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: