Rules to Stop Wasting Life [Discussion]

[u/hardwireddiscipline]

Most of us aren’t really living, we’re just wasting time.
We tell ourselves we’ll start tomorrow.
We drown in comfort.
We numb ourselves with noise.

The Stoics warned us about this. They weren’t just philosophers, they were people fighting against the same weaknesses we face today. Seneca put it brutally: “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

Lately I’ve been asking myself: how much of my time is really lived, and how much is just wasted?
The 4 Stoic rules that keep coming back to me are:

1. Remember you’re dying (Memento Mori)
2. Choose pain over comfort
3. Stop lying to yourself
4. Do the work in silence

For me, comfort as a slow poison is the hardest truth. It’s so easy to slip into scrolling, eating, or procrastinating and call it “rest.” But it’s not rest. It’s wasting life.

What about you? Which of these rules feels most urgent in today’s world, and why?

[u/Arijan101]

LoL who's drowning in comfort? You think the average person who's forced to work for a living and has kids to take care of is drowning in comfort?

[u/hardwireddiscipline → u/Arijan101]

True, I am not talking about work and family when I say "comfort". But let’s be real, almost everyone is glued to their phone, scrolling hours away. That’s the comfort trap I mean.

[u/Arijan101 → u/hardwireddiscipline]

But let’s be real, almost everyone is glued to their phone, scrolling hours away. That’s the comfort trap I mean.

And where are you writing this from if not your smart device?

This hustle culture, "step outside your comfort zone", "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" mumbo jumbo, isn't the answer to anything in the best case scenario it frustrates people who really do have problems with motivation (IE depression) making them feel like it's all their fault because there simply lazy, and to the rest of us who are working our asses of and also raising children and not having time for anything else, its just irritating to see 20 smth year olds who know nothing about anything because they don't have any life experience, think they're qualified to give advice because they saw a Tony Robbins motivational video.

There's nothing wrong with a little comfort, also if we're all going to die anyway, at least let's not be miserable hustle bro's who wake up and go to the gym at 5AM and listen to 3 audio books before going to work and be on a protein diet just so we can feel like we've accomplished smth.

[u/hardwireddiscipline → u/Arijan101]

The Stoics were not against comfort in itself. They were against being ruled by it, and I am not against using a "smart device" to do your work or similar, but I do think you understand what I mean when I say scrolling. Comfort is fine until it owns us.

[u/Arijan101 → u/hardwireddiscipline]

Everything is fine until it owns us (fire, watter, electricity, alcohol, nicotine, kitchen salt...) this is generally applicable to absolutely everything and scrolling on your phone doesn't have any exclusivitee here also it's far from the worst thing that can own you, definitely not even in the top 50.

Also, stoicism is not what modern hustle bro's are pumping it up to be.

It is a philosophy that focuses on finding inner peace by cultivating virtue and self control, and it can be applied to literally everything and anything.

This new age, subjective interpretation of certain elements of stoicism in the context of hustle culture is hilarious to anyone who's ever read a book, worked a job and has any kind of genuine life experience.

So relax and scroll on your phone if that's what you feel like doing, chances are you're safer at home scrolling on your phone than at work or at the gym.