How Much Is Left? | The Stoic Protocol for Your Next Zoom Call

Summary

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The Daily Stoic – How Much Is Left? | The Stoic Protocol for Your Next Zoom Call

Host: Ryan Holiday (with Stephen Hanselman)
Guest: Maria Semple
Date: May 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ryan Holiday reflects on the endurance of Stoicism through time and explores how its ancient wisdom remains relevant today. In the second half, he and co-host Stephen Hanselman welcome novelist Maria Semple to discuss practical "Stoic protocols" for managing the all-too-common modern stressor: Zoom calls. Semple shares actionable, Stoic-inspired routines for keeping calm, present, and purposeful—even in the digital meeting age.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

The Endurance and Legacy of Stoicism (00:00–03:18)

• Ryan reflects on the decline and remnants of ancient empires like Greece and Rome, emphasizing how what survives is often accidental or depends on conscious preservation.
• He attributes the survival of Stoicism (through texts like Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Seneca's writings) to a mix of chance and deliberate effort.
• The practice of Stoicism continues robustly today, perhaps with more adherents than ever, as modern tools like podcasts and emails connect a global community.

Notable Quote:
“History is the study of what remains, what's left behind, which can be almost anything, so long as it survives the ravages of time and war.”
— Ryan Holiday [00:50]

Notable Quote:
“We are lucky that, say, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations survives. Someone kept that in a box and it was not lost to time.”
— Ryan Holiday [02:27]

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The Modern Stoic Community (03:18–03:47)

• Ryan discusses the vibrance of today’s Stoic community, inviting listeners to join the Daily Stoic Life and continue the tradition.

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The Downside of the Remote Work Transition (06:29–07:24)

• Ryan and Stephen discuss the shift in work culture due to the pandemic.
• While virtual options increased flexibility, Ryan laments the explosion of unnecessary Zoom meetings, finding them draining and less efficient than phone calls.
• Both express frustration with “Zoom fatigue,” but acknowledge that virtual meetings are often unavoidable.

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Maria Semple’s Stoic Protocols for Zoom Calls (08:11–15:13)

Stoic Principles Before a Zoom Call (with timestamps and quotes)

1. Assume Good Intent (08:13)

   • “Okay. Assume good intent. You just have to think no one's there to hurt you.”
     — Maria Semple [08:13]

2. List Positive Qualities of Others (08:17)

   • “List the positive qualities of who I'm interacting with. I really think that just that shift into, like, oh, these are all good people…can change everything.”
     — Maria Semple [08:17]

3. Gratitude: “I Get To Do This” (08:28)

   • “That’s pretty fucking cool that I'm in that situation…That’s kind of amazing that I got to be in the arena.”
     — Maria Semple [08:35]

4. Humility and Perspective (09:09)

   • “Understand my place…It’s not all about me…all the main character energy.”
     — Maria Semple [09:09]

5. Define Who You Want to Be (09:21)

   • “Who's the person I want to be?...the person I want to be is, like a reasonable, collaborative, pleasant person to be around.”
     — Maria Semple [09:21]

6. Employ Specific Virtues (09:54)

   • “What virtues will I employ? For me, it’s talking less…listen, don't interrupt, speak less.”
     — Maria Semple [09:54]

   • “Two ears, one mouth, as Zeno says.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [10:09]

7. Openness to Experience / Being Present (10:11–10:34)

   • “Be open to where it goes. This is a fresh experience. Don’t try to put it into past patterns.”
     — Maria Semple [10:11]

8. Don’t Rush Decisions (10:50)

   • “Okay to say, let me think about it…don’t give an answer in the room.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [10:51]
   • “You have more control than you might feel in the moment.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [11:00]

9. Assent to Reality / Active Listening (11:15)

   • “Take seriously what I hear. Write it down…maybe it was just someone being nice and there was a lot of things you don’t want to hear.”
     — Maria Semple [11:31]

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Additional Protocols from Stephen Hanselman

1. Walk During Zoom Calls (11:45)

   • “I refuse to do any Zoom calls sitting down. I only walk…I at least got a 45 minute walk in.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [11:45]

