Named for the Stoics, who ended each day by preparing the next.

The painted porch

Around 300 BC, a merchant named Zeno of Citium began teaching philosophy in Athens. He did not have a school building. He taught in the Stoa Poikile, the “painted porch”: a long colonnade on the north side of the Agora, decorated with paintings of famous battles. Anyone passing could stop and listen. His followers became known as the Stoics, the people of the porch.

Stoicism lasted for centuries and spread to Rome, where its best-known writers lived: Seneca, a statesman and playwright; Epictetus, a former slave who became a teacher; and Marcus Aurelius, an emperor who kept a private notebook we now call the Meditations.

A habit for the end of the day

Many Stoic ideas are about attention: noticing what is in your control, and spending your effort there. One of the most practical is a daily review. Seneca describes it in his essay On Anger: when the light was out and the house was quiet, he would go back over his whole day, asking what he had done well, what he had done badly, and what he would do differently. Epictetus taught his students a similar evening review.

Marcus Aurelius turned the same attention toward the morning. The second book of the Meditations opens with him preparing himself for the day ahead and the people he would meet in it. Together, the two habits form a simple loop: close the day honestly, then make ready for the next.

Why a planner borrows it

Small teams lose a surprising amount of time at the start of each day. People arrive, open their messages, and work out what to do. A handoff that could have been arranged yesterday is discovered at 10 AM. Someone is overbooked and does not know it until the afternoon. None of these problems is dramatic, but together they wear a team down.

Stoa is built on the Stoic loop. At the end of the day, each person closes today: what got done, what moves to tomorrow, what goes back to the week, what is dropped. Then they plan tomorrow, and the tomorrow check looks for the problems that would otherwise surface in the morning. Leaders see the team’s plans together on team tomorrow. The next morning, everyone starts knowing what to do.

What we believe about planning

• Plans belong to the people doing the work. Managers suggest; people decide their own day and can say no with a note.
• Planning is not surveillance. Stoa has no timers, no screenshots, and no activity tracking. Hours come from the plan a person confirms.
• Days before hours. The week is planned in full and half days. Hours are decided the evening before, when they can be known.
• Quiet tools are better tools. Stoa sends no email. Updates stay inside the app, sorted into what needs attention and what is just for your information.
• Overtime should be seen. Extra hours are recorded and acknowledged, not absorbed silently.

Who Stoa is for

Stoa is for small teams, from 2 to 30 people, whose work depends on each other: agencies, software teams, design studios, and any team that plans projects by the week and work by the day. It is priced per team rather than per person, so the whole team can plan together.

The name, today

The column in our logo is a nod to the porch where it all started. The phrase on our home page says the rest: tomorrow, planned tonight.

If you would like to try the habit with your team, the guide to planning tomorrow works with or without Stoa, and the pricing page lists the plans for when you want the checks done for you.