People fail for a lot of reasons.

People do crazy things for a lot of reasons.

But one reason we don’t talk about enough is sleep.

I watched this at American Apparel.

There were a lot of problems at that company.

It borrowed too much money. It had a toxic workplace culture. It was besieged by lawsuits. It opened too many stores. This was all written about many times during the company’s public disintegration in 2014.

As I talked about in Ego is the Enemy and in Stillness is the Key, Dov Charney, the founder, was a remarkably accessible boss. A lot of leaders talk about being reachable, having an open-door policy, but he really did.

Not just open-door but phone and email too. Any employee, at any level of the company, from garment sewer to sales associate to photographer, could reach out whenever they had a problem. For good measure, during one of the company’s many public relations crises, Charney posted his phone number online for any journalist or customer who had an issue as well. The upside of this was that he was constantly in tune with what was happening in the company. He could solve problems as they happened, sometimes even before they happened. He had eyes and ears everywhere. He could notice and respond to sales trends. He could jump on every opportunity.

The downside of this was the same as the upside. Because by 2012, the company had 250 stores in 20 countries. Charney was sleeping only a few hours a night. By 2014, he wasn’t sleeping at all. There was always someone with a problem, always someone with an idea, always something to do. There was always someone somewhere in some distant time zone taking him up on the open-door policy.

It was this extreme, cumulative sleep deprivation that was the root of so much of the company’s catastrophic failure. How could it not be? Research has shown that as we approach twenty or so hours without sleep, we are as cognitively impaired as a drunk person. Our brains respond more slowly and our judgment is significantly impaired.

I knew this was a problem at the time, but it was only a few years later when I had kids that I fully understood. He was slowly killing himself through sleep deprivation. It wasn’t simply that he was making bad, even reckless decisions, it’s that his sleep deprivation was depriving him of the ability to make good decisions.

You want to think you can function on little to no sleep, but you just can’t. Not on a sustained basis, anyway.

American Apparel ultimately careened in a catastrophic mess of its own making. The decision to open up a new distribution facility was rushed, the timeline impulsively moved up. And when it started to go poorly, Charney moved into the shipping and fulfillment warehouse, installing a shower and cot in a small office. To him and some diehard loyalists, this was proof of his heroic dedication to the company. In truth, he was doubling down on what had created the problem, and ensuring it would be made worse.

Dov descended into madness in front of us. Unshaven. Bleary-eyed. Incapable of controlling his temper, or of even the slightest bit of patience or propriety. Issuing orders that contradicted orders he had issued just minutes before, he seemed almost hell-bent on destruction. It came soon enough…

Two things stand out to me from this period. The first is when he would call to talk very late at night, sometimes staying on the phone until he drifted off to sleep. It was as if he was terrified of having even the slightest down period, so he actively fought sleep until it eventually just took over. And then, oftentimes, there would be calls or texts early in the morning. He’d barely stayed asleep.

The other standout moment was reading reports from the famous board meeting after he had agreed to some financing terms that diluted his control of the company. His board watched, in horror, as Dov mixed package after package of pure Nescafé powder in cold water—essentially mainlining caffeine to stay awake. By the time he left the meeting, he no longer had a job. Within a few months, his shares were worthless.

Although this failure was particularly epic and played out in the headlines, it’s actually fairly common. The overworked person creates a crisis that they try to solve by working harder. Mistakes are piled upon mistakes by the exhausted, delirious mind. The more they try, the worse it gets and the angrier they get that no one appreciates their sacrifice.

Elon Musk has been doing some version of it (to slightly better results so far) for years now. Stimulants to stay awake. Ambien to crash. Careering from crisis to crisis, urgent deadline to urgent deadline, tweeting at all hours, a cycle which makes it all the more impossible to enjoy his success or plan for the long-term future. Arianna Huffington tells the story of waking up on the floor of her bathroom as she was building her company, covered in blood. She had passed out from sheer exhaustion and shattered her cheekbone on the way down. Meanwhile, a friend of Churchill’s said “He made in Cuba one discovery which was to prove far more important to his future life than any gain in military experience, the life-giving powers of the siesta.”

