Practice like a Stoic: 19, Cut out busyness

Are you too busy because you are not paying attention to what's really important?

Image from flickr.com/photos/thomashawk, CC license.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 126-128 of the paperback edition.]

“You will hear many of those who are burdened by great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or their pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: ‘I have no chance to live.’ Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self. . . . Check off, I say, and review the days of your life; you will see that very few, and those [that are] the refuse . . . have been left for you. . . . Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow.” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 7)

Time is the only thing that, once loaned, can never be paid back, and therefore the one resource we really need to be careful to apportion wisely. Seneca was writing two millennia ago, but he may as well have been speaking in the twenty-first century: Our lives are becoming ever busier, but not necessarily more meaningful. The first question a Stoic would ask of someone who is too busy is whether they have their priorities straight. Are we paying sufficient attention to what is most important in our lives, or are we being distracted by inconsequential or downright destructive pursuits? The second issue is one of quality versus quantity, as we moderns would put it. While the phrase “quality time” is more than a bit overused, it gets to the idea that we cram too much into our days, which is not a good recipe for life, or even to get those things done. There is empirical evidence that beyond a certain threshold, more hours spent on a task can actually be deleterious. The reason is simple: Human beings need rest and variety of stimuli in order to keep their minds focused.

There are two other aspects of busyness that Seneca focuses on and that are worth mentioning. The first is that there are few days left, and those are the “refuse,” that is, the lowest quality ones. Seneca is referring to people who have lived long enough that they begin to sense the final stretch. Looking back at their lives, they realize that their time had not been used well. We certainly don’t want to get to that stage only to find that we’re out of time, do we?

Second, we should plan each one of our days as if it were our last. This is another example of Stoic motivation: Awareness of death gives value to life. Imagine for a moment if today really were your last day. We bet you would spend it very differently, focusing on things that are important to you, not on trivialities. Of course, you don’t know which day will be your last, or how much time you may have ahead of you, so you should feel the same sense of urgency every day.

Don’t fret about the future, and don’t regret the past. The future hasn’t come yet, and the past is outside of your control. It is the present that demands your attention—a demand that requires you to make important decisions about how you are going to spend this day, and every day, in the moment.