The OYA Proust-like
Questionnaire

Within Own Your Story, we use the OYA Questionnaire — not as a test, but as a reference.

Like the Proust Questionnaire, its value lies in the questions themselves. The questions are designed to invite reflection, surface values, and reveal how someone thinks — not to evaluate or classify them.

In that sense, the questionnaire functions as an orientation tool: it helps people recognise their starting point before deciding on direction.

Inspired by the function of the Proust Questionnaire, this is not an evaluation but a structured way to think.


Why we use it before a conversation

At Own Your Story, we don’t start conversations with advice. We start with questions.

The OYS Proust Questionnaire is used in the pre-call process to create orientation — not to evaluate, score, or filter people based on performance. Its purpose is to help someone pause, reflect, and articulate where they currently stand before entering a conversation about direction, positioning, or next steps.

In many professional contexts, conversations begin too early. People arrive with urgency, assumptions, or half-formed ideas, and use the call itself to think out loud. That often leads to vague discussions, misaligned expectations, or decisions made too quickly.

We deliberately choose a different sequence.

Why questions come first

The questionnaire consists of carefully designed questions that invite self-reflection and awareness.
The value is not in a “result,” but in the thinking that happens while answering them.
Much like the tradition of the Marcel Proust Questionnaire, the function lies in the questions themselves. They surface values, patterns, tensions, and assumptions, not to judge them, but to make them visible. By the time a conversation takes place, both sides are already oriented: the individual has reflected on their situation and intent 
OYS has context to engage at the right level. This changes the quality of the conversation entirely.

Why this happens before a call

The pre-call questionnaire serves three purposes:
  • Orientation: It helps people recognise their starting point before discussing direction.
  • Agency: it shifts the work of reflection to the person themselves, rather than outsourcing it to a conversation.
  • Quality of dialogue: It allows calls to focus on substance, not first-time clarification.
    This is not a hurdle. It is a form of preparation.

What this is — and what it is not

The OYS Proust Questionnaire is a thinking tool, a moment of pause, a way to arrive informed and prepared.
It is not: an evaluation, a personality test, a gatekeeping mechanism based on “fit.”
We use it because good conversations require orientation and good decisions require better questions.

A short note on the OG Proust Questionnaire


The Proust Questionnaire is a set of personal questions that became associated with Marcel Proust, the French writer best known for 'A la recherche du temps perdu' (In Search of Lost Time).

In reality, the questionnaire did not originate with Proust himself. Versions of it circulated in late-19th-century France as a popular parlour game, often called a confession album. Participants were invited to answer a fixed set of questions about their tastes, values, fears, and aspirations.

Proust completed such a questionnaire twice in his youth, once around 1890 and again a few years later. His answers were later discovered and published, not because they were “correct,” but because they offered a revealing glimpse into how he thought, what he valued, and how he related to the world.

Over time, the questionnaire became known by his name for a simple reason: it demonstrated how a structured set of questions could surface character, perspective, and inner priorities — without evaluation, scoring, or comparison.

Its enduring relevance lies in that function.
The value of the Proust Questionnaire has never been in the answers themselves, but in the reflective space the questions create.

There are good storytellers,
that tell bad stories

-President Obama

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