Life is short, so it matters how you spend it.

As Seneca points out, “We are not given a short life, but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” A minute is long if you know how to use it. A week is plenty of time if you don’t waste it.

So that’s what the Stoics thought so much about: How to break down and organize their time. What to do—and not do—in the course of a life in order to ensure we effectively live the time we have been given.

We now have 2,000 years of stress testing applied to some of their insights and so based on their time-proven wisdom, I present to you how to have a great week, per the Stoics.

1: Rise and Shine

It’s comforting to think that the emperor of Rome (who was reportedly an insomniac) had to give himself a pep talk in order to summon the willpower to throw off the blankets and get out of bed.

From the time we’re first sent off to school until the day we retire, we’re faced with that same struggle. It always seems nicer to shut our eyes and hit the snooze button a few times.

But we can’t—because we have a job to do. Not only do we have the calling we’re dedicated to, but we have the larger cause that the Stoics speak about: the greater good. We cannot be of service to ourselves, to other people, or to the world unless we get up and get working—the earlier the better. So c’mon. Get in the shower, have your coffee, and get going.

2: Prepare Yourself for Negativity

Life is full of suffering, acute and benign. We come down with the flu. We are hit with a costly expense. Someone with power over us abuses their responsibility. Someone we love lies or hurts us. People die. People commit crimes. Natural disasters strike.

All of this is commonplace and inevitable. It happens. Everyday. To us and to everyone else.

That would be bad enough, yet we choose to make this pain worse. How? By pretending we are immune from it. By assuming we will be exempted. Or that only those who have somehow deserved it will find themselves in the crosshairs of Fortune. Then we are surprised when our number comes up, and so we add to our troubles a sense of unfairness and a stumbling lack of preparedness. Our denial deprives us even of the ability to tense up before the blow lands.

“You should assume that there are many things ahead you will have to suffer,” Seneca reminds us. “Is anyone surprised at getting a chill in winter? Or getting seasick while on the sea? Or that they get bumped walking a city street? The mind is strong against things it has prepared for.”

This is premeditatio malorum. What is likely to happen? What can possibly happen? What are the tortures that life inflicts on human beings? And then, more importantly, am I ready for them?

3: Clarify Your Principles

In the opening chapter of his book Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead, the retired US Marine Corps general and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis talks about the fundamental lessons he learned in his early years as a Marine. In particular, he writes: “Know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for… State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” Least of all, you.

Marcus Aurelius called them “epithets for the self.” Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Those were his non-negotiables. Think for a second about the position Marcus was in. He had absolute power. In his own time, his statue was displayed in homes across the empire. He could have done whatever he wanted.

Isn’t that why people chase power, success, greatness? So they can be freed from trivial rules and regulations? So they can do whatever they want?

But what the truly great know is that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that no one has less serenity than the person who does not know what is right or wrong. No one is more exhausted than the person who, because they lack a moral code, must belabor every decision and consider every temptation. No one wastes more time than the person who is winging it. Life is meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning. Meanwhile, the person who knows what they value? Who knows what they will and won’t stand for?Who has a strong sense of decency and principle and behaves accordingly? Who possesses easy moral self-command, who leans comfortably upon this goodness, day in and day out? This person has clarity and tranquility.

That’s what Marcus promised would happen if one followed this prescription. “If you maintain your claim to these epithets,” he wrote, “without caring if others apply them to you or not—you’ll become a new person, living a new life.”

What are your flat-ass rules? What are your principles? Your epithets? Don’t wing it. Life is chaotic and confusing enough. Give yourself some clarity and some certainty.

4: Be Ruthless to the Things That Don’t Matter

One of the hardest things to do in life is say “no.” To invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff that everyone else is doing. Even harder is saying no to certain time-consuming emotions: anger, excitement, distraction, obsession, lust. None of these impulses feels like a big deal by itself, but run amok, they become commitments like anything else.

If you’re not careful, these are precisely the impositions that will overwhelm and consume your life. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back or how you can feel less busy? Start today off by utilizing the power of “no”—as in “No, thank you,” and “No, I’m not going to get caught up in that,” and “No, I just can’t right now.”

It may hurt some feelings. It may turn people off. It may take hard work. But the more you say no to the things that don’t matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. This will let you live and enjoy the life that you want.

For more on saying “no,” you can check out this video, Why You Should Say No, as well as this article, To Everyone Who Asks For “Just A Little” Of Your Time: Here’s What It Costs To Say Yes.

5: Turn “Have To” Into “Get To”

What does a Stoic say to adversity? To recessions? To pandemics? To setbacks and struggles and months stuck inside? To uncertainty and cramped quarters and a collapse of confidence? What do they say to the looming question that has so many people scared—“What if things get worse?”

