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A Stoic Guide To Navigating The Modern Workplace

The image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoic, on the other hand, is the antithesis of this idea. The Stoic is the man in the marketplace, the merchant on a voyage, the senator in the Forum, the soldier at the front. In other words, they are like you.

Those jobs might not seem like one well-suited for “philosophy,” but they are. And so are you. For in even the most modern seeming professions, a Stoic is able to find peace and clarity. For thousands of years, Stoicism has been a tool for the ordinary and the elite alive — from slaves to emperors — as they sought wisdom, strength and the ‘good life.’ It was philosophy designed for action — for doers — not for the classroom.

Which is why it has been popular with everyone from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca (one of the richest men in Rome), to Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick the Great and Michel de Montaigne. More recently, Stoicism has been cited by investors like Tim Ferriss and executives like Jonathan Newhouse, the CEO of Condé Nast International. Even football coaches like Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks and baseball managers like Jeff Banister of the Texas Rangers have recommended Stoicism to their players.

How can we follow in their timeless footsteps? How can we reap the benefits of this operating system in our own workplace? It’s simple. Go to straight to the sources. Below are Stoic exercises and strategies, pulled from the new book The Daily Stoic (and daily email at DailyStoic.com), that will help you navigate your workplace with better clarity, effectiveness, and peace of mind.

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DON’T MAKE THINGS HARDER THAN THEY NEED TO BE

“If someone asks you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Wouldn’t you rather gently spell out each letter for them? So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty . . . just methodically complete your task.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.26

Here’s a common scenario. You’re working with a frustrating coworker or a difficult boss. They ask you to do something and, because you dislike the messenger, you immediately object. There’s this problem or that one, or their request is obnoxious and rude. So you tell them, “No, I’m not going to do it.” Then they retaliate by not doing something that you had previously asked of them. And so the conflict escalates.

Meanwhile, if you could step back and see it objectively, you’d probably see that not everything they’re asking for is unreasonable. In fact, some of it is pretty easy to do or is, at least, agreeable. And if you did it, it might make the rest of the tasks a bit more tolerable too. Pretty soon, you’ve done the entire thing.

Life (and our job) is difficult enough. Let’s not make it harder by getting emotional about insignificant matters or digging in for battles we don’t actually care about. Let’s not let emotion get in the way of kathêkon, the simple, appropriate actions on the path to virtue.

IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT

“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.13

On tough days we might say, “My work is overwhelming,” or “My boss is really frustrating.” If only we could understand that this is impossible. Someone can’t frustrate you, work can’t overwhelm you-these are external objects, and they have no access to your mind. Those emotions you feel, as real as they are, come from the inside, not the outside.

The Stoics use the word hypolêpsis, which means “taking up” — of perceptions, thoughts, and judgments by our mind. What we assume, what we willingly generate in our mind, that’s on us. We can’t blame other people for making us feel stressed or frustrated any more than we can blame them for our jealousy. The cause is within us. They’re just the target.

A PROPER FRAME OF MIND

“Frame your thoughts like this — you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.2

We resent the person who comes in and tries to boss us around. Don’t tell me how to dress, how to think, how to do my job, how to live. This is because we are independent, self-sufficient people.

Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

Yet if someone says something we disagree with, something inside us tells us we have to argue with them. If there’s a plate of cookies in front of us, we have to eat them. If someone does something we dislike, we have to get mad about it. When something bad happens, we have to be sad, depressed, or worried. But if something good happens a few minutes later, all of a sudden we’re happy, excited, and want more.

We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way — that we’re not puppets that can be made to dance this way or that way just because we feel like it. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

“At every moment keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand, as a Roman and human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice — giving yourself a break from all other considerations. You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. You can see how mastery over a few things makes it possible to live an abundant and devout life — for, if you keep watch over these things, the gods won’t ask for more.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.5

Each day presents the chance to overthink things. What should I wear? Do they like me? Am I eating well enough? What’s next for me in life? Is my boss happy with my work?

Today, let’s focus just on what’s in front of us. We’ll follow the dictum that New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick gives his players: “Do your job.” Like a Roman, like a good soldier, like a master of our craft. We don’t need to get lost in a thousand other distractions or in other people’s business.

