I’ve been exploring Modern Stoicism for a while now. Reading about the theory is easier than putting the ideas into practice, so this January I decided to subscribe to the New Year Challenge course run by dailystoic.com. It involves a series of assignments sent by email every day for 21 days. Most of them are not just one-off tasks, but are designed to introduce new habits to be continued long term. Some are practical, for example taking cold showers, doing pressups, and keeping to a regular bedtime. Others are more psychological, for example visiting a cemetery to aid the practice of memento mori, resuming a project that has been abandoned, and choosing a word to focus on all year – my word is PATIENCE.

Now half way through the course, I find some of the assignments easy because I am doing them already. But the challenge that I haven’t even tried to attempt is spending 24 hours without my iPhone. I do have some excuse, because I genuinely need it to deal with important messages throughout the day. But I have to admit to being quite addicted, and was absolutely devastated on the recent occasion when I thought it was lost (I found it some hours later under the duvet). I plan to compromise by spending a day without online games or social media, and even that will demand great self discipline. I obviously have symptoms of the condition popularly called “nomophobia” – fear of having no mobile.