The Daily Stoic - The Old Way Is Not The Only Way | Don't Let Your Attention Slide

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Ryan talks about why you should be open to change, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, the daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance in the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. The old way is not the only way.

Cato went down in history for his ardent defense of rooms, old ways. The Moss meorum. The Republic wasn't perfect, but he was willing to die for it. And this sacrificed this commitment to it, enshrined his place in history forever. As it happens, this was a family business. The Kato's had long been defenders of Rome's traditions. Kato's father did it. His grandfather did it. His great-grandfather did it. And that's partly how the Republic was able to last so long. It's why any institution endures.

Some significant group of people are willing to protect and defend and live by its values. But there is a little historical irony in the Cato family that reminds us that the old ways are not always perfect and that's why we can't always resist change. Put aside slavery, put aside brutal wars of conquest and unequal political representation, all equal parts of the old ways that the Kato's defended and think about this. Although Kato the younger became one of Rome's

great Stoic philosophers, if his great grandfather had had his way, that never could have happened. As I write in Lives of the Stoic, when one of the first Stoic philosophers from Greece, first lectured in Rome as part of a diplomatic mission in 155 BC, Cato the Elder, Cato's great-grandfather, was horrified. Who were these academics with their new fangled ideas?

He was saying who were these foreigners corrupting the youth? To Cato philosophy was decadent and pointless in self adonjant, and he suggested it be banished from the city forever. Little did he know that some five generations in 75 years later, it would be precisely this philosophy that girded his great grandson in one of the most important moments in Rome's history. Had Cato the elder banished philosophy there had been no Cato the younger, and in fact, if there had been more stoic philosophers in Rome at that time, perhaps they could have defeated Caesar and protected Rome better. The old ways are not perfect. We have to remember that. We have to be open to change, to new ideas, to new influences. We can't appoint ourselves as arbitrary enforcers of what

culture is, of what people are allowed to do. And while there are certainly many things to learn from the old ways, and no shortage of old ways worth keeping, we can't keep every little thing as it was, not if we want to protect what really matters. Don't let your attention slide. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly.

My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cell It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. When you lay your attention slide for a bit, don't think you will get a grip on it whenever you wish. Instead bear in mind that because of today's mistake, everything that follows will be necessarily worse. Is it possible to be free from air not by any means, but it is possible for a person

to be always stretching to avoid air? For we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide. That's epic teetuses discourses. Winford Gallagher and her book wrapped quotes David Meyer, a Cognom of Scientist at the University of Michigan. Einstein didn't invent the theory of relativity while he was multitasking at the Swiss patent office. Because in truth, it came after when he really had time to focus and study.

Attention matters. In an era where our attention is being fought for by every new app, every website, every article, every book, every tweet, and every post. The value of attention has only gone up. Part of what EpicTitus is saying here is that attention is a habit, and that letting your attention slip and wander builds bad habits and enables mistakes. You'll never complete all your tasks if you allow yourself to be distracted by every tiny interruption, your attention is one of your most critical resources. Don't squander it. There's a quote I was using from Epictetus in my new book about discipline when I'm talking about focus. And Epictetus basically says, is anything

improved by inattention? Does anything get better by only half focusing? Do Does that ever produce good work? And the answer is no, it doesn't. Attention is everything. Attention is the prime resource. You know how you know attention is where something, because of all of the people who are not just competing for it, but building multi-billion dollars in the case of Facebook, trillion dollar businesses on top of it. Attention is the most scarce resource in the world. This is based on our time, first and foremost, right?

It's based on this non-renewable resource, which is our life, which Asenica says is always ticking away. You've got to think about your attention as something to protect, something to spend wisely. And as my friend, Cal Newport, who I've had on the podcast a bunch of times, and he wrote two great books, which I highly recommend digital minimalism and deep work. You can check out deep work in the Pain and Ports bookstart. Love it. I'll link to it in today's episode. But to me, deep work is the ability to focus to control your attention, to lock it in on something,

and not be thrown off it, not be pushed off of it. Basically, Kyle says, if you think you're a good multitasker, you're bullshitting yourself, because you're not. Nobody is a good multitasker. You think you're switching between tasks, like, for instance, as I was recording this, because I forgot to put my phone on, do not disturb, I got a spam call. And you might have noticed that little glitch where I was talking, and even though it only took me a half second to turn it off, it's going to take a second longer than I would like to admit for me to come back to being fully engaged in this conversation that we're having. Now, thankfully, this is in a super taxing thing to do, but imagine that I did that a lot of times

over the course of writing a book. Imagine if I did that a lot of times over the course of my relationship with my kids, which we all do, it takes a toll, it adds up. The more you can focus, the more you can lock in, the less you can let your attention slide, the better. As EpicT2 says, is it possible to never do that? No, right? It is impossible to be free of error to always be locked into, never be distracted, but we must be content to limit it as much

as possible. Everything that follows from that place of distraction, from letting your attention slide, from focusing on the wrong thing, from letting yourself get riled up, letting yourself get sucked down the rabbit hole, letting yourself go into doom scrolling mode, what comes out of the other side of that is not as good as the alternative. The conversation you have is not as good. The work that comes out of is not as good. The connection between you and your kid or your wife or whomever is not as good. When you let your attention slide, there is a cost. That's switching it creates a residue. It creates a lag, creates a glitch, and it adds up. You have to understand that it adds up. So lock in, create boundaries. Like that's what the do not disturb mode on the phone is for. It's why I usually put it face down in the other part of the room. It's why I don't have alerts on my phone. It's why even the

fact that it was only vibrating on the table, it was less disruptive than that super loud ringtone that can sort of pierce the silence of a room. You got to create focus, you got to create space, you can't let your attention slide, your attention is the most important thing. You only get this moment once, don't waste it being distracted, don't waste it by being only half present, you have to focus. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa, Pocule, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously we can all get together in one place

because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa, we're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community you can talk about like today's episode, you can talk about the emails, ask questions, that's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better in their actual

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