When the topic arises, how do you describe your home? Cozy, cluttered, or perfect? Pristine, expansive, or charming? Something else entirely?
Share why if you wish.
Category: Home
How Does Your Personal Life Influence Your Work Life?
Time you spend at work is naturally influenced by your time at home. Can you think of how your personal life influences your work life?
Sometimes it seems like our lives are split into two parts: a work life, and a personal life. You might have work friends that are different than your personal friends. How you dress in each is likely different, and even how you act may vary from one to the other.
So it might seem like two different worlds. Of course, that’s not true at all. There is one big thing in common: you. You can’t help but have your personal life affect work, and vice versa. Particularly with many people working from home during the pandemic.
Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘Are we too busy?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What are our responsibilities to others?’
Can you think of any specific ways that what you do in your personal life impacts the work that you do? It might be something simple, like pictures of your family on your desk. But it could also extend to skills you learned at home being used in the office. Maybe something you read on your own time became meaningful somehow in doing your job.
Despite your best efforts, it is impossible to keep home and work completely apart (and perhaps you shouldn’t even try). What are some of the ways, positive or negative, that your personal life influences your work life?
Related questions: How has remote work changed your workplace culture? Who would serve on your personal board of directors? What do you do with a day off work? What is your dream job?
Own Or Rent?
For your living arrangement, do you own or rent? Which would you prefer? What about other things in your life (car, furniture, art, etc.)?
Share why if you wish.
Own Or Rent?
How Would You Describe Your Civic Life?
Civic life can vary drastically from person to person, and from town to town. Are you active in your local community?
In our lives, there is some level of civic engagement.Even if you live out in the country, there are some services that are provided by the nearby town that benefit you.
The exact amount varies from person to person. While one person might have children in the public school system, another may check out books from the local library. You might serve on a town committee of some sort, or just organize a block party for your neighbors.
Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘What makes a place feel like home?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What beliefs do you have that might be wrong?’
There are some civic services that benefit everyone, like local roads we all drive on, or trash and recycling collection that is done on a weekly basis. What other services do you take advantage of?
Some people are simply good members of the town they inhabit. That might mean shopping a locally-owned stores rather than national chains or online outlets. Or it might mean picking up trash at a local park, or helping out a neighbor in some way.
There is also actual engagement in local politics. This runs the gamut from voting in town elections, to serving on select committees or attending forums to discuss issues that impact your neighborhood or city.
There are many ways of being a member in the town or city where you live. Which ones are meaningful or important to you? How would you describe your civic life?
Related questions: What are our responsibilities to others? What role should the government play in our lives? Why do you live where you live? Urban, suburban, or rural?
Where Are You From?
The question ‘Where are you from?’ might seem pretty simple. After all, everyone knows where they are from, right?
However, the real trick to this question is how you define the word ‘from’. It can mean many things, and how you choose to define it will influence your answer to the question. It also may reveal something about you.
One way to interpret this is to think about where you were born. But even that has some ambiguity. For instance, you might answer with the country you were born in. Or the state, or the city. Or even the hospital.
Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss the related question: ‘What makes you you?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What gives a person value?’
Of course, where you are ‘from’ might not have anything to do with where you were born. It might mean where you lived the longest. Or where you spent your formative years. It could even mean where you live right now.
It might be the case that the person asking the question can further refine the question. They may be trying to get a specific piece of information, like country of your citizenship.
However, in the absence of any such clues, this becomes a question that is really about identity. How do you identify yourself? With whom do you align yourself? Perhaps you consider yourself an inhabitant of a particular region, like the Midwest or the Northeast. Maybe you are from Seattle or Atlanta, or some other metro area. Or your nationality is your defining point of origin.
However you choose to answer, what do you have in common with the other people who hail from the same place as you? How are you like the others in your town, your state, your country?
Where are you from?
Related questions: If you could live anywhere, where would it be? Why do you live where you live? How would you define yourself in ten words or less?