Ancient Wisdom

When Patanjali compiled the Yoga Sutras around 400 CE, he wasn't writing for people who sat in air-conditioned offices or responded to Slack messages. Yet his second sutra contains perhaps the most relevant advice for today's exhausted...

Every morning, you wake to a flood of notifications. Slack messages from three time zones. Email threads that multiplied overnight. Calendar invites that somehow conflict with other calendar invites. Your heart rate climbs before you've left...

Every morning, you wake to a flood of notifications. Slack messages, emails, calendar invites, and news alerts compete for your attention before you've finished your coffee. The ancient Stoics never faced a crammed inbox, yet their wisdom on...

Every morning, you wake to a flood of notifications. Slack messages, email alerts, news headlines, social media updates—each one carrying not just information, but interpretation. Someone's opinion about the quarterly results. A...

Every morning, Marcus Aurelius woke up as the most powerful man in the Roman Empire. His inbox wasn't email—it was generals demanding troops, senators plotting schemes, and provinces reporting crises. Yet in his private journal, later...

Arjuna stood paralyzed on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, his bow slipping from his hands. Before him: an impossible situation. He had to fight, but fighting meant harming people he cared about. He had to act, but every action seemed wrong. Sound...

You've optimized your calendar, batch-processed your emails, and downloaded three productivity apps this month alone. Yet you're more overwhelmed than ever. What if the problem isn't that you need better time management, but that...

At 3 AM, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius sat in his military tent on the Danube frontier, unable to sleep. The empire faced plague, war, and betrayal. Yet instead of spiraling into anxiety, he picked up his journal and wrote: "You have power over...

In Zen Buddhism, there's a concept called shoshin, or "beginner's mind." Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki famously wrote: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." For...

In 13th century Japan, Zen Master Dogen wrote, "When you eat, just eat. When you walk, just walk." This simple instruction contains a radical challenge for modern professionals who pride themselves on juggling multiple browser tabs, Slack...