The Power of Asking Questions
Our Pickaxe to Get Everything We Want
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known but to question it.”
Jacob Bronowski (Writer and Presented of The Ascent of Man)
“What you seek is seeking you.”
Rumi (1207 – 1273)
Sometime after college, I learned how powerful questions can be. Tim Ferriss, in his book Tribe of Mentors, says that everything we want is in other people's heads, and questions are our pickaxe to dig them out.
He believes his success comes from asking better questions. This idea resonated with me because I had so many unanswered questions.
Questions like:
Why am I always getting the short end of the stick?
How come I’m not being rewarded for doing the right thing?
Is this all there is to life?
Will it ever get easier?
What’s the point of understanding complicated things if no one cares?
When will I have sacrificed enough?
How do I make more money?
Why do I keep making bad choices?
I realized…the problem wasn't the harsh answers but that I wasn't asking the right questions.
Improve my questions, improve my life.
Knowing I could ask better questions gave me hope and power.
When asked questions, our minds immediately start finding answers.
This can be uncomfortable, but once a question is asked, we can't ignore the answer. It doesn’t matter who asks; our minds will search for the answer. If we want answers, we can ask ourselves questions or have others ask us.
Even simple questions like “What do I want to eat for dinner?” or big ones like “What do I want my life to mean?” make our minds work to find answers. Being genuinely curious about the answers helps.
Asking the right questions in the correct order matters. Good questions in the wrong order can lead to bad answers. Starting with easy questions before deep ones leads to better, more honest answers. Here are some of my important questions:
What do I want to change, and how will I know when I have?
What would this look like if it were easy?
What am I avoiding just because I know the answer is painful?
How can I make my 10-year plans happen in 6 months?
What am I not saying that needs to be said?
What’s being told that I’m not hearing?
What are the actions I need to take today?
What am I unwilling to feel?
Whose expectations am I trying to fulfill? My own or someone else’s?
What would make today great?
How could I have made today even better?
How can I start asking better questions?
“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”
Pierre-Marc-Gaston
Tim Ferriss says, “Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.”
Asking questions helps us learn and grow.
The more specific the question, the better. Specific questions are easier to answer and easier to apply to our lives.
For example, asking someone, “What is your favorite movie?” is not a good question because it is difficult to answer, and even if we got an answer, it would be difficult to apply that answer to our lives.
A better question would be, “What movie do you most recommend people watch?” This question is easier to answer because there are fewer options. Rather than thinking about all the movies they have seen, they have to search through the movies they recommended (which is typically a smaller list). Additionally, once we obtain the answer, we can be more certain that we will enjoy that movie or could recommend it to others with similar tastes.
What else can questions do for us?
Questions help us think differently and break old patterns.
Chouinard (2007) highlighted that children ask questions to resolve gaps in their knowledge, leading to cognitive development. This indicates that asking questions can drive change by focusing attention on areas needing clarification rather than by directly learning new information - questions can be used to target precisely what we don’t know.
Bonawitz et al. (2020) showed that children change their answers when a knowledgeable person asks a neutral follow-up question, even when no new information is provided. This study underscores that questioning can alter beliefs and understanding. Simply asking questions or being asked a question can change our perspectives.
Flammer (1981) proposed that questions address gaps in knowledge, driving cognitive change. The act of asking questions can be a mechanism for cognitive change and goal achievement without acquiring new information. We can change ourselves and accomplish more by simply asking great questions.
References:
Chouinard, M. M. (2007). Children's questions: a mechanism for cognitive development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Bonawitz, E., et al. (2020). The power of neutral follow-up questions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Flammer, A. (1981). Toward a theory of question asking. Psychological Review.