Marcus says to approach each task as if it were your last, because it very well could be. And even if it isn’t, botching what’s right in front of you doesn’t help anything. Find clarity in the simplicity of doing

NEVER DO ANYTHING OUT OF HABIT

“So in the majority of other things, we address circumstances not in accordance with the right assumptions, but mostly by following wretched habit. Since all that I’ve said is the case, the person in training must seek to rise above, so as to stop seeking out pleasure and steering away from pain; to stop clinging to living and abhorring death; and in the case of property and money, to stop valuing receiving over giving.”

— Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 6.25.5–11

A worker is asked: “Why did you do it this way?” The answer, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done things.” The answer frustrates every good boss and sets the mouth of every entrepreneur watering. The worker has stopped thinking and is mindlessly operating out of habit. The business is ripe for disruption by a competitor, and the worker will probably get fired by any thinking boss.

We should apply the same ruthlessness to our own habits. In fact, we are studying philosophy precisely to break ourselves of rote behavior. Find what you do out of rote memory or routine. Ask yourself: Is this really the best way to do it? Know why you do what you do — do it for the right reasons.

YOUR CAREER IS NOT A LIFE SENTENCE

“How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators.”

— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 20.2

Every few years, a sad spectacle is played out in the news. An old millionaire, still lord of his business empire, is taken to court. Shareholders and family members go to court to argue that he is no longer mentally competent to make decisions — that the patriarch is not fit to run his own company and legal affairs. Because this powerful person refused to ever relinquish control or develop a succession plan, he is subjected to one of life’s worst humiliations: the public exposure of his most private vulnerabilities.

We must not get so wrapped up in our work that we think we’re immune from the reality of aging and life. Who wants to be the person who can never let go? Is there so little meaning in your life that your only pursuit is work until you’re eventually carted off in a coffin?

Take pride in your work. But it is not all.

PROTECT YOUR PEACE OF MIND

“Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadi- ness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things?”

— Epictetus, Discourses, 4.3.6b–8

The dysfunctional job that stresses you out, a contentious relationship, life in the spotlight. Stoicism, because it helps us manage and think through our emotional reactions, can make these kinds of situations easier to bear. It can help you manage and mitigate the triggers that seem to be so constantly tripped.

But here’s a question: Why are you subjecting yourself to this? Is this really the environment you were made for? To be provoked by nasty emails and an endless parade of workplace problems? Our adrenal glands can handle only so much before they become exhausted. Shouldn’t you preserve them for life-and-death situations?

So yes, use Stoicism to manage these difficulties. But don’t forget to ask: Is this really the life I want? Every time you get upset, a little bit of life leaves the body. Are these really the things on which you want to spend that priceless resource? Don’t be afraid to make a change — a big one.

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April 23, 2018 by Ryan Holiday

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How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvisrecte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.) — Sir Henry Royce

Whatever you’re doing right now, chances are you’d probably rather not be doing it. Even if you’ve got your dream job, it’s very likely that right now you could still be on a conference call you’d rather skip, scheduling some meeting you’re doing as a favor to someone else or dealing with some administrative detail you wish someone else would handle.

Or maybe you’re home from work and you’re picking up around the house. Maybe you’ve got some writing to do and the resistance is setting in. Or you’ve got homework, an application to fill out or someone to fire or need to have difficult conversation with your significant other.

It’s easy to blow these things off. It’s tempting to phone them in. But you can’t.

Because how you do anything, is how you do everything.

Long past his humble beginnings, President Andrew Johnson would speak proudly of his career as a tailor before he entered politics. “My garments never ripped or gave way,” he would say.

On the campaign trail, a heckler once tried to embarrass him by shouting about his working-class credentials. Johnson replied without breaking stride:“That does not disconcert me in the least; for when I used to be a tailor I had the reputation of being a good one, and making close fits, always punctual with my customers, and always did good work.”

Another president, James Garfield, paid his way through college in 1851 by persuading his school, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, to let him be thejanitor in exchange for tuition. He did the job every day smiling and without a hint of shame. Each morning, he’d ring the university’s bell tower to start the classes — his day already having long begun — and stomp to class with cheer and eagerness.

Within just one year of starting at the school he was a professor — teaching a full course load in addition to his studies. By his twenty-sixth birthday he was the dean.

