Stoicism and the Modern Worker

Most of us have heard the phrase, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Maybe instead it was stated as “You can’t win if you don’t play,” or “You have to swing the bat to get a hit.” I have heard the line many times coming from the hearts and minds of leaders I worked with and supported. Essentially, sometimes we get lucky, but we had to put ourselves in that position to get lucky in the first place, so do not take it for granted.

What many of us do not know is that phrase is attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca, who was born about 2000 years ago. That we continue to utilize his phrase, a key phrase of a Stoic, in some way today should be a reminder that the struggles and wisdoms of old should not be forgotten in a dusty tome upon a shelf. That our ancestors were people just like us, and their trials and tribulations (and jobs) should be experiences we learn from and take comfort in. Life for humanity has changed in so many ways over the last 2000 years. And in some of our lifetimes perhaps no year has changed us more than 2020. However, we can use those trials, those results of the past, to help us plan for, and love, tomorrow. This is where the Stoic philosophy comes in.

We may think of Stoics as stone-faced relics, unemotive, unfeeling, cynical (but not Cynics). This is likely because Stoicism strives for self-control and inner peace. An effort to control our impulses, our reactions, and our expectations -- perhaps our humanity. To achieve happiness through the four virtues (which predate Catholicism). It may surprise you then that these efforts are bound in a love of being alive, of being human, of the fate that is thrown in our face day after day. It is with effort that you get to be your best self, but also be your best for your fellow human. It may also surprise you that Stoicism offers practical ways of dealing with the day-to-day trials of being a human, dealing with humans, and focusing on outcomes.

How can Stoicism help you in your 21st-century life and balance your expectations from work? There are many works on the subject from the philosopher Seneca (Letters from a Stoic) to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Meditations), to more modern thinkers like Ryan Holiday, whose work inspired me to write this. As you read through these, and the examples provided, know that these topics and exercises have been the basis for people throughout history. Emperors and slaves, presidents and entertainers, coaches and laborers, all humans seeking to attribute feelings of contentment and worth one day after another.

1.      Wake Up Early

“Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius is the collection of his daily journaling. He never intended for these to be published, so the thoughts and wisdom contained within are truly unfiltered thoughts from the most powerful man in the world at that time. And what did even the most powerful man in the world struggle with? Getting out of bed when the sun rose. Yet his mindfulness on this topic proved to give worth to the action itself. He said, paraphrasing, that he was not made for being coddled in the warmth of bed and blanket. That he cannot be who he was made to be, and meant to be, without rising to meet the day and putting himself to work.

Rising early is key to make the most out of the waking hours that you have as a human. This is not meant to be ever “productive” in a sea of tasks from the moment you stir in bed to the moment you tuck yourself in. It is important to note what the morning has to offer. Step out of your home before the sun rises and you are greeted with silence. Stillness. You are not greeted with the dings of a new email or a text message but with the thoughts of yourself, your being, and the slow waking of life and the world around you. If you missed it, you are starting with your thoughts. Your goals. You are not waking up and checking emails that came in overnight from the other side of the globe, where tensions have built while you slept. You are not turning on the news to check in on the daily calamities the world has offered up. You are not unlocking your phone and Doomscrolling to your anxious mind’s content (which will never be satiated by enough bad news).

You are starting the day on your terms and taking comfort in a new dawn. The sunrise represents a beginning, a new chapter. Take to creating a morning journal to dump your thoughts into. Some will find mindfulness in random rambling, but as a part of the Stoic philosophy, taking the time to write your goals for the day with intent and purpose creates a basis and foundation for you to check in with. Do it for that day, that sunrise, that new beginning you have been offered that you always wished you had.

2.      Manage Expectations

Traditional stereotyping thinks of Stoics as pessimists. However, the important distinction is that they were realists. A realist is not just a pessimist who used to be an optimist. Again, we are striving to manage expectations. And the expectation from the Stoic philosophy is that you are pleased when something bad did not happen. Not because of chance, but because of preparing for the realities that life can and will throw at you. You have prepared for the worst, thus have expected it. When it has not come to pass as most of our worst expectations do not, then you are pleased with the outcome. You are far less pleased, and far quicker to anger or judge or feel the crushing weight of defeat when the thing you did not expect did come to pass.

