but because I am afraid of losing it in the pool and also it gets too hot in Texas (and your hands swell). But I do carry my marriage with me everywhere. I cannot recommend getting married highly enough. I have a whole chapter on the importance of finding a partner in Stillness is the Key for a reason. 

Signet ring — You’ll notice in most of my author photos that I am wearing a black agate signet ring. This was my grandfather’s ring, and he left it to me when he died. Wearing it makes me feel connected to him. When I’m not wearing it, I wear a Memento Mori signet ring (which has Marcus Aurelius’ famous quote on the inside: You could leave life right now… let that determine what you do and say and think). People have been wearing signet rings for thousands of years, I love the symbolism of it, and here’s a piece we put together on the history of them. 

Power Wash Tee (or vintage tee) — Being able to wear and dress as I please is important to me—at least the freedom of it is. So I am in a T-shirt most days. I basically live in the American Apparel Power Wash Tee, which is the standard American Apparel T-shirt but treated so it mimics a shirt that has been washed roughly 50 times. Unfortunately, the company is basically a ghost ship these days, so the shirts are harder to find than they used to be. If I’m not wearing one, I usually wear vintage concert t-shirts, either that I bought myself or I found on Etsy (if you care about the environment, wearing vintage clothes is actually a basic thing you can do to reduce your footprint).

Memento Mori challenge coin — In my left pocket, I carry a coin that says Memento Mori, which is Latin for ”remember you will die.” On the back, it has one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius: “You could leave life right now.” I firmly believe the thought of our mortality should shadow everything that we do, not in a way that is depressing, but liberating. It should let you cut out bullshit, it should let you decide how you’re going to treat other people and let yourself be treated, and it should determine the quality of the work that you’re going to do.

Amor Fati coin — In my right pocket, I carry another coin that says Amor Fati on the front, and the line Friedrich Nietzsche called his formula for greatness on the back: “Not merely bear what is necessary… but love it.” The reason? To constantly remind myself that nothing bad can really happen—there is only fuel. That everything I face can be of some purpose. The line from Marcus Aurelius was that a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. The artist that turns pain and frustration and even humiliation into beauty. The entrepreneur that turns a sticking point into a money maker. The person who takes their own experiences and turns them into wisdom that can be learned from and passed on to others. The Stoics talk about it over and over: we don’t get to choose so much of what happens to us in life, but we can always choose how we feel about it, whether we’re going to work with it or not. Why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good? Why would you choose not to work with it? What would that accomplish? Those are the questions I have to remind myself of. 

A book — You should always have a book with you. Always. People often assume something about me: that I’m a speed reader. It’s the most common email I get. They see all the books I recommend every month in my reading newsletter and assume I must have some secret. They want to know my trick for reading so fast. The truth is, even though I read hundreds of books each year, I actually read quite slow. In fact, I read deliberately slow (more on this below). But what I also do is read all the time. I am always carrying a book with me. Every time I get a second, I crack it open. I don’t install games on my phone—that’s time for reading. When I’m eating, on a plane, in a waiting room, or sitting in traffic in an Uber—I read. There’s no trick, no secret, no shortcut. I like B.H. Liddell Hart’s old line that sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. If you put the time in, you get the results. If you are serious about wanting to commit to being a better reader, I think you’ll like the reading challenge I put together. 

Journals — I only have to carry these with me when I travel (the rest of the time they stay at home) but when I do, I lug them everywhere. In the first one—a small blue gold-leafed notebook—I write one sentence about the day that just passed. Then in a black Moleskine, I quickly journal yesterday’s workout (how far I ran or swam), what work I did, any notable occurrences, and some lines about what I am grateful for, what I want to get better at, and where I am succeeding. Last is The Daily Stoic Journal where I prepare for the day ahead by meditating on a short prompt; the key is setting an intention or a goal for the day that I can review at the end of the day. I got asked a lot on podcasts and at events and appearances for Stillness Is The Key about the best way to develop stillness in your life. Journaling is usually at the top of that list, and so I put together this comprehensive guide to journaling. 

Pen (stolen from the last hotel I stayed in) — I always carry a pen with me to mark up the book I am carrying. As I said above, I’m a slow reader. I take notes, I ask questions, I mark anything that sticks out at me as I read—passages, words, anecdotes, stories, info. It’s what the best readers do, period. It’s called “marginalia.” Then I fold the bottom corners of the pages of the particular passages I want to come back to and when I finish a book, I go back through and transcribe them onto notecards for my commonplace book.

