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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

Don't let yourself be rushed. Robert Caro is getting old and people are getting worried.

He's now 84 years old and each day that passes makes it increasingly unlikely that he'll ever finish this epic and must read series he's writing on Lyndon Johnson.

He's only made it up to the beginning of the Vietnam War and there's just so much material left to tackle. It's understandable that fans and publishers are subtly trying to nudge him to hurry and finish.

With so little time left, they want him to get as much onto the page as possible. You might think that reminding him of his mortality is a part of the Stoic practice, an important memento-mory.

But in fact, it's missing the point. As Caro recently told the reporter for The New York Times, people want to make me think about that, but it is a mistake to think about it because it would make me rush. It's probably the understatement of all time.

But I have not rushed these books. They've taken the amount of time that's necessary to show what I wanted to show. What would be the point of the books if I didn't do them properly?

I'm trying very hard to keep the standard of this book up to whatever standard I had in the other ones.

This is exactly right. When Marcus really spoke of his own impending and inevitable death, it wasn't to remind himself to squeeze in as much crap as possible.

It wasn't about picking up the pace. It was to remind himself of what was important of the standard to which he needed to hold himself.

He said, do everything as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life. That is, do it right.

Not do it as quickly as possible so you can say it's complete.

Yes, it's true we will die. It could be tomorrow or it could be 50 years from now, which is why this very moment is so important and why we can't let anyone rush us through it.

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