Examen Questions: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Examen Questions, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Solve practice questions before checking the answer
   Work through exam-style questions on material you just studied — and attempt every question before checking.
   Active Recall: The Most Effective Way to Study
2. The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
   The Examen is a short, structured evening review from the Ignatian tradition: you replay the day with gratitude and honest attention to where you felt drawn toward or away from your values, then carry one resolve into tomorrow. It is a centuries-old contemplative practice; its benefits are best described as mechanistically plausible and widely reported rather than established by controlled trials.
3. Reduce: convert main notes to questions in the cue column
   After the session, cover your notes and write a question in the cue column for each main idea.
   Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording
4. The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
   The Ignatian Examen is a five-step daily prayer and reflection practice developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola: give thanks, ask for clarity, review the day, face what fell short, and resolve what comes next. As a structured reflection method it is centuries-old and widely practiced; its benefits are supported by the broader research on gratitude, emotional review, and implementation intentions, not by trials of the Examen itself.
5. Use frequent low-stakes quizzes rather than rare high-stakes tests
   Regular short quizzes — even without grades — produce more retention than equivalent time spent reviewing.
   The Testing Effect: Why Retrieval Practice Beats Restudying
6. Recite: self-test from cue questions before re-reading
   Cover your main notes and attempt to answer each cue question from memory before uncovering the answers.
   Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording
7. The Examined Life
   Socrates’ claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology, 38a) means that a life lived without sustained reflection on one’s values, beliefs, and actions is a kind of sleepwalking. The Socratic method — elenchus — is a specific form of examination: honest questioning that surfaces inconsistencies and untested assumptions. As a practice, it overlaps with metacognition and reflective practice, which have genuine evidence bases, though Socrates’ philosophical claim is stronger than any psychological finding.
8. Apply Socratic questioning to your own thinking (not just others’)
   Use the same question types on your own beliefs that you would use to probe someone else’s.
   Socratic Questioning
9. Socratic Questioning
   Socratic questioning is a disciplined method of asking probing questions to expose the foundations, assumptions, evidence, and implications of a claim — rather than asserting a counter-position. Richard Paul’s taxonomy provides the most practical framework for applying it. The method’s value is demonstrated by centuries of philosophical use and its adoption in clinical and educational practice; large-scale experimental evidence is limited.
10. The Socratic Method, Made Practical
    The Socratic method is a form of disciplined questioning that exposes unstated assumptions, reveals inconsistencies, and forces more precise thinking. Applied to self-examination, it is one of the oldest and most reliable tools for developing genuine self-knowledge — distinct from introspection, which surfaces what you already believe rather than challenging it.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I’ve got the textbook down but I freeze the moment a real exam-style question asks me to actually apply it→
• When I sit down to review, all I do is read my notes over and over, and they feel familiar so I assume I know them→
• I save up all my testing for one big nerve-wracking exam at the end, and the pressure of that single shot makes me freeze→
• I always peek at the answer the instant I’m unsure, so I never actually make myself dig it out of memory→
• I’m good at picking apart everyone else’s reasoning, but when it’s my own belief I never run the same questions on it→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.