Asking ‘Why?’ in response to disappointment can send a person into perplexing self-analysis if the cause and effect is not clear. Thankfully, with your recommendations and method, you ask ‘Why?’ as a basis for connecting with purpose and that is a great idea.

stop

and

reflect

Regarding the “time audit” you mention, it’s a great way to compare if your “top down” view of values and goals match with your “bottom up” reality of everyday actions.
I did this exercise once and it was a great wake-up call, as the mismatch was huge. Thanks for reminding of it! I will certainly do it again and blog about it — this is a great exercise that everybody can benefit from!

At work I’ve been walking people through a series of exercises. First, list the five or seven things they value most in life (mine, for example, are my faith, my wife, my extended family and friends, my health, and my work). Then (in a seemingly unrelated exercise), do time tracking for at least a few days to see how you spend your time during the week. Then the a-ha moment - put the two next to each other and compare how you spend the 24 hours of your day to the list of things you yourself just said were the most important in your life. For example, the average American (according to the US Census Bureau and AC Nielsen) watches over four hours of television a day, but I bet “spend a sixth of my life watching TV” isn’t on many “Top five things I value most in life” lists.

Asking why is one of the essentials in life. As my four year old nephew reminds me, it’s why we’re so good at it at a young age.

Giuliano: I enjoy 5W2H, too. Quality Control is a field that has many, many ideas that can be applied in our personal lives: this very article is somewhat based on the known “Root Cause Analysis” concept. QC literature is sometimes too formal, and I believe it’s valuable to translate its concepts into a more approachable format.

Samir: I wholeheartedly agree with your comment — thanks for sharing your insights!

We are, each and every one of us, creatures of habit. As much as we would like to think of oureslves as free-thinking and open-minded members of a higher life form, we still are very much in a mode of instinctual animal behaviour in most situations — we just have more complicated sounding instincts now, like “career”, and “job security” and “spending power”.

Asking “why” is generally the last thing we think of, which is why it is the first thing we should be thinking of. Most people only ask “why” when it is part of a complaint about why someone else is asking all these ridiculous questions!

The best answer is always the simplest, for a question like that: “Why not?”