He’s been described as “part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy” by self-improvement guru Mr Tim Ferriss. Mr Ryan Holiday is a writer, media strategist and, if not quite a philosopher himself, a conduit to history’s smartest thinkers. His pithily distilled bestsellers The Obstacle Is The Way and Ego Is The Enemy, which repackaged the ancient Greek doctrine of stoicism – in short, control what you can, accept what you can’t - became must-reads in NFL locker rooms and boardrooms alike. (Mr Holiday has the titles tattooed on his forearms as cues.)

Mr Holiday’s latest book contends that Stillness Is The Key to, well, everything, but specifically “enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence”. (Having run out of forearms, he had the title tattooed on his right wrist, just under his watch strap.) But what exactly is stillness? “To be steady while the world spins around you,” he writes. “To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude, exterior and interior, on demand.” Stillness doesn’t necessarily mean being static: you can be still while walking, running or bricklaying. (See below.) Conversely, you can be sitting, but not still – especially at your desk, assaulted by stimuli. Stillness is increasingly scarce in our modern, wired (in both senses) world.

“But why was that stillness so rare?” he asks. “Why was I just letting it happen? I wanted to see what the ancients had to say about cultivating this powerful force. And it turns out that pretty much all the wisest philosophers of history had a lot to say about it.” Indeed, Stillness Is The Key condenses a library of knowledge – handy for appearing well read at dinner parties, yes, but also for carving out some precious stillness in your own non-stop life. To that end, below are some examples from the book – with takeaways from Mr Holiday.

Emperor Napoleon’s general rule was to leave correspondence for three weeks before reading it, by when most “urgent” matters had resolved without him lifting a finger – the opposite of our compulsively checking, always-on thumbs. “Any one that sleeps with their phone in the bedroom is setting themselves up for failure and temptation,” says Mr Holiday. “I keep mine on the other side of the door.” His other rule is to not check his phone for the first hour of the day, when he’s not just sucked into “the crazy”. Emperor Napoleon also ordered messengers never to wake up him up with good news, only bad, “for then there is not a moment to be lost”. You perhaps can’t ignore all communications, but you can, say, turn off alerts for all but the highest priority, eg, your boss, client, partner, children’s school or nursery.

Stillness Is The Key contains a wealth of valuable lessons from prolific hyphenate Sir Winston Churchill. While serving as chancellor of the exchequer in the 1920s and simultaneously writing an exhaustive account of WWI, Sir Winston was urged to avoid burnout by finding a hobby: his unlikely pick was bricklaying. “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real,” he wrote in a book about his other pastime of painting. “It’s got to be a real hobby – something you go out and do,” echoes Mr Holiday, who variously runs, swims and works on his farm in Texas. “Chatting on message boards online is a bad hobby. Gardening is a great one. Trading stocks is just another form of work. Training for a triathlon is better.”

On his induction to the basketball hall of fame in 2009, Mr Michael Jordan listed every slight he’d suffered throughout his career, including being cut from his varsity team: for all he’d accomplished, he was still eaten up by anger. Even if it spurs you on to victory, anger “turns its teeth on itself”, as Roman thinker Seneca wrote 2,000 years ago. “I try to actively practice what you might call ‘the pause’,” says Mr Holiday. “Most of the trouble that anger gets me into happens immediately. They say this so I say that. They mess up this so I jump on them for it. I feel upset, so I go do X. But what if I waited a minute? What if I didn’t rush in? What if I let it dangle a bit? ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ – we forget what that saying is about. The plate is hot. You’ll burn yourself.”

Stillness Is The Key (Profile Books) by Ryan Holiday is out now