Confucius's student Zengzi had a nightly practice that sounds almost absurdly simple: he asked himself three questions before sleep. Had he been faithful in his duties? Honest in his relationships? Had he actually practiced what his teachers gave him? What's striking isn't the questions — it's the granularity. Not 'was I a good person today?' but three precise, non-overlapping audits. This is what the Confucian tradition called daily self-examination, and it anticipates something behavioral researchers only formalized recently: specificity is the enemy of self-deception. Vague moral stocktaking lets us off the hook. Concrete, named questions don't. The practice worth stealing isn't Zengzi's exact three questions — those belong to his world, not yours. It's the structure: two or three non-overlapping domains of your actual life, examined nightly with a question precise enough that you can't answer 'mostly yes.' The vaguer your self-review, the more flattering it becomes.

What are the two or three domains of your life that most deserve a nightly audit — and have you ever actually named them out loud?

Drawing from Confucianism — Zengzi (disciple of Confucius, referenced in the Analects 1.4)