Prompts for the New Year

Questions for reflection and setting your course

The first exercise in The Steal Like an Artist Journal

Hey y’all,

Slowing coming out of Dead Week over here. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my diary, reflecting on the past year and plotting the way forward this year. I wanted to share a collection of prompts that I’ve found interesting and helpful to me.

What do you want to learn?

I’ll start with a plug for my favorite and first prompt in The Steal Like an Artist Journal: make a list of 10 things you want to learn.

Here’s a list of mine from 5 years ago:

I think asking yourself what you want to learn is a great way to clarify the next moves you should make in the macro and the micro sense. Choosing between two jobs, for example, you can ask yourself which one would teach you the most. Or, you can take a page from Leonardo: before planning his day, he’d make a list of what he wanted to learn.

Courtney Martin’s 10 reflection questions

“What do you want to learn more about?” was the first question in

Courtney Martin

’s year-end reflection list last year. I’ve answered her questions two years in a row now: I filled out last year’s questions again this year before finding out that she posted a new list for this year in her newsletter

the examined family

. (One of my favorite questions is “Who made you feel heard this year?) Here are the first five:

1. What was the best adventure you had this year?

2. What was the best book you read, TV show you watched, or podcast you listened to?

3. What “current event” really broke your heart this year?

4. What are you missing most about the smaller life you led in the throws of the pandemic? How might you bring that smallness back in some nourishing way?

5. What did you shed, let go of, or give up this year? How did you get lighter?

She recommends answering the questions solo in your notebook, or getting together with loved ones, printing out the questions, tearing them up, and throwing them in a bowl to answer at random.

Julia Rothman’s Less/More drawing exercise

my attempt at Julia Rothman’s More/Less exercise

If you’d like a more visual exercise, in the latest issue of my friend

Wendy MacNaughton

’s newsletter

DrawTogether

, she shared a “More/Less” exercise by Julia Rothman.

Simple, clean, and good: On one side of the page/notebook, write MORE and on the other side write LESS, then draw what you want more or less of in your life.

(I’ve been doing a version of this in my diary lately: instead of drawing what happened, sometimes I draw what I want to have happen.)

5 lists from the Isolation Journals

I came across these five questions from

The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad

on Priya Parker’s Instagram:

1. What in the last year are you proud of?

2. What did this year leave you tearing for?

3. What’s causing you anxiety?

4. What resources, skills, and practices can you rely on in the coming year?

5. What are your wildest, most harebrained ideas and dreams?

That last question made me gulp, because sometimes I feel like Dolly Parton: “I've dreamed myself into a corner, meaning my dreams have come true so I have to keep them alive.”

The 30-day challenge

the 30-day challenge from The Steal Like An Artist Journal

I’ll end with one more advertisement for myself: if you want to develop a good creative habit in the new year, I recommend this 30-day challenge from The Steal Like An Artist Journal. It’s the best way I know to harness the power of something small, every day and hold yourself accountable.

You can also download free printouts of the challenge in many variations:

• 28-day challenge

• 29-day challenge

• 30-day challenge

• 31-day challenge

• 31-day practice and suck less challenge

• 100-day practice and suck less challenge

Happy New Year! Feel free to share with us any reflection questions or prompts you like to start your year with in the comments:

I also started a chat for New Year’s Resolutions if you want to say yours out loud.

xoxo,

Austin