There's one set of questions that when answered thoughtfully, is meant to reveal who you really are.
It's not a workplace tool to deduce whether you're going to be better with words or shapes. It's not a left-brain/right-brain gotcha or an attempt to assign you an identifying letter or colour. It's about character, and answering it honestly requires trust.
It's called the Proust Questionnaire. The title is a bit misleading because the famous French writer and critic did not invent it, he simply took it with great enthusiasm as a teenager in the late 1880s and went on to get all his literary mates to do the same. They would answer the questions in a book dubbed the "confession album" and pass it around between them.
Watch: Come on an intimate first date with the amazing Holly Wainwright. Post continues after video.
It's the kind of list fiction writers answer on behalf of their characters, although I have to admit, these days I make my own fictional people do conversation cards instead, because they don't like the surprise. Yes, I know I sound strange, take it up with my Proust answers.
The reason I know anything about these questions is not, embarrassingly, because of their literary origins but because Vanity Fair, an American magazine that I have loved and read all my adult life do it as their back-page staple. Every celebrity from Hugh Jackman to Zendaya to Judy Blume to Elton John has taken it.
