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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient

wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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 DailyStoke.com.

You have to be firm, but not rude. A stoic guards their time. You get that from Seneca.

He chides us for being protective of our property, but spend thrifts with our time. Life is

short, he says. Don't waste it. Don't let it be eaten up by other people. Don't fritter

it away on the inessential obligations. But the problem with this advice is that if we're

not careful, this very real imperative can devolve into selfishness. It can make you

an externalizer, so protective of your time that you actually cost people theirs by making

them wait, by putting them off, shunting off your responsibilities as a human being to them.

So remember for the Stelox, a key virtue is moderation, which means not being too selfless

or too selfish with your time. Marcus Aurelis was taught the importance balance of these

approaches by Alexander the Platonist. From Alexander's example, Marcus Strowve, not

to be constantly telling people or writing them that I'm too busy unless I really am. Similarly,

he says not to be always ducking my responsibility to the people around me because of pressing

business. So yes, you have to protect yourself. You have to be firm, but you can't pretend

that the world revolves around you or that the world outside your interests doesn't exist.

You can't close yourself off to other people completely. You can't just be a taker of

time and never a giver. Kind of deal with that. As Marcus said, we decline the inessential

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