About The Question Collector

I’ve come to believe that some of the most useful things we can collect in life aren’t answers, but questions.

The kind that stay with us long after a conversation has ended. That make us reconsider something we thought we understood. That appear in ordinary moments and change how we see the world.

The Question Collector is a place for those questions and for the observations and experiences that lead me to them.

I spend much of my professional life helping people see differently. I work with ideas about meaning, attention, creativity and living with greater intention.

But knowing how we ought to live and actually living that way are two very different things.

I still get distracted. I still confuse being busy with doing something worthwhile. I still find myself chasing things I’m no longer sure I want.

And perhaps that’s what makes life interesting.

Here, I’ll write about the things I’m noticing and the things I’m struggling to understand. Parenthood, art, ambition, getting older, relationships, uncertainty, the small peculiarities of everyday life, and occasionally the bigger questions that sit beneath them.

Sometimes I’ll share something I’ve learned. Other times, something I’ve got completely wrong.

I won’t pretend to have all the answers. That’s rather the point.

Think of this as a collection of personal essays and field notes from someone trying to pay a little more attention to the life he’s living.

I hope you recognise something of your own life in these pages.

And perhaps find a question worth keeping.

— Damian Madden