People say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” as they hasten that very death, both literally and figuratively. They trade their health for a few more working hours. They trade the long-term viability of their business or their career before the urgency of some temporal crisis.

If we treat sleep as a luxury, it is the first to go when we get busy. If sleep is what happens only when everything is done, work and others will constantly be impinging on your personal space. You will feel frazzled and put upon, like a machine that people don’t take care of and assume will always function.

It takes discipline to put your phone down and go to sleep. It takes confidence to manage your schedule in a way that protects your health. It takes self-awareness to know when you are not at your best, your mind is not operating right, and to step away.

The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that “sleep is the source of all health and energy.” He said it better still on a separate occasion: “Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”

Are you going to wait for a literal wake-up call? Are you going to keep working yourself to the bone, trading sleep for an extra conference call or a few minutes on television or a meeting with an important person?

That’s not success. It’s torture. It’s a prison experiment.

And no human can endure it for very long.

Happiness? Stillness? Enjoying the solitude or beauty of your surroundings? All of that is out of the question for the exhausted, overworked fool. The bloodshot engineer six Red Bulls deep is doing it wrong. The recent grad—or not-so-recent grad—who still parties like she’s in college is not cool.

I try to remind myself that having to stay late at the office to write, trying to push through on no sleep, is disrespectful to the craft. When I spend that extra time on my phone instead of going to bed, when I plan a trip or a week poorly, I am cheating my work, cheating my family. I’m doing something unfair to the stranger I happen to bump into.

Mostly, I am cheating and harming myself. A 2017 study actually found that lack of sleep increases negative repetitive thinking. Abusing the body trains the mind to abuse itself.

Sleep is the other side of the work we’re doing—sleep recharges the internal batteries whose energy stores we need in order to function and thrive as a person. It’s a meditative practice. It’s stillness. It’s the time when we turn off. It’s built into our biology for a reason.

If you want peace, there is just one thing to do.

If you want to be your best, there is just one thing to do.

Go to sleep.

Earlier this month, I gave a talk in Colorado. I got in late, but it was OK because I knew they were putting me up in a really nice hotel, one I remembered staying in before. As I walked to my room, I was struck by how run down the hotel was. The furnishings seemed staid. The walls were scuffed. The decor was tired. Even the electronics in the room were old. 

Weird, I thought, this hotel used to be new and trendy. 

Then it hit me: It used to be. Time had passed. I might have been in my twenties the first time I stayed there! And then it really hit me: I used to be new and trendy. I’m pretty worn down myself! Those same years have been working on me, too. 

There is a similar observation from Seneca. He’s visiting the house he grew up in and is lamenting the poor state of the landscaping. All the trees that lined the road on the way in were dying. Then he realized, this wasn’t a maintenance issue. The trees, which he had planted himself were dying…of old age. And he himself was not in much better shape. 

I’m writing this birthday post—my 37th birthday and my 12th post in this series—in a COVID brain fog (I picked it up on my book tour). I’m not great at math, but when I was born, life expectancy was roughly 75 years…that puts me at the halfway point. I know medicine is better these days but that still hits me. It hits me like the vibe of that hotel hallway. 

Not that I feel old. If anything, I feel like I am at the height of my powers creatively. I love my life. I love my work. If you told me that this was the halfway point of my life, I’d be grateful. In fact, if you told me this was the end, I’d feel pretty good about that too—I have well more than 37 years to show for the 37 years I’ve gotten. 

So with that in mind, I thought I’d pass along some lessons I’ve learned this year (and beyond) as I have in previous years (check out 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, and 26).

1. “We’ve got nowhere to be and nothing to do,” my seven-year-old said a couple of weekends ago when we tried to prod him to finish something up. He was right and I’m trying to make this a little bit of a mantra. It’s not exactly true but it’s a nice counterbalance to my more natural inclination of doing, doing, doing.

