10Q: Reflect. React. Renew.

Social Network for One: Website Offers Visitors Chance to Reflect

A website called 10Q wants you to share a bit of yourself. Before you raise your arms and scream “not another social network,” hear this one out. The intended audience is not the Twitterverse, nor is it Facebook’s 800 million users. The intended audience is you… a year from now.

Starting today and running for the next nine days, 10Q is inviting people to its website to answer a question. Ten days, ten different questions. What kind of questions? It could be something like, “Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year.” Or “Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year?” Or even “How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year.” In short, questions that you can’t really answer in a tweet.

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In an era where most reflection happens publicly in 140 characters or less, the 10Q project provides a private, deeper online forum for personal reflection beyond the waffles you had for breakfast.

Timed to coincide with the Jewish New Year, traditionally a time of introspection and self-reflection, 10Q is a unique project that, started today, will email participants of all backgrounds a question a day about the year that’s past and the year to come. After the 10-day period, the answers are sent into a digital vault. A year later, the answers are returned to participants and the process begins again.

“Thanks to new technologies like texting and Twitter, people have more opportunities than ever to express themselves, but fewer than ever to express themselves well,” said 10Q co-founder Ben Greenman, a New Yorker editor. “What 10Q wants people to do is what people should want to do for themselves — to reflect on life without worrying about status updates.”

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10Q Project: Answer life’s big questions online … Then reread next year

It might seem odd that 10Q, a project bent on promoting deep personal reflection and penetrating spiritual insight, would engage Joel Stein, a somewhat nihilistic humor columnist, as one of its endorsers.

“I find it hard to believe that anyone in our present society needs to spend any more time thinking about themselves,” said Stein, who writes for Time magazine, about the 10-day online journal exercise that is taking place this year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, asking participants to answer “life’s big questions.”

“All I do is write about myself — maybe that’s why I’m less interested,” Stein said.

The 10Q project was conceived and organized through Reboot, a countercultural network of artists and innovators, and is, in its essence, an online version of cheshbon ha-nefesh, the ritual “accounting of the soul,” that Jews undergo each year during the 10 days of repentance. This iteration, however, is organized around 10 major questions, the answers to which are submitted electronically, then are secured in an online vault for one year, to be returned to participants on the eve of the following High Holy Days. It is also, the organizers say, designed for a universal audience (Reboot strangely employs the term “ecumenical”). To that end, Reboot has been promoting the project through bicoastal events and, yes, even celebrity Tweets, promising to deepen High Holy Days reflection beyond 140 characters, the Twitter limit.

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Let’s Play 10 Questions

Would you like to talk to your past self and compare notes on how your life is shaping up, be reminded of your goals, take stock in your blessings?

The world often moves too quickly for reflection, and the responsibilities of the everyday can keep us from life’s larger questions. This week, Reboot (the group behind the National Day of Unplugging) wants us to reconnect to self-reflection with a free online program called 10Q.

Starting tomorrow, September 28, people who sign up for 10Q will receive one question a day for 10 days. After participants answer the questions, they submit them to a secure online vault. “One year later,” the folks at 10Q say, “the vault will open and your answers will wing their way back to your email inbox for private reflection.”

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I’m begining to have a backlog of posts I keep meaning to write. The problem is by the time I get home, I’m tired of writing on the computer and don’t feel like blogging. Instead, I watch youtube videos until it’s prime time TV hour(s). Speaking of which, I’ve been watching so much cable reality shows (a la, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”), it’s kind of weird to watch sit-coms again.

Um, anyway, since I haven’t written in a while, I thought I’d share something I got in my email today. A year ago I did this thing called 10Q, where you answer 10 questions over the course of 10 days, and have it sent to you a year later.

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A few years ago I started answering 10 questions about myself and the world every September.  The following year, those answers pop up in my inbox.  I love this project (10Q) and it’s made me realize that 1) I know myself pretty well and 2) Many of my feelings and beliefs about the world are consistent year after year, but some things do change.  It’s cool to see. Like last year I said one of my goals was to live healthier and “cleaner” one step at a time, and I’ve definitely taken steps to clean up my diet and lifestyle.

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