Seneca was loaded. He owned estates across Italy, was an adviser to the Roman emperor, and was one of the Empire’s wealthiest men. And every so often, on purpose, he'd spend a few days living like he'd lost it all.
His instructions, from Letter 18 to his friend Lucilius: "Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?'"
He wasn't cosplaying poverty with little food, rough clothes, and a hard bed for podcast content or TikTok videos. He was deliberately training himself.
If what you fear loses its power to frighten you, nobody can use that fear to control you.
The Stoics called this voluntary discomfort. Purposely do the hard thing while you have the choice, so you're ready for when you don't.
If you are wondering what an ancient Roman, who was four years older than Jesus Christ, has to do with you becoming indispensable in the age of AI, here’s my clear answer:
Seneca’s practice of poverty is the essay you write today without AI.
The Most Comfortable Moment in Human History
You have a smart machine that will eagerly draft your papers, summarize your readings, solve your problem sets, and explain that concept you slept through during class. Every point of friction in your education now has an off switch in the form of a chatbot prompt.
Seneca would be quick to recognize your situation. He understood the vulnerability of comfort — of becoming someone who couldn't survive without it.
The danger to you isn’t AI. But becoming a person who can’t think without it is a very real threat.
Ryan Holiday, who has probably done more than anyone alive today to put Seneca back in fashion in bookstores and podcasts, does all his research on physical notecards. He also reads only physical books. He even opened his own bookshop in Bastrop, Texas. He’s so committed to analog that he prints out articles and attacks them with a pen.
He's quick to say he's no luddite: he uses AI for trip routing and entertaining his kids on car rides. But for the work that makes him who he is? Holiday deliberately takes the slow, hard road. He agrees with Seneca that friction can be a feature, not a bug.
Holiday shares a story from his mentor Robert Greene, who once spent ten hours in college translating a single paragraph of Thucydides from ancient Greek. I took three years of Latin in high school and read the Aeneid and speeches by Cicero, so I understand how brutal Greene’s task must have been. But his task was also formative: Greene credits it with building his patience and discipline. Asked what would've happened if he'd had ChatGPT, Greene didn't hesitate: "The whole thinking process would have been annihilated right there."
I understand that ten hours for one paragraph sounds insane. But his goal wasn’t the translation. He was buying a brain that could do hard things.
Practicing Poverty: Cognitive Edition
So here's your move, and it's straight out of Letter 18: set aside certain days like Seneca.
Seneca didn't live in rags year-round. He went back to being rich, which, respect. I’m the last person who would advise you to swear off using AI. I wrote a whole book for students that includes a chapter on using it well. Refusing the most powerful tool of your lifetime would be a huge mistake.
The move is scheduling hardship. Here are some practice examples:
Write your next essay with zero AI help. I’m talking start to finish with no AI research, no advice on structure, no critique of your writing. If you have become skilled at using AI without having it write the essay for you, feel how rusty you have become. If you have been using AI to write for you, you’ll feel the cognitive deficit even more.
Sit with a confusing concept for thirty minutes before you ask AI for help. Thirty minutes of struggling with "I don't get it" is nothing in comparison to Greene’s ten hours. The constant flow of instant answers skips the cognitive workout you need to develop and maintain your ability to solve problems without a machine.
Do one problem set the long way. Then check your work with AI. You will get the same grade, but you’ll have a completely different brain at the end.
Take notes by hand in one class. Holiday's notecards aren't just nostalgia. Slow capture forces cognitive engagement that Granola never will.
Then ask Seneca's question: Is this the condition that I feared? You'll find the answer is usually no. You can still write and think for yourself. Knowing that will change how you decide to use AI the rest of the time: from always choosing to reduce friction to protecting your cognitive development.
Fear Works for You
Seneca's practice had a payoff beyond mental and physical toughness: freedom.
The person who lives their worst-case scenario is no longer threatened with it.
For you as a student, periodically working without AI makes you afraid of the day the chatbot is wrong, banned for an assignment, or missing in the job interview when someone asks a tough question.
In his newest book, Wisdom Takes Work, Holiday quotes Seneca again: no one was ever wise by chance. Two thousand years later, the notecards, the ten-hour translations, the essays written the hard way — they're all making the same bet as Seneca’s.
Schedule your discomfort. Seneca did. Your move.
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