Stoic journal prompts, with their sources

How to use these prompts

Choose one prompt, not a whole section. Read the passage above it first, then write for five minutes by the clock and stop, even in the middle of a sentence. Three honest lines do more than a page written to fill a page.

Answer about a real day. Name the meeting, the person, the email you haven’t sent. A question about patience gets a vague answer until you make it about Sam at lunch on Tuesday.

The Stoics left no list of journal questions, though Epictetus said philosophers should write down thoughts like these daily (Discourses 1.1); the Stoic journaling guide shows how they used writing. Where a prompt borrows a question straight from the text, it says so.

Repeat freely. The same prompt answered on ten different mornings gives you ten different pages. And keep it private. A page nobody else will read can afford to be honest.

The prompts for anger and worry are for reflection, not a substitute for professional help. If anger or worry is persistent or frightening, read when to get help.

Morning prompts

Morning prompts look ahead to a day that hasn’t happened yet. These ten draw on a note Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself about doing the thing in front of him well.

Marcus gives himself a short list for whatever he has in hand: dignity, affection, freedom, justice. Then he names what gets in the way, including carelessness, hypocrisy, self-love and “discontent with the portion which has been given to thee” (Meditations 2.5). The prompts turn that list on your own day. For a fuller morning built on Meditations 2.1 and 5.1, see the Stoic morning routine.

1. What is the first thing you have in hand this morning? Describe what doing it with simple dignity would look like, at your desk, in the car or at the stove.
2. Who will you deal with today whom you are inclined to see as an obstacle? What would ordinary warmth toward them look like, for one minute?
3. Of the faults Marcus sets aside (carelessness, hypocrisy, self-love, discontent and the rest), which is most likely to show up in you today, and where?
4. What are you carrying into today that has nothing to do with the work in front of you? Write it down here and leave it on the page.
5. Which part of today would you have arranged differently if it were up to you? Write what you can do with it as it is.
6. Where in today’s plans are you hoping to look good rather than to do well?
7. What would it mean to work with freedom today? Free of what: a deadline, someone’s approval, an old grudge?
8. Where does fairness come into an ordinary day for you today: credit to share, a promise to keep, a hearing you owe someone?
9. What task are you planning to do carelessly because it seems too small to matter? What would doing it properly cost you?
10. Who is counting on you today without having said so? What do they need from you?

Evening prompts

Evening prompts look back. These ten use a passage from late in the Meditations, in which Marcus picks out a few names he wants to deserve.

The names are good, modest, true, rational, even-tempered (Long’s word is equanimity) and magnanimous. Marcus doesn’t assume he will hold on to them all day. He allows that he may lose them, and tells himself to “quickly return to them” (Meditations 10.8). He also wants to keep them without wanting other people to call him by them. An evening page is a good place to check both. For the bedtime questions of the philosopher Sextius, and Seneca’s account of his own nightly review (On Anger 3.36), see the Evening Examination.

11. Go through Marcus’s names one at a time. Which did you lose hold of today, and at what moment?
12. When you lost it, how long did it take you to come back, and what brought you back?
13. Where were you true today? Where did you say what you think, and where did you shade it to keep the peace?
14. Marcus says being rational means close attention to each thing and “freedom from negligence” (Meditations 10.8). What got your full attention today, and what did you handle with half your mind?
15. Name one thing that happened today that you didn’t choose. How long did you argue with it before you got on with things?
16. Where did you want credit today? Did you get it, and does it matter now?
17. Where did you want to be thought patient, generous or kind today more than you wanted to be it?
18. Who felt like an interruption today? What did they actually want from you?
19. What did you do today that nobody noticed and that you would do the same way again?
20. What from today are you still turning over? Write it out once, then write what, if anything, is left for you to do about it.

When you’re angry

Write these after the anger has cooled, not in the middle of it. This chapter of Seneca’s On Anger gives advice that still sounds unusual: stop going looking for offense.

Seneca’s point is that a good deal of anger is collected rather than suffered. We go and find the remark, the rumor, the thread. “Would you not be irascible? then be not inquisitive” (On Anger 3.11). In lines the excerpt skips, he suggests putting some slights aside, laughing at others and pardoning others still. The fuller Stoic account of anger, with a free exercise for the moment itself, is in Stoicism and anger.

21. Write down what was said or done, in the words a stranger would use. Then write, separately, what you told yourself it meant.
22. Did you go looking for this, by rereading the thread, asking what was said, checking who replied? What were you hoping to find?
23. Sort the day’s irritations into three piles: set aside, laugh at, forgive. Which pile is hardest to put anything in?
24. Socrates met a box on the ear with a joke about a helmet. Is there anything in what happened that you could find funny, if not tonight then in a week?
25. If you had never heard about this, by chance or by asking, would your day have been any worse?
26. If a friend you like had done exactly the same thing, how would you describe it?
27. What did the anger cost you today: a conversation, an hour, your evening? Was the thing worth that?
28. What would you say to them tomorrow if you said it calmly? Write it out here. You don’t have to send it.

When you’re worried

These eight are for the worry that keeps you up. Epictetus addresses this discourse to people who fear running short of what they need, and pictures one of them lying awake at night.

Two things in this passage help on a bad night. One is about shame: Epictetus asks whether anything that is “not your own act” (Discourses 3.26) can be shameful, any more than a fever or a parent’s poverty. The other is a pair of questions he says the student never put to himself: “Am I able to bear, or am I not able to bear?” and “What remains for me to do?” (Discourses 3.26). For a guided version, the free Worry exercise is in Stoicism and worry.

