Are you asking Good Questions?
I love learning stuff. I actively seek answers. My brain lights up with smart explanations. I smile when I'm around people who know a lot of things. And I've personally have written about curiosity here and here.
The truth is: I've been struggling. I don't seem to find the answers to what I'm looking for. I've been lost in thoughts and scenarios, fearful of embracing new challenges, and scared of some bold decisions that question the "traditional" way of doing things. I know deep down what I have to decide, but I keep returning to the same fears. A few weeks ago, I took part in a Coaching group session and was amazed by a sudden realisation that unblocked some issues. I was not asking good questions. And because of it, I was not getting any value from the answers.
Nowadays, everyone looks pretty much alike. A degree, great ambition, hard-working skills, and indeed, a great team-player. But what do you have that is yours? What can you do not to look alike? Come up with answers. But don't be content. Ask more and better questions. Why is it so? Why is it important? Question your assumptions to avoid confirmation bias, only looking for arguments supporting your current beliefs.
The questions I was previously asking were mediocre: "Is it too risky?", "What if it goes wrong?", "How can I do this"? So, I shifted the questions. "How can I succeed, even if the plan goes wrong?", "How am I different because of x?" "Where do I want to go with this decision?", "How can I purposefully go against the expected?". The most exciting thing is: I don't know the answers to all of these questions. But when I ask, I'm forced to think, discover, and refine the path, so it better fits what I've learned about myself.
Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, both venture capitalists, decided to invest in Facebook because they questioned and dug deeper into the facts. Friendster, a social network at the time, was having a lot of users abandoning the website, which, at first sight, could mean users were not interested in social media. But that was far from the truth. The two investors were astonished by the number of minutes users spent on the website, even though it was constantly crashing. So, they wrote a $500,000 check to Zuckerberg, sold for almost a billion dollars, eight years later. This story illustrates the power of asking better questions and not settling with first-level answers, and underlining assumptions.
After a few months of the blame for not finding the right and clear answer, I've turned the process upside-down. I'm just seeking better questions to ask myself.
This one is mainly for me:
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”