Everyone faces problems.

You might even say that that is what life is all about. Or at least, it’s about how you deal with those problems.

The thing is that people differ quite widely in how they deal with the problems that life throws at them…

• Some hide in drugs or other hedonic pursuits

• Others lean fully into their problems

• Others make their biggest problem part of their identity

But what if there would be another – more effective – way of dealing with the fact the life deals out problems like candy?

What if there was a skill that most of us have unlearned?

And what if we could re-learn that skill?

Wouldn’t that be much MUCH better than the alternatives above?

The Death of Good Questions

When you were a kid, you asked questions all the time.

According to Warren Berger – author of the book A More Beautiful Question – kids ask up to 300 questions per day. They explore the world, through curiosity. And by doing so, they learn new things.

In this process, they ask question. And not only questions…

…but genuine questions!

They come straight from the heart. And cut through our (adult) defenses like a hot knife through butter. Because their questions are not pointed. They have no hidden motive behind them. The kids just want to learn and understand… Because they are fascinated by reality…

But is this still the case?

Are you still asking 300 questions per day? Are you curiously exploring the world? Do you never have hidden motives when asking your questions?

The answer is a clear “No”! And that is quite normal… (although for you these things might still be more true than for the average person, simply due to the fact that you are reading this).

As you get older, you learn to make more sense of reality. You gain more understanding. And with that, you don’t need to ask as many questions.

But there is another process that is going on…

…another thing that keeps us from asking the right questions…

…one that is caused by the way we educate our kids…

Here is what happens to asking genuine questions:

We entered school.

Maybe you have a cousin who recently primary school… Or you still remember your own first steps in school.

I fall into the first camp. The daughters of my cousin are both in primary school. But when I talk to the older one how she likes it, she always frowns a little bit.

This is not because she is stupid or simply not good at school. Actually quite the opposite. She is full of energy whenever I see her. And very quick to pick up on things. Definitely beyond her years…

But the way school tries to box her in kills her curiosity…

…and that’s why she doesn’t like it – understandably!

Here is what happens on a more general level.

Kids come into primary school with all their curiosity to explore the world. They ask their genuine questions about the world that cut through all the BS of the adult world. And they are excited to receive the answers…

But there’s a problem.

There’s no way one teacher can answer all the questions of 30 hyper curious kids…

And there is another problem.

These kids have to get grades so we can determine what follow up school they should visit.

And that is where the real problem comes in.

What happens when we stop answering the questions our kids have, and ask them question instead?

We stop rewarding for asking good questions…

…and reward giving the “right” answer…

…to the questions that we came up with.

Now, this clearly has some utility. It’s not all bad. General education is a gift! But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with it’s problems…

I pulled the quote above from a Ted Talk on how to ask good questions.

It perfectly expresses what goes wrong when you start reinforces answers instead of questions. According to Andrew, we stopped to question our questions…

I find this by itself to be a really powerful idea. But I think it goes even deeper than that. I don’t think – as kids – we questioned our questions…

For kid, questions just pour out of them. And most of the time, they are good questions… Because they are genuine…come from the heart…are driven by curiosity. However you want to express this.

So, rather than having stopped to question our question…

…we have unlearned to be curious and ask genuine questions…

This is paired with another problem that we face when we grow up and start becoming self-conscious…

According to Tim Ferris – a master of asking questions – people don’t ask the right questions, because we life in a culture of shame and fear.

We don’t want to be the person who asks “the stupid” question. We don’t want to be the person who asks the plainly obvious…

Even though, according to Tim, most of the time, that is exactly the right solution…

Most of the times, the most obvious question is the best question to ask. Yet, nobody dares to…

Because we are taught by school to give the right answers, not ask the right questions…

Because this has left us afraid to ask something genuine…

Because it lays open our ignorance – the fact that we don’t yet have the answer…

But that is why we should be asking in the first place…

So, how can we overcome this problem?

And before we jump into that…

…Why should we care about asking the right questions in the first place?

Why Ask..?

The quote above says it all.

When facing a problem – when trying to answer a question – the biggest part of the solution is the question that we will ask.

If we ask a good question, we will find a good solution. If we ask a bad question, we will find no or just a bad solution.

The same idea has been expressed in a lot of different ways…

…but one stands out: 42

This is the number that the supercomputer Deep Thought gives in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy… to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”

You see the problem here? The people who built Deep Thought didn’t even specify the question properly. And so, when they finally receive the answer, they cannot make heads or tails from it. They don’t get it… Because they didn’t ask the right question…

In Hitchhiker’s Guide, the solution to this problem is to build another supercomputer. One that is more powerful than Deep Thought. One that is so powerful, that it can calculate what “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” actually is…

And we need to do the same…

…not to build a new supercomputer…

…but to use more of our brain power to ask the right questions…

So… How can we do that?

…A Good Question?

“What is a good question?”

