The situation
My diary is full from seven in the morning until ten at night: work, the school run, emails, a committee I said yes to, the gym I feel guilty about missing. Every week I tell myself it will calm down after this deadline, and it never does. I can’t remember the last time I did something just because I wanted to.
Your situation, reframed
AI interpretationConstant busyness is tiring in a way that sleep does not fix, and it is natural to keep hoping the next deadline will be the last. In Stoic terms, the problem is not that you work hard but that your time is being spent by other people and by habit, without a clear sense of what it is all for, while your own life is postponed until things calm down.
The dichotomy of control
AI interpretationYours to act on
- Which commitments you take on, and which you hand back
- What each part of your day is for
- Protecting some time that is genuinely yours
- The attention you bring to the tasks you keep
Not yours
- Deadlines and demands set by other people
- The real needs of your children and your job
- Whether things ever calm down on their own
- How others react when you say no
The Stoics said
Verbatim from the source · full citationsSeneca, On the Shortness of Life 7
… Another is an advocate who is fought for in all the courts, and who draws immense audiences, who crowd all the forum to a far greater distance than they can hear him; “When,” says he, “will vacation-time come?” Every man hurries through his life, and suffers from a yearning for the future, and a weariness of the present: but he who disposes of all his time for his own purposes, who arranges all his days as though he were arranging the plan of his life, neither wishes for nor fears the morrow: for what new pleasure can any hour now bestow upon him? he knows it all, and has indulged in it all even to satiety. …
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.7
Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then thou must also avoid being carried about the other way. For those too are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every movement, and, in a word, all their thoughts.
Epictetus, Discourses 4.4 ¶1
… But a tranquil and happy life contains nothing so sure as continuity and freedom from obstacle. Now I am called to do something: I will go then with the purpose of observing the measures (rules) which I must keep, of acting with modesty, steadiness, without desire and aversion to things external; and then that I may attend to men, what they say, how they are moved; and this not with any bad disposition, or that I may have something to blame or to ridicule; but I turn to myself, and ask if I also commit the same faults. How then shall I cease to commit them? Formerly I also acted wrong, but now I do not: thanks to God.
What this means here
AI interpretationSeneca, On the Shortness of Life 7
The section opens with an attack on people who waste their lives on pleasure, but most of it is about the respectably busy: successful people who are never allowed to live their own lives, because everyone who calls on them takes them away from themselves. Seneca notices that even those who fought for their positions keep asking when the year will be over, wishing the present away. The alternative he describes is someone who arranges each day as though arranging the plan of a life, and so neither longs for tomorrow nor dreads it. Your sense that things will calm down after this deadline is exactly the yearning for the future he means.
Translation note: A business man here means anyone wholly occupied with affairs, a busy person, not a trader. The fasces were the symbols of high Roman office.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.7
Marcus, who ran an empire, asks himself whether outside demands are pulling him about, and tells himself to make time to learn something good and stop being whirled around. Then he adds a twist: you can also waste your life by being too active, worn out by activity with no single aim directing it. Busyness, in other words, is not the same as purpose. The question for each commitment in your diary is what it is for, and whether that aim is one you actually hold.
Translation note: Triflers means people who fritter their lives away on trivial things. Object means aim or purpose.
Epictetus, Discourses 4.4 ¶1
Epictetus adds a warning that sounds strange at first: even the desire for leisure can make you its servant. If your peace depends on an empty diary, then any meeting, fever or email can take it away. Some of your busyness cannot be cut; the children still need collecting and the deadline is real. For those parts, his answer is to go into each task on purpose, deciding how you mean to conduct yourself in it, rather than resenting it as time stolen from the life you would rather be living.
Translation note: Measures means the rules or standards you set yourself. Aversion means the urge to avoid something.
Seneca shows what constant busyness costs: a life spent waiting for it to be over. Marcus separates activity from purpose, so that a full diary can still be an aimless one. Epictetus shows that you do not have to wait for an empty diary to have peace of mind; you can bring it into the tasks you keep. Together they suggest two moves: cut what has no purpose, and do what remains on purpose, including some time that is genuinely your own.
One action for today
AI interpretationEvening review
Tonight, go through next week’s diary and label each item in a word: necessary, chosen or drift. Hand back or decline one drift item, perhaps the committee, and block one hour for something you want to do, treating it as seriously as a meeting. At the end of each day this week, spend two minutes asking where your time went and whether it went where you meant it to.
A line to carry
“Every man hurries through his life, and suffers from a yearning for the future, and a weariness of the present …”
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 7