Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast.

Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics illustrated with stories

from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic

intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave

you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it.

You must practice this ritual this year.

Marcus Aurelius was a busy man.

He was a smart, enable, and talented man.

So why did he need to spend so many precious hours in his tent riding by the lamp light

practicing philosophy in his journals?

It wasn't for our benefit.

No we never expected meditations would see an audience.

He was riding for himself, to himself, trying to get better by himself.

He was journaling as a means of self improvement as much as he was a self expression.

As Tim Ferriss has said of his own daily journaling habit, I don't journal to be productive.

I don't do it to find great ideas or to put down pros I can later publish.

The pages aren't intended for anyone but me, he says.

I'm trying to figure things out, I'm just caging my monkey mind on paper so that I can

get on with my fucking day.

It's now been a little over five years since we first published the Daily Stoke journal,

...