Developing an experienced fighter pilot can take ten years and cost $50 million. Pilots must make life-or-death decisions with incomplete information and limited time—all while traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Veteran U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Hasard Lee says their most important training focuses on decision-making. In The Art of Clear Thinking, he says, “Though we have talented pilots, the mantra that we bet our lives on is that a good pilot uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of superior skill.”
Tucked into the right-hand corner of the cockpit in each F-16 fighter jet is a relic from the past: an analog clock. While almost every other part of the jet has been upgraded since the 1970s, the wind-up clock remains. But it’s not used to tell time. It’s used to slow it down.
Seasoned instructors will tell the pilot, “Before you make a decision, wind the clock.” Although it doesn’t seem like much, it allows a pilot to pause and focus, preventing them from rushing into action.
“Winding the clock occupied the pilot’s attention for just a few seconds and physically prevented them from touching anything else,” Lee writes. “It forced their brain to spend time assessing the situation before they acted, allowing them to make far better decisions.”
Tighten the window
Louise DeSalvo says there’s an inverse correlation between the amount of time she has and the amount of writing she gets done. Too much time, and she becomes unfocused or needlessly worried over each word. “I wrote more, and published more books, when my kids were small and when I was teaching more classes than I do now,” she writes. “And the hardest writing times for me were always summers and sabbaticals.”
Like the old saying—if you want something done, give it to a busy person—she prefers to write on days she has a lot to do. It tightens her window of time, sharpening her focus.
“Knowing that I must write during my allotted time or I won’t get to write at all urges me to get right to work, draft a few pages. If all I have to do is write, writing becomes too fraught for me.”
Start the clock
Ryan Holiday has a phrase he often uses with his team: “Start the clock.” If a vendor says something will take six weeks, he wants to start the clock immediately. He doesn’t want to add days or weeks by being slow to respond or indecisive. We can’t control how fast others move, but we can control how quickly we get the ball rolling.
“The project will take six months? Start the clock,” he writes. “You’re going to need a reply from someone else? Start the clock (send the email). Getting the two quotes from vendors will take a while? Start the clock (request it). It’s going to take 40 years for your retirement accounts to compound with enough interest to retire? Start the clock (by making the deposits). It’s going to take 10,000 hours to master something? Start the clock (by doing the work and the study).”
Let it be enough
While it’s important to know how to get the right things done, it’s more important to know your limits.
We’ll never feel like we’ve “finished.” We’ll never feel like we’ve done enough. And guess what? That’s a great thing—it’s how it’s supposed to be.
On a trip to Portugal, professor and author Kate Bowler visited the Batalha Monastery. Inside a giant octagonal chapel, an older man said it was perfect—the layers of beautiful, imperfect ornamentation.
“He gestured up,” Kate writes, “and where the ceiling should have been, there was only open sky. Seven kings had overseen the rise of this monument and had buried their dynasty in its walls. Yet none lived to finish it.”
“It was never finished, dear,” the old man smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you see? It’s us! I can’t imagine a more perfect expression of this life. I came all the way to see it. We’re never done, dear. Even when we’re done, we’re never done.”
Kate reflects:
“All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough and are done before we’ve even started. It’s better this way.”
In December 1851, Victor Hugo—the beloved author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame—was exiled from France for defying a rising authoritarian regime. He would remain in exile for nineteen years.
That month, on December 2, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and rewrote the constitution to suit his will, granting himself unlimited terms in office. Hugo, who had once supported Bonaparte, was horrified. In response, he tried to rally the French National Assembly in a desperate attempt to resist the government’s coup d’état.
But Bonaparte silenced dissent swiftly and ruthlessly, imprisoning or executing anyone who opposed him. In the days that followed, Hugo and his allies—many of them former legislators—were forced to meet in secret, hiding from a regime that was tightening its grip by the hour. It didn’t take long for them to realize their efforts were in vain. “Former legislators were dead, arrested, or missing,” writes Marva A. Barnett in her remarkable book To Love Is to Act.
On December 11, Hugo boarded a night train to Brussels. In a letter to his wife three days later, he expressed a calm pride in having stood up for what he believed was right: “For twelve days, I existed between life and death,” he wrote. “But I had never a moment of distress. I was pleased with myself. And besides, I know that I did my duty and that I did it completely. That brings happiness.”
