Most time management experts recommend that we focus on the present and plan for the future. But Seneca takes a different approach. He recommends that we focus on the past:

“But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.”

Whilst sharing his thoughts on the vice of procrastination, Seneca writes:

“While wasting our time hesitating and procrastinating, life goes on…”

Seneca suggests that one of the best ways to overcome procrastination is to practice what Stoics refer to as Premaditatio Malorum....

Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day.

Often we postpone our happiness until the future, but Seneca argues that iro...

It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never mo...

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is p...

Whenever you create goals and envision a better future, you’re actually planning for your future self, who values discipline and long term rewards.

But when it comes time to take action, your present self—who values short term gratification—fights with your future self. And more times than ...