Stoic strategies for navigating four years of uncertainty

Executive overview

Every four-year period in history has been defined by chaos. The question is not how to avoid it but how to avoid being broken by it.

The Stoics offer a practical framework: focus on what is in your control, do your job regardless of external conditions, and cultivate the stillness needed to act well under pressure.

The best preparation for an uncertain future is not an escape plan — it is character.

Focus on what is in your control

• Epictetus's core task: separate what is up to you from what is not
• External events — politics, inflation, others' behaviour — are not up to you
• Your attitude, focus, desires, and responses always are
• Chasing what you cannot control wastes the energy you need for what you can

Read old books instead of following the news

• Books from similar historical periods offer more durable insight than breaking news
• Information with a long half-life: history, psychology, biography, great fiction
• Stoic ideas have held for 2,000 years; they are unlikely to be disproved by 2028
• Churchill: "It helps to put a couple of thousand years between you and the present moment"
• Recommended: Victor Frankl, Taylor Branch's King trilogy, Stockdale, the Odyssey

Remember your job

• Marcus Aurelius: "How does this stop you from acting with courage, justice, discipline, wisdom?"
• External circumstances — who is president, the economy, your employment — do not change your obligation
• Helvidius to Emperor Vespasian: "You do your part and I'll do mine" — even under threat of death
• Raising children well is a form of multi-generational impact that is always available

Keep a journal

• The Stoics waged their "spiritual combat" on the pages of a journal
• Meditations is the byproduct of Marcus Aurelius journaling through a period as chaotic as ours
• A journal creates distance from the present moment and cuts through noise
• Orwell: keeping a record helps you see what is in front of your nose and hold yourself accountable

Focus on things that don't change

• Bezos's 1997 shareholder letter: build around what customers always want, not current trends
• Seneca's euthymia: stay on your own path; do not chase the paths that crisscross yours
• Character, discipline, patience, treating people well — these remain valuable in any political era
• Fads, controversies, and outrages are unlikely to matter in five or ten years

Cultivate stillness

• Clarity, insight, and good judgment come from stillness, not from constant input
• High-performing CEOs tend to have hobbies with no voices: fly fishing, long-distance cycling, archery
• Control your information diet; choose what inputs you allow in
• Ataraxia — Stoic tranquility — is not passivity; it is the condition that makes effective action possible

Contribute to community

• Modern success is often subtractive — extracting, optimising, doing more with less
• Physical community (bookstores, local businesses, shared spaces) rebuilds human bonds
• You do not need to be an entrepreneur: attend a city council meeting, start a book club, talk to a neighbour
• The fraying of community bonds is a root cause of polarisation and dysfunction

Have fewer opinions

• Marcus Aurelius: "Things are not asking to be judged by us"
• Fewer opinions about other people's lives means more energy for things that actually matter
• It is not things that upset us — it is our opinions about things (Epictetus)
• Reserve judgment for genuine injustice; let the rest go

Help the starfish — resist cynicism

• Cynicism is cowardice; it takes courage to care and to try
• Focus on small, concrete acts of kindness for real people in front of you
• Look for the helpers: they are always present in every crisis
• The best revenge against cruelty is not becoming cruel — Marcus: "Do not be like them"

Do difficult things

• Physical discipline and mental discipline reinforce each other
• Seneca: "We treat the body rigorously so that it is not disobedient to the mind"
• Doing hard things builds the conviction that you can endure what comes
• Socrates: no one is excused from keeping themselves in fighting shape

Choose to be philosophical

• "Philosophical" means seeing the big picture, staying calm, maintaining perspective
• Every era has felt like the end of the world; history is cyclical
• The passage of time reduces today's chaos to a paragraph in a future book
• We do not choose whether we live in normal times; we choose our attitude toward the times we have