2. Respect the Clock (12:10–12:32)

   • “Be aware of the time…this Zoom call is for 35 minutes and I'm getting off at 30.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [12:10, 12:30]
   • “You are paying for this zoom call with your life.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [12:33]

3. Defend Your Attention and Time (12:56–14:29)

   • “Did you spend six hours today on Zoom?...You didn’t work for those six hours.”
     — Ryan Holiday [12:56–13:02]
   • “Be diligent of the most important resource you have, which is your time, and…cut it off when it needs to be cut off.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [13:04]
   • “Marcus Aurelius talks about this in Meditations where he says, ask yourself, is this essential?”
     — Stephen Hanselman [13:54]

4. Eliminate Unnecessary Meetings to Be Present in Meaningful Ones (14:19)

   • “What that allows you to do is actually be present and contribute and not be resentful of the ones that you are on.”
     — Stephen Hanselman [14:19]

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Stoicism as a Tool for Flourishing (14:42–15:13)

• Maria reflects on using Stoic practice daily to optimize her time toward meaningful work (like writing novels), ensuring her day aligns with her true purpose.

Notable Quote:
“That's what the stoicism does for me. It's just like, what am I gonna fit into the day that's the best for me in terms of just like flourishing.”
— Maria Semple [14:42]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You are paying for this zoom call with your life.”
  — Stephen Hanselman [12:33]

• “Who’s the person I want to be?...the person I want to be is, like a reasonable, collaborative, pleasant person to be around.”
  — Maria Semple [09:21]

• “Two ears, one mouth, as Zeno says.”
  — Stephen Hanselman [10:09]

• “Assume good intent…no one’s there to hurt you.”
  — Maria Semple [08:13]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–03:18: The endurance and transmission of Stoic philosophy
• 06:29–07:24: Reflections on remote work and the proliferation of Zoom
• 08:11–15:13: Maria Semple's Stoic protocols for Zoom calls
• 11:45–14:29: Stephen Hanselman's additions to the Stoic protocol: walking and protecting time
• 14:42–15:13: Structuring your day for flourishing with Stoic principles

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Practical Takeaways

• Incorporate Stoic premeditation and virtue in daily work interactions, especially those that are stressful or tedious.
• Use intentional protocols—such as gratitude, humility, and openness—to transform digital meetings from draining obligations into opportunities for practice.
• Move more (literally, by walking during meetings) and treat your time as a precious, finite resource.
• Ruthlessly evaluate which obligations are essential; eliminate those that aren’t to be present for what matters most.

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This summary provides a comprehensive guide to the episode’s main points and actionable Stoic strategies for thriving in the 21st-century workplace.

Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

Welcome to the daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. How much is left? For hundreds of years, it was a glittering, powerful empire. Buildings and statues, rituals, traditions, millions of people, millions of events. And now, well after the decline and fall, how little of it remains? How little is left of Greece or Rome besides some coins, some ruins, some stories, as the great historian Gill Lepore writes, not just of the ancients, but of the more recent past as well. Most of what once existed is gone, she writes. Flesh decays, wood rots, walls fall in, books burn. Nature takes one toll, malice another. History is the study of what remains, what's left behind, which can be almost anything, so long as it survives the ravages of time and war. Letters, diaries, DNA, gravestones, coins, television broadcasts, paintings, DVDs, viruses, abandoned Facebook pages, the transcripts of congressional hearings, the ruins of buildings. Some of these things are saved by chance or accidents, like the one house that, as if by miracle, still stands after a hurricane, raises a town. But most of what historians study, she writes, survives because it was purposely kept in a box and carried up to an attic, shelved in a library, stored in a museum, photographed or recorded, downloaded to a server, carefully preserved or even cataloged all of it together, the accidental and the intentional. This archive of the past remains relics, a repository of knowledge, the evidence of what came before this inheritance is called the historical record, and it is maddeningly uneven, asymmetrical and unfair. But we are lucky that, say, Marcus Aurelius Meditations survives. Someone kept that in a box, and it was not lost to time. Seneca's writings, stories about Cato, fragments from Zeno. And most of all, the tradition of Stoicism continues. This philosophy that's been of use, been practiced without interruption, even as those buildings crumbled, even as the wood rotted and wars destroyed. And best of all, we get to continue that tradition. We get to raid that store of knowledge. And in a way, what's left of

