Evening Review
End each day with honest self-assessment: where did I succeed in virtue? Where did I fall short? What can I improve?
Seneca wrote of his teacher Sextius's practice of asking each evening: 'What bad habit of mine did I cure today? What weakness did I resist? What virtue did I exercise?' This honest self-inventory, without harsh self-judgment, tracks moral progress and reinforces virtuous habits.
I am making progress. Let me review what I've done and what I've failed to do.
Evening review practices appear in Pythagorean philosophy, Stoicism, and later in Jesuit Examen and modern evening journaling practices.
De Ira
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about anger
Seneca describes ending the day by asking what he resisted and where he fell short. He put that practice inside his book on anger, which tells you what he thought it was for.
- What Stoicism says about starting again after a fall
Seneca records his teacher Sextius asking three questions each night: what bad habit did I cure today, what weakness did I resist, what virtue did I exercise? It is an audit, not a confession — the output is a ledger you can act on, not a feeling about yourself.