How did I miss this piece from Epictetus? Bob used to say that the present is primetime. Now is when your actions happen, and now is when results happen.
51.1. How much longer will you delay before you think yourself worthy of what is best, and transgress in nothing the distinctions that reason imposes? You’ve acquired knowledge of the philosophical principles that you ought to accept, and have accepted them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for, that you should delay any effort to reform yourself until he appears? You’re no longer a youth; you’re a full-grown man. If you’re now negligent and idle, and are constantly making one delay after another, and setting one day and then another as the date after which you’ll devote proper attention to yourself, then you’ll fail to appreciate that you’re making no progress, but will continue to be a layman your whole life through until you die.
2. So you should think fit from this moment to live as an adult and as one who is making progress; and let everything that seems best to you be an inviolable law for you. And if you come up against anything that requires an effort, or is pleasant, or is glorious or inglorious, remember that this is the time of the contest, that the Olympic Games have now arrived, and that there is no possibility of further delay, and that it depends on a single day and single action whether progress is to be lost or secured.
3. It was in this way that Socrates became the man he was, by attending to nothing other than reason in everything that he had to deal with. And even if you’re not yet a Socrates, you ought to live like someone who does in fact wish to be a Socrates.
Handbook, 51. Emphasis added.
If you put this with the little piece I read from Marcus Aurelius today, it all makes sense. Slow down. Do one thing. So the vital thing.
“ If you seek tranquillity, do less.” Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.
Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”
But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.
Meditations, x:24