[Stephen Hanselman]

Stoicism, like what we have today, is, if anything, more robust than it was

[Ryan Holiday]

in the ancient world. There are more people today participating, listening to this podcast, getting the daily Stoic email, than perhaps ever existed in human history, maybe even combined. The community we have with daily Stoic

[Stephen Hanselman]

life is one I love participating in

[Ryan Holiday]

because it's a continuation of this ancient tradition. And yet, in many ways, it's bigger than ever before. I would love to have you join. You are welcome. I would love to see you in there.

[Stephen Hanselman]

If you sign up, you get access

[Ryan Holiday]

to all our courses and challenges. We say annually, that's worth 7, 800 bucks.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You get a really cool hardbound cover

[Ryan Holiday]

of the last year of meditations. You get a bunch of awesome stuff, including extra messages each week, all ad free. You can sign up right [e-mail] I'd love to see you in there. We're going to be doing some challenges here coming up very soon. That'll be included as part of your membership if you join us in Daily Stoic Life. So just go over to Dailystoiclife.com and I'll see you in there. Being an effective leader is difficult, right? You gotta keep your ego in check. You gotta know how your business works, how the team operates for peak effectiveness. But most leaders are making decisions about their teams based on assumptions and not reality. And that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor Scribe was built to fix. Scribe Optimize passively captures how your team works across approved business apps. And it uses AI to automatically surface workflows, inefficiencies and improvement opportunities. No interviews, no manual discovery, no extra work for your team. Scribe is trusted by 80,000 plus enterprises, including nearly half of the Fortune 500. Scribe Optimize follows work across every tool involved. If someone starts something in Salesforce and finishes it in a completely different tool, it tracks it the whole way. And Optymyze shows you where your biggest inefficiencies are with AI powered recommendations on how to fix them. So you're not just identifying problems, you're getting clear directions on how to improve. The kind of visibility that used to take months now is awesome. Always on. And optymyz only works on applications. Your admin improves so no personal activity is captured and no one's privacy is at risk. If you want to see what Optimize could look like for your organization, visit Scribe. How Stoic S C R I B E How stoic. Maybe you've been hearing the buzz about live shopping lately. I know I have. And it makes sense. Like people are already on their phones, they're hanging out, they're looking for stuff to do. So why wouldn't business want to meet people where they're at? If you're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk into your store, my a little bit about that. You're setting yourself up for disappointment on whatnot. You can go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, they ask questions and they buy and they keep coming back. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real, thriving businesses on Whatnot. Whatnot. Buyers spend more than an hour a day on the app, and they're not just browsing. They're bidding and buying and coming back so you can go live, show off your projects, and turn that into real income. People selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces, and that's because you're not just listing products. You're building real connections with buyers. For a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. You just got to visit whatnot.com sell to start selling. W-H-A-T-N-O-T.com sell whatnot.com sell.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Okay, so one of the positive things

[Ryan Holiday]

that came out of the pandemic is things that didn't actually need to be in person. It didn't happen in person. So, like, more people got to work remotely. We did some things over the phone or virtually that we were previously having to travel for.

[Stephen Hanselman]

All that's great.

[Ryan Holiday]

What I've hated, though, is this transition from phone calls to zooms.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I've always done a lot of stuff

[Ryan Holiday]

remote, but I try to multitask. Like, I try to go for walks or maybe I'll do it in the car or whatever. I hate zoom. I just hate having to be forced to sit in a zoom meeting because most of them are so bad. So I have a little anxiety when they happen. I have some frustrations when they happen. I just prefer to do stuff over the phone. Again, that's my personal preference.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But maybe you have to do zoom

[Ryan Holiday]

calls for work or you have to do them for clients, or your family has a weekly zoom. Maybe you just have some frustrations with this. Well, I think you're really gonna like today's episode.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Maria Semple, who wrote this amazing new

