The three questions a Stoic asks before the day starts

Stoicism gets read as swallowing your feelings and enduring things. It is not that. The core is narrower: work out precisely what you control and what you do not, then stop spending energy on the second list.

First: what is actually mine today?

Epictetus was enslaved before he was a philosopher, so he knew what it was to have no say over his circumstances. His conclusion: you do not control what people think of you, where the market goes, or whether your body stays well. You control what you do next.

In the morning, write down three things worrying you. For each, underline only the part you can act on. The underlined part is nearly always smaller than the worry feels — and that gap is what is tiring you out.

Second: if today goes badly, how will I respond?

The Romans called this premeditatio malorum, rehearsing the bad thing. Not to frighten yourself, but so that when it arrives you already have a response instead of composing one while annoyed.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality. — Seneca

In practice: before a difficult meeting, decide the two sentences you will say if challenged. Two is enough. It removes most of the force of being caught off guard.

Third: will this matter in ten years?

The cheapest of the three and the most effective. Most of what costs you sleep will not survive a year, let alone ten. Noticing that does not make the problem disappear — it returns it to its actual size.

The question has a useful second edge. Occasionally the answer is yes, this will matter in ten years — and then you have found something worth the worry, which deserves proper attention rather than background dread. Either answer is worth having.

What this is not

None of this asks you to feel nothing. The Stoics were not against emotion; they were against being governed by it before you had looked at whether it fit the facts. Marcus Aurelius wrote his notes to himself precisely because he kept needing them, which is the most reassuring thing about the book: the man running the empire had to remind himself every morning too.

Nor is it an argument for accepting everything. The dichotomy of control cuts both ways — once you have set aside what you cannot influence, what remains is genuinely yours to act on, and the philosophy is unusually insistent that you then act.

All three questions take under two minutes. The point is not the first time you ask them, but repeating them long enough that they arrive by themselves in the middle of a bad afternoon, rather than only in a quiet morning.