Marcus Aurelius' journaling prompts
Marcus Aurelius began the day by rehearsing it rather than reviewing it: naming the difficult people he expected to meet, and reminding himself what the day's work actually was. It is a bracing practice, not a comforting one, and it takes about five minutes.
The prompts Marcus Aurelius worked from
Marcus Aurelius never published a list of questions. He wrote reflections to himself, and these two prompts are ours, written to do the job his morning passages were doing — rehearsing the day's difficulty, and naming the day's work. The framing is his; the sentences are not, and nothing here should be read as a quotation.
- Who are you likely to find difficult today, and what will you do when they are? From Meditations II.1, where he lists the kinds of people the day will bring and reminds himself they cannot implicate him in ugliness.
- What is the work in front of you today that is actually yours to do? From Meditations V.1, the argument against staying in bed: he is getting up to do the work of a human being.
What he actually did
Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations to himself, in Greek, mostly on campaign. They were not published in his lifetime and were never meant to be read. Two of them open with the morning.
Book II begins: when you wake, tell yourself that the people you deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly — and that none of them can implicate you in ugliness. Book V begins with the argument against staying in bed: that he is getting up to do the work of a human being, which is what he was made for.
Neither is a question. Both are rehearsals.
Why the morning and not the evening
Stoicism is better known for its evening review — sitting with the day after it is over and asking what went wrong. That practice is Seneca’s, not Marcus Aurelius’, and Seneca himself credits it to Sextius before him. It is a different template and it belongs to a different person.
What Marcus documented is the other end of the day. He is not settling accounts; he is getting ready.
The practice
Two questions, once each, five minutes. The first names the friction you expect. The second names the work you are actually for. Neither asks how you feel, and that is deliberate — this is a practice for people who find it easier to start a hard day having already looked at it.
If you want the softer end of the tradition, this is not it.
Try these prompts in Steps, free for 30 days — or, if you already have Steps, paste this page's link into your thread and Steps sets them up for you.
People who would rather walk into a hard day having already pictured it than be surprised by it, and who want something short and unsentimental rather than a page of feelings.
This is a rehearsal, not a comfort. It braces you for a day rather than helping you sit with one, and it is a poor fit for grief, crisis, or anything that needs gentleness. If naming difficult people in advance makes you dread the day rather than meet it, this is the wrong practice and you should stop.
The Meditations are his private notebooks, written in Greek while on campaign and never intended for publication. Books II and V open with the two morning passages this template is built from — the difficult people of II.1, and the getting-out-of-bed argument of V.1.
What this template is built on
Curated by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
