“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” –Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize Winner)
Our brains love questions. They have the power to engage us and to shift our mindsets. They drive knowledge and growth, and fuel both creativity and critical thinking. Here are 10 ways to ask questions more intelligently you can start using today.
1. Questions for Creative Problem Solving
One of the most effective ways to approach any problem is to ask questions about it. The greatest thing about questions is that your brain automatically starts working on them as soon as you ask them. Not only that, but it’ll keep working on them in the background, when you’re not even aware of it.
For an initial set of more than 50 sample questions you can use in just about any problem, try the SCAMPER technique. Another effective technique you can use is asking why until you get to the core of your problem.
2. Questions for Shifting Your Perspective to a Problem
Just like it’s useful asking questions about a problem, so it is turning the problem itself into a question. We know that properly defining and stating problems is essential for great problem solving, and framing problems as questions is one of the techniques that can definitely boost your effectiveness as problem-solver.
In general, statements trigger our brains’ logical and analytical skills. Many times, they encourage you to try and reach conclusions as soon as possible. Questions, on the other hand, trigger our brains’ imagination and creative thinking skills. They encourage you to take a more exploratory approach, which tends to foster a whole new set of insights.
For example, try changing a problem statement such as “Ways to Improve My Life” into questions such as “In what ways can I improve my life?”, or “Is there an opportunity for improving my life here?”, and check how it feels.
3. Questions for Directing Thinking and Debate
Questions guide and direct our thinking process. Depending on the situation, it might be more useful to ask “open”, or “expanding” questions: they elicit new ideas, opinions and grow possibilities. Examples include “What are your thoughts on this idea?”, and “Can you think of other usage scenarios?”.
On the other hand, sometimes it might be more productive to ask “closed” or “narrowing down” questions: they converge focus, direct thinking, and bring discussions to a more objective, “down-to-earth” level. Examples include: “What are the tasks that need to get done?”, “How much will this cost?”.
The idea is to purposefully use different kinds of questions at different times to consciously drive your thinking process towards the most productive direction.
4. Questions for Education and Leadership
Great teachers and coaches know that true learning can only happen when students think by themselves. Questions are a great way to stimulate thinking — and, if used skillfully, work vastly better than just dumping knowledge into someone’s head.
Instead of simply showing concepts and solutions to students, teachers can use questions to instigate collaborative exploration: ” What would happen if we increased the angle here?”, “How would it behave without air resistance?” and so on.
Also, questions work not only for teachers, but can be extremely useful in business environments. In corporations, for example, leaders (formal or not) can, by asking questions and guiding people to think for themselves, encourage shared pride and ownership of the solutions generated. Typical questions include “What solutions can we see here?” and “What do you think we should do?”.
5. Questions for Creating Conversation and Empathy
Questions are the glue of empathetic communication: they energize and enliven conversations, inviting people to participate and to share insights and opinions. When you use them properly, people feel included and listened to and, therefore, will be much more likely to engage in meaningful and productive conversation.
Lately, I started noticing that many discussions are, in fact, more like simultaneous monologues: instead of listening, each person is just waiting his turn to talk. Simple queries such as “How can I help?”, or “Did your son get better since last time we talked?” are the easiest way to show that you’re listening, and that you honestly care about what’s being shared with you.
6. Questions for Critical Thinking
Skillful use of inquiry is the cornerstone of critical thinking. Again, it’s only through questioning that we can truly think by ourselves — instead of blindly accepting whatever we’re told as the right thing to do or the only acceptable answer.
When I say ’skillful use of inquiry’, this does not mean necessarily getting fancy: oftentimes, it means being playful and “thinking like a child”. Great critical thinkers don’t get embarrassed to ask seemingly naïve questions: these are usually the most effective — as well as the ones snob intellectuals are more prone to overlook.
As an effective initial set of questions to use, it’s hard to beat the famous 5Ws (what, where, who, when and why). “Where did you see it?”, “What are the causes of it?”, “Why is the emperor naked?”.