Eight years later, Emperor Napoleon III offered him amnesty. Hugo refused. He would not return simply because the law now allowed it. Instead, he published a powerful reply: “Faithful in my commitment to my conscience, I will share liberty’s exile right to the end. When liberty returns to France, I will return.”
A decade before Bonaparte’s rise to power, Ralph Waldo Emerson had written the words that would one day echo Hugo’s defiant stance: “No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”
Like Emerson, Hugo believed that each person must obey their conscience, no matter the cost. “In the end,” Barnett writes, “Hugo . . . did what [he] did because [his] conscience permitted no other action.”
The music in your head
In the final decade of his life, Beethoven composed music that would change the world. He was also completely deaf. His greatest triumph—the Ninth Symphony—was written without the ability to hear a single note.
Early in his career, Beethoven’s compositions echoed the style of his teacher, Joseph Haydn. But after he lost his hearing, his work became radically original, ushering in the Romantic era of music. “It seems counterintuitive, to say the least, that Beethoven became more original and brilliant as a composer in inverse proportion to his ability to hear his own—and others’—music,” Arthur C. Brooks writes. “But maybe it isn’t so surprising. As his hearing deteriorated, he was less influenced by the prevailing compositional fashions and more by the music forming inside his own head.”
The freedom to attend to yourself
Two years into solitary confinement, Shaka Senghor feared he was unraveling.
So he built himself a kind of sanctuary.
Each morning, he turned his cell into a classroom, ordering books on every subject imaginable. He designed quizzes to test himself. “The structure helped,” he writes, “but real changes came when I started keeping a journal. Anytime I got angry at one of the other inmates, I would immediately grab a lined notepad and begin writing down what I wanted to do to him and why.”
One day, after an inmate lied to him, Shaka poured his fury onto the page. Days later, he read it back—and what he saw startled him. “The other inmate had been inconsiderate, no doubt,” he wrote, “but was it really meant as a personal attack? And even if it was, did he really deserve to be harmed or even killed, as payback? . . . It’s hard to express how much this process of examination began to change me.”
That moment marked a shift: he saw that the anger he directed outward was the same anger that had put him behind bars. “I thought I had been fighting for my dignity and respect,” he later reflected, “but I hadn’t realized how undignified and disrespectful my anger had caused me to be.”
There’s a line in The Life of Antony by Athanasius that describes what sparked the saint’s transformation: “He began to pay attention to himself.”
For Shaka, writing became a lifeline—not just to survive, but to heal. The more attention he paid to himself, the more he uncovered: childhood trauma, the ache of abandonment, the violence he had endured—and inflicted. “Each time I filled a page of my journal,” he writes, “I felt as if a great weight had been lifted.”
He stopped feeling bitter. He stopped carrying around his anger, waiting to explode. He grew stronger. He felt more compassion for other inmates. “Each day in the hole was a test of my will to survive, as the insanity continued to unfold around me,” he writes, “but the act of writing about the things I saw helped to take away their power.”
Shaka could have given in to rage. Hugo could have gone along to get along. Beethoven could have stopped composing. Instead, each became a testament to our uniquely human power: our ability to transform our outer world by changing our inner one. And no one and nothing can take that from you.
People are often surprised when I tell them I write three pages in my journal each morning.
“How do you have that much to say?” they ask.
I tell them it’s not really about having something to say. I just write down what I’m thinking—what I’m excited about, what I have to do that day, how good a brownie sounds. If I have nothing to write, I write I have nothing to write until something else comes out.
It’s what Julia Cameron coined as Morning Pages—three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing in the morning.I first read about Morning Pages in Julia Cameron’sThe Artist’s Way, which I bought in 2012.
I was skeptical. My first entry reads, “Really do not want to do this. Doubt this will help anything really. I didn’t think I needed help really, but I haven’t been sticking to the writing schedule I set for myself.”
For the next five years, I wrote Morning Pages on and off before finally sticking with them for good.
This month, I pulled out the Sterilite storage bins full of old Morning Pages and read through some. And I noticed something curious. Something about the dates.
On September 28, 2012, the same day I started writing Morning Pages, I broke up with my then-boyfriend—something I had been putting off for months.
On August 20, 2013, after not writing Pages for a few months, I picked them up again. Two days later, I slid into my future wife’s DMs. A few months after that, I finally moved out of my parents’ house.
Between 2014 and 2016, I didn’t write a single Page. Those years were marked by one crappy call center job after another.
Then, in early 2017, I started writing Pages again. Not long after, I enrolled in community college. I graduated in 2019. I kept writing. In 2020, I landed the job I have today, one I love.
