If we let them, our days can become filled with activities that take our attention away from what we really want to be spending time on.
Breaking news, advertising, social media disagreements — these are just some of the things that want to keep you engaged with them for as long as possible.
They rely on your emotional investment. Provoking fear and anger is a reliable way for them to steal your time as you become fixated on the stories they’re spinning.
As our attention gets haphazardly dragged from here to there throughout the day, the complexity of life increases. There is more to remember, more to register, more to react to.
Stoics seek to simplify.
Even two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius could see how many things were trying to divert us from what we should truly be focusing on.
To guard against them, he had a simple rule for himself:
Because most of what we say and do isn’t essential. Ask yourself at every moment, Is this necessary?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.24
It can be tempting to engage with every breaking story, every shiny novelty, and every provocation.
But to paraphrase Seneca, to try to be everywhere is to ultimately be nowhere. In other words, if we indulge in every distraction we’ll end up spreading ourselves too thin.
With everything you say yes to, you are indirectly saying no to something else.
Your time is your own but it is a finite resource. To maximize the time you have, it is up to you every day to focus on the things that matter to you at the expense of the things that don’t.
It is up to you every day to have less time for noise. Less time for needless. Less time for nonsense. More time for necessary.
Today, just as Marcus Aurelius did, remember to ask yourself at every moment, Is this necessary?
Accepting and adapting to change
Another practice that helps us focus on what’s necessary is an awareness of change.
The ancient Stoics knew that one of the biggest determiners of our daily peace of mind is how we cope with change.
It may not seem like it when we lose something we wanted to last forever, but change is Nature’s delight. Everything is fleeting.
Change is inevitable. “The only constant,” as the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus put it. “Is change.”
By denying this, we subject ourselves to disturbance every time change intrudes on our lives.
When we refuse to acknowledge the impermanence of things and those things inevitably disappear then our peace of mind disappears with it and we waste time on unnecessary worry.
But if we expect change and accept it, we prepare ourselves to adapt to it.
The author Diego Perez, who writes under the pen name yung pueblo, summarizes this attitude well in his book Lighter:
Everything in the history of mind and matter has a beginning and an end. Our fear that endings will ruin the beautiful moments of life is actually counterintuitive. When we live with the truth of change, everything that is good becomes brighter and everything that is hard becomes more tolerable.
By keeping the ephemeral nature of the world in mind, we can learn to fully appreciate the good times while they last and take comfort in the fact that bad times won’t persist forever.
Marcus Aurelius was constantly reassuring himself with the same line of thinking:
If there’s nothing unusual in the elements themselves changing moment by moment one into another, why should the alteration and disintegration of them all be a cause for anxiety? It’s in accord with nature, and nothing that’s in accord with nature is bad.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.17
I think it’s fitting to conclude these thoughts with Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay, which beautifully encapsulates the appreciation of the present and acceptance of impermanence that the Stoics sought to abide by.
So whether it’s meaningless distractions or needless worry, remember to keep asking “Is this necessary?”
Nature’s first green is gold,
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
