The Stoic evening examination: a nightly reflection

Do tonight’s examination

The questions below are the ones the Stoic Practice app asks every evening, in the same order. Keep each answer to today and to your own conduct. Every answer is optional, and one honest line is enough; if a question has nothing for you tonight, skip it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and when you finish you can copy or download your notes to keep wherever you write things down.

Seneca’s evening questions

Near the end of On Anger, Seneca describes the custom of the Roman philosopher Sextius: when the day was over and he had gone to bed, he questioned himself about it. Seneca says he does the same every night.

Look at what Sextius asks. Not what you did wrong, but which bad habit you cured, which vice you checked, and “in what respect are you better?” (On Anger 3.36). The questions look for progress. They assume there will be some, even if it is small.

Seneca’s own version is wider. He says “I pass the whole day in review before myself” and hides nothing, words as well as deeds. Then comes the phrase that sets the tone for the whole practice: “I pardon you this time” (On Anger 3.36). Honesty first, then pardon, then a rule for next time.

Why is this in a book about anger? In the sentence right after Sextius’s questions (left out above), Seneca says that anger will cease and grow gentler if it knows it must come before a judge every day (On Anger 3.36, paraphrased). The review works on tomorrow, not only on today. If anger is what brought you here, see Stoicism and anger.

An older habit: “what’s done amiss”

The nightly review did not start with Seneca. Sextius founded a school in Rome in the time of Augustus, and Sotion, one of Seneca’s teachers, was a member of it. In Cicero’s On Old Age (38), the elder Cato says he goes over each evening what he has said, heard and done, as the Pythagoreans did, to exercise his memory. Epictetus, teaching a generation after Seneca, quotes verses on the habit that are also found in the Golden Verses (lines 40–44), a poem of moral advice ascribed in antiquity to Pythagoras or his followers; its date is uncertain (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (opens in a new tab)).

Two things in Epictetus’s framing are worth keeping. First, the verses are an opinion kept “in readiness” for a particular moment. Some thoughts belong to breakfast or the bath; this one belongs to bed, the one point in the day when the whole of it is finished and still fresh. Second, he wants the verses used, not recited. Saying the questions over is not the practice. Answering them is.

The verses also give the review its shape: “What’s done amiss, what done, what left undone” (Discourses 3.10). And they end on a balance that is easy to forget: blame what went wrong, and “in what is right rejoice.” A review that only lists failures is half a review. Tonight’s first question, what you did well, keeps the other half.

Examine without punishing yourself

Seneca’s review is strict about the facts and fair to the person. Right after “I pardon you this time,” he gives two examples from his own day:

Notice how each one is built. It names one specific moment (that dispute, that man). It says plainly what went wrong, and in the second case what it cost: he offended the man “instead of amending his ways.” And it ends with a rule for next time. There is no verdict on Seneca’s character, no sweeping claim that he always does this, no plan to become a different person by morning. That is the model for the second and fifth questions tonight: one moment, what it cost, what you will do differently.

Seneca also set the bar where a working adult can reach it. Answering critics who said he did not live up to his own philosophy, he wrote:

Not the best of men, only “better than the worst,” and a little less vice each day. The standard is steady correction, not perfection.

Finally, keep the review on your own conduct. Epictetus lists the signs of someone making progress, and the first few are about other people: he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one.

The evening is not the time to reargue what your manager said or draft the reply you should have sent. The person Epictetus describes “blames no man”; when he is hindered, “he blames himself.” Elsewhere Epictetus explains what that blame is aimed at: when we are disturbed, we should blame not others but ourselves, meaning our opinions, and the fully instructed person blames neither others nor himself (Enchiridion 5, paraphrased). It is a search for a mistaken judgment, not a sentence passed on yourself. Even the harsh-sounding last line, watching yourself “as if he were an enemy and lying in ambush,” reads best as a call to attention: you know where your habits tend to catch you, so you watch those places.

Lying awake rearguing the day is not a review either, and a line from Marcus Aurelius suggests why it matters. The mind, he says, takes on the color of what it repeats:

If “the soul is dyed by the thoughts” (Meditations 5.16), what you go over every night becomes part of the dye. Replaying an argument is also a kind of practice; it rehearses the wrong thing. The examination gives that replay a shape and an end: look at the day once, judge it fairly, decide what you will do tomorrow, and put it down.

A simple Stoic evening routine

Five to ten minutes is enough, and it can be the last thing in your bedtime routine.

1. Put the day down. Pick a fixed point: after the dishes, after the last message, once the lights are low. Seneca waited until the lamp was out and his wife, who knew his habit, had stopped talking. Close the laptop first. The review is about the day, not a chance to keep working.
2. Walk through the day in order. Morning, midday, afternoon, evening. You are looking for the two or three moments that stand out, not writing a full log.
3. Answer the five questions.
   • What did you do well today? One thing is enough. Starting with what went right keeps the review fair.
   • Where could you have responded better? One moment, described the way Seneca described the man he offended: specific, plain, with what it cost.
   • What did you allow to disturb you that was outside your control? The traffic, the reply that never came, the rain on the one day you needed it to hold off. Naming these applies what is now called the dichotomy of control, a modern name for the opening of the Enchiridion, to a day already lived.
   • Which virtues did you practice? Wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. Choose any that apply. There is no score, and leaving one unchecked is not a mark against you.
   • Tomorrow I will… One concrete action, small enough to do and specific enough that you will know tomorrow night whether you did it.
4. Stop. Once the case is heard, don’t reopen it. Anything that still needs doing now lives in tomorrow’s line.

The examination is the evening third of a simple daily rhythm: prepare in the morning, respond well during the day, examine at night. For the whole day, see a Stoic daily routine. For the morning, start with today’s teaching.

On a hard day

Some nights one event crowds out the rest of the day. Keep the five questions anyway, and give the second one to that moment: when it started, what you told yourself just before, and what you would do next time.

For more specific questions, the journaling prompts include sets for when you’re angry and when you’re worried, and the guides to Stoicism and anger and Stoicism and worry go further. To keep your evenings in writing, see Stoic journaling.