Stoic rules for living: what to do, stop, and start

Executive overview

Life without design is erratic. The Stoics offer a practical system of rules, habits, and reframes to cut through noise and act well.

These aren't abstract principles — they're operational guardrails: what to stop doing, daily habits that compound, how to handle criticism, and how to beat procrastination.

The core Stoic move is always the same: separate what you control from what you don't, then act on the former.

Things the Stoics say never to do

• Don't complain — not aloud, not to yourself
• Don't compare yourself to others in contests where winning isn't up to you
• Don't tie your identity to things that can be taken away
• Don't talk more than you listen — two ears, one mouth
• Be strict with yourself, tolerant with others' mistakes
• Don't over-indulge in anything, including work, sleep, or stress — temperance applies everywhere

Five habits for a great year

• Pause before reacting — test every impression before responding
• Walk every day — movement produces better thinking
• Do something genuinely hard — the body must be kept obedient to the mind
• Break your routines deliberately — try new routes, use your non-dominant hand
• Carry a book everywhere — reading is a conversation with the wisest people who ever lived

Why fame is a distraction

• Fame is other people chattering — it has no intrinsic value
• Craving posthumous approval is chasing something you won't be alive to enjoy
• We routinely seek validation from people we don't respect; that's the contradiction to dissolve
• Ambition is tying your happiness to others' decisions; sanity is tying it to your own actions
• Define success as doing your best work — everything else is outside your control

Eight ways to beat procrastination

1. Take it step by step — don't extrapolate to the full mountain, just the next foothold
2. Build a routine — fewer choices means fewer opportunities to defer
3. Eliminate the inessential — a shorter list gets the right things done better
4. Cultivate urgency — you are dying every day; the time is now, not tomorrow
5. Choose better company — spend time with people who don't tolerate deferral
6. Chase small wins — momentum lowers the stakes and fuels the next effort
7. Drop perfectionism — focus on what you control (the process), not the outcome
8. Demand the best of yourself — Epictetus: those who keep deferring die ordinary

How to handle criticism and insults

• It's not the remark that upsets you — it's your opinion about it; you choose to take offense
• Cato's move: pretend you didn't hear it at all
• Don't return a bite to a dog — people behave badly; don't mirror it
• The best revenge is not becoming like that person
• Useful reframe: "If they really knew me, they'd say something worse" — you got off easy
• Separate valid correction from noise: an enemy wouldn't correct your mistakes; someone who does is doing you a favor

Five things fools do

1. Care about opinions of people they don't actually respect
2. Always get ready to start — perpetually preparing, never beginning
3. Waste time as if it's unlimited while protecting money and property
4. Suffer in advance by catastrophising things outside their control — we suffer more in imagination than in reality
5. Act as know-it-alls — you cannot learn what you think you already know

Eight practices for a successful day

• Prepare mentally in the morning for frustrating people and friction — don't be surprised
• Begin with physical movement; the day is a win from that point forward
• Do deep work — don't let your inbox become your to-do list
• Do one act of kindness: if you want to feel good, do good
• Read every day — learn from others' trial and error without paying the cost
• Add strenuous exercise — push your heart rate, challenge your body
• Practise memento mori — life is short not because there isn't enough of it but because we waste it
• End the day with a brief review: what went well, what to improve tomorrow