20 Questions for Weeknotes
As a kid, I used to love playing the game 20 questions. On family holidays, we must have spent hours whiling away the time on car journeys playing “Animal, Plant, Mineral.”
Over the past couple of days, I’ve enjoyed reading a couple of things based around questions:
When I wrote my first set of weeknotes last week, I deciding to base them around three questions posed by James Reeve. I knew at the time that I might not always want to follow this formula.
However, using questions helps me to avoid listing things and to pick out themes and to learn. I also thought that I could use them both to help prompt me to do things that I value, such as microactions for oneteamgov, and to articulate things that I sometimes find hard to put into words.
So, inspired by the reading above, here are 20 questions I thought would help me when I reflect on things. And I thought I’d share them and make them open in case they help others too.
1. Who or what inspired you?
2. Who did you work with in a different profession/team within your organisation?
3. Who did you work with/talk to/visit outside your organisation/sector?
4. What did you enjoy?
5. What was fun?
6. What would you have liked to do more of?
7. What do you wish you could have done less of?
8. What do you wish you could have changed?
9. What was hard?
10. What went well?
11. What could have gone better?
12. What (outcome) made you proud? (or “What are you most proud of?”)*
13. When did you make a personal impact that improved something?
14. What did you achieve?
15. What did you do that was critical to something succeeding?
16. What did you do that helped someone else achieve something?
17. What did you fail with?
18. What did you learn?
19. What did you experiment with?
20. What are you looking forward to next week?
* In relation to question 12, in Emotional Agility Susan David says:
‘“What are you most proud of?” is a question often reserved for retirement parties and graduations, but it’s one we’d benefit from asking much more frequently. When you find yourself in a disappointing or difficult situation, it’s likely that even within that challenge, there is an action you are taking that you feel proud of. Look for opportunities to ask yourself what you’re proud of, and notice how answering that question primes you to continue moving toward what matters to you.”