Until this month, I hadn’t realized it: almost every pivotal shift in my life has coincided with the periods I was writing Morning Pages.
It’s no wonder Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages her lifeline. “I would no more do without them than I would try not breathing,” she says. The list of people who swear by them includes Olivia Rodrigo, Tim Ferriss, Billy Oppenheimer, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who said without Morning Pages, “there would be noEat, Pray, Love.”
I started writing Pages to unlock creative blocks. I didn’t expect them to quietly shape my life.
You could call it a coincidence—I would’ve made those choices anyway. I’m not so sure. The pattern’s too strong to ignore.
But even if the timing was a coincidence, the benefits I get from writing them are not.
If you’re wondering what Morning Pages actually help with, here’s my answer—after 12+ years of writing them, I can confidently say they’ll help you…
Clear the mental fog
Morning Pages aren’t quite the same as journaling. With journaling, you usually have a topic or theme or something you’re trying to figure out. With Morning Pages, you write whatever’s in your head—no structure, no filter. You dump the junk drawer in your mind so you can get on with your day.
Tim Ferriss, author ofThe 4-Hour Work Week, said, “Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they’ll otherwise bounce around all day like a bullet ricocheting inside your skull”.
By the time you’re done, your head is clear. No more mental pit stops throughout the day to decide what to do next. You already know.
Take action
Morning Pages surface unresolved problems until you deal with them. They don’t let up. They circle back, repeating the same thoughts, wearing you down until you finally take action.
For instance, this month, I wanted to pinpoint the epiphany I had in my 2017 Pages about going back to school. I scanned page after page looking for the tell-tale signs of a dramatic turning point—exclamation marks, all caps, maybe some lightning bolt doodles.
Instead, I found: “I guess I’ll get my stupid degree.”
Wait, what?? I guess I’ll get my stupid degree???
I don’t remember being so annoyed and reluctant. But apparently I was. But that’s the thing: sometimes doing the right thing feels like surrender.
Anyway, that’s what Pages do—they compel you to take action if for no other reason than they won’t shut up about it until you do.
Change perspective
I read a recent article by an author who said writing Morning Pages made her miserable. She would spend day after day writing about how sad she was, which only made her feel worse.
Of course, everyone’s experience is different. But for me, it’s been the exact opposite. If I’m sad or anxious, writing it down helps shift my perspective, which is often healing in itself.
When blink-182’s bassist Mark Hoppus was diagnosed with stage 4a lymphoma in 2021, his therapist suggested he keep a journal throughout chemo to help with his anxiety and depression. “Write down whatever you’re feeling, stream of thought. Write like no one’s ever gonna read it.”
His first entry, on May 11th, was raw and brutal. Confused. Angry. Hopeless. “Good fucking times,” he wrote after describing the first few rounds of chemo. He wonders if he would be better off dead.
A few weeks later, he writes, “You’re a real fighter? Holy shit. You’re just too afraid to do the right thing and die.”
But then, in the very next line, he admonishes himself. “No. Don’t do that. Think positive. . . . Is this therapeutic? Is this helping? Writing down all my thoughts? My hair is falling out and I’m throwing it into the fire.”
By June, though still struggling, his tone had shifted. He started listing things he was grateful for. “You’re the luckiest person on the planet,” he wrote. And later: “I have so many kind and caring friends. Good people. I’m blessed.”
Pay attention to your life
Even on days when I have nothing to say, when the only words rolling off the nib of my pen are the lowest-hanging fruits of thought and the shallowest observations, I’m still benefiting. I’m still noticing things about myself. I’m still clearing my mind for a calmer start to the day, still spending time with my thoughts.
In short, I’m paying attention to my life. I’m engaged and active. I happen to life, not the other way around.
I’ve noticed that when I’m paying attention to my life, that’s when I’m happiest.
Pay attention to your feelings
Negative emotions don’t have to disappear for you to feel better. Sometimes all it takes to loosen the grip of a feeling is to simply name it. Trace its outline. Examine its contours.
“What we call depression,” Alain de Botton said, “is in fact sadness and anger that have for too long not been paid the attention they deserve.”
Go your own way
One reason Pages are written first thing is that your ego hasn’t fully woken up yet. In those early hours, you’re less guarded. More honest.
As Julia Cameron said, when we’re honest with ourselves, we’re more honest with others. We learn to draw firmer boundaries. We speak more clearly. We trust our instincts.
We follow our own path in life because we’ve already practiced following it on the page.
Keep the important stuff in the forefront
Epictetus said our predicament is that time and again, we lose sight of what’s important.
The truth never changes. Wisdom is always the same. Our brains are just exceptionally good at forgetting.
Writing each morning helps keep the important things front and center.
Rewrite your software
If we don’t monitor our thoughts, we become vulnerable to their influence and control. We can end up living in the worst way: unconsciously.
Lusting for money, worshiping material things, seeking power, thinking you’re the center of the universe…what’s insidious about these things “is not that they’re evil or sinful,” writes David Foster Wallace, “it is that they are unconscious.”
Morning Pages make us more conscious of our lives. It’s a spiritual process, and as Sadhguru put it, “A spiritual process means we have made up our minds to rewrite our software, consciously.”
Hear the wisdom within
Your subconscious is wise. The problem is that it’s terribly quiet and shy. It often won’t respond to direct questioning.
That’s where Pages come in.
Morning Pages create a regular, quiet, purpose-free space for your subconscious thoughts to roam freely. Only then, in familiar solitude with you, do they feel comfortable speaking up. And when they do, watch out—they’re assertive.
Create space between self and mind
The Buddha became enlightened when he stopped identifying with his personality and became a witness to his intellect.
The essence of yoga and meditation is to arrive at the space between yourself and your mind. In this space, you’re free from limitations. Your sense of clarity and perspective is heightened, along with your freedom.
We can access this state each morning in our Pages.
See what’s in your head
Write down “the contents of the noise in your head,” Verlyn Klinkenborg says. “You can’t revise or discard what you don’t consciously recognize.”
By dumping our thoughts and feelings onto the page, we’re able to sift through, untangle, and examine them. And discard the ones that no longer serve us.
Connect to your superpower
Epictetus said we differ from animals and plants in two ways: we can reason and reflect—two things animals and plants don’t need because they were made to obey, not command.
Our ability to look inward is our superpower.
“It is impossible to write Morning Pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power,” Andrew M. Barry says, quoting Julia Cameron. “Anyone who faithfully writes Morning Pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom within.”
Animals can look only outward and dream. Humans can look inward and, as Carl Jung said, awaken.
Invest in yourself
Years ago, I read an article by an author who said Morning Pages were a waste of time. She had pages and pages of writing, she complained, but nothing publishable. I remember feeling the same way about my Morning Pages. I could be producing actual content in the real world. I could be getting things done. Yet, here I am, hunched over my journal writing gibberish.
But I was missing the point.
I don’t write Pages to “be productive”. I write them to calm and prepare myself for the day (ironically making me more productive throughout).
I think of what Leo Tolstoy said: “If you can see all of the consequences of your actions, then your actions are of no consequence. All great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.”
I remind myself that even if it doesn’t feel like it, the small moments I spend writing—working on myself—are adding up in unfathomable ways.
Whenever I feel an urge to stop short of my three pages and do something more “urgent” or “important”, I say to myself, I will get to that thing in just a bit. Right now, this is what’s most important.
It might be the most important thing you do all day.
By the way, here are some tips to get you Paging like a pro:
-Wake up about 30 minutes earlier to give yourself time to write.
-Julia Cameron recommends using 8 x 11–inch notebooks. (I’m currently using a 5.75 x 8.25 journal, so I write 5-6 pages—roughly the same amount of space as three larger pages.) (Also: These are great pens.)
-Stop at three pages. Why? You don’t want to slip into overthinking. The whole point of Morning Pages is to get you to take action.
-Write them quickly—but not so quickly that you can’t read your own handwriting.
-It’s not six pages. Not front and back of three. It’s three sides: one full page, the back of that page, and one more.
-You can eat breakfast first. At least, I do. Then I drink my coffee as I write.
-You can skip weekends. Again, at least Ido.
-You don’t have to reread them. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.
-They’re private. If you live with…curious people, find a way to lock up your journal or bring it with you during the day. You won’t get the most out of them if you’re not being honest.
In Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman says the main problem with how we approach decision-making is that we treat decisions as things that happen to us. Should we accept the marriage proposal? Take the job offer?
