#question asking

A really handy tip! I use it all the time. 

This will help you get the answers to your questions, but there are 2 rules you must follow:

1. Use a dried bay leaf, using a fresh bay leaf is not going to work.

2. Dont ask too serious questions such as, “When will I get married?” or “Will I get the job at the shopping center?” 

I've written on the importance of questions before, even going so far as to outline a combinatorial equation for asking better questions. But questions remain a complex and otherwise difficult problem to work around for creative thinkers.

Questions—particularly when they're investigatory in nature rather than fact-finding—keep our thinking open. They create spaces for ideas to fill in our minds. When produced in an exploratory way with the intention of doing more than merely eliciting straight-forward information, questions are often what propel creative thinking forward.

Yet you probably struggle to come up with questions which feel impactful enough in a moment to warrant their investment. If you're like most people, you end up asking more or less the same questions you always ask. "Why is this the way it is?" "What is this trying to do?" "How does this work?" Or, if you're unfortunate, you find yourself without enough time to ask proper questions. Or you find yourself in an environment where questions outside of the status quo aren't welcome.

Questions, like all ideas, evolve only from what you already know. If you fail to explore new questions, or to push your question-asking muscles, you're bound to repeatedly ask the same questions. Often this restriction may be less helpful for creative output than you'd like.

The solution is the same as with any endeavor: we must expose ourselves to not only new and different ways of thinking, but also of forming questions.

The combinatorial equation is a good place to start, but it can be helpful if you go out into the world and observe how people ask questions elsewhere. At the coffee shop, why do they ask "How can I help you?" rather than "Do you know what you'd like?" How do children ask questions differently than adults? How do you formulate questions as opposed to your peers or friends? Why?

A favorite quote of mine from Socrates goes: "Understanding a question is half an answer."

Famous American inventor William Edwards Deming echoed Socrates by stating: "If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing."

The importance of both these quotes cannot be overstated, however both what Socrates and Deming's say can easily be misunderstood.

Undoubtedly asking and exploring many questions is beneficial, as doing so is a core attribute of creative problem solving. As Einstein famously said: "I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious." To be curious is to ask many questions, but what these quotes are undoubtedly hinting at is the value of asking and understanding the right questions. It's not enough to simply be curious and ask many questions.

What matters is being able to understand the questions you're asking and learning from them regardless of their answer or outcome.

What does it mean to ask the right question? What makes one question better than another? How do you start to understand the questions you ask?

First, you must pursue investigative questions, not factual ones. In his book Beyond the Obvious, Phil McKinney explains the difference between these two common types of questions can quickly end, or empower, your pursuit of new ideas or understanding.

McKinney writes: "By definition, a divergent question means that there is more than one correct answer (unlike factual questions). It cannot be answered with one phone call, or a quick check at some stats or figures, and forces us to investigate all of the possibilities." To invoke creativity you should seek to ask questions with no common, quick-to-address answers; questions which will allow our thinking to diverge rather than converge. The benefit of focusing on investigative questions is their ability to help connect ideas which you may not first perceive as having been connected, rather than mere information gathering.

The next thing you must do to ask better questions is think about the attributes of the questions themselves. Getting meta is valuable for understanding the possible answers you might uncover.

Asking why the sky is blue is different than asking why we perceive the sky to be blue. But why? In one question the emphasis is on the science of our atmosphere, while the other focuses on the human body. But how often do we consider these types of attributes within the questions we ask?

When you're asking a question, don't merely ask it, ask what you're asking and break down each component of the question in order to either invoke other questions or to better understand the question you're already looking at.

One way to break questions down is to ask additional questions about the questions you ask.

I typically do this by addressing the five Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. Who is this question for and who does it matter to? What is this question trying to answer, what might it be overlooking? Where does this question commonly occur? Is there anything I might learn from looking at where the question is asked? When does this question come up? Was there a certain prompt which influenced it over another possible question? Why does this question matter to begin with? Why not the opposite of this question?

Hey guys! I’m sorry I’ve been slacking on the question answering so much lately...Like a lot and for waaaaay too long. I’ve got a pretty big backlog that I’m gonna try to work through so expect those coming soon!

But I need to desperately reiterate something.

I am NOT a veterinarian. I CANNOT give medical advice for your pet’s safety and for legal reasons. If you are concerned for your pet’s health, my answer will always be to SEEK VETERINARY CARE.

A lot of the questions I get are asking for medical advice that I cannot and do not feel comfortable giving.  I am not a doctor. I cannot see your pet. I do not know the full situation from your ask. I cannot accurately help you.

Please seek veterinary attention if you need help.

But please, if you have questions about the profession or fun things that aren’t directly medical advice I would love to answer them.