Man, let me tell you, if you’ve ever done a tarot reading—either for yourself or paid some mystic on the corner—you know the biggest waste of time isn’t the cards, it’s the garbage questions people ask. We’re talking about stuff like, “Will I be rich next year?” or “Does he love me?” Seriously? That’s just hoping for a magical answer, not actually wanting insight. And I hated that. I felt like I was wasting my time, and honestly, disrespecting the whole point of using the cards as a tool.
I wasted years trying to pull useful answers from awful questions. Then I had this one disastrous session last spring that finally flipped the switch. It wasn’t even my reading; it was my buddy, Mark. He was having massive trouble at work, right? But instead of asking something helpful, he just asked, “Is my boss an idiot?”
The Disaster That Forced My Hand
I pulled the cards and the interpretation was just a mess, because the question was useless. It was accusatory, demanding, and gave zero room for him to change his situation. I tried my best to turn it into something practical, something about boundary setting, but he walked away frustrated. He thought the cards were nonsense, and frankly, I almost agreed.
I realized then that the system wasn’t broken, the input was. I decided right there I needed a list, a rock-solid, practical, real-world list of 20 questions that couldn’t possibly result in a vague answer or just a yes/no coin flip. This wasn’t about fortune-telling; this was about self-coaching using some pretty pictures.
The first thing I did was grabbed a notebook—the biggest, cheapest one I could find—and just started writing down every stupid question I’d ever heard, and then immediately underneath, I’d write the “fixed” version. The contrast was crazy. Instead of “Should I quit my job?” the fixed version became, “What immediate action can I take to improve my daily satisfaction at work?” See the difference? One is running away; the other is taking control.
Sifting Through the Garbage and Finding Gold
I spent about a week on this. My process was simple but rigid. I categorized everything. I needed questions that hit the three main areas where people actually struggle: Career/Money, Relationships/Love, and Personal Growth/Spirituality. If a question didn’t fit neatly into one of those buckets, or if it relied on external magic (like predicting the exact date of a promotion), it was tossed right out. Zero exceptions.
I ended up generating a massive list of maybe 60 or 70 concepts. That was way too many. So then I started the culling process. I pulled out a red pen and got ruthless. I looked for redundancy. If I had five questions about self-sabotage, I combined them into the single best, most actionable one. This part was hard because you get attached to your ideas, but you gotta be brutal to get to perfection.
I focused hard on making sure every single question demanded an internal look. The cards aren’t going to tell you what your boyfriend is thinking—that’s his job. But the cards can tell you what beliefs or actions you are holding onto that might be messing up the communication. That became the core philosophy: Focus on the Querent’s agency.
The Finalized Structure: Making it Usable
I finally got the list down to a tight 20. But just having 20 questions typed out on a page wasn’t enough. People forget them the second they sit down. So I had to structure them so they were easy to access and choose from, even in a stressed state.
I decided to present them in clear categories, and I made sure that five of those 20 were “opener” questions—super broad, designed to just check the temperature of life right now—and five were “closer” questions, aimed at specific, immediate action once the reading was done.
Here’s how we grouped them in the final list. This organization made it feel less like a test and more like a guided conversation:
- Five Action Starters: These are for when you feel totally stuck.
- Five Relationship Builders: Focusing not on the other person, but on your role in the dynamic.
- Five Career and Money Movers: Focused on value, skill, and resource management, not just “getting rich.”
- Five Inner Work Deep Dives: The spiritual stuff—understanding blocks, shadows, and true motivation.
Once I had the list finalized, I tested it out on Mark, the same guy who asked about his “idiot boss.” He came back a few weeks later, and this time, he picked a question from the new list: “What lesson am I avoiding that is delaying my career growth?” The reading was night and day. It was focused, deep, and actually gave him concrete things he could do. He walked away realizing his boss wasn’t the idiot; Mark was just avoiding a tough conversation about delegation. He actually fixed the problem a month later. That was when I knew we had nailed it.
Making those 20 questions wasn’t just a fun exercise; it completely changed how I approach the cards. It took all the ambiguity and wishful thinking out of the process and turned the tarot into what it should be: a solid tool for self-reflection and practical planning. Seriously, don’t ask the cards what’s going to happen to you. Ask the cards how you can make things happen. That’s the real trick.
