Novelist
Recorded · The Hemingway Society · 2017
Homegoing spans about 250 years of Ghanaian and American history.
Life experience & transition
Life after work: a retirement review
A long-view record of choices, work, relationships, enough, regret, joy, and what became clear only with time.
12 questions, 1,291 quoted from what public figures said elsewhere, each with its source. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.
Worth reading
Which decision paid off only after many years, when its value could not yet be proved?
British wheelchair racer, 1988–2007; member of the House of Lords
Recorded · Cherwell · 2014
I might have liked to have done it a couple of years later, but you'd be stupid to turn it down.
Middle-distance runner and neurologist; first man to run a mile in under four minutes
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2002
there was already an area of research, the autonomic nervous system, which was relatively neglected.
Every question in this questionnaire
- What became visible only after your working life slowed down or ended? 21
- Looking back, which parts of your working life mattered, and which parts only seemed important at the time? 7
- Which decision paid off only after many years, when its value could not yet be proved? 12
- What lesson has mattered most in your life? 138
- What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore? 78
- What belief about work, family, money, or success took you longest to recognise as wrong? 11
- When did you first understand what enough meant for you? 9
- Which relationships did you tend well, and which did you neglect while other things felt urgent? 8
- What made you stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time? 14
- If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change? 203
- What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy? 577
- How would you want people to remember you? 213
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