They say what Bruce Springsteen said:

Marcus Aurelius didn’t believe that it was unfortunate that bad things happened to him. He said, “No, this is fortunate that it happened to me.” Because not everyone would have been able to handle it.

But you can. Because you trained for this. Because you know how to find the opportunity inside of difficulty, because you have harnessed the power of amor fati. Other people might be thrown back by what has happened, others still might be able to muddle through, but not you. You’re going to be improved by this. You’re going to triumph over this. You get to prove your mettle.

That’s why you say: Bring it on. That’s why you say hit me with your best shot. Because you have plans to use it. Because you’re going to step up and make something of this moment. Because you know that’s the only part of this that’s up to you.

6: Take a Walk (or a Run)

In his famous Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertes tells us that the philosopher Chrysippus trained as a long-distance runner before he discovered Stoicism. One can only imagine the influence this training had on Chrysippus, and how it put him in a position to understand a philosophy based on self-discipline, inner-control and endurance. The saying in the ancient world was, “But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch” (the stoa in Stoicism). But if not for the many miles of running, would there have been a Chrysippus?

There are plenty more philosophers, writers, and poets who have found the same benefits not just in running but in walking. In a notoriously loud city like Rome, it was impossible to get much peace and quiet. The noise of wagons, the shouting of vendors, and the hammering of blacksmiths all filled the streets with piercing auditory violence. So philosophers went on a lot of walks—to get where they needed to go, to clear their heads, and to get fresh air. In the process they discovered an important side-effect: it helped them make better work. As Nietzsche would later say, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Thoreau, another avid walker, claimed “the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

Remember that if you find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today. Go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run. And in the future, when you get stressed or overwhelmed, take a walk. When you have a tough problem to solve or a decision to make, take a walk. When you want to be creative, take a walk. When you need to get some air, take a walk. When you have a phone call to make, take a walk. When you need some exercise, take a long walk. When you have a meeting or a friend over, take a walk together.

Nourish yourself and your mind and solve problems along the way.

If you’re not yet convinced of the power of walking, I encourage you to read this piece: Take A Walk: The Work & Life Benefits of Walking.

7: Review

Winston Churchill was famously afraid of going to bed at the end of the day having not created, written or done anything that moved his life forward. “Every night,” he wrote, “I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.”

In a letter to his older brother Novatus, Seneca describes the exercise he borrowed from another prominent philosopher. At the end of each day, he would sit down with a journal and ask himself variations of the following questions: What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve?

At the beginning or end of each day, the Stoic sits down with his journal and reviews what he did, what he thought, and what could be improved. It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity, not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is a form of practicing them, just as repeating a prayer or hymn might be.

Keep your own journal, whether it’s saved on a computer or on paper. Take time to consciously recall the events of the previous day.

Be unflinching in your assessments. Notice what contributed to your happiness and what detracted from it. Write down what you’d like to work on or quotes that you like. By making the effort to record such thoughts, you’re less likely to forget them. An added bonus: You’ll have a running tally to track your progress.

If there’s been a silver lining in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that we were reminded immediately and unceremoniously that life should never be taken for granted. Sometime during the Antonine Plague, Marcus admonished himself to not put anything off until tomorrow because today was the only thing he controlled (and to get out of bed and get moving for the same reason). The Stoics knew that fate was unpredictable and that death could come at any moment. Therefore, it was a sin (and stupidity) to take time for granted.

Today is the most valuable thing you own. It is the only thing you have. Don’t waste it. Seize it. Live it.

In a world where everything is uncertain.

Where things are changing quickly. 

Where chaos reigns. 

And very little is under our control.

What we need is simple. 

It’s something that human beings have needed for all time—whether they were kings or artists, parents or farmers, senators or soldiers. 

We need practices.

What I’m not talking about are routines. Although daily routines are important, and many of us rely on them, the truth is that routines are fragile. 

Hasn’t this pandemic shown that? Suddenly you aren’t taking your kids to school. And then every part of your routine that is triggered by dropping the kids off starts to shift, like tectonic plates after an earthquake. Assuming, of course, that those other parts haven’t been crushed or subducted themselves. Suddenly you’re not able to go to your favorite  gym at your favorite time. Suddenly you’re not going into the office at all… because there is no office to go to. Your job no longer exists. 

Practices are different. Practices are things you do regularly—perhaps daily, perhaps not—but in no particular order. They are things you return to, time and time again, to center yourself. To reset. To reconnect. To focus. 

Waking up everyday at 6 a.m. and watching the news while you have your coffee: that’s part of a routine. Prayer or meditation: that’s a practice. Eating at the same lunch place and same time everyday is a routine. Being vegan or eating kosher is a practice. Journaling is a practice. Going to the 9 a.m. CrossFit class is a routine. Exercising regularly is a practice. 

