Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Heart of Livin,

which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman.

So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me,

and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

What gets the best part of your day?

In those first moments you're awake, how do you decide to start this fresh day? By reaching for the phone, for social media,

we fill the sunlight hours with meetings, spending them all indoors, we wait until after school, after a long stint at the office, to try to spend quality time at home.

We pick up a book for a few days, and we'll be back in a few days.

We've spent time at home, and we've spent time at home.

We pick up a book for a few minutes, we close our eyes to sleep, already tired, already fried.

It's insane! Both Seneca and Marcus lamented at the quickness with which ambitious professionals will promise up all their time to the most trivial of work pursuits.

Seneca talked about how philosophy gets the time left over, not the other way around.

All the wisest people in the world have been unable to explain why we are so willing to waste our time giving it away to anyone who demands it from us.

Marcus talked about treating philosophy as his real mother, not some guardian.

He talked about getting up early and seizing the day, doing what nature and duty demanded of him, not what was easy or pleasurable.

The novelist Philip Meyer, whose book The Sun is an incredible read and actually just did a wonderful interview on the Daily Stoke podcast in the new studio, so you can check that out.

He once said, you have to be careful about to what and to whom you are giving the best part of your day.

Perfectly said. We get only so many hours in a day, so many days in a life, to what and to whom will we give them to?

Philosophy, self improvement, that has to be at the top of that list. So do our duties to the common good, to the people we love.

If to start the day off right, start your life off right, don't tell yourself you'll get to it later. Do the important stuff now.

...