A stoic journaling template
Stoic Brekkie is a weekly newsletter, not a journaling course. But readers often ask how to put a week's reflection onto paper, so here is the plain template I use. Copy it into a notebook or a notes app and keep it short; two honest lines beat a page of performance.
Morning: preparation
Five minutes before the day claims you. Answer briefly and in your own words.
- What is within my control today, and what is not?
- What difficulty am I likely to meet, and how would a reasonable person meet it?
- What is the one duty I owe to the people around me today?
Evening: review
The older habit, and the more useful one. Review the day as a fair witness, not a judge or a defence lawyer.
- What did I do well, and why was it well done?
- Where did I fall short, and what judgement led me there?
- What will I do differently when the same moment comes again?
How to use it
Keep the same questions for a few weeks rather than collecting new ones. The value is in noticing the pattern of your own judgements, which only appears when the questions stay still. If you miss a day, begin again the next morning without ceremony.