/40-questions

Questions that I ask myself at the end of each year and each decade.

About

This repo maintains revisons and translations to the list of 40 questions I ask myself each year and each decade.

See related blog posts:

Translations

If you'd like to help translate the questions, you can submit your translation via pull request. Place the translated files into a folder named using the ISO 639-1 two letter language code. See the /translations folder.

ISO 639-1 Language Year Decade
en English (original) link link
ar Arabic link link
de German link link
el Greek link link
es Spanish link link
fa Persian link link
fi Finnish link link
fr French link link
hi Hindi link link
id Indonesian link link
dv Dhivehi link link
it Italian link link
ja Japanese link link
ko Korean link link
lv Latvian link link
nl Dutch link link
no Norwegian link link
pl Polish link link
pt Portuguese link link
ru Russian link link
sv Swedish link
ta Tamil link link
tl Filipino link
tr Turkish link link
uk Ukrainian link link
vi Vietnamese link link
zh-hans Chinese (simplified) link link
zh-hant Chinese (traditional) link link

40 questions to ask yourself each year

One of my rituals at the end of each year is asking myself these forty questions. It usually takes me about a week to work my way through all of them. I find it to be one of the most valuable exercises to reflect on what happened, good and bad, and how I hope the year ahead will shape up.

What is more interesting than each individual answer are the trends that emerge after years of answering the same questions. I’ve shared this list with my family and closest friends, and always enjoy discussing answers as we reflect on the year.

Feel free to add or remove questions, and share your edits with me. This is first and foremost a personal exercise, so make it a tradition you can enjoy for years to come.

40 questions to ask yourself each decade

Some time ago I had answered Proust's famous questionnaire, and thought I would try answering it again. While the yearly questions help me reflect on what happened, Proust's questions are more about personal philosophies and traits, and thus change less frequently over time.

Going through my answers to the Proust questionnaire, I was inspired to work on a new questionnaire that I could use for the next few decades. I tried create a set of questions that I would enjoy reflecting on in ten years. This list combines questions from Proust's questionnaire, and others I've been collecting ad hoc.

It will be ten years before I can tell you whether this worked well or not, but join me on this journey if you'd like! Again, consider editing this list with questions you would like to know your own answers to in ten years.