That in itself is a good question 😉 

But I don’t want to let you hanging with this, so let me try to put my finger on it.

Questions set the frame for the problem we are trying to face. They determine how we approach the problem. What we consider to be important and unimportant. And whether we feel boxed in or in curious exploration…

But questions do not only frame our approach to problems. They frame our engagement with the unknown…

I love this idea so much. I got it from Warren Berger who said that “questions enable us to organise our thinking around what we don’t know“.

Isn’t that cool? What an idea. Basically what questions do is to create a centre of gravity in a vacuum that we haven’t yet explored. We have some intuition that something of import is at this center of this gravity, but we cannot be sure.

A good question helps us with the exploration of that which we don’t yet know.

It does so, by striking the balance between two opposites:

• Leaving things open for exploration while

• Limiting our approach to not get lost in the weeds

A good question does not ask “what should I do“ but “what could I do”. It allows us to explore the problems space we are trying to find an answer in by giving us a frame that is open enough to walk through that space and find the solution.

At the same time, it gives us a clear boundary so that we don’t wander too deep into the maze and get lost in places that definitely don’t hold an answer to the problem we are trying to solve…

A good question strikes this balance by showing us what we don’t yet know. I think that is what Berger meant with his quote above. The allow us to ask follow up questions. And so, step by step, dive deeper into the maze of the problem we are trying to solve…

Like Theseus being guided by Ariadne’s string, we are guided by a string of questions that we can use to find our way back… when we find ourselves walking too deeply into the maze.

Therefore, a good question is not only our guide…

…but also our lifeline, when we get lost!

And finally, a good question has one more characteristic:

It comes from the heart…

A good question is asked with genuine curiosity… like kids do.

Curiosity is the creative spirit manifested as emotion. It is the signal that you have encountered an opportunity to access a deeper level of reality – to get a deeper understanding of what is true.

This makes curiosity a call to adventure…

And this is why kids are asking questions so curiously…

It is their inbuild instinct for the heroic act. To confront what is unknown. Bit by bit. One question at a time. With the appropriate amount of novelty.

A good question, asked with genuine curiosity, is a journey to new knowledge… and new growth.

How to (Re-)Learn to Ask Good Questions?

So, now that we know

• why it makes sense to ask questions and

• what makes a good question

the only question that remains is

• How to ask good questions..?

As with almost anything, the answer is:

Practice…

And as almost any practise, it starts with people who are already experts…

1. Study the Experts

If you want to learn how to ask good questions…

…study the people who ask good questions.

By being exposed to a lot of good questions, you will pick up the ability to distinguish a great question from a mediocre one in your day to day life.

But who to study?

If I were you, I would make Sean Evans, the host of Hot One’s, my go to…

I don’t know any interviewer who is being told how great question he or she asks with the frequency that Sean is being told that…

I don’t know any interviewer who gets as many compliments for their questions as Sean does.

Sean is truly a master of asking good questions that not only surprise the person he asks them to, but also allow them to reflect on things and tell stories that they probably have rarely if ever told before…

By listening to Sean as great questions…

…you will also learn what it takes to ask them yourself…

2. Research

Asking the right question can require a lot of research.

This is true when you want to learn from someone (e.g., like Sean during his interviews)…

…or when trying to understand a new concept or solve a problem.

Here is why: when you do research you

1. familiarize yourself with whatever or whomever you are dealing with an

and

2. you learn which questions have not been asked yet.

Especially the second point here is crucial. As you research your topic or the person that you want to learn from, you pick up on the questions that are asked all the time. The ones that some people ask… and the ones that jump into your mind but that nobody else seems to be asking.

It’s with this latter kind where the magic is.

Remember what we learned from Tim Ferris above: sometimes, it is the most obvious questions that nobody asks…

but those are the best question to ask…

3. Practise

And finally, it’s time to practise…

As with everything, you will need to put in some sweat to get better at asking questions. The great thing is that life puts more opportunities to practise your questions in your way than you can handle.

For example, when you encounter a problem – it could be a tiny or a very big one – this is a perfect time to practise asking the right questions.

Don’t just go with the first question (or even answer) that pops into your mind. Take a breather and question your questions. Which once lead you to more questions? Which one’s put you into an explorative mood? Which once confine you?

Keep track of this. Note the questions down that stand out to you… The ones that help you move forward in your exploration… Or the one’s that lead to interesting answers from the people you are asking…

Overall, note down the questions that get you to places you want to be…

Wrap Up

And that’s it…

…a shorted post compared to the long and meta-level ones of the past couple of weeks.

I think in the next weeks I will focus on more applied stuff…

• Asking good questions

• Idea Conversion

• Systems Thinking

• …

With this I want to really bridge the gap between the grand theories I have discussed so far…

…and bring them down to earth by giving you (and myself) the right tools to do so.

If you are interested in this…

…make sure to stick around for more!

Until then…

Go and Do!

Much success with it!

All the best,
Niklas