It means to expect the worst from your coworker’s late night and resulting short temper, or your grocery clerk’s lack of enthusiasm of finding the fresh spinach, or the airport security line twisting around the terminal and stilled like some sunbathing snake, or your prospect’s sudden loss of budget due to a bad few quarters as you prepped for your Q4 close. It means to inspect your pipeline with impunity and the fact that not all deals or sellers or prospects are created equal. It means to check the boxes that are key to your sales process and ensure they have been completed by all parties involved in a sale. It means to inspect your organization with objectivity to ensure the things you think are important truly are important. It means to not trust in the times of prosperity to be there tomorrow when a global lockdown causes economies to shut down due to a novel virus. It means to do the work you can while you are in control and have readied all you can to be able to react as best you can to the variables that tomorrow will throw at you. For when we are not prepared, when we are confronted with the unexpected failure, our minds retreat to the primal anxiousness that is survival first and good work second. We then make the situation worse. All hands on deck and forget about that other thing that was so important, right? With managed expectations, your mind is already prepared to confront the threat and you embark on the steps to make it right. Your managed response is just as important as the responses you received.

3.      The Importance of Stillness

There is a saying that attributes the mind to being like muddy water. How do you clear up muddy water? You keep it still and steady until the particles settle to the bottom. This does not mean you just sit in one place, a quiet and dark room perhaps, and keep still until you are free of distracting thought. Often people state they are terrible at meditation because they feel they keep drifting off and thinking of things, thus failing at keeping their mind clear. What is forgotten is that meditation is a practice with intent, and that removing distracting thoughts is a part of the practice. We as humans practice skills that we are bad at until we get good (or good enough), and then continue to practice them to retain the skills we built over time. The intention of creating stillness is that sort of practice.

Notice the word intent. We remind ourselves that to achieve growth in practice, intention must be built in. None of this just happens by accident or hope. You must take a walk and address your thoughts. Create a ritual of making your coffee or tea perfectly every time. Block off your calendar for an hour or two and sit down to work on the task that you intended it for. Set your phone on silent and leave social media alone. You are not missing out on anything at that time other than your own practice of stillness, clarity, and focus. Be alone. Remove the toxic influence. And learn to love it. You will contend with distractions eventually, so bathe in stillness now.

4.      Focus on the Essential

How many of us have felt overcommitted and overconsumed of late? I know I have. I have reviewed my goals for the year (with myself and with my team) and have seen many of the things I thought were key to success this year never got addressed. That is not to say we were not productive or did not accomplish other goals that supplanted them, but what was essential at the beginning of the year was set aside as we overcommitted to other tasks and projects. How did we get there?

We did not say no. There were key projects and initiatives that my leaders and their leaders agreed upon as being essential at the time. Yet as pressures built, we succumbed to the perils of overcommitting (which tends to follow the path of the overachiever). The Stoic perspective of essential makes its way into the life of a revenue organization every single day. We craft compensation plans to adjust behaviors and create activity which rewards successful outcomes of those behaviors. In other words, we feed the “What’s in it for me?” attitude of a successful sale and compromise. Yet many times we fail to adhere to that same credo as the organization which must overachieve in connecting the various parts of the business to each other. We lose sight of the essential, and regret to say no until the time has passed and goals of old become goals of new once again.

As time is our most important resource, focusing on the essential is a craft which rewards itself. You cannot create more time; you can only use the time you have. Part of focusing on the essential is then that you do less, not more, with your time. You do work that is not done out of habit, or out of guilt, or out of greed. Your outcome focuses on what it means to you, and the effort in proportion to its worth. We have all by now seen the memes of a cartoonist showing their work if you give them 10 seconds, 10 minutes, or 1 hour to complete a drawing. Similarly, we would prefer a few great deals with compelling events to focus on to make our goals rather than chasing every contact that knocks on our web-chat interface. We do better with less. We do less, better.