The difference is in the flexibility. 

One is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly. One is something you made up. The other is something you do. 

Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten to interview some of the best artists on the planet about the behind-the-scenes of their work. “It’s a wild collage of human behavior,” as Austin Kleon has said about studying the routines of creative people, “like visiting a human zoo.” Some artists like the quiet before everyone else wakes up. Others like the quiet after everyone has gone to sleep. Some treat it like a 9-5. Others like a shift worker. Some break up the day with a nap. Others with a run. Some stop working when they run out of momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. Others when they are building momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. No two routines are the same.

And yet the key practices are nearly universal…

…journaling

…set wake up time

…quiet moments of reflection

…exercise

…reading

…walks

Think of someone like Marcus Aurelius. As we’ve talked about, he lived in a time of chaos and dysfunction, featuring brutal wars, devastating plagues, natural disasters, famines, political turmoil, and a plummeting economy. That’s to say nothing of his personal life—he buried eight children, his wife was probably unfaithful, his stepbrother and co-emperor was a ne’er-do-well, and his only son to outlive him was deranged. While his adopted father and cherished mentor, Antoninus, enjoyed a peaceful reign for over two decades, from the day Marcus put on the purple, it was one obstacle after the next. And it didn’t let up for any of the 15 years during which he ruled. 

It’d be hard to sum it up better than Cassius Dio: “He didn’t have the luck which he deserved… but was confronted, throughout his reign, by a multitude of disasters.”

But what centered him through all this were his daily practices. Journaling. Reading. Hunting and riding horses. A quick dip in the baths. Some friendly philosophical banter with Fronto or Sextus. Family time. If any of these were routine, he would have written somewhere in his journals or letters about when he preferred doing this or that. He didn’t have the luck or luxury to be rigid. Instead, he said, “to live life in peace” requires resilience and adaptability. Resilience is “keeping your mind calm… sizing up what’s around—and ready to make good use of whatever happens… while Adaptability adds, ‘You’re just what I was looking for.’”

Same with Seneca. His daily routine was undoubtedly subject to intrusion from his health problems, his exiles, and Nero’s descent into madness. But what remained remarkably consistent and unperturbed was his practice of letter writing, his habit of “wandering walks,” his cold plunges, and his search for “one piece of wisdom” per day. 

When we talk about stillness, we don’t mean the absence of activity. In fact, what we are referring to are activities that create stillness while the world is spinning out of control around us. Marcus Aurelius used the image of the rock surrounded by the raging sea. Perhaps a better image is of the Buddhist that Eugen Herrigal writes about in The Method of Zen, who calmly meditated through a terrible earthquake. 

This is what daily practices give us. 

Winston Churchill is a great example of how a good life should have both routine and practices. When at Chartwell, his estate, he liked to wake up at the same time each day, do the same things each day—especially when he was writing. There was the time he took his afternoon nap, the time he poured his first drink, the time he took his bath. That was part of the routine. But the bedrock practices—reading history and poetry, painting, bricklaying—these things transcended the day. They were lifelong pursuits. They were things he turned to whether a war was breaking out or whether his depression was creeping back into view. 

If he had time for these practices, then certainly you do too.

There is not a lot of good that can come out of a global pandemic, but one thing we can use it for is to reset and reorganize the building blocks our lives and our days are set upon.We can get our act together. We can create and adjust and fine-tune our habits and practices while we have the time. Because in a world filled with despair and chaos, what we need is hope and dependability. We have the power to create ritual and the moments of peace that ripple out from them. 

Maybe right now you’re stuck at home. Maybe you’re not working. Your kids might be home with you. Certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Almost certainly, your routines have been blown apart. 

I experienced this when I had kids. I also experience it when I travel. As much as I would like this to be simple and controllable, it isn’t. So I’ve had to work to loosen my grip on the routines (plural) I’ve built over time and focus more on practices that don’t depend on my ability to do the same thing everyday in a precise way to be “successful.” 

Maybe your work is shift-based, or it’s the feast or famine life of a freelancer. It doesn’t matter. Routine might be out of reach, but practices never are. 

Wherever I am, whatever is going on, what I know is that every single day, I am able to make time to journal, to exercise, to walk, to write. The order can change, but the activities remain the same. I have rules too—for instance, no touching the phone for one hour after I wake up, I don’t watch television news, I’m only reachable through three channels, I never put more than three things on my calendar per day if I can help it, I fast for 16 hours, I don’t buy wi-fi on planes, I always carry a book with me. And if I am unable to do these things, or if the rules are violated, my productivity and my mental health suffers. 

