Reboot’s annual 10Q annual reflection project, which sends participants a question a day for 10 days will return for the 13th year this month. But, with the challenges, grief and fear of COVID-19 weighing heavily on the world, this year’s 10Q will include additional questions to offer a space for exploring and preserving feelings and experiences of this unique time in a digital time capsule.
Each year, for 10 days, the 10Q project from the nonprofit Reboot captures daily insights, experiences and beliefs from tens of thousands of people, many of whom have been participating since 10Q’s founding in 2008 and have amassed a personal archive.
“It has been found again and again that, when difficult circumstances hit, the simple experience of taking a pen and paper and allowing our inner voice to speak through our pens is in itself a healing and regenerative act,” said Nicola Behrman, 10Q co-founder (in partnership with writer Ben Greenman and educator Amelia Klein). “We know from 13 years of answers just how meaningful the 10Q experience is for so many, but, this year, when the foundation of everyday life has shifted so seismically and we are desperately attempting to find meaning in the madness, this simple act of reflection is both anchoring and essential.”
For 10 days, starting Sept. 18, and coinciding with the traditional period of reflection during the High Holidays, participants of all backgrounds will get the 10Q questions by email, leading them to their private digital portal, where the answers will be stored. The annual 10Q questions are not intrinsically religious and are focused on life, personal goals, plans for the future, relationships, our place in the world and more.
The answers are returned to participants the next year before the project starts again. The 10Q vault serves as a digital time capsule, and answers to the new questions will serve as a chronicle of experiences through COVID-19 that can also be shared by participants with future generations. For some people, this is a one-time experience; for others, 10Q has created an annual tradition of building a personal archive for future years and mapping personal growth.
Although the project is rooted in the Jewish idea of ethical wills and runs during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in the last decade, more than 70,000 people of all backgrounds and ages have turned to 10Q for a meaningful and modern spin on the centuries-old tradition of introspection, atonement and self-change during the High Holidays. The questions have scrolled on the jumbo screens at Times Square in New York City and on the Las Vegas Strip.
“It has never felt so important to pause and reflect on ourselves and the world around us,” said Reboot chief executive officer David Katznelson. “We are living in such a unique moment of human history, a moment that is worth turning to the individual to ask big questions about what we can learn to take us into the future.”
To find out more about 10Q and to register, go to doyou10q.com. Find out more about Reboot at rebooters.net.