Nothing, it seems, is harder for the busy person than to slow down.

Seneca knew this.

It was as true in Rome as it is today.

And that's why he wrote with such pity about the conquerors, for whom there was never enough, about the lawyers, very well into old age, still exhausting themselves in court, arguing for clients they didn't care about, trying to win a little more money or acclaim, none of which was going to follow them into their graves, which were closer than they would have liked to think.

Seneca must have judged himself too for his inability to walk away earlier, when it became clear what life in Nero's service was really going to be like.

Yet here we all are, equally incapable of slowing down, of stepping back, or reflecting on what is important, finding balance, of using stillness to our advantage.

At the end of his career, after he'd been pushed out of power, the French president Charles de Gaulle was asked how he spent his days.

Ask the cat, he replied.

We play solitaire and take walks together.

It isn't easy for a man to force himself into a discipline of idleness, but it is essential.

Life is not work, he said.

To work without stopping sends a man mad.

Remember that.

And to want to do so is a bad sign.

Those of your colleagues who could not stop working were by no means the best.

Yes, Marx really said we ought to wear ourselves down doing what we love, but he didn't mean that literally, not fully.

He meant that the time and energy we allocate to a vocation every day should be something we love, and something we give our all to in those hours.

But to do more than that, to sacrifice yourself on the altar of work, that contradicts the essential stoic virtue of moderation.

We have to know how to do nothing.

We have to know when it's time to take a break.

We have to slow down.

We have to seek stillness.

And those who cannot are not the best, because they have no tranquility, no perspective, and no self-control.