7. Questions for Shifting Your Focus
Reframing self-limiting situations as questions has long been celebrated as an excellent way to instantly changing the way we feel.
Suppose you’re feeling down but, even so, you dare to ask yourself “What am I excited about?”. At first, you’ll get irritated by the question. However, if you put honest effort in answering it, you will indeed find something worth feeling better about. And that’s not denial: it’s just shifting your focus.
Also, disempowering statements such as “This is impossible!” increase your stress and prevent you from searching for solutions. Turn it into “How can I make this possible?” or ” What’s good about this?” puts you back in the driver’s seat and direct your focus on solutions.
8. Questions for Inspiration, Goal Setting and Action
A great way to set goals is by asking yourself “What if…?”. This question alone has the power to direct our imagination to create a vision for ourselves — and then spawn the thought processes that help it become reality.
A technique I use to think about “higher-levels” goals — as well as roles and areas of responsibility — is to turn them into questions. Statements may work fine for to-do lists, but I find that for thinking about the big picture they’re overly dull and uninspiring.
For example, suppose that you identified ‘Health’ as a general area that is important to you. Now, one way to track and assess progress under that area is to think generically about this label “Health” and what actions you can take. Contrast it with the much stronger alternative of turning it into a question: “How can I improve my health today?”.
Thinking that way motivates and primes you for action. In fact, it’s so strong that it’s hard not to take action, don’t you agree? The same holds true for goals and even lower-level projects: the goal “Get 10 new customers by the end of the week” may be what some call a SMART goal, but “What can I do now to get a new customer?” is the one that motivates action the most.
9. Questions for Self-Reflection
As powerful thinking tools that they are, questions can help you examine your life and help you get in touch with your inner self. They work very well with standard self-reflection techniques, such as many forms of journaling.
A great exercise is to create a list of 100 consisting only of questions — the questions that matter the most to you at the moment (these can range from “Where did I left my keys?” to “What’s my life mission?”). From that list, narrow it down to ten or twenty items, creating your own List of Great Questions, which you can revisit often to reconnect with the pursuits that really matter to you.
An extension of that technique you may want to try is taking each of those questions and journaling about them, devoting a journal entry for each question, just like in the Topics du Jour technique. This gives you the opportunity to focus your attention on each question at regular intervals.
10. Questioning as a Way of Life
Developing the habit of questioning is perhaps the greatest hallmark of highly-developed minds. I believe that questioning is the ultimate tool to stimulate thinking and, as such, it’s hard to dispute the usefulness and importance of cultivating this habit.
But how do we develop the habit of questioning? The answer, just like everything else in life, is practice, practice, practice. Always carry a notebook with you and keep writing questions down as they come to you.
Question everything. Become comfortable with unanswered questions. Don’t see them as problems, or as a necessary evil in your way to answers. Welcome them. Play with them. Your brain will thank you.
So many great points in this post that I don’t even know where to begin. In life there are so many questions — and so many different types of questions — and you’ve done such a great job of addressing how we should deal with these questions. As much as I loved the entire post, I have to admit that this is my favorite part: “Question everything. Become comfortable with unanswered questions. Don’t see them as problems, or as a necessary evil in your way to answers. Welcome them. Play with them. Your brain will thank you. ” That’s such a great way to think about questions!
http://positivelypresent.typepad.com
Interesting — that’s precisely my favorite part, too!
I love this post, Luciano. Questions are so much more inspiring than answers!
I think much better than finding an answer to one’s question is finding a question to one’s answer!
Congratulation on this inspiring blog!
That’s a very interesting proposition, Mary! Thinking about your comment, I took an old journal entry of mine (from 2004) and tried to distill it in a single question. What a great mental exercise!
Thanks for providing the inspiration — that may well turn into a journal analysis technique I use regularly!
Brilliant! A awesome selection of topics and very useful examples to shift your thinking and questions you use to explore each of these areas in a positive approach. I love it!
