Separate What You Control From What You Don’t
You control your judgments, decisions, and actions. You do not control outcomes, other people, or external events. A manager who sorts a stressor into those two groups can see where effort will change something and where it will not.
Evidence is not a decision
On October 15, 1962, analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center identified Soviet missile sites in U-2 photographs of Cuba. Their findings gave President Kennedy and his advisers evidence they needed to assess the crisis.
The photographs established a crucial fact. They did not determine a single course of action. Kennedy and his advisers still had to weigh military risks, diplomatic options, and Soviet intentions.
That gap between evidence and judgment is where a manager works every day. A report arrives. A number moves. A colleague reacts. None of these tells you what to do. You still have to judge, decide, and act.
In intelligence work, the same distinction directs effort. Separating evidence from speculation points you toward questions that can be investigated.
The Dichotomy of Control
Stoicism began in Athens around 300 BCE, when Zeno of Citium started teaching at the Stoa Poikile, the Painted Porch. Later thinkers, including Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, explored how to live well amid political pressure, hardship, and uncertainty.
Its practical core is the Dichotomy of Control. Some things are in your control, and some are not.
| Within your control | Outside your control |
|---|---|
| Judgments | Outcomes |
| Decisions | Other people |
| Actions | External events |
Marcus Aurelius makes the point in a line this book paraphrases: you can reconsider your judgment of an event, even when the event itself is beyond your control.
The Stoics also emphasized how judgments shape emotional responses. Examining those judgments can help you recognize bias and respond more deliberately.
This is not a call to stop caring about outcomes. Outcomes may lie beyond your reach. Effort, intention, and response remain within it.
What this looks like for a manager
These two scenarios are illustrative.
Waiting on a decision. A manager submits a staffing proposal and hears nothing for two weeks. Within her control: the clarity of the proposal, the specific request, and her follow-up. Outside her control: when leadership decides and what leadership concludes.
The sorting changes her next step. She stops rehearsing outcomes. She sends a short follow-up that names the decision she needs and the date it affects.
A team’s reaction to a change. A manager announces a change handed down from above. Some of his team react badly. Within his control: how clearly he explains the change, how he handles questions, and the judgment he forms about the reaction. Outside his control: how each person feels. The book’s own drill places others’ opinions on the uncontrollable side.
He can answer questions honestly. He cannot decide what people think.
Why it matters under pressure
A single social-media post can spark global uproar. Stoicism answers that kind of pressure with a pause for analysis and discernment. Where chaos seeks to distract, clarity begins with control of the self.
That is the first discipline of the book: command your perception before you command action.
The drill
Four steps from Chapter 1 of The Stoic Strategist.
Choose a current stressor. Write it in a sentence or two. The book’s example: “I’m anxious about how others are responding to my work.”
Divide the elements. Make two columns, controllable and uncontrollable. In the example: effort, tone, preparation, and mindset on one side. Others’ opinions, external events, and timing on the other.
Reaffirm your role. Write: “My responsibility is to [what you control]. The outcome is not mine to own. My peace lies in integrity, not result.”
Identify the virtue involved. Wisdom, courage, justice, or temperance. In the book’s example, the situation calls for temperance: managing the emotional reaction and avoiding overcorrection.
Final Reflection
Where am I spending energy on what lies beyond my control, and what would shift if I let that go?
Apply this to your next decision
After separating what you control from what you do not, choose the decision you can act on. Use the free Decision Brief and completed workplace example to record the evidence, compare your options, and explain your next step. You can download it with or without subscribing to emails.
