It strikes me every year: the biggest problem with repentance is that it’s such an introspective process that there’s no accountability.
While many would point out that the penitent heart is judged by God, and that this is the entire point, we must face the fact that very few of us are expecting God to say, “Hey, remember last year when you promised to stop slandering people? Well, you didn’t.” But if someone were to record our promises to ourselves, flash freeze our repentance for a year, and send it back to us, would we be more or less likely to make promises to God and to ourselves?

10Q, an initiative of Reboot (“a growing network of thought-leaders and tastemakers who work toward a common goal: to “reboot” the culture, rituals, and traditions we’ve inherited and make them vital and resonant in our own lives”), aims to help us define the areas where we desire improvement, and will basically remind us in a year of what we’d hoped to achieve.
Each day during the Ten Days of Repentance (the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which is traditionally a time of introspection and self-analysis), 10Q asks registered users a different question, and records the answer “in the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping.” And on next Rosh Hashanah eve, “your answers will magically appear in your inbox, full of revelations.”
Who knows if just the mere knowledge that we’ve sent our goals to someone – even if it’s our future selves – will keep us more honest, more goal-centered, and more sincerely repentant in the coming year. God willing, I’ll let you know next year how I did with my goals.