Something to readWorkload & wellbeing
Meditations
A book of a Roman emperor's private notes to himself on staying steady, handling difficult people and doing his part
Why it’s worth your time
Staying steady through difficult people and a heavy load is an old problem, and Meditations shows a Roman emperor working on it in writing, nearly two thousand years ago. Marcus Aurelius wrote these notes to himself in Greek, and they read like daily self-coaching: short entries you can take a few at a time.
How to stay calm with difficult people at work
The book · About 4 hours of reading · Free
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- Start with Book 2.
Book 1 is mostly Marcus thanking the people who shaped him, and it reads differently from the rest. In Hays's translation, Book 2 opens with a reminder written for the start of a day: he will meet meddling and ungrateful people, and none of them can truly harm him, because no one can pull him into anything shameful. In the free Project Gutenberg version, the same entry is section XV of Book 1, near its end. Read a few entries and stop.
- Write one line before a hard day.
In the morning, name the person or meeting you're dreading and write one sentence about how you want to respond. Read it again before you walk in.
Good moments for this: before a day you're dreadingafter a run-in with a colleaguea few entries at a time
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
If you manage people, his reminders about patience with others may hit hardest. If you're early in your career, his notes on not chasing fame may be the useful ones.
What might make this harder
Read three or four and stop. The repetition seems to be part of how he kept the ideas close, so a little at a time tends to suit it.
Questions people ask
What is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius about?
Private notes the emperor wrote to himself, probably in his later years, on Stoic ideas: what's in your control, how to judge events and people, how to stay calm and do your duty, and how brief life is.
Which translation of Meditations should I read?
Gregory Hays's 2002 translation for the Modern Library is modern and plain. The free Project Gutenberg version is Meric Casaubon's 1634 translation, full of 'thou' and 'thy' and often closer to a paraphrase, which can be slower going.
Was Meditations meant to be published?
Probably not. The work has no known original title, and it reads as notes Marcus wrote for his own guidance.
What it says, and how it holds up
Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180, through long military campaigns and a plague, and he kept notes to himself in Greek that he probably never meant anyone else to read. They read like a private notebook kept by someone with a hard job: reminders and small pep talks for the day ahead. The work came down to us in twelve books, and the title Meditations was given to it later.
The ideas are Stoic. You can't control what other people do, only how you judge it and what you do next. People who behave badly are acting from their own confusion, and they're still your kin, made like you for working together. Fame and comfort matter less than doing your part well, and life is short. Matthew Sharpe, who teaches philosophy at Deakin University, points to the scholar Pierre Hadot's reading of the constant restating: a Stoic writing exercise, recommended by Epictetus, for keeping these ideas at hand. At work, that exercise can look like reading one entry before a meeting you're dreading.
Sharpe also makes a plainer point: the ideas are mostly easy to follow, and the hard part is living by them in the heat of the moment, when a setback or someone else's failings are right in front of you. It helps to remember who was writing: an emperor with enormous power, whose advice to accept what you can't change came from a position very different from yours.
If the hard part of your week is a manager who treats you unfairly or a workload that won't fit, inner steadiness is a place to start. It can help you have the conversation about the situation itself, with your manager or someone who can change it, and it won't replace that conversation.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.