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August  22nd

DON’T   SWEAT   THE SMALL   STUFF

“It is  essential   for you to  remember    that    the attention   you give    to  any action  should  be  in  due

proportion  to  its worth,  for then    you won’t   tire    and give    up, if  you aren’t  busying yourself    with

lesser  things  beyond  what    should  be  allowed.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS,   MEDITATIONS,    4.32b

n 1997, a psychotherapist named Richard Carlson published a book called Don’t Sweat the Small
Stuff . . . and It’s All Small Stuff. It quickly became one of the fastest-selling books of all time and
spent years on the bestseller lists, ultimately selling millions of copies in many languages.
Whether you read the book or not, Carlson’s pithy articulation of this timeless idea is worth
remembering. Even Cornelius Fronto, Marcus Aurelius’s rhetoric teacher, would have thought it a
superior way of expressing the wisdom his student attempted in the quote above. They both say the same
thing: don’t spend your time (the most valuable and least renewable of all your resources) on the things
that don’t matter. What about the things that don’t matter but you’re absolutely obligated to do? Well,
spend as little time and worry on them as possible.
If you give things more time and energy than they deserve, they’re no longer lesser things. You’ve
made them important by the life you’ve spent on them. And sadly, you’ve made the important things—your
family, your health, your true commitments—less so as a result of what you’ve stolen from them.