That’s what the Stoics meant when they said you don’t control what happens, you only control how you respond. That’s what they meant when they said the one thing people can always change is themselves. And that’s what they meant when they said we are what we repeatedly do—when or how we manage to squeeze them in is less important than our religious commitment to their continued existence. 

Start today. Focus on your practices. In a world where everything and everyone else seems to be falling apart, you can make good use of this time and say, “You’re just what I was looking for.”

At the height of the financial crisis in 1975, Bill Belichick—the now six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots—was 23 years old and unemployed. Desperate for a job in football after an assistant position fell through, according to his biographer David Halberstam, he wrote some 250 letters to college and professional football coaches. Nothing came of it except a unpaid job for the Baltimore Colts. 

The Colts’ head coach desperately needed someone for the one part of the job everyone else disliked: analyzing film. 

Most people would have hated this job, especially back then, but it turned out to be the springboard through which the greatest coach in football was launched into his legendary career.

In this lowly position, Belichick thrived on what was considered grunt work, asked for it, and strove to become the best at precisely what others thought they were too good for. “He was like a sponge, taking it all in, listening to everything,” one coach said. “You gave him an assignment and he disappeared into a room and you didn’t see him again until it was done, and then he wanted to do more,” said another.

Most importantly, he made the other coaches look good. His insights gave them things they could give their players. It gave them an edge they would take credit for exploiting in the game. 

It’s a strategy that all of us ought to follow, whatever stage of our careers we happen to be in. Forget credit. Do the work. 

I’m lucky enough someone told me that early on, and I still try to follow it today. Don’t worry about credit, they said. Starting as an assistant in Hollywood, the best thing I could do was make my boss look good. 

Forget credit so hard, they said, that you’re glad when other people get it instead of you.

It ended up being pretty decent advice, but it was nowhere near the right wording. I certainly wouldn’t have moved upwards as quickly as I have if I’d just sat there and worked on the way people thought about my boss.

Now that I’ve been around a bit, I think a better way to express it would be:

Find canvases for other people to paint on.

It’s what I now call the canvas strategy.

I used it as a research assistant for bestselling authors. I used it as Head of Marketing for American Apparel. And I continue to use it with my company Brass Check, advising companies like Google and Complex, as well as multi-platinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world.

I even wrote a chapter about it in Ego Is the Enemy.

One of the things I kept coming across in my research was that Belichick wasn’t unique. So many of the greats—everyone from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin—used the same strategy to become great. The strategy? The canvas strategy.

In the Roman system of art and science, there existed a concept for which we have only a partial analog. Successful businessmen, politicians and rich playboys would subsidize certain favored writers, artists, and performers.

More than just being paid to produce works of art, these artists performed a number of tasks in exchange for protection, food and gifts. One of the roles was that of an anteambulo, literally meaning one who clears the path.

An anteambulo proceeded in front of his patron anywhere they traveled in Rome, making way, communicating messages, and generally making the patron’s life easier. The artists who did this were rewarded with stipends and commissions that allowed them to pursue their art.

That takes humility. The canvas strategy takes humility.

It’s a common attitude that transcends generations and societies—the angry, underappreciated geniuses forced to do stuff she doesn’t like for people she doesn’t respect as she makes her way in the world. How dare they force me to grovel like this. The injustice, the waste.

But when you enter a new field, we can usually be sure of a few things:

1. You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are.
2. You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted.
3. Most of what you think you know, or most of what you learned in books or in school, is out of date or wrong.

There’s one fabulous way to work all of that out of your system:

Attach yourself to people in organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.

It’s certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory, though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward. That’s the other side of this attitude. It reduces your ego at a critical time in your career, letting you absorb everything you can without the obstructions that block other’s vision and progress.

Imagine if for every person you met you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them, and you looked at it in a way that entirely benefitted them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have overtime would be profound.

You would learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.

You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable.

You’d have countless new relationships.

You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.

That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others, making a concerted effort to trade your short term gratification for a longer term payoff.

Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be respected, you could forget credit. Let others take their credit on credit while you defer and earn interest on the principle.

The strategy part of it is the hardest. It’s easy to be bitter, to hate even the thought of subservience, to despise those who have more means, more experience, more status than you, to tell yourself that every second not spent doing your work or working on yourself is a waste of your gift to insist, I will not be demeaned like this.

Once we fight this emotional and egotistical impulse, the canvas strategy is easy. The iterations are endless.

• Maybe it’s coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
• Find people, thinkers, up and comers to introduce them to. Cross wires to create new sparks.
• Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
• Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.
• Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.

In other words, discover opportunities to promote their creativity, find outlets and people for collaboration, and eliminate distractions that hinder their progress and focus. It’s a rewarding and infinitely scalable power strategy. Consider each one an investment in relationships and in your own development.

If you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating. The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.