[Ryan Holiday]

book called Go Gentle. It's Oprah's book club pick. It's a novel with stoic philosophers in it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Anyways, when she was on the Daily

[Ryan Holiday]

Stoic podcast, we did a deep dive into some protocols she has for going on zoom calls. I know this seems crazy how you mix sort of stoicism up this way, but I thought this was a nice

[Stephen Hanselman]

deep dive, and there's gonna be a

[Ryan Holiday]

lot of stoicism in here. So here's Maria Semple read her new novel Go Gentle, and here's a stoic call for jumping on a zoom call.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You sort of apply stoicism in a bunch of situations in your life that I thought some of them. It's funny, it's like they could not have imagined 2,000 years later, this is what they would be applying them to. But you're like, here, I'm you. You laid out some stoic protocols before you get on a zoom call with someone.

[Maria Semple]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Holiday]

Walk me through them.

[Maria Semple]

Okay. Assume good intent. Okay. You just have to think no one's there to hurt you. Which. Okay, no comment there. List the positive qualities of who I'm interacting with. And again, even that shift that's like, goes to the optimism thing. I really think that just that shift into, like, oh, these are all good people who I want to be spending time with. That can change everything. I get to do this. My favorite. Because also, that's the thing. You know, what if I'm on a conference call with, you know, Apple about my Olivia Colman project? That's pretty fucking cool that I'm in that situation. You know, it ended up breaking my heart and it. But still, that's kind of amazing that I got to be in the arena. Right? I'm just like, we're in the arena,

[Stephen Hanselman]

and they're not all great. It's like, I gotta call with Legal review. I gotta call. There's also the not fun parts, but that's still part of a fun thing. This is the tax that you have to pay.

[Maria Semple]

Very much so.

[Stephen Hanselman]

On the good thing that you get to do.

[Maria Semple]

Yes, very much so. Humility. Understand my place, as we talked about. Just that it's not all about me. They all the main character energy. It's that type of thing. You know, when you write scenes or in any kind of writing, they say, make sure all the other characters have as much intention and stakes going on in the scene as, like, your character. Who's the person I want to be? That's a really big one. Which is like, what? And it's not, like, manipulative, but it's because really the person I want to be is, like a reasonable, collaborative, pleasant person to be around. And I can do that. You know?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. I go in, it's like, hey, I am not going to lose my temper in this. Even though I'm pissed, I'm going to handle it. I'm going to be calm the entire time. That's the person I want to be.

[Maria Semple]

I want to be, and that's what I want to be. And that's totally in your control. What virtues will I employ? I go to the. If it's like talking less. That's usually what it is for me. Yeah. So it's like. But then the subsets. It's like talking less. Okay. Which leads to listen, don't interrupt, speak less.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Two ears, one mouth, as Zeno says.

[Maria Semple]

Oh, okay. Okay, that's great. Okay. This is big for me. Be open to where it goes. This is a fresh experience. Don't try to put it into past patterns, you know, which is like being in the present. Don't, like, just be in the past about this. Don't just say, they always do this to me. Don't have, like, some story about it that you're bringing into it, because it just closes off all of this possibility to actually.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I know how this is going to go.

[Maria Semple]

I know what they're going to do. I know what. They're just going to say this, and then. And you're like, no, you know, why don't you just take this as a new. As a new experience? It's about being in the present always. Okay to say, let me think about it. Now. See, that's big for me because I have, like, anxiety.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Don't give an answer in the room, as they say.

[Maria Semple]

Okay, see, I'm sure you know about business, but is that what they say?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, that's one of. It's like, you don't have to decide on the spot.

[Ryan Holiday]

You.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You have more control than you. Than you might feel in the moment.

