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develop a routine and a habit that allows for quiet detachment and provides an opportunity to think deeply. This may start with logistical questions such as: Where is my tortoise enclosure? When is my tech Shabbat?
Having the time and a place to question is only part of it; discipline is required to “sit with a question,” to create mental space for it by pushing aside the mundane “small thoughts,” as Eric Maisel calls them. Such thoughts “steal neurons” when we’re trying to think deeply.
Thinking means concentrating on one thing21 long enough to develop an idea about it . . . It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my brain come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.”
“cultivate the habit of gratitude.” Simply by asking, at the end of each day, What am I grateful for? and writing down the answers in a “gratitude journal,” people tend to be “happier, more optimistic, more successful, more likely to achieve their goals,”
the happiest people he encountered —including some living extremely modestly—had a strong connection to those around them. “They laughed and really enjoyed being around the people they love.”
To make changes in his own life, Belic asked, in effect, What has worked for me before—and how can I bring more of that into my life now? Appreciative inquiry is usually focused on building upon current strengths, but sometimes by looking into the past, you can glimpse what might improve your life in the present and future.
ask ourselves some version of the question What did I love doing as a child? “The things we loved at age six or eight are probably still the things we love,” says Maisel. He suggests drawing up a list of favorite activities and interests from childhood—“and see what still resonates with you today.
one’s natural interests: When you’re in a bookstore, what section are you drawn to? The things we care about, that we love doing and do well, provide great starting points for questioning. We might, for example, ask the following: Why do I seem to “shine” when doing certain things? (What is it about those activities/places that brings out the best in me?) What if I could find a way to incorporate these interests/activities, or some aspect of them, into my life more? And maybe even into my work? How might I go about doing that?
approaching change as a series of modest experiments can help.
You wonder about something new or different; you try it out; you assess the results. That’s an experiment.
why some people live their lives in a particular way. He then speculates, What if I tried that myself? Then he jumps right into the How stage, as he starts to live the experience. For example, Jacobs found himself wondering about people who say, “I follow everything in the Bible.” “And my question was “Yeah, they say that, but what if you really lived by everything in the Bible?” So Jacobs did that, for a year (the experience was chronicled in his book The Year of Living Biblically).
change experiments: “If you just go ahead and do something differently, and you do it enough times, it will change your mind. If you force yourself to smile, you trick your brain and then you start to become happier.”
When he finds that he’s doubting himself on a project, Jacobs asks, What would an optimistic, confident person do? That person would probably cast aside those doubts and forge ahead, so Jacobs tries to do likewise.
Ask yourself a lot of What If questions to come up with new possibilities that you can try out; give form to those ideas quickly and put them out into the world; get feedback on what works and what doesn’t. In a word, experiment.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? In the past few years, the question has had another surge in popularity that seems to have been jump-started by the former DARPA director Regina Dugan, who used it in a widely circulated TED speech.36 The question has also been picked up and championed by the influential Google X founder Sebastian Thrun, who has quoted it on Reddit and elsewhere.
the could-not-fail question. “If you really ask yourself this question,” she told the audience, “you can’t help but feel uncomfortable,” because it becomes clear that fear of failure “keeps us from attempting great things . . . and life gets dull. Amazing things stop happening.” But if you can get past that fear, Dugan said, “Impossible things suddenly become possible.”
“Failure is, in a sense, the highway42 to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.”
Fields thinks that as we embark on a new endeavor, we should begin by confronting that possibility of failure via this question: What if I fail—how will I recover? Often when we think about failure, Fields says, we do so in a vague, exaggerated way—we’re afraid to even think about it clearly.
anyone undertaking something with an element of risk start by visualizing what would actually happen if it failed and what would be needed to pick up the pieces from that failure.
What if I do nothing? This underscores that when we undertake an important change, it’s often because we need to change—and if we don’t go ahead with it, we’re likely to be unhappy staying put. Whatever problem or restlessness already exists may get worse.
What if I succeed? “That’s important because the way our brains are wired, we tend to automatically go toward the negative scenario,” Fields says. “So in order to give your mind a chance to latch onto something positive, something that will actually fuel action rather than fuel paralysis, it’s helpful to create some level of clarity around what success in this endeavor would look like.”
What’s truly worth doing, whether you fail or succeed?”
“strategic questioning,” which I would characterize as questioning with an open mind and a caring heart.
by employing the right kinds of questions—open, curious, slightly provocative at times, but never judgmental—one could have a meaningful dialogue with people who are very different from you,
a question could serve as the lever to pry open the stuck lid on a can of paint. “If we have a longer lever, or a more dynamic question,” she wrote, it can also be used to “really stir things up.”
When people are looking at issues from very different perspectives, it becomes problematic if one side tries to impose an answer on the other. Conversation either becomes argument or shuts down altogether. Perhaps the only way to break the stalemate on even the most divisive questions is to put the declarative statements on hold and try working on the following: If we don’t agree on an answer yet, can we at least come to terms on a question?
Instead of trying to tell local youths that he knew what they needed, “I decided to ask, ‘What would you do to reach yourself?’”
Bond considers questions to be “the verbal equivalent of nonviolent conflict resolution.” The only way to get any traction on polarizing issues is to attract people on both sides, “not bully them into submission.”
question the views of those with whom we disagree—yet with an open, curious mind: Why might they see the issue this way? Why do I see it differently? What assumptions are we each operating under?
it should be checked for faulty assumptions by “questioning the question”
In seeking out his question, he looked to others (the Harvard fellowship program) for help and counsel. He also looked around to see what was most needed in the world. But he looked inside himself as well—to inquire about what he was good at and how he might apply those skills in a fresh and meaningful way.
they tend to devote themselves to one question at a time.
Look for a question that is “ambitious yet actionable”—or, as the physicist Edward Witten puts it, a question that’s hard enough to be interesting, but realistic enough that you have some hope of answering it.
That, right there, is a beautiful question for the ages: What do you want to say? Why does it need to be said? What if you could say it in a way that has never before been done? How might you do that?
“just try to get to the next question.” Break your big question into smaller ones and work on those. Keep cycling through Whys, What Ifs, and Hows, subjecting everything—even your being stuck—to a fresh set of queries.
