Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Lauryn and Michael Bosstick (The Skinny Confidential) Talk Stoic Morning Routines and How to Manage Your Life in Quarantine

My definition of success is autonomy. If you don't have control over your life day to day, you're not powerful or free.

The worst thing you can do—and this is from someone who is maybe a little bit of a workaholic—is wake up and check your phone. Honestly, if I can give one tip to anyone, it's don't even look at your phone.

So many of us live in our inboxes now, and it takes us out of time to reflect and to think and to plan and strategize ... We're constantly on our back foot trying to accommodate requests of others.

They've done some studies and found that if 80% of people wore masks that we're 60% effective, essentially it would send the transmission rate to below one and the virus [COVID-19] would very quickly die off.

Do you wake up and the first thing you do is check your emails? I did that for eight years. I get it. It's just not a productive way to start the day in my opinion. You're really going off what everyone else needs you to do.

If you're not taking quiet time in the morning to think big picture, to plan out what you want to do, to be creative, and to make stuff, you got to ask yourself: Who's doing that?

People around here [Texas] seem to be convinced that wearing a mask is an infringement of one's rights, which ironically only extends the dangers of the pandemic and continues to not only put people at risk but forces more repressive measures to go into place.

I like being friends with people who live different lives. They expose you to different things, they open your mind to different things, and sometimes, they teach you different things.

If I don't have that first routine where I'm reflecting and thinking and taking time to stay calm, the rest of the day is just completely fucked for me.