AirPods — I balked at the price too, but turns out they were worth every penny. Not just because I never get frustrated with tangled wires, but because it helps me leave my phone in my pocket. The more that it’s in my pocket, the more alive, present, and in control I am. Cal Newport calls it “digital minimalism”—the idea that we need to be in control of these technologies rather than be controlled by them. Because as my watch and Memento Mori coin are reminding me, this is my life and it’s ticking away every second. I want to be there for it, not staring at a screen.

iPhone — The phone is probably the antithesis of philosophy but unfortunately a part of modern life (and work). I use it only for music, podcasts, calls, and emails. No alerts. No social media. No news. No watching TV or movies. It stays in the pocket most of the time (thanks to the AirPods). For tips on using your phone less, try this piece I did a few months ago. 

***

There’s a beautiful story about a Buddhist teacher named Ajahn Chah. He lifts a crystal goblet from his side table and holds it up to the sun. “Do you see this glass?” he says to his students. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When you understand that this glass is already broken,” Chah says, “every minute with it is precious.”

That’s what I try to remind myself with all of these things, especially the ones that really mean something to me: that the cup is already broken. The ring is already lost. The screen on the phone is already cracked. My dog-eared copy of Meditations just fell apart. Ownership—much like existence—is transitory. So while I prize these possessions, they are also a great reminder of how ephemeral all of this is. The Stoics talk a lot about detachment, loosening the hold that possessions have on us, embracing the truth of uncertainty, having the ability to enjoy whatever is in front of you, whether that’s a brand new Tesla or a beat-up Taurus. “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver,” Seneca wrote, “but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware.” 

That’s the idea. You don’t have to abstain from having nice things. If you can afford it, or if it was given to you, what’s the point? What you do have to reject is the idea that they say anything about you as a person. You have to reject the idea that these things are somehow special because they are valuable or because other people desire them. The Stoics would urge us to remember that things don’t make the man.

There are two tragedies in life, Oscar Wilde once said: not getting what you want and getting everything you want. The last, he lamented, is much worse. 

I wanted to be a writer. I don’t know when that dream started, but for a very long time, I craved accomplishment in this creative calling that very few are lucky enough to make a living in, let alone find success in. 

Of course, like most people, I also fantasized about what it would be like to have money, or more specifically, to have lots of it. It’d be cool to be a little famous too, while I was at it. To be connected with or have influence over important people, to be sought after for advice or input. That has to be awesome too, right? 

Maybe, apart from the genuine love of writing, that’s what attracted me to being an author. It was a way to have all those things. And indeed, in the last year or so, it has become harder to deny that I have accomplished most of them. 

My books have sold extremely well. They have been reviewed in major newspapers and are translated in dozens of languages. Looking at my bank account here, as I write this, I am relieved to say that I don’t really need to think about money anymore. Few authors make that life-changing, generational kind of wealth, but I’ve done well enough to have my and my family’s needs met without worry, probably for good. If that weren’t lucky enough, I regularly get invited to speak with all sorts of interesting people from the worlds of politics, finance, sports, and entrepreneurship, to name a few. 

So how does that feel? How does it feel to have everything you ever wanted in life? To have it earlier than you ever could have realistically expected?

I can tell you: It feels like nothing. 

Hitting #1 on the bestseller list?

Looking at a comfortable bank balance?

Sitting across the table from some powerful person as they hang on your every word?

Nothing.

In the new Taylor Swift documentary she talks about that moment where 1989 came out and utterly dominated the music industry. “Oh god that was all you wanted,” was the only thought in her head as she won Album of the Year for the second time. “That was all you wanted. That was all you focused on…. You get to the mountaintop and you look around and you’re like, ‘Oh God, what now?’

Ten years ago, I probably would have scoffed at that, whether I was hearing it from a  mega-famous mega-millionaire or a grandparent. I know that was my reaction a long time ago to a beautiful passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

“From that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”

But today, I get it. I understand that existential angst. You work so long and hard to accomplish what feel like crazy pie-in-the-sky dreams, then when the opportunity knocks, you answer, and success comes flooding in, you expect the high to last. You expect it will feel wonderful and exciting, but it doesn’t. In fact, it doesn’t really feel like anything at all. 

Maybe it feels even worse than nothing because you expected something so different.

I was mowing the lawn when I found out my book hit #1 this year. I saw the email come in and went right back to mowing the lawn. Nothing was different. Nothing changed. I was still me. And when I hit it two more times over the next twelve months? The same…only less because the novelty had worn off. The news wasn’t new anymore. 

I wish I could tell you that this feeling is the exception, but it’s probably closer to the rule. 