Questions are like the devices on a gym: the more you have and the more complicated, the greater the results. You know what they say: the answer is most of the time in the questions, so ask wisely.
You’ve put a lot of time in this post and it shows, it’s great content.
Thanks for sharing
Insightful post Luciano… just what I was looking for. To quote John A. Simone: “The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions.”
Nice quote, thanks for sharing! Another provocative one I enjoy:
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” ~Pablo Picasso
A very good question-asking strategy is the “why/what’s stopping you?” approach. It’s described in Min Basadur’s book The Power of Innovation. In short, you describe a situation: eg, I want to go for a run. Then ask “Why?” Answer = to get fit. Then ask, “What’s stopping you?” Answer = the weather’s always bad. Then phrase a challenge as “how to…” Eg: How to get fit regardless of the weather?
NB: A better way to phrase such a question is in the “In what ways can I…” format. So the question is better worded as: “In what ways can I get fit regardless of the weather?”
I love this question-asking strategy, John! Thanks for sharing!
I am a big fan of using language constructs as “templates for thinking” (just check this article about procrastination for an example). Your idea goes straight to my toolbox.
“In what ways can I (goal) regardless of (excuse)?”
Simple, elegant and gets the job done. Love that.
Very cool post. When I was living in Brazil during the fall semester of my MBA program, I started learning how to surf. But, I could never stand up on the board. The other day I had gone out to the beach after having a nearly perfect day, the day before. And I kept asking myself “What the hell am I doing wrong?”. Then I changed my question to “What can I do differently”. The new and improved result was immediate.
That’s another excellent pattern for questioning! Yet another idea that goes straight to my toolbox. Thanks for sharing!
So you came over to live in Brazil? Where exactly? Well, hope that you enjoyed your stay!
Hi Luciano, it was absolutely amazing. I lived in SAMPA, which is one crazy city and very stressful. While I wasn’t a fan of SAMPA, I loved Brazil. I think we might be Facebook friends, so you can see pics from all my travels there. In fact, one of my next blog ideas for Yaro’s mastermind program is an insider’s Brazil Travel Guide where I review the nightclubs, tourist attractions, etc in a daily blog post
. Just trying to think of a good domain name for it.
Saude,
-SRinivas
Awesome Luciano! I think this is one of the best posts you’ve written in awhile.
Stumbled.
50 Question technique is the BEST way to dig deep into any problem and find the right solution. I’ve tried this for several personal and business problems and it worked very well.
Thank you.
Hi Amity,
Can you please elaborate on how the “50 Question” technique works?
Is it like a List of 100 (that is, come up with 50 questions in one sit), or are there any additional instructions?
Tony Robins talks about questions a lot and he’s right. If you want better answer then ask better questions. The mind always finds what it seeks and if you are asking poor questions then you are likely finding poor answers. Think up better questions to ask yourself and you can only get better results.
Yeah, Cody. A good one I got from a Tony Robins book is:
What would I have to believe to do (x)?
It’s a good question that can be used with CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) techniques when looking at core beliefs. I also like to reverse the question to ask:
If I did (x) what would it make me believe?
As much as I don’t like Tony Robbins’ style, I must admit that his ideas about asking better questions are right on.
I have never considered the questions you mention about beliefs. Trying it for just a few times, I can see they’re awesome!
It’s amazing the power of questioning beliefs — considering something you take for granted and imagining in what ways you can break it. Mind-bending!
Thank you (and many other commenters) for such a rich flow of ideas!
Luciano, great post, have you ever came across the work of Byron Katie? She wrote a great book called ‘loving what is’ and another great one called ‘I need your love… is that true?” She elevates the act of asking meaningful questions to the quasi-spiritual level. Give it a gander sometime if you come across a copy.
Sometimes I feel I get too focused on questions that resolve the “down-to-earth” issues, and not so much on the more “spiritual ones”. These books might help me striking a better balance, as I can see the value on both approaches. Thanks for the recommendations — will definitely check them out!
Good stuff!
