A life audit that doesn’t score you
The year you had, not the one you meant to have.
Twelve questions, around forty minutes if you answer them properly. At the end you get your own answers back, arranged so they argue with each other. No score, no type, no reading of your character. Nothing is sent anywhere, and the first question is already below.
There is a paid AI interview at the end of this. 9 EUR, optional.
This is saved in this browser and nowhere else. No account, no server, no copy we can read. Clearing your browser data clears this with it, so export anything you want to keep.
If any of this is heavier than a review should be, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential lines by country.
What a life audit is
A life audit is one pass over a fixed stretch of time, usually the twelve months behind you: you put down what actually happened, then sit and read the whole thing at once. It is neither planning nor goal setting, and it is harder than both, because those two are about a year that does not exist yet while this one is about the year you already spent. That is why most people skip to them.
Almost nobody does the second half. You can carry a perfectly accurate account of your own year and still not see what runs through it, because that account has only ever existed in fragments, days apart, one at a time. Putting twelve of them on a single page is enough to fix that. Nothing cleverer than that is going on here.
The difference from a year in review is not the questions, it is the arrangement, and the FAQ below has the long version. What matters here is what the page does with what you write: underneath the boxes it sets a few of your answers against each other, and stops. It writes nothing of its own into them, offers no reading of your character, and has no model behind it that could form one.
The twelve questions
All of them, in order. Take them and use them somewhere else if you prefer.
The Record
- 1Name three things you actually finished. Not started, not almost. Finished.
- 2What took the most hours?Not what mattered most. What took the hours.
- 3Something changed and you can point to roughly when. What was it, and when?
What It Cost
- 4What did you drop to make room for that?Name the thing, not the category.
- 5What did you keep paying for that stopped working?A habit, a routine, a story, a subscription. Any of them count.
- 6Who got the worst version of you this year?You don't have to explain why. A name is enough.
The Pattern
- 7What did you say you'd start, more than once, and didn't?
- 8When you got overwhelmed, what did you actually do?Walk it from the first sign.
- 9Write the sentence you said to yourself most this year.The exact words.
What's Unfinished
- 10If next year had to protect exactly one thing, what is it?One.
- 11What would you have to stop to make that true?
- 12What's the question you've been avoiding?Don't answer it. Just write it down.
Questions people ask
What is a life audit?
A life audit is a structured pass over a fixed period, usually the past year, where you write down what actually happened and then read it back. It is not planning and it is not goal setting. The value is in the reading back. Most people can describe their year accurately and still miss the pattern running through it, because they have never seen their own account of it in one place.
What are some good questions to ask during a life audit?
Questions that are answerable from memory and hard to answer vaguely. What you finished rather than what you worked on. Where the hours went rather than what mattered. What you dropped to make room. The sentence you said to yourself most often. Anything you can answer with a value or an intention is a question you can answer without thinking.
How long does it take?
Around forty minutes if you answer properly, and about six if you do not. There is no timer and no reminder either way.
Do I have to finish it in one sitting?
No. Your answers stay in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back. Nothing is scored on completion, and unanswered questions are simply left out of everything below.
Is anything sent anywhere?
No. This page makes no network request after it loads. Your answers are written to your own browser storage and never leave the device. There is no account, no email field, and no copy on any server that anyone can read. The flip side is that clearing your browser data clears this too, so export anything you want to keep.
Can I print it or fill it in on paper?
Yes. There is a blank sheet download that prints the twelve questions with room to write under each one, and a print option for a filled-in sheet.
What is the difference between a life audit and a year in review?
A year in review is chronological: it walks through what happened. An audit is comparative. It puts the record next to what the record cost, and what you said you would do next to what you actually did. The arrangement is the method.
Two other versions of this
If you are doing this because the year is ending rather than because today happened to be the day, the end of year review is the same twelve boxes with a set built around the turn of a year: what you thought it was going to be about in January, and what it was about instead.
If you got here from YearCompass, or you have done it a few years running and it has gone flat, the comparison against the booklet is written out in full, including the three rows where the booklet is the better tool.
If the sheet raised something it could not answer
A canvas can only rearrange what you put on it. It cannot ask you the follow-up, because it has no idea what you wrote. If a pairing above landed, and you want the second question rather than the first, Fatement asks it. One question at a time. It adapts to what you actually said, and it does not stop at the polite answer.
The interview and the read it produces are free. Detailed artifacts built from your transcript are 9 EUR, once, no account and no subscription. You do not need them to get something out of this page.
If the artifacts do not land, write to us and you get the 9 EUR back. No form and no reason required.