Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. - Abraham Lincoln

Much of 2020 has been spent sharping my axe, shaving questions down bit by bit, so that they instantly produce results.

Here is a collection of deadly questions I gathered throughout the year:

  • What is going on? What is currently going on in the Moment, in the Role, in the Life Purpose?
  • What emotions are involved? What did these push him to do?
    • Some mistake? Something out of fear? (The huge irreversible life mistakes often are made from emotion.)
  • What emotion carries forward?
    • What drives the character forward?
      • The driver could be a heaven or a hell, a positive anticipated motivation or a negative one; cheese or cat dander. But both carry forward.
    • How does this emotion affect other sectors of his life?
  • Where is the pain?
  • What deeper meaning was read into this painful experience?
  • Amidst the pain, what forks in the road is he debating and approaching?
  • What will he see this from his deathbed?
    • Why does this matter, at all levels of their hierarchy: the internal level, the scene level, the Agenda level, and the life’s purpose level? (Ask why 5x)
  • What puts the hero in the biggest state of urgency? What time-clocks exist?
    • Think in terms of his current life Agendas: To have a family before 35? To leave his company, to start his own, before he gets a promotion that will make it impossible to leave? To stop the joker before he blows up a boat?
  • Are there unexpected consequences? What about immediate consequences?
  • How did this affect close friends and family?
  • What from their deathbed WON’T they remember (that current seems important to you)?