r/GetMotivated • u/hardwireddiscipline • 7d ago

DISCUSSION Rules to Stop Wasting Life [Discussion]

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?

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u/violentdeepfart 6d ago

These are nice words that come from people who had the luxury of sitting around all day to think of them. But I don't feel like anyone really has the ability to be anything else or do anything more than what they are currently. It's my conviction that everyone is always doing the best they can at any given moment. You can't will yourself to do something for which you have no energy. It's like turning something on with a dead battery. You're gonna get something for a moment and then it'll die. And the battery's life will be shortened from it.

So, no one is wasting their life. There may be some things that appear to be possible for someone when comparing them to others or maybe comparing them to their past selves, but that doesn't mean they have wasted potential.

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u/hardwireddiscipline 5d ago

I understand where you're coming from. Energy and circumstances are real limits. But the Stoics weren’t saying “do more for the sake of it.” They were saying don’t hand away the little energy and time we do have to comfort and noise. Even with a low battery, we choose where those few charges go. That choice is what decides if life is lived or just drifted.