This is what happens when you do your job — whatever it is — and do it well.

These men went from humble poverty to power by always doing what they were asked to do — and doing it right and with real pride. And doing it better than anyone else. In fact, doing it well because no one else wanted to do it.

Sometimes, on the road to where we are going or where we want to be, we have to do things that we’d rather not do. Often when we are just starting out, our first jobs “introduce us to the broom,” as Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity toexcel — and to learn.

But we are always so busy thinking about the future, we don’t take enough pride in the tasks we are given right now. Too often we phone it in, cash our check, and dream of some higher station in life. Or we think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter.

This is foolishness.

Everything we do matters — whether it’s making smoothies to save up money or studying for the bar — even after we’ve already achieved the success wesought. Everything is a chance to do and be our best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.

An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it’s the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and theonly degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.

Same goes for us. We will be and do many things in our lives. Some areprestigious, some are onerous, none are beneath us. To whatever we face, our job is to respond with:

hard work
honesty
helping others as best we can

We should never have to ask ourselves, But what am I supposed to do now?Because we know the answer: our job.

Whether anyone notices, whether we’re paid for it, whether the project turns out successfully — it doesn’t matter. We can and always should act with those three traits — no matter the obstacle.

There will never be any obstacles that can ever truly prevent us from carrying out our obligation — harder or easier challenges, sure, but never impossible.Each and every task requires our best. Whether we’re facing down bankruptcy and angry customers, or raking in money and deciding how to grow from here, if we do our best we can be proud of our choices and confident they’re the right ones. Because we did our job — whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. “Obligations” sound stuffy and oppressive. You want to be able to do whatever you want.

But duty is beautiful, and inspiring and empowering.

Steve Jobs cared even about the inside of his products, making sure they were beautifully designed even though the users would never see them. Taught by his father — who finished even the back of his cabinets though they would be hidden against the wall — to think like a craftsman. In every design predicament, Jobs knew his marching orders: Respect the craft and make something beautiful.

Every situation is different, obviously. We’re probably not inventing the next iPad or iPhone, but we are making something for someone — even if it’s just our own resume. Every part — especially the work that nobody sees, the tough things we wanted to avoid or could have skated away from — we can treat same way Jobs did: with pride and dedication.

The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps,found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell us. Instead, he said,the world is asking you that question. And it’s our job to answer with our actions.

In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.

Right action — unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative — that is the answer to that question. That’s one way to find the meaning of life. And how to turn every obstacle into an opportunity.

If you see any of this as a burden, you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Because all we need to do is those three little duties — to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That’s all that’s been asked of us. No more and no less.

Sure, the goal is important. But never forget that each individual instance matters, too — each is a snapshot of the whole. The whole isn’t certain, only the instances

How you do anything is how you can do everything. We can always act right.

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This originally appeared on Thought Catalog.

April 18, 2018 by Ryan Holiday

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To Everyone Who Asks For ‘Just A Little’ Of Your Time: Here’s What It Costs To Say Yes

To the person who emailed me this morning with a perfectly nice request,

I’m sorry to say the answer is no.

You didn’t do anything wrong. You were perfectly respectful and within your rights to ask about arranging a time for a meeting (or was it for a phone call or about setting a date for that project we discussed, I don’t recall).

The problem isn’t you. There is something wrong with me.

I have a form of anorexia.

Don’t be alarmed. It’s not serious, though I take it quite seriously. Because it’s probably the only form that’s healthy. In fact, I think it’s the secret to my success.

I have calendar anorexia.

I want as absolutely little in my calendar as possible. I’m meticulous about it. Whatever the least amount possible I can have in my calendar without killing my career—that’s what I want.

To be clear, this isn’t some nonsense about not putting things in the calendar, like someone who says they’re on a diet but eats a lot. This is about committing to and scheduling next to nothing on a daily and weekly basis.

Want to set up a quick call to chat? Should we have coffee next week? Let’s get together to discuss?

Nope, nope, nope.

I could, but I just can’t.

Even if they are serious opportunities, even if it will only take 15 minutes, even if it’s something that everyone else does, I’d like to avoid it.