29. Put Epictetus’s first question, “Am I able to bear, or am I not able to bear?”, to this worry. Answer in a full sentence, not a yes or a no, and say what bearing it would actually involve.
30. If it did happen, what would remain for you to do on the first day? In the first week?
31. Is part of this worry really shame, about money, about family, about something you didn’t cause? Whose act is it, actually?
32. How much of tonight’s worry can be dealt with tonight? Write down anything that can, and leave the rest for the morning.
33. When have you been through something like this before? What did you actually do, and how did it turn out?
34. What are you trying to guarantee? Write the guarantee down, then write who, if anyone, could give it to you.
35. If a friend brought you this worry, what would you ask them first? Now answer it yourself.
36. What is one thing you could do tomorrow that would make this a little smaller? Write down when you’ll do it.

When something is out of your control

These eight work from the opening lines of the Enchiridion, the handbook of Epictetus’s teaching.

In the lines the excerpt skips, Epictetus lists what is in our power: opinion, desire, aversion and, in a word, our own acts. Everything else, from the body to your reputation, is “in the power of others” (Enchiridion 1). The modern name for this division is the dichotomy of control, and things you can’t control works through it with examples.

37. Name what is bothering you and list every part of it: people, money, timing, your own conduct. Mark each part mine or not mine.
38. Which item on the not-mine side are you still trying to manage? How: by checking, rehearsing, persuading?
39. Whose decision is this really? Write their name, and one sentence leaving the decision with them.
40. What on the mine side have you been neglecting while you worried about the other side?
41. Reputation is on Epictetus’s list of things not in our power. Whose opinion of you are you trying to control right now?
42. Where are you treating your best effort as if it guaranteed the result? Write the effort and the result on separate lines.
43. Which of your own opinions about this is doing the most damage? Could you hold a different one?
44. What would you do with the time and attention you are spending on this, if you stopped?

After a setback

Seneca wrote the Consolation to Helvia from exile, to console his mother for losing him. In this chapter he takes on an imagined critic who says that exile, poverty and disgrace might each be bearable alone, but not all at once.

In the same chapter, Seneca says that Cato’s two election defeats disgraced the offices, not Cato, and that no one is despised by others who has not first despised himself (Consolation to Helvia 13, in our words). Seneca’s consolations covers the whole work, and Stoicism and failure goes further into setbacks. In the app, the guided Setback exercise is part of Premium; these six prompts are our own.

45. Whose judgment of this setback are you treating as the verdict on you? Is it theirs to give?
46. Think of someone you admire for how they handled a loss or a failure. What did they actually do in the weeks after? Which part of that could you do this week?
47. A year from now, what would you want a friend to say about how you handled this? Write it in their words.
48. Who else does this setback land on? What could you say or do that would make it easier for them?
49. What are you saying to yourself about this that you would never say to a friend? Write what a fair-minded friend would say instead.
50. Seneca thinks misfortune borne well can become “badges of honour” (Consolation to Helvia 13). What would bearing this one well look like on an ordinary Tuesday, with no one watching?

The four virtues

In this entry Marcus Aurelius names the goods he ranks above everything else and dares himself to find a better one.

Marcus’s list here is justice, truth, temperance and fortitude. The four main virtues the Stoics usually named are wisdom, courage, justice and temperance; fortitude is Long’s word for courage, and truth takes roughly the place of wisdom. The four virtues explains each one and has a free exercise for a real decision. There are two prompts for each virtue.

51. Wisdom. What did you believe today because it was convenient, not because you had checked?
52. Wisdom. What decision in front of you can’t be made well yet? What would you need to find out first?
53. Courage. What conversation have you been putting off? Write its first two sentences.
54. Courage. What are you putting up with that you ought to name? What is the smallest honest way to say it?
55. Justice. Who did part of the work this week without getting part of the credit?
56. Justice. Who are you being unfair to in your own head? Write the most reasonable explanation for what they did.
57. Temperance. What did you have more of this week than you needed: food, news, argument, time on your phone?
58. Temperance. Marcus asks whether anything is better than these four. What have you been acting as if it were: praise, money, comfort, being right?

A question Marcus asked himself

Of all the Stoic questions to ask yourself, this one is the easiest to carry around. Marcus quotes an older piece of advice, to busy yourself with few things if you want calm, and then improves on it.

His version is to do what is necessary, and on every occasion to ask, “Is this one of the unnecessary things?” (Meditations 4.24). He applies it to thoughts as well as acts, because unnecessary acts follow from unnecessary thoughts. That gives the last two prompts.

59. Read tomorrow’s list and put Marcus’s question to each item. Cross out one that is unnecessary, and write what you will do with the time instead.
60. What thought have you had more than ten times this week? Write it down once more, then ask whether it has ever led you to do anything.

Print all sixty

To print the prompts, use your browser’s print command; to keep a copy, choose Save as PDF in the print dialog. There is nothing to sign up for and no email address to give. The printout leaves out the site’s menus and app links and keeps the prompts with their passages.

A paper copy is easy to keep in a notebook. Some ways to use it:

• Tape the morning ten inside the front cover and the evening ten inside the back, so the right list is open at the right time of day.
• Tick a prompt each time you use it. After a month, look at the ones you have never ticked. The prompts you avoid are often the ones worth answering.
• Copy the passage, not just the question. Writing out a few lines of Marcus or Epictetus by hand before you answer slows you down in a useful way.

The passages on this page come from George Long’s translations of Marcus Aurelius (1862) and Epictetus (1877) and Aubrey Stewart’s translation of Seneca’s dialogues (1889), all in the public domain. How we source the Stoics explains how each quotation is checked.