5.      Look for the Good in Everything

I can hear you now. “You said be a realist, not an optimist!” And you are exactly right. See? Hmm, well let me explain.

You should not hope for perfection, and when the imperfections arise you should take those as opportunities to learn. To be better. To expect, better. In essence, you welcome those imperfections as they happen. Perhaps you gave your prospect the perfect product demo. No static on the call, your video was clear, the topical hand-offs were in sync, the product worked flawlessly, and in your euphoric flow state, the call just ended. You did not ask for the next meeting. You did not espouse enough the value of the outcomes your solutions provide. You might have forgotten to say hello to the laggard that joined the Zoom call. Should you now just curl up in a ball and pray the world forgives you? No! Amor fati, you must love your own fate, and in this case your own misstep. You must now take the opportunity to reconnect, to create that next meeting, to continue your process, to deliver the video with customer success stories, to connect with everyone from that call on LinkedIn with a kind message. To look for the good in everything, to accept what has happened as an outcome, is an exercise in controlling your response, not the effect which has put you there.

Choose what to do with the time you have to make it better. You have accepted what has happened. You have embraced it, loved it, and are moving -- nay, throwing! -- yourself into the next step.

6.      Take a Walk

Getting away from your work is just as important as it is to cement yourself into it. To take a walk is to put yourself into your surroundings, into the world that has impacted you, your life, your current moment. The benefits of walking have been written about in more ways than I can do it justice here, but the intent (there is that word again) is to make it a meditative practice.

Embrace the benefit of giving yourself time and space and be an observer of the world. Yes, sometimes we must walk and talk, but perhaps one of those times you can also take a walk and then write. Or just take a walk and listen for a bird call or rustling leaves on a branch. Or observe the purposeful carving of a mosaic on a building as you walk along a canyon of skyscrapers built long before your time.

Being in and embracing moments of life is a restorative and connecting practice. You are not just sitting at your desk and waiting for the next email to answer or meeting to arrive. You have gotten out, you are moving, and you are alive.

7.      Reviewing the Day

In the build-up to this, we started with waking up early as a key factor to taking on the day. Through giving ourselves to our work, our being, who we are becoming, we have now come to the end of the day. Rest is important (and restorative), but so is a review. Stoics believed that looking back was just as important as it was in the morning to look forward. How did the day go? Did everything go as planned? What have we learned? Are we better now than we were before?

Think for a moment on our quarterly business reviews, or our win/loss reviews, or a project launch which led to a customer satisfaction survey. Have those been prepared for and conducted with intent? Or have we checked a few boxes and said we did it, so now we move on? Our days should be the same, with a beginning at sunrise and an end at bedtime with a tallying of our result to keep us on track. A time for reflection offers a time for you to now keep watch over yourself. What are you holding onto that you can let go? Did we live up to our own expectations for today? We focus on the essentials we place on ourselves and ensure that we have made the progress we promised ourselves. If not, then we will do so tomorrow! I do not want to fail that review…

8.      Mortality

Woah, that took a turn, didn’t it? Reminding ourselves of our mortality was also a critical piece to Stoic thinking. Remembering death is a certainty of all living things, each moment creates a dying one, meant that at any moment we could take our leave of this world. Coming to terms with that helps us determine and focus on how we want to act and think while we are here with the time that we have. We are humbled by the unpredictability of life, just as we are humbled in the unpredictability of business. Our best intentions with process and procedure are sometimes upended by the need to balance it with artful experience. Those moments that were so essential at the time are defined that way because once they are gone, we cannot have them back. Have we been fully present? Were we prepared for everything? Did we focus on the right things or did distractions do us in again?

Yet it is at this point, our awareness of our own demise, a very human trait, that we put faith in our ability to make things good. As in all facets of our life, have we been real with ourselves in our work? Has the deal you have kicked the can on four times truly something to waste time on, or are there other useful actions you can be taking? Have you taken useful actions, or are you being selfish without regard for common good? As stated before, so much of our existence is responding to our environment. We endure with wellness and contentment by being able to control those responses and transforming them into a life well lived.

"Live the good life" as they say, for one day is every day and tomorrow is never guaranteed.