2. I’m not sure I’ve ever opened a social media app and then after logging off thought, “Wow, I’m so glad I did that.”

3. Conversely, I have never taken a walk without thinking, after, “I am so glad I did that.”

4. George Raveling told me that when he wakes up in the morning, he says to himself, “George, you’ve got two choices today. You can be happy or very happy. Which will it be?”

4b. Voltaire put it another way I love: The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

5. I was talking to a friend and he said something I can’t stop thinking about: “Having a contrarian view that turns out to be correct can be a brain-destroying experience.”

6. One more from George: he told me a story from when he was a kid—“George,” his grandmother asked him, “do you know why slave owners hid their money in their books?” “No, Grandma, why?” he said. “Because they knew the slaves would never open them,” she told him. To me, the moral of that story is not just that there is power in the written word (that’s why they made it illegal to teach slaves to read), but also that what’s inside them is very valuable. And the truth is that books still have money between the pages. My entire career has been made possible by what I read.

7. There is a fine line between complacency and using your success to be more deliberate and intentional. Or maybe it’s not such a fine line…that’s why I’m trying to use that advice from my 7-year-old to remind myself that if success doesn’t afford you the luxury of picking your shots (or some autonomy over your schedule), what good is it?

8. Epictetus said that an athlete doesn’t think about whether a throw is good or bad. They just catch it and throw it back. This is life. Everything is a catchable throw. You gotta get there and then you gotta toss it back.

9. Another sports analogy…the great ones tune out the crowd. It’s been a journey for me to wrap my head around tuning out not just the cheers but the reality of the fact that the bigger your audience is, by definition the bigger the amount of people who don’t like you also. (I shudder to think how many people out there think I suck…so I don’t think about it!)

10. “‘​Rich’​ is how much you see your kids,” I’ve been saying at Daily Dad. “‘​Power’​ is how much power you have over your own schedule.”

11. I don’t have any goals. None. I have things I like doing—writing, running, etc—and I do them. My only goal is to keep doing those things. Results and accomplishments are the byproduct of this process.

12. Gandhi was once asked what worried him most. His reply? “Hardness of heart of the educated.” When I look around right now, I think of this hardness of heart—the embrace of cruelty, ‘owning the libs,’ etc—as one of the big problems of our time. But that’s always been there. There has always been dark energy in human affairs. What is more alarming is the way that good people have become utterly exhausted and detached as a result of going on eight years of resisting this energy.

13. By the way, that’s what the dark energy is after. They don’t actually hope to convince a majority of anything. They hope to exhaust a majority and then grab the steering wheel for a bit (again or for a bit longer). That’s what happened during Reconstruction. That was what Southern politicians hoped for during Civil Rights. That’s the movement afoot right now (both candidates are the same et al).

14. “You just have to keep going back,” the civil rights attorney John Doar said. You can’t let them wear you down. You can let them make you give up.

15. If success—more knowledge, more ability, more money, a promotion, whatever—doesn’t make you a better person, it’s not success.

16. Along similar lines, a friend of mine was torn about leaving a very important job that a lot of people would kill for, but made him miserable. I told him, “If you can’t walk away, then you don’t have the job…the job has you.”

17. It’s amazing the amount of work we’ll put into humoring other people. It’s amazing what we’ll put up with from other people. It’s amazing how patient (or how many times we’ll repeat ourselves) we can be with a clueless colleague or client. Yet we just cannot bring ourselves to figure out how our own children can stand to watch YouTube videos of people playing video games. We can’t bear to ask them to do something a third time. We just cannot remember the names of our spouse’s friends or that thing they were telling us about. What the hell?

18. Speaking of hotels, you know you can just leave when you’re ready to go. Checking out is for amateurs…

18b. What I’m really saying is figure out how the pros–the people who do whatever you’re doing, be it travel or banking or shopping for a car or whatever–do it and see what efficiencies you can pick up. See what assumptions can be questioned.

