Imagine you're waiting for an answer that matters. You check your phone, put it down, and pick it up again. Nothing. You check again. It's like closing the fridge, then opening it two seconds later, expecting a juicy ribeye to have magically appeared.

Epictetus's advice sounds unreasonable at first. Wish for what happens? Even when you wanted something else?

Try it at the scale of this afternoon. You can prefer a quick answer while accepting that, for now, you haven't got one. The preference can stay. The condition you've attached to everything else can change.

That matters because waiting is already part of the situation. You don't have to enjoy it, approve of a delay, or abandon a sensible follow-up. But you can stop making an answer the admission requirement for the rest of your day.

Acceptance leaves you with a practical question: given what's happened, what would be useful now? Sometimes that means taking action to change things. Sometimes it means doing the work you keep interrupting to check for news.

Give yourself ten minutes today.

Pick one unresolved thing you're monitoring. Write down the current fact: no answer yet, decision still pending, result still unknown.

Ask whether you have a useful action to take. If so, take it. If you've already done your part, choose a reasonable time to check again. Then spend the remaining minutes on something you can actually do.

You may still want to look. Let the urge be there while you finish a paragraph, wash the dishes, or listen to someone without checking under the table.

The practice is continuing with an unfinished situation. Ten minutes won't settle the outcome.

In chapter 4 of the Enchiridion, Epictetus asks someone heading to the baths to consider what happens there: pushing, scolding, even theft. It's quite a review. You'd keep scrolling for somewhere with nicer towels.

But his teaching example gives the bather two aims: to bathe, and to keep their will in harmony with nature. A disruption may interfere with the bath. It needn't cancel the second aim.

He starts before anything goes wrong. He asks the person to include ordinary trouble in the plan. Otherwise, they arrive expecting a bath on terms the other bathers never agreed to.

We can make a similar adjustment while waiting. Plan for the answer, but include the possibility that it won't arrive when wanted. Then the afternoon still contains something worth doing.

What have you put on hold until somebody else answers? What part could you resume today?

Take the afternoon with you,

Jon

What are you waiting on? Hit reply and tell me.