[Maria Semple]

Interesting. Because in the moment, like, if they're like, oh, well, what if. What if you write a second script before we pick you up? I'm like, okay, you know, like, why don't I just agree to that? No, they said they'd pick up my show after one script and after. Write a whole second script, you know, and you go, yes, but it's so. That, to me, is, again, like, a breaker on. Just, like, don't let the anxiety. And then the last one is, which is a really big one. Ascent to reality. Take seriously what I hear. Write it down, because I can have my imagination. You hear one little thing, you hear the thing you want to hear, and that's what you think the zoom call was. But maybe it was just someone being nice, and there was a lot of things you don't want to hear.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Here's two I'm going to add. Okay, so number one, I refuse to do any zoom calls sitting down. I only walk. I go, sorry, they were doing construction in my office. Or like, sorry, you know, I'm. I'm on the road, and I'm just. I'LL just walk. And. And so it's like, at the very least, I got a 45 minute. Like, the call could have been an email, as 95% of the time they could have been, but I at least got a 45 minute walk in.

[Maria Semple]

That's amazing.

[Stephen Hanselman]

That's how I think about that. And then the other one, I would add, though, this is Seneca's thing, which, you know, he says, you know, it's not that life assure is that we waste too much of it. I would say be aware of the time. Like, sometimes people get on Zoom calls and they're like, it's gonna take as long as it's gonna take. And it's like, no, no, no. I scheduled this zoom call for 35 minutes and I'm getting off at 30.

[Maria Semple]

Like, okay, that's good.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So be open to where it goes.

[Ryan Holiday]

Of course.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But I also think it's like, you are paying for this zoom call with your life.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right, Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And I do. I do try to go, hey, guys, I gotta run.

[Maria Semple]

Right. Okay, good.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Or if I'm not that important in the thing, I'm like, yeah, oops, it dropped off.

[Maria Semple]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You know what I mean?

[Maria Semple]

That's right. That's right. Oh, yeah. Well, there's a lot that you don't need to sit and be there for.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Exactly. And so. So I think sometimes people get like. I remember I was looking at someone I know's schedule, and I was like,

[Ryan Holiday]

did you spend six hours today on Zoom?

[Stephen Hanselman]

I know you felt like that was work, but you understand that you didn't

[Ryan Holiday]

work for those six hours.

[Maria Semple]

Like, that's right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like, be diligent of the most important resource you have, which is your time, and be willing to. To have the courage and the self discipline to stand up for that time and cut it off when it needs to be cut off.

[Maria Semple]

That's good. Well, I would. I always like to be running the meetings. Like, I don't want to be in a meeting that someone else is running. You know, like, it has to be. And so that, to me is like, why I like being a showrunner, for instance, and not just on the staff, because I don't waste other people's time and I don't waste my time. Only so much. Can you say on a Zoom call of like, okay, you guys will do this another time. I don't need to be here for this. Like, can we go to the thing that I need to be here?

[Stephen Hanselman]

For sure.

[Maria Semple]

And you do that some time out. So it's good to. When you're A boss, then you can just like do what you need to do on the call and get off.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But I think deciding, hey, I'm gonna be the boss of my own life here and not. Not just passively allow people to consume endless amounts of my time.

[Maria Semple]

Yes.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And by the way, I would say the way that you can say I get to do this, to be present for it, to be open for it. Like on that zoom call is by first not being on 95% of the Zoom calls that like, you might have otherwise been on. So by. But Marcus Rios talks about this in Meditations where he says, ask yourself, is this essential? Like, does this actually need to be happening?

[Maria Semple]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And then because most of it doesn't.

[Maria Semple]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And if it doesn't need to be happening, you eliminate it. And what that allows you to do is actually be present and contribute and not be resentful of the ones that you are on.

[Maria Semple]

Right, Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like, if I only rarely get on the phone, when I get on the phone, I'm going to be like, hey, this is one of the times I have to be on the phone.

[Maria Semple]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So I'm going to be there for it.

[Maria Semple]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

As opposed to phoning it in, literally. Because I, I agree to way too many of these.

[Maria Semple]

That's right. That's right. No, I think that's really good. And it's just always. And I think that's really what I do every day when I start out. That's what the stoicism does for me. It's just like, what am I gonna fit into the day that's the best for me in terms of just like flourishing. Right. Like, I think I'm meant to write novels. I love writing novels. I wanna write novels. That's what I wanna do. How can I arrange my time and my to do list and everything so that I can like, really crush what I'm here to do?

[Stephen Hanselman]

When you're saying yes to this, you are not writing novels.

[Maria Semple]

Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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