19. I struggle with calibrating how to have high standards without hanging oneself on them. Of course, deciding willy-nilly what time you start each day is a recipe for slowly, steadily drifting towards starting later and later. On the other hand, sweating five minutes here or there—especially when what you’re rushing through is school dropoff or traffic that’s outside your control—is a recipe for misery and missing the point. A book, for instance, is a project that takes months and years. Pace yourself accordingly.

19b. This is what John Steinbeck was talking about when he talked about the ‘indiscipline of overwork.’ It was, he said, the falsest of economies (​more about that here​).

20. Why did it take so long for me to get a water bottle to carry around? What percentage of my issues as a child–and arguments I’ve gotten into as an adult–were the result of mild dehydration?

20b. The other day I had just enough ice in there that the water and the ice had sort of combined into a slush. It just hit me that this was the kind of pleasure that Epicurus was chasing. It’s not much…but it’s so wonderful.

21. Like a lot of men of my generation, I’ve learned about this concept of “mental load” in relationships (the way, unthinkingly, a lot of responsibilities, emotional obligations and tasks are placed on women). This has necessitated a lot of changes in my life, not all of which have been easy. But I will say this concept has also helped me as a boss, realizing ways in which I was carrying mental loads for people/projects and allowed me to make changes in how I manage and what my expectations are for my employees.

22. Which brings me to something I talked about in ​Ego Is The Enemy​. Almost invariably, making improvements in your personal life or your self-development will make you better professionally. The converse is less often true—getting better and better at what you do is not necessarily going to make you a better spouse, parent, citizen.

23. At Per Se, Thomas Keller put up signs that say “A Sense of Urgency.” While I may need to work on slowing down a bit, I’d say most people could use a little speeding up. One of the things I say at work is ​“Start the clock”​ or sometimes, out of frustration, “Why the fuck have we not started the clock on this?” The point is: Stuff takes time. When you add time in front (by taking too long to start) or in the middle (by taking too long to reply) or at the end (by taking too long to process and start the next thing) you are making it take longer. How long other people take to do their parts is not up to you, how long you take to do your stuff is.

24. All success (indeed all failure, too) ​is a lagging indicator​. What are the choices you’re making now to give you what you want later?

25. Sometimes I’ll take a caffeine mint right before I go for a run or a bike ride. I have a lot of reasons to be glad I’m alive, but that right there is one of them. Epicurus would be jealous.

26. How does this stop you? This was the question the Stoics asked. How does this situation stop you from acting with ​courage​, ​discipline​, ​justice​ and wisdom? How could it?

27. I am getting better at recognizing when my brain is not functioning optimally. So like, I can say, when someone tries to explain something to me, “Sorry, I am not in a position to understand this right now.” Or, I can recognize, hey, this is not a good time to have this discussion with my wife. I used to brute force everything, even when I was tired or burned out, but what you find is that this itself just requires more work later, when you have to undo the mistakes you made because you were too fried to think clearly.

28. You are almost certainly not saying enough positive stuff. You’re not saying ‘good job’ enough. ‘Thank you’ enough. ‘I love you enough.’ You are not complimenting, congratulating, or appreciating enough.

29. The fewer opinions you have, the happier you’ll be. Or at least, if you do have to have opinions about things that don’t really matter, hold them lightly and in good humor.

30. Everybody thinks Jimmy Carter was a bad president because he was too nice or too idealistic or whatever, that he should have waited until reelection to do some of the things he did. Turns out the real reason he struggled (and why he wasn’t re-elected) was that he tried to get away with not having a Chief of Staff (read Chris Whipple’s book ​The Gatekeepers​). This is an important lesson, I think: At the end of the day, it comes down to how well-organized you are and how tight a ship you run. Most everything else is secondary.

