Mastering Ancient Wisdom for Modern Fulfillment
Using Stoicism and Slow Productivity to Control You Emotional Half-life
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” -Ryan Holiday
Imagine I told you there was a pill that can cure depression, provide an abundance of energy, improve your relationships, make you thrive professionally and in your personal pursuits, and fill your life with happiness and fulfillment. You’d need to be a fool not to take such a pill.
Well, there’s no pill for this yet (maybe soon), but for now the best we can do is glean insight from ancient philosophy. Stoicism is centered on the idea that most of our fate is beyond our control, but what we can control is our emotions. The external world simply is, the events neither good nor bad, and it is up to us to perceive them how we wish. Mastering this skill is a superpower that comes as close to that pill that I can imagine.
Stoicism 101
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” -Seneca
Stoicism is build upon three key disciplines: perception, action, and will.
Perception is the ability to perceive the world objectively: no good, no bad. The experience of pain, love, loss, suffering, joy, grief, all are solely labels we place on events that happen in our life. And the beauty is we have the ability to control which of these we feel.
Action refers to our capacity to act in accordance with reason and virtue. Stoicism is not merely a way to view the world, but we must act in accordance to our ideals.
Will is the power we have to choose our actions in line with our perceptions.
Embodying these disciplines gives one ownership and control over their entire world. The external cannot harm them. The only thing that can harm them is themself. This philosophy gives one extraordinary faculty over their life and the ability to find happiness in the smallest of things. As Socrates said: “The secret to happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
Two of the greatest Stoics of all time (personal favorites), Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, lived dramatically different lives, but both found peace through these principles.
Marcus was the Emperor of the Roman Empire in the height of their rule. The most powerful man at the time, blessed with all the wealth he can imagine and an empire in his command, yet his reign was not easy by any means. He reigned through constant war, battled disease and famine, and lost his father as a child along with his wife and several children during his rule. Yet, the true Stoic he was, he was able to experience the traumas and challenges, though not let them overtake his character. He persevered through it all, journaling his thoughts, striving for continuous self-improvement. These Stoic teachings are shared with us in the book Meditations (cannot give this book higher regards). Through Stoicism he staved off corruption and immorality, spared himself from suffering, and lived a fulfilled life.
Epictetus was born a slave. Upon being granted permission from his owner to study, he discovered philosophy and became one of the most prominent Stoics to date. His life was filled with hardship, living in slavery, being expelled after his freedom was granted, and lived a life in destitute. However, as he himself said, “no man is free who is not master of himself.” Epictetus lived a happier, more fulfilled, more free life than most. The impoverished man is only one who believes himself to be impoverished and the free man is one who believes himself free.
We can look at these two Stoic figures as guidance for how we can employ these lessons in our own lives. With these two living such dramatically contrasting lives, surely we fall somewhere in between and are able to utilize the Stoic lessons ourselves. But how?
Slow Productivity
“Most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a lifetime.” -Bill Gates
Run a marathon. Write a book. Change your job. Learn to code. We hear these (or not exactly these, but you get the point) things to do from the people around us. Big changes we should make in our life. And often these would be positive changes. After all, most people want to help us. But making such large changes can be daunting. Unsure where to begin and far away from any semblance of what one would deem as success, making these strides towards hyper-productivity can seem impossible.
Starting a blog for me was one such task. I failed twice before I successfully started this one. Why did I fail? In those moments of inspiration I wrote and wrote, sometimes entire articles in a sitting. Then I would want to post it but all these questions came up. Was it good enough? Should I edit it more? Wait, I need a blog name? Who is my audience? Maybe a theme to the blog? Okay, maybe I need to write more to figure this out before posting.
So on I went and have accumulated about ten articles, none of which are fully ready or helped me grow as a writer. All unreleased. I grew excited by my idea of starting a blog, and reached quite the high when finishing an article. However, the frustration and disappointment following any hardship sunk me into a deep low, ultimately causing me to give up on the blog.
What changed this time is this idea coming from Cal Newport: slow productivity. The idea is that of sustained quality work, focusing on only a few, or even one, high-impact tasks, rather than doing it all every day. I began writing out ideas for posts and that can be my day. Writing out a section of a post. Focusing on subsection titles in one post. Images in the next. And most importantly, posting my work. While the quality is not always (or ever) perfect, it is then done and that allows me to learn and grow from that, moving onto my next posts.
“I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book.” -Stephen King
Prolific, successful writers don’t churn out chapters a day. As Stephen King says, he makes small, daily contributions, which compound over time. Many authors write less, such as Ryan Holiday who strives to make a daily positive contribution. This can, and should, include removing or editing certain parts, improving by excluding.
Importantly, this idea by no means applies to writing alone. You want to learn to code? Learn one new idea a day. Write one line or function every day, and I assure you that you’ll get there. Want to succeed in your job? Again, a simple daily practice that can be as easy as setting yourself five minutes of undistracted work can do wonders. Take this principle of slow productivity, a simple habit which builds over time, and see where it can take you.
Adapting Your Emotional Half-life
What does that idea of slow productivity have to do with Stoicism?
Everything. Stoicism is a challenging practice. It’s a struggle to control your emotions, to observe the external without judgement. People say that anger is damaging, that we shouldn’t ever get angry. But how are we supposed to control that?
That’s where my idea of slow productivity meets Stoicism. The emotional half-life is the time it takes for the strength of an emotion experienced to fade halfway; when it no longer feels so connected to one’s being. Recognizing when an emotion comes and assessing whether it is maladaptive or beneficial is key to improving one’s emotional half life.
To give an example, I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household, but never quite liked prayer. When home recently, now grown up and not religious, my father needed me to be part of a prayer service. I got angry, confused, upset, a whole slew of negative emotions. These emotions go the better of me and caused the rest of my day to suffer because of it.
“How much more grievous are the consequences on anger than the causes of it” -Marcus Aurelius
About a week later this happened again, but this time I quickly recognized the consequences of my emotions. I felt them, experience them, and then let them fade. I let the Stoic words of Marcus Aurelius soak in and embodied them through my action. My character improved as a consequence and so too that day of those around me.
The path to Stoicism or frankly the path towards improving your emotions comes this way. Identify those emotions that are maladaptive, for me those include anger, self-pity, comparing to others, loneliness, guilt, and regret, and don’t not feel then, but don’t let them control you. Each time you experience them, make a small, positive contribution towards reducing their half-life.
The same goes for positive emotions. For me emotions such as awe, gratitude, excitement, happiness, love, passion, these emotions can feel fleeting. I want to dwell in them a bit longer. For these I recognize the emotion and make a cognizant effort to increase it’s half life, to extend the duration that I deeply feel these emotions.
By making these small changes to the half-life of your emotions, both good and bad, this will ultimately lead you to a path where you no longer need that pill I described since you will find equanimity in your life before you know it.