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Tim Duggan<\/a>Work columnist<\/p>\nSeptember 24, 2026 \u2014 4:00pm<\/p>\n
September 24, 2026 \u2014 4:00pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Two thousand years ago Seneca warned us about AI. The ancient Roman philosopher wrote about a wealthy and lazy man who desired to appear worldly and educated, without wanting to do the hard work of studying required to get there.<\/p>\n Instead, he bought and trained slaves to recite lines of poetry and spit out the answers to any questions that he desired. Summoning knowledge from these slaves, he told his friends, was no different to summoning it from his own mind.<\/p>\n The obvious absurdity of this belief was mocked by Seneca, and today you can draw the same dotted line to our relationship with technology.<\/p>\n This story was recounted to me by Ryan Holiday, the author most responsible in recent times for a resurgence in applying historical philosophies to modern problems. His 15 books, like The Daily Stoic and The Obstacle Is The Way, have sold over 10 million copies.<\/p>\n We speak from a recording studio that he\u2019s built next door to The Painted Porch, a charming bookstore he owns in a small town in Texas. Ryan writes extensively about Stoicism, or the philosophy of focusing on what you can control, and is touring around Australia next month.<\/p>\n Although we like to think that our problems are unique and new, we\u2019ve been struggling with similar questions for thousands of years.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cWhen Stoicism burst onto the scene in the fourth century BC, there was something about it that was both basic and also radical and mind-blowing,\u201d he says of its perennial popularity. \u201cAnytime a book or a series of ideas lasts for 23 or 24 centuries, there\u2019s clearly something about it that\u2019s timeless – and there are elements of it that feel very timely when the world is on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the driving themes of Stoicism is that we are in charge of ourselves, which came into full view in many workplaces as they adapted to working from home. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t have a boss looking over your shoulder and you don\u2019t have an office you have to commute to, you now have to make some decisions about your day in a way that a lot of people really struggled with,\u201d says Ryan.<\/p>\n You can apply Stoic thinking to work in many ways, like how to deal with difficult colleagues. When obstacles are placed in our way, it helps to reframe them. \u201cYou can think, \u2018does losing my temper or being disappointed help this situation?\u2019\u201d says Ryan, explaining that gaining perspective can help with any problem. \u201cHow are we going to learn a lesson from this? Are we going to put in better processes because of this? That to me is the day-to-dayness of what the Stoic philosophy is.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article The biggest lesson for workplaces, however, is that the difficult and messy parts of doing your job is often more important than the outcome itself. In other words, the process of work is just as important as the work itself. Take writing an essay, says Ryan. \u201cYou could have ChatGPT write your essay for you, but is the point to have the essay? Or is the point to write the essay yourself so that you are the person who wrote the essay? Not just to learn how to do it, but to learn about yourself as you do it and to develop the capacity to be able to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n These big questions are something every worker is grappling with right now as our robotic slaves can summon impressive-sounding results without the usual cognitive thinking required. Although we like to think that our problems are unique and new, we\u2019ve been struggling with similar questions for thousands of years. And if history is anything to go by, we\u2019ll still be wrestling with them for a long time to come.<\/p>\n Tim Duggan\u2019s new book, Clear in Tension: How to get better at conflict, is available for pre-order now from www.clearintension.com.au<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get workplace news, advice and perspectives to help make your job work for you. Sign up for our weekly Thank God it\u2019s Monday newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790243181_811_3fc20575a2163af34c12ab353ceb607689355c75.jpeg\")
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