But the far more life-enhancing approach is not to wait for decisions to come along, but to hunt them. “In other words,” he says, “to operate on the assumption that somewhere, in . . . .your work or your life, lurks at least one decision you could make, right now, in order to get unstuck and get moving.” Steve Chandler refers to this decision-making as a form of choosing—similar-sounding but massively different from ‘trying to decide’ or figuring out what to do next. “You could fritter months trying to work out how to best begin the screenplay you’ve been meaning to write and you might never succeed,” Burkeman writes. “But to take the three opening scenes you’ve been pondering and just choose one is the work of a moment, and unequivocally within your capabilities.”
There are only two rules. The first is that your decision must be an action; you can’t just decide in your mind—you have to take a physical step. The second rule is that the step doesn’t need to be grand. It can be as small as you like.
Keep making these tiny-but-real decisions, and eventually, you’ll reach the point where finishing—the screenplay, the album, the grant proposal—is just the next step.
The solution wasn’t perfect…but they were making progress
In 1881, Booker T. Washington arrived in Tuskegee, Alabama, to be a leader for the new Black industrial schools. At the time, the conditions of schools for Black children “were worse than stables that housed farm animals,” writes Sharon McMahon in The Small and the Mighty. Any money mainly went to the teacher’s measly salaries; there was no money for books or materials. If Washington needed funds, he would have to raise them himself.
Businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald had recently read and was touched by Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery. The two became friends, and Washington asked Rosenwald to help fund six one-room schools for Black children. Rosenwald, who had recently given nearly all of his fortune away to various charities—about $21 million in today’s dollars—and had a little left over, agreed on the condition that the state and community match his contributions. Booker readily agreed, as he “believed in JR’s philosophy that people appreciate gifts more when they are required to contribute,” writes McMahon. “Making the recipient contribute funds demonstrated that there was public support for the initiative, and it meant that the recipient was likely to take care of the resources it used.”
Over the next two decades, Julius Rosenwald, partnering with Black communities and the Tuskegee Institute, built five thousand schools. The community rallied and gave what they could. One of JR’s employees of the Rosenwald fund said, “I have never seen greater human sacrifices made for the cause of education. Children without shoes on their feet gave from fifty cents to one dollar and old men and old women, whose costumes represented several years of wear, gave from one to five dollars. . . . It should be borne in mind that funds with which this project was completed came from people who represented a poor working class, men who wired at furnaces, women who washed and ironed for white people, and children who chopped cotton in the heat of the day for money to go in their snuff boxes.” Sharon McMahon writes, “Everyone did what they could, where they were, with the resources available to them.”
Thanks to the Rosenwald schools, hundreds of thousands of children were now being educated. The schools were still segregated and unequal, but Booker and JR knew that “they were working within the confines of an existing societal structure . . . . educating students had to be realistic.” Still, they “change[d] the course of history in an imperfect way.” The Rosenwald schools provided education for children who would go on to become famous civil rights leaders, including Maya Angelou. “And so while the schools were not equal or integrated . . . . without their ability to become educated, integration and equality under the law would not have occurred. Education was simply too powerful a weapon, and without the lift from JR, there is little chance that states would have allowed African Americans to wield it.” Without imperfect solutions, without tiny-but-real decisions, progress would not have been made.
Something in the bag at the end of each day
Between 1947 and 1948, President Harry Truman moved at a rapid pace. There was much to do. “Plans had to be conceived and clarified with minimum delay, imagination applied, decisions reached, and always with the realities and imponderables of politics weighed in the balance.” McCullough writes. “The pressure was unrelenting.” In response to critics, naval commander George Elsey would say, “‘You don’t sit down and take time to think through and debate ad nauseam all the points. You don’t have time. Later somebody can sit around for days and weeks and figure out how things might have been done differently. This is all very well and very interesting and quite irrelevant.’”
If there was one thing Harry Truman was good at, it was getting things done. He said his greatest responsibility as President was to make decisions. He had to decide. He had to make a choice and act on it. In one of Harry’s initial meetings with Stalin and Churchill, Churchill proposed they discuss three or four points at each meeting. This frustrated Truman to no end. “‘I don’t want to discuss, I want to decide,’” he’d say. “Truman had kept insisting on results, not talk,” writes McCullough. He wanted “something in the bag at the end of each day.” A tiny-but-real decision. A move forward, imperfect or otherwise.
Books Read:
–The Man with the Golden Typewriter by Fergus Fleming is a collection of letters that Ian Fleming wrote while working on various projects, including the James Bond series. I skimmed through the more obscure and long-winded sections but found some valuable insights on writing, editing, and publishing.
