What Is This For

About this journal

Twelve months of the questions people put off.

There is a set of questions most people intend to think about properly one day. What is work actually for. What would I do about money if I were honest. Who do I owe a conversation. What am I afraid of that I have never said out loud.

One day does not arrive on its own. This is a guided journal that puts one of those questions in front of you every week for a year, with a full page to answer it on.

Twelve themes, forty-eight prompts

The year is divided into twelve subjects: work, money, time, the body, love, friendship, parents, fear, loss, faith, legacy and now. Each gets four prompts and a monthly review that asks the question underneath the four.

The prompts are specific. Not reflect on gratitude. More like: name the thing you are putting off, and say what it is costing you each week you leave it.

What is inside

• 48 writing prompts, a full page each
• 12 monthly themes with an opening page and a quote
• 12 monthly reviews that ask what the four prompts were circling
• Prompts that name something, rather than inviting you to reflect
• Four lined pages at the back
• Undated, so month one starts the day the book arrives

Who it is for

• Anyone in their thirties, forties or fifties asking what this is all for
• People going through a change of direction, at work or at home
• Anyone who finds meditation apps thin and wants something to write
• Readers of philosophy and psychology who want to apply it to their own week
• A birthday present for someone who thinks a lot and says little

Not a self-help book

There is no method here, no framework and nobody telling you what the answer should be. Forty-eight questions and a lot of white paper is the entire design.

A year later you have something no book by anyone else can give you: your own handwriting on the subjects you had been avoiding, dated, and impossible to argue with.

Questions people ask

Is it religious? There is a month on faith and it asks what you believe now and when that changed. It does not assume an answer in either direction.

Do I have to do it in order? No. The twelve themes stand on their own, so open it at the month you are actually in the middle of.

How long does a prompt take? Twenty minutes for most people, and considerably longer for two or three of them.

Is there advice in it? None. Forty-eight questions and a lot of white paper is the whole design.

The details

• 6 x 9 inches, 108 pages, matte cover
• Undated: start in July if that is when you are ready
• Printed in colour on white paper
• Quiet cover with nothing on it about self-improvement

Twelve months of the questions people put off, asked one at a time, with room to answer.

Also from Mara Linde

Work, Honestly, twenty-six weeks on where your working life is going, and Tell Me About You, a keepsake journal of questions for a parent or grandparent.