Of course, I’m not perfect at this. I succumb, like everyone else in the modern world (so if you think I’m being a hypocrite, I am…and that’s why I really have to say no this time). There’s stuff I have to do and that stuff has to be scheduled. There are requirements for work and for basic civility. But even then…

When I pull up my phone, click the day’s date and see too many little boxes of time blocked off, I get very nervous. What is all this? Where did all my time go? What about my day? Why did I agree to any of this again? (The answer is usually because it was really far away and I thought it would magically work itself out.)

And then the most fearful question: How will I be able to write?

I want two or three things in there at most. The rest is for me. The rest is not allowed to be scheduled. And if it is scheduled, it better be because I’m getting paid or I really, really wanted to do it. Everything else is for suckers.

Paul Graham has a famous essay about managers vs makers. There are two ways to run your life, he says. Managers know that their day is divided up in pieces for meetings, calls, and administrative tasks. Makers, on the other hand, need to have large blocks of uninterrupted, unscheduled time to do what they do. To create and think.

When people ask how I manage to get so much writing done, my anorexia is the answer. Same goes for how I’ve managed to keep a healthy relationship and how I manage to exercise and read. I keep a maker’s schedule because I believe that anything else is anathema to deep work or creativity.

Early in one’s creative career, this is relatively easy. Mostly because no one really wants much of your time. But as you achieve any measure of success in your field, this changes. It’s not a malicious thing. It’s actually an enormous compliment and a validation of your hard work.

But the result is that you have more opportunities and responsibilities that can reasonably be accommodated. And how you choose to respond to this determines the course of your career (and in my opinion, your personal sanity and happiness).

In Ego is the Enemy, I tell a story about George Marshall. While he was cabinet member in the Truman administration, he was asked to sit for an official portrait. Though I’m sure he did what he could to get out of it, for whatever reason, Marshall was unable to. So he went, on several days, to sit for the artist, spending who knows how many hours still as…well…a portrait. On the final day, the artist informed Marshall that the portrait was complete. Marshall quickly got up, thanked him and began to walk out the door. The artist was surprised. He’d just spent all this time sitting, didn’t he want to at least see the painting?

The answer was no. Marshall didn’t want to spend one second more than he had to. He definitely didn’t care what he looked like in some picture.

I always thought it was strange to hear actors complain about the two weeks of media they had to do to promote their movies. Who doesn’t like publicity? Isn’t that the whole perk of being famous? But then, over the last few years, I started to understand. These interviews were a major time and energy suck. It’s disrupting their life—a life where the rest of the time, they make their own schedule. Worse, it’s to do something repetitive and unfulfilling, answering the same questions over and over again, asked by people who usually haven’t even seen their work.

When I ranted about podcasts last year, it was in part, my own realization of the same idea. The podcast is fun for the person making it. For the person agreeing to be on it, that’s an hour of their time they’re giving up. Both sides seem to fundamentally miss the magnitude of that imposition. But one is selfish if they point it out, or refuse to play along, except on their own terms. And so most don’t.

Seneca writes that if all the geniuses in history were to get together, none would be able explain our baffling relationship with time. He says,

No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passers-by, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.

You can only hand so many hours of your day over to other people before there is none left. Even if there are some left, you may have lost the clarity, the energy and the capacity to do anything with them.

The goal in my impossible, perfectionist calendar-anorexic mind is that one day I’ll have enough control and discipline that there will be no distinction in my schedule between a weekday and a weekend. Every day will be Saturday. Will feel like a Saturday. No interruptions. No feeling like this or that must be because someone else wants it to be. All white space in the calendar. Free. Productive.

It’s in that mindset and that lifestyle that I do my best work. So I do my best to recreate it however possible, that is, in modern life where one has a job, obligations, and responsibilities. However many times I have to say no, or things I have to miss out on to make that happen.

But even anorexia fails as a metaphor. Because food, once consumed, can be burned off. Even Seneca’s property metaphor fails too. Property can be regained, money can be re-earned.

Time? Time is our most irreplaceable asset—we cannot buy more of it. We cannot get a second of it back. We can only hope to waste as little as possible. Yet somehow we treat it as most renewable of all resources.

So if you’re asking if we can chat or get together. The answer is no.

I’m sorry. But I have this condition.

I hope you can understand.

This post was originally published on Thought Catalog.