31. If you want to understand the present moment, go read about the past. Read something about a similar moment from a long time ago. ​The Great Influenza​ is an amazing book to understand the pandemic. ​It Can’t Happen Here​ and ​All The Kings’ Men​ are two great novels to understand the political moment. ​Invisible Man​ is a great way to understand the conversation about race. ​Jan Morris’ memoir​ from 1974 helped me understand what it means to be transgender.

32. I posted ​a picture of my positive COVID test​ and a bunch of people got extremely upset. This struck me as really weird because one of the things I have learned as a parent is anything you can do to avoid getting your family sick, you should probably do.

33. But this is just a life lesson too: Not just, why should my kids have to miss out on things they were looking forward to this week because I picked up something on my book tour? Not just why should my wife be rewarded with a fever for holding down the fort while I was gone, but why should my employees have to take something home to their kids, why should an old person I stood next to at CVS end up in the hospital when I could have worked from home and gotten things delivered? And this has nothing to do with this very specific (and strangely controversial) virus but has to do with all colds, bugs, and illnesses, it has to do with how you choose to drive on the road, it has to do with all sorts of little choices we make. The ​virtue of justice​ is considering how your actions impact other people. The only positive we should take from the pandemic is how interconnected and interdependent we all are.

34. And by the way, if you look back at COVID–something that killed more than 1.2 million Americans and at least 7 million people worldwide and you think we overreacted, I just don’t know what to say to you.

34b. Should we have done a bunch of things differently? Did the government make a bunch of indefensible mistakes? Did a lot of the assumptions turn out to be incorrect? Yes. But the indefensible reality is that we could have and should have done more, and when we look at this period as a historical moment, that’s what our children and grandchildren will say to us.

35. At the beginning of 2023, I made the decision to push ​the book I was working on​ an extra year. It was the first time I’ve ever done that. I think maybe I thought that it would be a nice chill and easy year but if anything, it was much harder. This is a good reminder: We often work and stay busy as an excuse to not deal with harder problems at home and with ourselves.

36. One of my favorite chapters in ​Right Thing, Right Now​ is the one on ​‘coaching trees.’​ A successful coach or leader should not just be judged on what they achieve, but also on what the people they discover, scout, hire, and develop are able to achieve. At the end of your life, you’re going to be most proud of the impact you’ve had on people.

36b. I can’t pay Robert Greene back for things he did and the doors he opened for me, but I can pay it forward.

37. Remember, you don’t die once at the end of your life. You are dying every second that passes. We are going in one direction. Don’t rush through it. Don’t miss it. Have something to show for it.

There aren’t too many of us who are satisfied with the person we currently are.

That is, we know we could be better. We know we should be better.

And by better, we don’t mean at our jobs, at lifting weights, or looking better, or having more money.

We know we could be better people–that is to say, kinder, more generous, more patient, more thoughtful, more reliable.

But how many of us actually do anything about this? How many of us are as focused on being good?

“A better wrestler?” Marcus Aurelius asked himself, rhetorically, referring to the time he spent improving at one of his hobbies. “But not a better citizen, a better person, a better resource in tight places, a better forgiver of faults?”

What is your most important job? he emphasizes. “To be a good person.”

When the Stoics talked about the virtue of justice, they weren’t talking about a legal system of rules and codes. They were talking about what Marcus was talking about—actively working to be a better citizen, a better person, a better resource, a better forgiver of faults.

That’s what I spent a lot of time thinking about as I wrote my newest book, ​Right Thing, Right Now​ (…which you can ​preorder…right now​). It’s about this key Stoic virtue, the virtue that challenges us to put in the work to be good, not just to be great. You know, values, character, deeds.