You might also want to try the Phoenix Checklist Creative Method developed by the CIA to encourage agents to look at a challenge from different angles
THE PROBLEM.
- why is it necessary to solve the problem?
- what benefits will you gain by solving the problem?
- what is the unknown?
- what is it you don’t understand?
- what is the information you have?
- what isn’t the problem?
- is the information sufficient? or is it insufficient? or redundant? or contradictory?
- should you draw a diagram of the problem?
- where are the boundaries of the problem?
- can you separate the various parts of the problem? can you write them down? what are the relationships of the parts of the problem?
- what are the constants (things that can’t be changed) of the problem?
- have you seen this problem before?
- have you seen this problem in a slightly different form?
- do you know a related problem?
- try to think of a familiar problem having the same or similar unknown
- suppose you find a problem related to yours that has already been solved. can you see it? can you use it’s method?
- can you restate your problem? how many different ways can you restated it? more general? more specific? can the rules be changed?
- what are the best, worst and most probable cases can you imagine?
THE PLAN.
- can you solve the whole problem? part of the problem?
- what would you like the resolution to be? can you picture it?
- how much of the unknown can you determine?
- can you derive something useful from the information you have?
- have you used all the information?
- have you taken into account all essential notions in the problem?
- can you separate the steps in the problem solving process? can you determine the correctness of each step?
- what creative thinking techniques can you use to generate ideas? how many?
- can you see the result? how many different kinds of results can you see?
- how many different ways have you tried to solve the problem?
- what have others done?
- can you intuit the solution? can you check the result?
- what should be done? how should it be done?
- where should it be done?
- when should it be done?
- who should do it?
- what do you need to do at this time?
- who will be responsible for what?
- can you use this problem to solve some other problem?
- what is the unique set of qualities that makes this problem what it is and none other?
- what milestones can best mark your progress?
- how will you know when you are successful?
Thanks for the guest post, Jorge!
Now, seriously, this is a great checklist! I recommend all readers to check it out!
It’s amazing to see the quality of comments and ideas people are pouring into this post. This is one of those things that make writing worth our whiles… Thank you everyone, you rock!
Hi Luciano glad I could add value to an alrady insightful post!
Since we’re talking about using questions I think you and your readers should check out the 100 Whats of creativity book, it’s a What If Bible!
http://www.dontheideaguy.com/100whats/
Thanks!
Thanks Jorge, this is helpful.
Great post by Luciano and great comment by Jorge! It’s one of those times when people synergy and collaborate with each other and brings more creative insights on the table.
A group of electric batteries provide more energy then a single battery – Napoleon Hill
You guys provide so much of energy, that you make other people litteraly “light their mind”
Keep on writing great content!
I always correct people when they say there’s no such thing as a dumb question. You really show your intelligence by the questions you ask!
“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?” ~Scott Adams
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A very enjoyable, empowering post – I have long thought that people who assume they know enough and refuse to ask for the input of others (sideways and downwards as well as upwards in the chain of command in work environments) invariably end up disappointed with their progress in life.
I also agree that a hopeless sitation can suddenly seem like a platform for opportunities when you add questions…
Great article!
Kayleigh – I totally agree, “that a hopeless situation can suddenly seem like a platform for opportunities when you add questions into it”
Many years ago I have read a book and the title got my attention:
“What’s the question if the answer is the universe?”
I think only a genius can ask a question like that.
We have to be very specific with our questions to get the proper answer. Many times the answer does not come directly to you. Sometimes it comes in symbols, pictures or even someone says something in your dreams and you have to understand them.
I have experienced couple times in my life the benefit of questioning. The more specific you are the better response you get. And one answer will lead you to another one and so on.
I think the best way to find a solution for any situations you are involved is to set a time frame to find the answer, so your subconscious has to come up with some sort of solution.
Keep repeating the question many many times a day ’till you get the answer. Sometimes it could take weeks or even months to come up with something useful.
You have to be very specific, determined and enthusiastic to solve the challenge you face no matter what it is.