Almost one year ago, my life changed. It wasn’t a big, dramatic event that was the catalyst, nor a realization that my life was on the wrong path. To be honest, I didn’t even know that the path I was on was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.

No, what changed my life was far more simple. I started a morning routine.

It’s true when they say small, micro efforts daily add up to huge results. I hardly changed anything — I was simply spending the first 40 minutes of my day in a different way. …

The Stoic life centred around habits and routines — practices in which they engaged daily, from their waking moments until going to sleep, that provided the structure necessary for a day lived well. These practices can provide a blueprint for us, to help us to lead good and happy lives. This article outlines these practices, and how you can structure your day like a Stoic thousands of years later.

“Assemble your life… action by action. And be satisfied if each one achieves its goal… No one can keep that from happening…Action by action.” — Marcus Aurelius

Morning

Wake up early

“The day has already…

We live in a society of never enough.

We wake up and our first thought is usually, “I didn’t get enough sleep.” Then all day we’re thinking about how we don’t have enough time or enough money, and then we go to bed thinking we didn’t get enough done today.

But no one even has a definitive “enough”. It’s a constantly moving target. We’ll never have enough. So people just work harder to reach a target that will forever be moving further and further away. And that’s exhausting.

This culture of scarcity is more than just unproductive — it’s detrimental…

I’ve had a lot of people tell me they’d love to be morning people, but they just can’t find the motivation to get up and get going in the morning.

This is a common problem, but luckily, one that can be mitigated with a few simple tweaks. The key is to make getting up truly something to look forward to. Sometimes I wake up at 5am and I have to urge myself to go back to sleep — I just can’t wait to get up.

Here are 3 strategies you can use to become more excited to get out of…

It’s so easy to get caught up in the productivity that our society rewards.

Being productive, which often just looks like being permanently busy, is a huge badge of honor in our society. There are numerous articles, books, courses, and videos on how to be more productive. There are apps and software that will help you. There are routines you should follow. Desk set-ups you should try.

But this relentless focus on being productive shifts our lives way out of balance. We find ourselves having less and less free time and increasingly becoming more and more burnt out and unhappy.

…

I am becoming increasingly cognizant of the fact that we need rest.

While it can seem counterintuitive, taking time to pause and do the things we enjoy will actually make us more productive in the long run, and able to go harder for longer. Chronic stress is one of our biggest, and most silent, killers. The adverse effects of this long-term stress can be fatal, and we need to take the time and make the effort to mitigate this. …

These days, we think busyness = success.

But it doesn’t. Busyness = a lack of priorities. And while this may sound harsh, I’m saying it in the hope it will help someone as I sit here, sick and completely burned out. I’ve been busy, thinking I needed to be busy to be successful, and now I’m flat on my back.

It’s been a wake up call, and a sign that I need to re-evaluate my priorities.

Busyness leads to burnout

Burnout is a word that’s getting thrown around more and more.

But what actually is burnout? I always thought it would come from being…

I bet that pretty much everyone has heard the name Jerry Seinfeld.

I grew up watching Seinfeld with my parents (we owned all 9 seasons on DVD) so I definitely know the name. But even if you didn’t grow up with a Seinfeld DVD constantly in the DVD player, you probably still know roughly who he is.

He’s created incredible success for himself, and while he no doubt worked incredibly hard for this, he had one guiding principle through it all.

Systemization

Seinfeld had a system for everything, and it was in keeping to these systems that he was able to…