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36 questions you’ve never answered
Ten parts, 36 questions. Picked from a battery of over three hundred questions, and only what it wouldn’t make sense without stayed. Most of them you’ll do in a few minutes. Six of them are real exercises: they ask for paper, silence and maybe even half an hour. Those are the ones that give you the most. Time investment 2–4 hours, ideally in two or three sittings. And right after that, part 2: out of your answers you’ll build a compass and a plan calibrated to how you really work.
How to work with the battery (this first)
The questions come in an order that makes sense: where you come from, what you decide by, what you have in you, and only then the future and the legacy. Don’t skip.
Don’t answer correctly. Answer truthfully. When you catch yourself writing a sentence you’d say at a job interview, cross it out and write what’s underneath it.
Write by hand when you can. Handwriting slows thinking down enough that even what’s under the surface gets a word in. Write out by hand mainly the long exercises you’ll keep coming back to. (There’s a print of the blank version at the bottom too.)
Don’t rush, but don’t get stuck. Some questions you’ll answer in thirty seconds. Over others you’ll sit for half an hour. Both are right.
Watch the body, not just the head. Resistance, boredom, a sudden lump in the throat. Those are signals. Where it scratches, something is alive.
Come back. Read your answers in a month. And then once a year, ideally around your birthday.
Your answers save into your browser as you go. Even if you come back in a month, you’ll find them here. They’re not sent anywhere and nobody will see them unless you send them yourself. Prefer writing by hand? There’s a button at the bottom to print the blank version.
Your answers on one page
Once you’ve answered (or any time along the way), read it all at once, in one breath. Reading your own answers together is a completely different experience from writing them. And this is exactly what part 2 works with.
Part 2 — What now
The answers are half the work. The other half is building a one-page compass out of them and a plan calibrated to how you really work. Count on one quiet afternoon. And it can be a different day from the one you answered on.
Part 2 — What now
You have the answers. Now we’ll turn them into a life. Most people who fill in a questionnaire like this feel moved for two days and then go back exactly where they were. Not because they’re weak. Because a vision without a translation into today is just a well-written dream. This is that translation. Five steps, they’ll take you one afternoon.
Step 1 — Distillation
Read all your answers at once, in one sitting. Use “Show my answers” a little higher up. Don’t judge them. Just notice what raises your pulse again on the second reading. Then answer:
Which word or theme came up most often? (Across questions that seemingly have nothing to do with each other.)
Where did I lie? Find at least one answer you wrote because it sounded good. Rewrite it here truthfully.
What did I write and immediately wish I hadn’t? That’s usually the most valuable sentence in the whole document.
Step 2 — The compass
Now you’ll squeeze everything you wrote onto a single page. Not two. One. A compass that fits in your wallet, on the wall, on your phone screen.
MY VISION (who I’m becoming, one sentence, present tense)
MY MISSION (“I help ___ by ___, because ___.”)
MY 5 VALUES, ranked. Yes, ranked: the hierarchy is what makes values usable at the moment they go against each other.
MY LEGACY (the sentence on the gravestone)
MY ANTI-VISION (the life I avoid at all costs; often a more powerful engine than the vision itself)
MY ROLES (4–7 roles: partner, parent, friend, maker, seeker… For each one a sentence about who I want to be in it.)
Print it. Hang it up. It doesn’t work sitting in a folder.
Step 3 — Calibration: how big your goals should be
Your own goals usually fail from two opposite mistakes: you aim too high (nothing works out 100 %, you burn out and blame yourself), or too low (you hit it, nothing changes, you call it realism). You won’t spot that mistake in yourself, so I’m not asking about intentions, but about the trail you’ve left behind you.
1. When you decide to change something, you more likely:
2. A detailed plan brings up in me:
3. The last three meaningful goals you set yourself: how many did you really finish?
4. When you finish something, more often you feel:
5. Your life today vs. what you wished for a year ago:
6. When you picture your Letter from the future (the question in part VIII):
Track record is a stronger signal than any label from a test. Someone considers himself a spontaneous perceiver, and yet he finishes everything. Trust behaviour, not the label. And you don’t have to get it right the first time: after the first quarter you’ll see reality and adjust it.
Step 4 — Backward planning and the cascade
Don’t plan forwards. Plan backwards, from your Letter from the future. And write concretely: not “I’ll be healthier”, but “I run 3× a week”.
In 3 years. In 10 years I’m there. Where do I have to be in three years for that to still be possible?
In 1 year: three stones. Pick three goals, three at most. For each one check: does it move me towards the vision? Does it hurt a bit? Will I know when I’ve done it? And write the price next to each one, that is, what I’ll give up for it. A goal without a price is a fantasy. And how many stones you can carry was told to you by the profile in step 3: the Dreamer and the Wanderer one, the rest three.
90 days. Which piece of each stone will I cut off in the next ninety days? (1–3 measurable milestones)
Month. What has to be done by the end of the month for the quarter to work out?
Week. Which three things, if I do them, mean this week wasn’t wasted? Big stones into the calendar first. If you don’t put them there, the sand will pour over you and the stones won’t fit any more.
TODAY
Day. Which single thing today moves that week forward? One thing. Do it first.
Step 5 — The rhythm of returning
Every evening (2 minutes): When did I feel most alive today? When was I shrinking? Over time you’ll see a pattern and that pattern is information no test will give you.
Every week (20 minutes): open the compass. Did I live this week by it? Plan three stones for the next one.
Every quarter (2 hours): check the milestones and be honest: what didn’t I do and why? Laziness, or a bad goal? This is where the calibration tunes itself: the overestimator who did nothing shrinks the goal next quarter. The underestimator who breezed through it and was bored raises the bar. Whoever hit it and felt stretched but not broken changes nothing.
Once a year (half a day): read the Letter from the future and the eulogy. Rewrite the compass. A vision should evolve, just not every week according to your mood.
Four ways to ruin the whole thing
1. You turn it into a fourth job. If the system drains you more than it gives you, simplify it. Down to a single question a day if need be.
2. You mistake the vision for a goal. A vision is a direction. A goal is a stop. You can miss a stop and carry on in the same direction. Don’t mistake a failed goal for a failed life.
3. You’ll wait for certainty. It won’t come. A vision isn’t confirmed in your head, but by living by it and then seeing whether it feeds you or drains you. Test, don’t analyse.
4. You’ll do it alone and tell nobody. A vision said out loud to one person who’ll ask you in three months “so, how’s it going?” has ten times the chance of the best-written one in a drawer.
THE LAST QUESTION
What in your life right now is in direct contradiction with what you’ve just written? You know the answer. You knew it before you opened the first page. Now you have it in black and white.
What next, once you have the compass and the stones
The answers gave you a direction, the compass squeezed it onto one page and the cascade turned it into a plan. The hardest part is left: living by it, even when life happens. And also that last question, where most people know the answer before they finish writing it. It’s exactly with these two things that another person is priceless.
If you want to go through your compass and plan with me, fine-tune it and keep an eye on the first steps, that’s typically a job for one two-hour session.