–The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips was fantastic. It’s full of mini-biographies of mothers who were writers and artists and how they navigated creative life and motherhood. Really great stuff in here on self and authenticity.
-Wow. Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI was eye-opening. Imagine a computer that doesn’t simply follow commands but “thinks” alongside you. That’s how Mollick says we should view artificial intelligence. Unlike an Excel spreadsheet that automates repetitive tasks, AI is more like a creative partner you engage with. Whether we like it or not, it’s here and already changing how we live and work. This book should be required reading.
-I LOVED Marva A. Barnett’s To Love is to Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo’s Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience. It’s part biography, part deep dive into how and why Huge wrote one of history’s greatest pieces of literature. Hugo fought for the poor, denounced capital punishment, and believed in the power of redemption. The novel’s heart—Jean Valjean vs. Javert, humanity vs. the law—reflects his own battles. Les Misérables, says Barnett, is ultimately a story about love and Hugo’s belief that it wasn’t enough simply to feel love and compassion—one must act on it. His philosophy is succinctly expressed in some of the last words he ever wrote: to love is to act.
The other day, Courtney and I were lounging on the couch with the iPad propped up on the ottoman, watching the end of the Commanders-Lions game. I was looking at my phone, in my own world, when Courtney said, “Look how sad they are.”
I looked up toward the kitchen.
“No, on the iPad, the fans. Look how sad they are.”
I looked down. “Aw yeah, they do look sad.”
“Also, where were you looking?”
I laughed because I didn’t know. “I’m really not sure. I think I was looking in the general direction of where the (fur) kids are sleeping?”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about, that aloofness. As aloof as you are with things that matter, that’s how I need you to be with things that don’t. Instead of fixating on something trivial, treat it how you do everything else—say, ‘huh?’—and carry on.”
She was exaggerating, of course. Mostly. But it made me laugh, so it helped. She’d spent hours consoling me earlier over something silly. Something so minor it wouldn’t even register for most people had sent a wave of anxiety through me to the point of panic. Worse, it caught me off guard—I’m usually pretty laid-back. (Courtney says if I were any more relaxed, I’d fall off the earth.) But there I was, obsessing over something small, a “first-world problem,” which added a layer of guilt as if I wasn’t entitled to my feelings. (By the way, your feelings are always valid. Never diminish them.)
Anyway, when I began writing this newsletter at the beginning of the month, I intended to reflect on how, over the years, I’d moved from a chaotic way of being to a calmer one. But then, midway through the month, the anxiety spiral thing happened. Writing about calmness felt hypocritical and untrue.
I’ve realized that calmness isn’t some fixed state you achieve and then get to keep forever. It’s not like you cross a finish line one day and suddenly you’re immune to life’s chaos. No, it’s more like a practice—something you show up for every day, even on the hard days, maybe especially on the hard days. Calm is the small rituals that anchor us when the current pulls, the conversations we have with our fears to keep moving forward. Calm isn’t the absence of storms; it’s the strength we find amid them.
With this in mind, I decided I didn’t want to just list the broader mindsets that have helped me live more calmly—though those are important, too. I also wanted to include more immediate remedies: the things I say to myself if anxiety starts to tighten its grip. Because let’s face it, it’s one thing to work toward a calmer life overall. It’s another to navigate the chaos when it’s right in front of you.
So that’s what I’ve put together—a mix of both approaches. Some are daily habits, others are simple truths I lean on when I need to pause and reset. I think they can help you, too.
Look at the inner thing, not the outer
Courtney said this to me a few weeks ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Most of our frustrations are just stand-ins for deeper issues. Instead of looking at the external event that triggered us, we might do better to ask ourselves why, exactly, we are triggered. You hate the wall color you just spent weeks painting, and now you can’t stop thinking about it. Is it truly about the color? Or is something deeper—maybe a need for control or perfectionism—at play? If it wasn’t the wall color, what would you be obsessing about in its place?
Challenge your thoughts, question your feelings. Push past the obvious and go deeper. The trigger isn’t the story, it’s just the opening chapter. Get to the root because that’s where the real work—and the real healing—happens.
Cracks are where you grow
Courtney said this to me recently too. It echoes one of my favorite Stoic mottos: the obstacle is the way. Obstacles aren’t nuisances or setbacks—they are the essential leverage we need to hoist ourselves forward. They sharpen us, fuel us, and force us to adapt. They instruct, giving us hope. They point out our weaknesses, giving us strength. When life throws us a curveball, we can take a step back from our immediate reaction and choose to see the obstacle for what it is—an opportunity. And why would you ever despair over an opportunity?
