One Question

For the holidays

Ask them one question.

When the family is around one table, one good question can be worth more than any present. Here are twelve to ask a parent or grandparent, and a way for them to keep going once everyone has gone home.

Twelve questions worth asking

  1. What did the house you grew up in smell like?
  2. What was your first job, and what did you do with your first pay?
  3. Who was your best friend when you were twelve?
  4. How did you two meet, and who noticed whom first?
  5. What were the holidays like when you were small?
  6. Which family recipe would you hate to see forgotten?
  7. What news do you remember exactly where you were for?
  8. What did you want to be when you grew up?
  9. What was the hardest year of your life, and what got you through it?
  10. What’s a decision you’re glad you made?
  11. What did your own parents get right?
  12. What do you want your grandchildren to know about you?

Ask one, then listen. Follow-up questions are where the stories are: And then what? What did that feel like? If they don’t mind, record it with Voice Memos, or with the free StoryCorps app, which guides you through an interview. Or write it down that night in their words, as near as you can remember them.

If they’d like to write

One Question asks one question a day, about the day they’re living, and keeps the answers. In time, it reads them back as the chapters of their life. Setting it up takes a few minutes:

  1. Download One Question on their iPhone. It’s free.
  2. Open it together and answer the first question. A sentence is enough.
  3. Tap the gear on Today and set the daily reminder to a time that suits them. If the iPhone asks, allow notifications.
  4. Show them the microphone on the keyboard: they can speak an answer instead of typing it. With an Apple Watch, they can answer from their wrist.
  5. If they already keep a journal in Day One or Apple’s Journal app, bring it in, and their chapters start from their first entry.

What they write stays theirs

Entries live on their iPhone and in their own iCloud account. Nobody else can read them, you included. If they’d like to share, they can send the day’s question as a picture, with their answer on it if they choose, or export everything as a text file. One Question doesn’t send their writing to anyone.

Giving them Pro

Writing in One Question is free. One Question Pro opens what’s inside each chapter: how it felt, the moments worth finding again, what changed. It’s $14.99 a year in the US. The App Store doesn’t let you buy a subscription for someone else, but an Apple Gift Card can usually cover it, since Apple lets an Apple Account balance pay for app subscriptions.

Want their stories in a book?

One Question keeps their days from now on, and it doesn’t print a book. If what you want is a parent’s memories, told and bound, a service like Storyworth or Remento is made for that. How they compare

And keep your own.

One day, someone will want to know what your life was like. One Question keeps it, a day at a time.

Download on the App Store

Free on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.