Anything that must yet be done, virtue can do with courage and promptness. For anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and begrudging spirit, or to push the body in one direction and the mind in another, to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses.
-- Seneca, Moral Letters, 31.b-32
Quality is b=much better than quantity...one home run is much better than two doubles. -- Steve Jobs
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.
-- Seneca, Moral Letters, 123.3
John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that "a man's wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich."....Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won't tire and give up, if you aren't busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed.
-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.32b
"...don't spend your time (the most valuable and least renewable of all your resources) on the things that don't matter. What about the things that don't matter but you're absolutely obligated to do? Well, spend as little time and worry on them as possible....If you give things more time and energy than they deserve...then sadly, you've made the important things - your family, your health, your true commitments - less so as a result of what you've stolen from them."
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest -- by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.
-- Seneca, Moral Letters, 98.5b-6a
"The pragmatist, the person of action, is too busy to waste time on such silliness....let the news come when it does. Be too busy working to care."
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
It is said that if you would have peace of mind, busy yourself with little. But wouldn't a better saying be do what you must and as required of a rational being created for public life? For this brings not only the peace of mind of doing few things, but the greatest peace of doing them well. Since the vast majority of our words and actions are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility. As a result, we shouldn't forget at each moment to ask, is this one of the unnecessary things? But we must corral not only unnecessary actions but unnecessary thoughts too, so needless acts don't tag along after them.
-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.24
"What vanity obligates us to do, what greed signs us up for, what ill discipline adds to our plate, what a lack of courage prevents us from saying no to - all of these we must cut, cut, cut"
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