Is this in my control?
This is the ultimate life hack: knowing what we control and what we don’t. Our thoughts and actions are in our control; everything else is not. This distinction underpins a calm, organized, and effective life. Not only does it distill life’s chaos into a manageable sphere, it also shows us where to direct our energy soit will actually make a difference.
In 2018, I set out to earn my degree in half the time, which meant juggling eight classes in the fall semester while working full-time. On paper, it sounds like craziness. But in practice, it wasn’t so bad. My workload had increased, but my stress didn’t because I knew what I had to do each day, and I did it. I didn’t waste time worrying about things I couldn’t control, like outcomes, or gossip, or breaking news, or sports speculations, or what other people were doing. I knew that if I tuned out the noise, did my best at work each day, and knocked out a few school assignments each evening, the rest would take care of itself. It’s incredible the calm and clarity you get from this question: What’s my job at this moment?
Quit smoking cigarettes
Ever notice how smokers seem perpetually stressed? I would know; years ago, I was one of them. I had bought into the myth that smoking relieves stress. (A myth perpetuated millions of times in movies: the sweat-drenched protagonist steadies his trembling hand, fumbles for a cigarette, flicks the lighter—illuminating his troubled eyes—and exhales as if all his problems are now solved, his head lolling back in unadulterated bliss.) But here’s what we don’t see: the cigarette isn’t relieving stress—it’s just easing the withdrawal symptoms from the last cigarette. In other words, cigarettes only take away the pain they caused in the first place! (This was one of the many insights I took from Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking, which I can’t recommend enough!) When I stopped smoking, I calmed way, way down.
Just that you do the right thing
One of the fears I had about quitting smoking was that I wouldn’t be as alert or sharp without my nicotine fix. But then I would think about what Marcus Aurelius said, that the only thing that matters is that you do the right thing. Tired or well-rested, healthy or dying…or going through the withdrawals in the weeks and months after you quit smoking, the ceaseless craving for just. one. more. The only thing that mattered was that I didn’t give in.
Because that’s another thing Marcus Aurelius said: it can only harm you if it harms your character, otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out. The addiction itself could not harm me. Only giving in to it could. If quitting left me moody or irritable, oh well. I’d get over it. But I wouldn’t get over the stress and health problems I’d cause myself if I didn’t quit.
Tranquility and peace are byproducts of doing the right thing.
Live in day-tight compartments
This idea was instrumental in helping me overcome my addiction. I would tell myself: all you have to do is make it to bedtime without lighting up. Just be strong until then.
Taking life one day at a time isn’t just a tool for breaking bad habits—it’s a tool for breaking free from worry. We have enough work to do today; tomorrow isn’t our job yet. Let’s give ourselves the gift of focusing on just this moment, just this day.
Keep your head where your feet are
Do you know what the fundamental spiritual state for the Stoics was? Attention. They focused on what was in front of them—each thought, each choice, each breath, each moment. They wholly willed their actions. They were intentional in what they chose to think about and do.
Why were they so committed to living in the present? Because they knew anxiety couldn’t touch them there! The things that disturb us—our worries, fears, longings—those things exist in the past and the future. The present moment is like a safety zone; anxiety hates it there. So the next time you feel overwhelmed, remind yourself that in this moment, with this breath, you are safe—and that’s more than enough.
See things for what they are
To help keep himself grounded, Marcus Aurelius practiced naming things plainly—roasted meat was a dead animal, a fancy bottle of wine was fermented grapes, etc. He did this so he wouldn’t get so worked up over things. We can benefit from this practice, too: a designer outfit is stitched fabric, a luxury yacht is a floating pile of fiberglass. So when someone brags about buying a 2.9 million dollar Batmobile, remember that they’re bragging about overpaying for a chunk of metal. I found this exercise particularly useful when I was younger and more susceptible to the allure of shiny things, but I still use it now. Life becomes lighter when you see material stuff for what it is—stuff. Nothing worth losing your peace over.
Journal every day
Each morning, I sit down at my desk and write in my journal. I put my thoughts on paper so I can untangle them, sift through them, and—when needed—gently let them go. I’m not just writing; I’m creating space in my mind for calm to step in, clearing out the clutter so I don’t drag it around all day. I try to ask myself meaningful questions. If something is bothering me, writing it down or tracing its outlines helps soften its grip. As Alain de Botton said, “What we call depression is in fact sadness and anger that have for too long not been paid the attention they deserve.”
