Something to readWorkload & wellbeing
On the Shortness of Life
A short Roman essay on why life feels short, and who we let spend our time
Why it’s worth your time
Nearly two thousand years old, this essay can read like a note about your calendar. Seneca's claim is that we have enough time and hand it out carelessly, to other people's demands, to busywork and to a someday that may not come. It's free online, and the title essay fits in a long lunch.
How to stop giving your time away
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- Start with the opening sections.
The opening sections set out the argument and the long runs of Roman examples can be skimmed; don't skip the last few sections, where he urges Paulinus himself to step away. The free Project Gutenberg text is an older translation, collected with his other dialogues; the Penguin edition is a modern translation that adds two more of his essays.
- Sort one week of your hours.
Open last week's calendar and mark each block chosen, required or drifted into. Pick one drifted block to drop or shrink next week, and give that time to something you keep postponing.
Good moments for this: at the start of a new yearafter a week that vanishedbefore saying yes to something big
Keep going with Truest
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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
Stepping away for philosophy may not be on the table for you. The usable part is smaller: noticing the hours you gave away without ever deciding to.
What might make this harder
Keep the audit anyway and protect one small thing, even half an hour a week, for something you'd otherwise keep postponing. Postponing is one of Seneca's main targets, and it's often the part still in your hands.
Questions people ask
Who was Paulinus in On the Shortness of Life?
The man the essay is written to, probably Pompeius Paulinus, who oversaw Rome's grain supply and was likely related to Seneca's wife.
When was On the Shortness of Life written?
It's usually dated to around AD 49, though one argument places it in AD 55.
Can I read On the Shortness of Life for free?
Yes. Older English translations are in the public domain, and Project Gutenberg has one.
What it says, and how it holds up
Seneca opens by denying the old complaint that life is too short: there's enough of it, he argues, for anyone who spends it well. We shorten it ourselves. The rest of the essay is a tour of the ways people do that, written to a man he hopes to talk out of a demanding public post.
His busy people are lawyers, office-seekers, clients waiting at a patron's door, hosts fussing over banquets, collectors of trivia. One point is easy to recognize at work: people guard their money and property carefully, he observes, yet hand their time to anyone who asks, because it can't be seen. Another is about postponing. Planning to live properly after one more year in office, or at fifty or sixty, strikes him as a strange way to treat a life whose length nobody knows.
It helps to know who's talking. Seneca was recalled from exile in AD 49 and made tutor to the future emperor Nero, whom he went on to advise; depending on how the essay is dated, he wrote it as that career began or while already at Nero's side. His enemies later turned Nero against him, Penguin's author note says, partly with accusations of excessive wealth. The essay's case for withdrawing also sits awkwardly with another of his works, On Tranquility of Mind, which recommends public service, though in a related essay, On Leisure, he argues there's no contradiction, since a person can serve others either way. The tension doesn't cancel the essay's point, but it's a reason to read it as a challenge more than a guide.
The essay has little to offer someone short of money or security rather than time; it's written for a reader whose basics are already covered.
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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.