It’s what Olympic medalists feel, it’s what politicians feel the day they are sworn in, it’s what actors feel when they win an Oscar, it’s what scientists feel when they are awarded the Nobel Prize. 

We all think some external accomplishment is going to change everything, but it never seems to. It doesn’t change how you see yourself, it doesn’t change how you go through the world, it doesn’t change what you feel like when you wake up in the morning. 

Yet even as I write those words, I know most people won’t hear me. We’re hard-wired not to—and to delete them instead. It makes complete sense from an evolutionary point of view why we would believe that achievement will make life better, why it will be worth all the sacrifice and pain, how it will transform and change everything bad in our lives into something good. It’s that drive that has sent many an explorer off on another dangerous voyage into the unknown, kept an inventor in their workshop despite all the wealth and admiration in the world, it’s what made someone want to be not just a king but the king of kings. But just because something is good for progress, doesn’t mean it’s good for a person. You have to learn the lie of our biology by experience. 

To be clear, I am not writing this to the person who is still early in their career, who has yet to put that first big win on the board. That person is not ready to hear what I am saying. I am instead writing to the person who has already done it, who is asking, as Taylor Swift and countless other people have before and since asked: What now? What do I do now?

First: Do not deceive yourself. The ‘nothing’ you feel is not because what you did is nothing, or not enough. A second ring is not the answer. It does not prove the existence of the first ring, nor increase its luster. Proving to yourself and critics that this was not an accident is not possible. Advancing higher in the ranks, moving the goalposts a little further back, telling yourself that it will be different next time—this is the definition of insanity (expecting new results from the same inputs). 

Second: Do not despair. The problem for most people is that they have put so much pressure on this moment—not when the work is complete, but rather when the achievement is recognized—that when it comes it wrecks them. They turn to drugs. They act out and self-sabotage. Or they quit and walk away. The grief over this lost hope can destroy you. Because you’re not sure what to live for now, you’re even less sure how to keep going. 

What you must do instead is realize that what you have been doing is not the problem, it’s the why. You thought that doing important or impressive work will make you happy. This was precisely wrong. It’s that being happy will help us do important and impressive work, quite possibly better and more pure work. 

There is a story I wrote about in Stillness is the Key in which Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, the authors of Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22, respectively, were once at a fancy party in New York. As they stood in the home of some billionaire, Vonnegut needled his friend. 

“Joe,” he said, “how does it feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel has earned in its entire history?” 

“I’ve got something he can never have,” Heller replied. 

“And what on earth could that be?” Vonnegut asked. 

“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Enough. 

This is actually the best place to work from, to live from.

Over the last year, I have tried to see if I can’t operate from a place of fullness rather than craving, realizing that I already have everything I want and, in fact, have since the moment I was born. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped working—Joseph Heller didn’t—but it means that I now see the results as extra, not as entitlements or rewards or just dues. 

“We are here as if immersed in water head and shoulders underneath the great oceans,” the great Zen master Gensha once said, “and yet how piteously we are extended our hands for water.” 

To be alive, that is the accomplishment. To have your health. To have people you love. This is winning. To get to do the work—that’s the reward, not whether the work is recognized. Which is all we control anyway. 

Theodore Roosevelt was a published author by age 23. He had wealth, fame, medals and power. But eventually he realized that “far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” 

I’ve come to realize along those lines that there is a difference between being a writer and an author. What I love, what I should chase is the writing, being an author is about results. That’s why I always found rewards underwhelming. I was focusing on the wrong prize, missing that I had it along. 

The irony is that winning great prizes not only feels like nothing, but understood properly should change absolutely nothing! We should accept the honors with gratitude, we should cash the checks (saving the money responsibly), we should enjoy the parties or the praise, and then we should, as soon as possible, get back down to work.

Do the verb, rather than be the noun. 

Not to prove anything to anyone. Not to scale a higher mountain because it will feel different. Not to really get our parents to notice this time. Not because flying private is even better than flying first class is better than economy. 

No.

We get back to work because the dream is the doing. The lucky break is the opportunity. It’s the process that we have always loved, it’s the joy of realizing our potential that should never get old or let us down. 

It is the only fruit that doesn’t underwhelm or spoil. 

***

P.S. My latest book Stillness is the Key was an instant #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Whether you’ve achieved everything you dreamed of and don’t know what to do now, or you’re feeling overwhelmed, or you need a simple but inspiring antidote to the stress of 24/7 news and social media, Stillness is the Key is for you. I think it’s the best writing I’ve ever done, and I also think it’s the most important topic I have ever written about.