So here, riffing on some ideas from the ​new book​, are 10 habits that will make you better at your most important job—being a good person:

1. Tell the truth. “I’m going to be honest with you…”. How many times have you heard this phrase or said it yourself? It seems casual or like a way to establish trust. But beginning a remark by claiming we’re going to give it to you straight is of course implying that most of the time we’re not doing that. Honesty should not need a preface, Marcus Aurelius would say. An honest person should be like a smelly goat in the room—you know when they’re there. In matters big or small, public or private, convenient or inconvenient, tell the truth. Don’t be a jerk about it. Don’t give everyone your unsolicited opinion about how they should live or look or act. “Speak the truth as you see it,” Marcus reminded himself, “but with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.” Be honest, not hurtful. Be a bastion of truth in a time of lies. This is more than just the right thing to do, it’s your job. As a friend. As a parent. As an employee. As a human being.
2. Respect others. Clementine Churchill once left a note for her husband. “My Darling Winston,” she wrote, “I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be.” Yes, he had power, she noted, but if you keep disrespecting people, “You won’t get the best results.” The way you treat others sets off a chain reaction that shapes your life in profound ways. Disrespect, rudeness, pettiness, jealousy—these things repel. But dignity, equanimity, politeness, calm—they attract. They draw people in. They bring the best out of others. Choose wisely.
3. Give, give, give. When Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book, he avoided procrastination and overthinking. His only ritual before starting was to make a small donation to a charity he and his wife supported. Like ancient sacrifices to gods before battle, the rabbi waged the war of art by first striking with an act of kindness. Generosity is admirable, and many of us wish we could be better at it. There’s only one way to improve, and it happens to be the same way one gets better at writing or any other craft: by doing it. Not later, once we’re better off or once somebody really needs it. But consistently, regularly, habitually. Money is not the only currency of generosity. You can give your time, your energy, your words of encouragement, your patience, your kindness. Seneca reminds us that every person we meet is an opportunity for kindness. For expressions of generosity. How are you doing? Do you need anything? Can I help you with that? These opportunities are everywhere, every day. Start to seize them. Make a habit of it.
4. Find the good. During one of his many stints in prison, Gandhi made a pair of sandals for General Jan Smuts, the prime minister of South Africa, who put Gandhi in jail. Somewhere in Smuts, despite his complicity in a racist and exploitative system, there was goodness, Gandhi believed. Smuts wore the sandals and thought of Gandhi’s grace and goodness as he did. Smuts eventually tried to return them, saying he felt unworthy to stand in the shoes of such a great man. To his credit, he made an effort to fill those shoes. He contributed to the founding of the League of Nations, drafted the UN Charter, and helped find a homeland for Jews after the Holocaust. He said Gandhi inspired him to redeem himself. Each of us, the Holocaust survivor Edith Eger would later write, has both a Hitler and a Corrie ten Boom (one of the Righteous Among the Nations honorees) inside us. Which one are you letting out? Which one are you seeing in others?
5. Choose a north star. I watched Dov Charney go from a hero in the fashion business to one of its villains. In the early days, he was focused on challenging the broken assumptions of the business. He cared about his workers. He cared about the environment. Later, it became all about him, all about his urges, all about his power. This is the power of a north star. It can take you on an amazing journey or get you hopelessly lost. Your values, your aspirations, the things pushing and pulling you—whatever they are, they foretell a prophecy. They determine where you’ll end up…and who you’ll be when you get there. Cash is a bad but easy north star to default to. Same with ego, fame, power, a desire for revenge or dominance—they will lead you astray. Loyalty, mastery, a love of the game, a desire to keep your hands clean, to be an open book, have a clear conscience. These things take you north. They lead you forward. They cut through the noise. Of the cardinal directions, justice is the clearest, the Stoics said—it points you north, shows you where to go. Follow it, and you’ll end up in a good place…and you’ll be a good person when you get there.
