How to practice Stoicism at work

The Stoics we can still read wrote about work from inside it. Marcus Aurelius kept his notebook while governing an empire, some of it on military campaign. Seneca held high office in Rome and advised Nero. Epictetus, born a slave, ran a school. Their examples come from working life: the carpenter and his wood, the shoemaker and his leather, the soldier posted to the back line.

What they did not write is a productivity method. They had no interest in getting more out of you for an employer, and they didn’t think a job could make a life good or bad. Their question was how a person does the work in front of them: usefully, without complaint or show, and without letting a title, a compliment or a quarterly number decide how they are doing. Each section below takes one passage, applies it to an ordinary working week and ends with one step. None of it is career advice.

Start with your role

This passage holds the rest of the page together. It comes, of all places, from On Leisure, Seneca’s case for stepping back from public office, which shows how little he thought this duty depended on having a position.

Seneca measures a role by its usefulness, and his scale runs from many people down to oneself. Pay and title don’t appear on it. By that measure many jobs do better than their owners think. The payroll specialist whose work three hundred people never notice until it goes wrong is useful “to many of them.” The teacher with twenty-eight students and the person who keeps a small office running are useful to a few. Someone between jobs, looking after a household and getting ready for the next role, is still on Seneca’s list, which ends with oneself.

The end of the passage covers time that doesn’t look like output: the course you feel guilty about taking in a busy quarter, the evening spent learning the new system properly. On Seneca’s account, someone who improves themselves is “preparing what will be of service” to others (On Leisure 3).

Epictetus added that each of your titles marks out its own duties (Discourses 2.10). The title on your badge is one of them. Colleague, manager, parent and citizen are others, and they sometimes pull in different directions. His image of life as a play, in which you act the part you are given rather than the one you would choose, is the subject of Enchiridion 17.

One step: Finish this sentence in writing: My work is useful to … because … If you can’t, ask who would notice first if you stopped doing it well.

Hard is not the same as bad

Marcus Aurelius gave the Sunday-night feeling a three-sentence argument.

The argument works by comparison. Nobody thinks walking is a misfortune for a foot. Marcus asks you to judge a person’s labor the same way: if it is work a human being is suited to, “neither is it an evil to him” (Meditations 6.33). For a Stoic, evil is a strong word; strictly, only a fault of character is bad. A hard week is not one.

The phrase that matters most at the office is the condition: “so long as it does the things of a man.” Read as a question, it lets you sort a working week instead of resenting all of it at once. Solving a problem, teaching a new colleague, making something that works and keeping a promise to a client all use what a person is for. A report nobody reads, or a meeting held out of habit, may not, and noticing that is the first step to raising it with someone who can change it.

Marcus also wrote about the manner of working, in an entry short enough to remember.

He is not telling you to keep quiet about your work. Colleagues need to know what is late, what is blocked and what you can’t take on, and saying so plainly is part of the job. What the entry rules out is a second purpose riding along with the information: the long account of the weekend you lost, the update written so that everyone sees how much you carried. Ask whether a sentence is for the person who has to act on it or for you.

One step: Before you send your next status update, delete every sentence that is there to show how hard it was or how well you did. Keep every sentence someone needs in order to act.

Your real material

Epictetus came at the same question from another side. These lines come from Discourses 3.22, his discourse on the Cynic philosopher, but the comparison at their center fits any job.

Your job hands you a steady supply of what Epictetus calls appearances, or impressions: the meeting invitation with no agenda, the two-line reply from your manager, the rumor that the department is being reorganized. Each arrives with a meaning already attached. Checking that meaning, and accepting only what holds up, is the craft he calls “the right use of appearances” (Discourses 3.22). His point about assent is that this part is never in anyone else’s hands: no one can “compel you to assent to that which appears false.”

That makes a bad week at work a week with a lot of material. A curt message might be curt, or it might come from someone with forty other messages to answer, and the evidence usually doesn’t settle which. You can leave the question open until it does.

One step: The next time you hear that something is about to change at work, don’t repeat it or plan around it until you have asked someone in a position to know. Until then, treat it as an appearance, not a fact.

When you’re moved to the back line

Seneca wrote On Tranquility of Mind for his friend Serenus, who had complained of feeling neither ill nor well. Its third chapter reports the advice of the philosopher Athenodorus: public life gives an honest person more obstruction than help, so leave it and be useful in private. In chapter 4 Seneca disagrees. Athenodorus, he says, gave up too early.

The modern version is familiar. The promotion went to someone else. The project you started was handed to another team. After the reorganization you report to someone who doesn’t ask your opinion. In Seneca’s image you have been placed in the third line, and the tempting conclusion is that effort no longer matters because nobody important is watching.

Seneca’s list of what still counts starts with “your voice, encouragement, example, and spirit,” and he sums it up in one line: “The services of a good citizen are never thrown away” (On Tranquility of Mind 4). The new hire learns how the job is done by watching you. The team notices how you took the news. Your manager may not, and that isn’t yours to arrange.

He is not telling you to accept anything at all. In the same chapter he allows that a person must sometimes retire, though at a walking pace and with their honor intact, and in On Leisure 3 he says the wise person won’t waste his strength on a state past helping. Epictetus warns that taking on a part beyond your strength means neglecting the part you could have played well (Enchiridion 37). Whether to stay in a job depends on money, family and options that only you can weigh. Seneca’s question works for either choice: where can I still be useful, and can I keep my character there?

One step: Think of the person who got what you wanted, whether the project, the promotion or the client, and say one plain, generous sentence to them this week. Then go back to your own work.

The virtue each moment needs

The Stoics named four virtues, wisdom, courage, justice and temperance, and held that they are the only things that are truly good. A working day gives you chances at all four. Here are some ordinary cases, with the text behind each:

The four virtues page explains each one and has a free virtue check you can run on a real decision.

Colleagues, criticism and setbacks

The hardest parts of a job usually involve other people or bad news, and each has its own guide on this site:

• A coworker who makes every meeting harder, or criticism of your work: difficult people, including Seneca’s test for whether criticism is deserved.
• A failed project, a rejection or a missed promotion: failure and setbacks.
• The report you keep not starting: procrastination.
• More work than the week can hold: overwhelm.
• A sharp email, or someone taking credit for your work: worked examples in Stoicism in daily life.

Some news can’t be argued with. The reorganization is announced, the contract isn’t renewed, the budget for your project is gone. On a day like that, the free Outside My Control exercise takes a couple of minutes. You describe what happened, sort what is involved into what is up to you and what isn’t, read a passage from the first chapter of the Enchiridion, decide what to stop trying to control, and choose one thing to do with your part.

Before and after the workday

The Stoics practiced at the edges of the day as well as in the middle of it. Marcus has an entry for a morning when he would rather stay in bed, in which he reminds himself that he is getting up to do the work of a human being (Meditations 5.1). You can read it on Marcus Aurelius on mornings. Today’s teaching gives you one passage and one practice to take into the day.

In the evening, the Evening Examination asks what went well, what you would do better and what outside your control disturbed you. On a workday, most of the answers will come from work. Asked every night, the questions show you which situations keep coming back, and that tells you where to practice next. For how these pieces fit together, see a Stoic daily routine.