Journaling is how we pay attention. Because if we don’t monitor our thoughts, we become vulnerable to their influence and control. We can end up living in the worst way: unconsciously. The things that agitate and derail us—materialism, lust for money or power, thinking we’re the center of the universe…what’s insidious about these things “is not that they are evil or sinful,” David Foster Wallace writes, “it is that they are unconscious.” Journaling makes the unconscious conscious.
If you don’t already have a journaling practice, try this: commit to writing in a journal for just 10 minutes every day (you can even skip weekends if you want!) for the rest of the year. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an activity more deserving of your time—or more foundational to your calm.
Read every day
I like how my friend Tommy Dixon—who gets up at 5 a.m. and reads for the first three hours—puts it: Reading can be difficult, but it’s never taxing. Reading calms and centers us, one of its many benefits. I took Tommy’s advice and started reading more in the morning. After I journal, of course.
Don’t be a jackass
In my late twenties, I wanted to do lots of things—get my degree, keep a blog, make more money, start a business, set up passive income streams, etc. The problem was that I didn’t know where to start. How could I make time for it all? Well, of course, I couldn’t. It was James Altucher’s blunt advice that opened my eyes: don’t be a jackass. Don’t bounce from one thing to another. Do one thing for a few years, then do something else for a few years. Resist the urge to do more, more, more. Ignore what other people are doing. Stay on your path, make a little progress each day, and enjoy your life. Repeat ad infinitum.
Let go of anger
“Why should we feel anger at the world?” Euripides pondered, “As if the world would notice.” I remember hearing that and thinking, whoa. I hadn’t realized how often my default response was anger—at bad drivers, rude people, the economy, the world, the injustice of it all, the uncertainty of my own path. Want to know where all that anger got me? Prison.
Just kidding. But I was in a prison of sorts, a mental one of my own making. The world was not the problem—my perspective was. So I redirected my energy toward changing myself. I let go of anger and chose love instead. Leo Tolstoy said that peace in our hearts can begin only when we look at the world with a loving disposition, and I’ve found that to be true. A shared smile, a helping hand, an eagerness to smooth out discord, a willingness to see the good in others…the quiet understanding that we’re all connected. The more I practiced this mindset, the more at home I felt—not just in the world, but in myself.
Get back to the rhythm
Life moves fast. It’s messy, unpredictable, and full of emotions we don’t always understand. We’re all trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Some days are better than others. Sometimes we’re in a funk. The trick is not to get stuck there. Get back to your rhythm as quickly as you can. That’s what Marcus Aurelius did. He chose not to fight against the chaos but instead fight to get back to his center, to his rhythm, as soon as possible. Go through the motions if you have to, but get back to the rhythm. And remember…
No matter what, it will all be okay
The other day, my mom told me something I really needed to hear: “Just tell yourself, no matter what, it will all work out. It always does, Em. It will all be okay.”
Books Read:
-Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks is one of my favorite books, so I had to pick up Meditations for Mortals. No surprise, he delivers. It’s about how to best use our limited time without stressing about how to use our limited time. Really good stuff.
-In No Cure for Being Human, Kate Bowler details her stage 4 cancer diagnosis as a young mother. She’s confronted with the big questions: what does this all mean? Why are we here? How should I spend the time I have left? Am I being selfish or selfless by following my calling? How will I know when I’m finished? Such a great book. I read this at the end of December, so I wasn’t able to put it in my best reads of 2024 list in time, but it’s one of the best reads from 2024!
–Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom was a fascinating read. Her memoir takes you deep into the high-stakes poker world—where Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were regulars—showing both the highs and the inevitable crash. It was gripping, fun, and full of unexpected moments (who knew Tobey Maguire was such a weirdo?). It’s a wild glimpse into a world most of us—thankfully—will never see.
-I’m obsessed with Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life. Hadot reveals philosophy as a lived practice, a way to train the mind through journaling, meditation, and perspective shifts…I marked up almost every page.
-I can’t believe I hadn’t read George Orwell’s 1984—this might be one of the best books I’ve ever read. Orwell’s insights hit hard: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” The “thought police” made me appreciate how we can escape into our own minds whenever we want. Powerful, but easy to overlook. Another gem I loved was when the protagonist, Winston Smith, realized that the everyday, regular people were not mindlessly loyal to a party or an ideology, but to each other.