6. Hold the line. Your north star will illuminate a line in your life. That is, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, ethical and unethical, fair and unfair. Courage requires you to put your ass on that line. Self-discipline tells you to get your ass in line. Justice is holding that line. It’s what you will do and what you won’t. What you will stand for and what you won’t stand for. It’s the decisions you make, the actions you take. Indeed, all the philosophical and religious traditions–from Confucius to Christianity, Plato to Hobbes and Kant—are best preached not with words but with actions. Each action is like a lantern that hollows darkness and uncertainty. Each decision to do the right thing is a statement that our peers, children, and future generations will hear. So draw the line and hold it.
7. Develop competence. Keeping your word, taking responsibility, having compassion, good intentions, and good values are great. So is wanting to change things, to take on evil or injustice. But these feelings are worthless without competence. Florence Nightingale is often portrayed as an angelic nurse gliding through the halls of hospitals. The reality is much more impressive. She was a tireless seeker of knowledge, a stern teacher and trainer of a generation of talented nurses, a fierce advocate for resources, a diligent fundraiser, and a skilled steward of that money. If a problem is to be solved, it must be studied. If progress is to be made, if positive change is to happen, it will be paved not with good intentions but rock-hard competence. It will require courage, discipline, and wisdom. Of course it will. If change, if being of service, if developing smarts, capability, and competence were easy, everyone would do it and no one would be impressive.
8. Love. In the struggle against injustice, it’s easy to let bitterness and hatred harden your heart. As Marcus Aurelius wrote: “What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” When we close ourselves off to love and hope, we naturally experience less love and hope. The Bible reminds us that “whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.” And James Baldwin, that “hatred…has never failed to destroy the men who hated.” Hatred corrodes. It takes you south, backward, down, down to depths. Love, on the other hand, protects, trusts, hopes, preserves. Love does not fail. It takes you north, it leads you forward. It always wins. Which way are you going? Is your heart growing or shrinking? Is your love and compassion and connection for other people, your hope for a better future, growing or shrinking?
9. Just be kind. How did Hadrian know that Antoninus would be a worthy mentor to Marcus Aurelius? That he could give his absolute power to another man with only a promise that Antoninus would protect and guide Marcus to one day rule in his place? Because he felt he had glimpsed into Antoninus’ true character when he had once watched Antoninus help his elderly stepfather up a flight of stairs. He didn’t know anyone could see. It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t ‘virtue signaling’ as we call it today. It was actual virtue—what Antonius brought to his twenty years as Marcus’ guardian and to the Roman people as their leader. Character is fate, the Stoics said. Small acts are no small thing, they said. A helping hand, a smile, a door held open, a favor rendered—you never know who might be watching. You never know what low moment you might be rescuing a person from. You never know the ripple effect your small gesture can have. But that’s not why we do it. We do it because it’s right—because people deserve kindness and because kindness makes us better. We do it because it’s the discipline we practice.
10. Leave this place better than you found it. There’s a sign at the track I used to run at in Austin that reads: “Leave This Place Better Than You Found It.” It was put up by the Hollywood Henderson, who paid for the track (and made the neighborhood better). You don’t have to save the planet. You don’t have to save someone’s life. Can you make sure you pick up a piece of trash when you see it? Can you do something nice for a stranger? Can you just make things a little bit better every day?

Life is short.

Be good. Do good. Find the good.

Draw the line and hold it. Be respectful, kind, competent. Love and be loved.

Do the right thing.

Right now.

If you enjoyed this article, then I promise you’ll like my new book: ​Right Thing, Right Now​. This book comes out June 11th, but it would mean the world to me if you could preorder the book from ​dailystoic.com/justice​. Preordering a book is the number one thing you can do to support an author as they get a book off the ground. It’s how publishers determine how many copies to print, whether they’ll give an author a book tour, and where the book will land on the bestseller list.

To make ordering it early worth your while, I put together a bunch of bonuses like signed and numbered first editions, a signed page from the original manuscript, bonus chapters, and a bunch of other stuff. Just head to ​dailystoic.com/justice​ before June 11th to claim your bonuses.

And one last thing before I go… I’m celebrating the launch of ​Right Thing, Right Now​ in New York City at the ​Barnes & Noble Union Square​ on June 11th. I’d love for you to join me. There will be a live Q&A, book signings, and more. Learn more and register ​here​.