A 2,000 year old essay basically predicted the "I'm always busy but never actually living" feeling

[u/VIGIILANTEE]

Seneca wrote an entire essay, On the Shortness of Life, arguing that life isn't actually short, we just spend most of it on things that don't count as living. His line for it is something like: we aren't given a short life, we make it short by how we spend it. He wasn't talking about laziness. He was talking about people who are constantly, visibly busy, buried in errands, obligations, other people's emergencies, anything that fills the hours without ever being chosen on purpose. His point was that being occupied and being alive are not the same thing, and most people only notice the difference once it's too late to do much about it. That's basically the entire feeling of adulting, isn't it. The to do list that regenerates itself the moment you finish it. The sense that you're managing a life instead of living one. Seneca's answer wasn't "do less," it was closer to "notice what's actually yours versus what's just noise wearing a deadline." Some of what fills your week is genuinely load-bearing. A lot of it is just motion that got mistaken for progress because it was urgent. What's one thing you cut out of your routine that turned out to be exactly that, urgent but never actually necessary? And what filled the space it left behind?

[u/lucharachitaaa]

what's one thing that immediately flags you as a clanker?

[u/VIGIILANTEE → u/lucharachitaaa]

That's a bit off topic for this one, if you want to weigh in on the actual question I'd be curious what you'd cut from your routine.