Every night during the Marcomannic Wars, Marcus Aurelius wrote one sentence in his journal. Not goals. Not gratitude. Not affirmations.
A Stoic Question That Changed How I Spend My Energy
Just this:
“What did I let control me today?”
That question has stayed with me because of what it doesn’t ask. Aurelius wasn’t measuring outcomes. He wasn’t cataloging wins or losses. He was paying attention to something subtler — what had quietly taken ownership of his mind without permission.
And he was doing this while leading an empire at war.
That alone tells me this wasn’t a soft exercise. It was a survival skill.
Why Most Burnout Has Nothing to Do with Hard Work
For a long time, I assumed exhaustion came from effort. Long days. Heavy responsibility. Pressure.
But what I’ve learned is this: most people don’t collapse from working hard — they collapse from invisible leaks.
- An argument that replays long after it’s over.
- A comment that sticks when it shouldn’t.
- An email you keep checking even though you already know the answer won’t change.
None of these are major crises. But they steal energy in micro-doses. And by the end of the week, you’re drained — not from meaningful work, but from carrying mental weight that never mattered in the first place.
That kind of fatigue is harder to diagnose because it doesn’t feel dramatic. It just feels constant.
The Cost of Letting the Wrong Things Live Rent-Free
Marcus Aurelius understood something I had forgotten for years:
You don’t control events.
But you do control what rents space in your mind.
Every time I replay a conflict, refresh bad news, or obsess over someone else’s opinion, I’m giving away sovereignty. Not once. Every single time.
And the cost of that decision compounds faster than interest.
Attention is not neutral. What you give it to shapes how you feel, how you act, and eventually how you live. When I let unimportant things dominate my focus, I don’t just lose time — I lose clarity.
A Simple Nightly Protocol That Restored Control
I didn’t try to overhaul my life or become more “positive.” Instead, I borrowed Aurelius’s restraint and adapted it into something practical. At the end of each day, I write down one thing that controlled me today.
Just one.
Then I decide whether it gets access tomorrow.
- Not “let it go.”
- Not “be grateful.”
- Not “think better thoughts.”
I decide.
Because power isn’t about avoiding problems. It’s about choosing which ones deserve my attention. Everything else is noise pretending to be urgent. That distinction has been freeing. It turns reflection into a decision-making tool instead of a self-critique.
Why You’re Probably Not as Tired as You Think
Most people believe they’re tired because they work hard. In my experience, they’re tired because they let things that don’t matter act as they do.
They’re carrying mental tabs they never closed. Open loops. Old conversations. Hypotheticals that never arrive.
When I started closing those tabs intentionally, my energy changed — not because my life got easier, but because my attention became cleaner.
The Question That Tells the Truth
So here’s the question I come back to — the one Marcus Aurelius trusted, and the one that still challenges me:
If you wrote down what controlled your focus today, would you be proud of that list… or ashamed?
That answer tells you more about your life than any productivity system ever will.
