Every Deadline Is a Distraction From Dying
We’ve been getting life wrong for two millennia – Seneca tried to warn us.
I was cleaning out my old laptop the other day, expecting to find selfies with Snooki-level bronzer and a Supré bodycon dress. Instead, I stumbled on something even more unexpected – my university notes from a brief, misguided attempt at studying ancient history.
Buried between half-baked essays and citations I definitely didn’t format correctly – I found a PDF titled "On the Shortness of Life."
It was a translation of an essay by Seneca, a Roman philosopher who lived 2,000 years ago. I opened it, expecting grand, distant thoughts about time and wisdom and whatever else Stoics love to talk about. Instead, what I found was basically a man screaming through history …
"You are wasting your life."
It was unsettling. Not because he was wrong, but because he was right.
Seneca Warned Us and We Ignored Him
The core of Seneca’s argument is that life is short, not because we don’t have enough time, but because we waste so much of it. He was furious at people who spent their entire existence on meaningless obligations – busywork, empty social climbing, trying to impress people they don’t even like.
Seneca was mad at first-century Roman bureaucrats for wasting their days on ceremonial meetings and unnecessary errands. Imagine how he’d feel about LinkedIn engagement metrics, iPhone notifications, and the unspoken social contract that you must pretend to care about your coworkers’ pets.
He wrote about people who put off living – until the work’s done, until they’ve saved enough, until retirement. The more I read, the more it hit me – we’ve perfected the art of deferring life.
Work Isn’t Life, But We Keep Acting Like It Is
Seneca argued that most people spend their whole lives working for others, never actually living. He wrote that “they are careful in guarding their personal property but waste their lives with reckless abandon.”
Today people treat their inboxes like sacred texts but ignore their own exhaustion. We are terrified of missing an email but completely unbothered by missing our own lives. We act like rest is something we must earn, instead of something we are entitled to.
Seneca never lived to see the roll out of Google Calendar, but he still managed to predict every burned-out professional with a stress rash and a to-do list titled When I Have Time.
“One Day” is a Scam
Seneca hated the idea that people keep postponing their happiness.
“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.”
Or in modern terms … you keep telling yourself you’ll enjoy life later, but ‘later’ is a moving target that never actually arrives.
How many times have you thought, "Once things slow down, I’ll take a break"?
How many times have you believed, "After this deadline, I’ll finally have time to breathe"?
How many times has "next month" turned into "next year" turned into "I guess this is just my life now"?
We treat time like something that will magically appear in the future, but time doesn’t expand – it only disappears.
Seneca aimed his critique at Roman elites, but it lands just as cleanly on today’s freelancers answering emails at 10pm – insisting it’s not burnout, just “passion for the project.”
What’s the Solution?
I could wrap this up by saying “quit your job, move to an island, stop responding to emails” but I won’t, because:
Capitalism exists, and so do bills.
If I’m being honest, I am also bad at this.
Seneca wrote this 2,000 years ago, and we still don’t get it. If he were here today, he’d tell me to delete half my to-do list and go touch some grass. He’d be right.
Log off.
Your life won’t wait.
Another Slice?
How to Succeed at Work (According to Dead Men)
Two millennia of warnings didn’t work. Let’s try a PowerPoint from 1986.