Farther to Go!

Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Q Is for Questions

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If you want to get good answers, you have to ask good questions. That seems pretty obvious. What may be less obvious is that it’s also important to know what question it is you’re answering—because, in some cases, it isn’t the one you were asked or even the one you asked yourself.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of what he calls “answering an easier question” aka “substitution.”

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 [the unconscious] will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another substitution.

Even with his examples, substitution was nothing but an abstract concept to me until I happened to experience it myself.

Not long after I read this chapter of Kahneman’s book, I was standing in my kitchen looking out the window waiting for water to boil for a cup of tea. It was an overcast and dreary early winter day. I hate winter, and that’s putting it mildly. Gray days are demotivating to begin with, and I already wasn’t interested in any of the work I had to accomplish that particular day. So as I stared out the window, I asked myself a question: If I could do anything right now, what would it be?

Almost immediately, I caught myself in the act of answering a different—and much easier—question: What more enjoyable thing can I do right now that’s practical?

Had I not been reading Kahneman’s book, I would have missed this sleight of mind. Instead, I did notice that I couldn’t answer the original question. I didn’t know what I would do, if I could do anything. Upon further consideration, I realized that I didn’t know what I really wanted, period, which is why I couldn’t answer the question. As someone who usually knows my own mind—or who thinks I do—I was intrigued.

What Do I Really Want?

The result was that I created an exercise for myself so I could discover what I really wanted—not just the small or temporary stuff, but the big stuff—the big picture stuff. I ended up referring to these things as Big Picture Wants, and I created a course (What Do You Want?) so that other people could find out what they really want, too.

You can’t discover Big Picture Wants directly (that’s the hard question). An easier question to answer is what do I want right now? It turns out that by answering the easier question over and over (and over…and over…), you can eventually find the answer to the hard question.

Identifying Big Picture Wants is the “art” part of mastering the art and science of change. If you don’t know what you really want in life, you lack a compelling context for making decisions and setting goals. Knowing where you’re headed—why you’re doing something—helps you keep your eyes on the prize. Otherwise, one path seems to be as good as another, and distraction, procrastination, and self-doubt are your constant companions.

What Impact Do I Want to Make?

The phenomenon of substitution also shows up in my Personal Impact course, which I created after hearing many of my amazing clients talk about wanting to make an impact. When I asked them what impact they wanted to make, they could usually tell me what they were doing or wanted to do, but almost no one could describe the impact they wanted their “doing” to have. I think it’s Dan Ariely who said that thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant. Add to that what Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke recently said in their podcast, Two Guys on Your Head: Brains look for efficient ways to get on with it.

It’s no wonder we immediately shift to the question we can answer: because trying to answer the deeper, more difficult question is unpleasant and because our brain wants to get on with it.

And per Daniel Kahneman:

[A] lazy System 2 [consciousness] often follows the path of least effort and endorses a heuristic answer without much scrutiny of whether it is truly appropriate. You will not be stumped, you will not have to work very hard, and you may not even notice that you did not answer the question you were asked. Furthermore, you may not realize that the target question was difficult, because an intuitive answer to it came readily to mind.

We spend two-thirds of the Personal Impact course focusing on the what and the who—and trying to separate them from the how. (Yes, some of our conversations sound like we’re reading Dr. Seuss.)

Making an impact is all about changing the status quo, but on a bigger level than the personal, which makes it even more challenging. That’s why it’s extremely important to be not only clear, but also passionate, about what impact you want to make and why you want to make it.

Asking Why Forward

But asking why questions can be tricky, too. For one thing, we tend to ask them in the wrong direction. We ask why did that happen? Why did that person do what he/she did? Why did I do that? Why am I the way I am? 

Asking why backward is an attempt to find an explanation, rationale, reason, or maybe even an excuse. It’s easy to get stuck in the past searching for answers to questions about the present or the future.

Asking why forward instead of backward, however, is extremely useful. An example is asking why do I want to do this thing or make this impact?  Instead of providing an explanation, which is neither useful nor powerful, the answer to that question can provide definition, motivation, and determination.

The backward why is just a habit of thought. It can’t take you anywhere new—or anywhere at all, really. The forward why is where all the action is. It can break through the limits and barriers imposed by the past. It can open up and expand your world.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

The Fruits of a Lesser Discontent

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Wanted
(Photo credit: Cayusa)

I don’t mean to imply that all great ideas or outcomes—or at least all of my ideas or outcomes—arise from states of discontent. Some have been the result of a logical progression of thought or activity. Others have come from Aha! moments when my unconscious connected some previously unconnected or unrecognized dots.

But just as a moment of deep existential discontent started me on the path of creating Farther to Go!, a moment of lesser discontent led to the creation of the What Do You Want? course. And weather played a role that time, too.

One overcast and unusually cool early fall day, I rebelled against immersing myself in the tasks I needed to complete. Imagine me mentally stamping my foot and scowling. This isn’t a particularly common occurrence, but it’s definitely more likely to happen on gray days than on sunny ones. In this instance, I decided to make myself a cup of coffee to generate some motivation or at least a small burst of energy.

While I was waiting for the water to boil, I asked myself, out of the blue, what I wanted to do instead of all the boring and tedious stuff. What did I really want to do? If I could do anything. And then it happened! I found myself answering a different question instead, an easier one: What do I want to do that’s practical?

By then I was familiar with the brain’s tendency to substitute an easier question for a hard one and to answer the easier question. But I had never before been aware of it as it happened, and I was kind of stunned. Why couldn’t I answer the original question? What made it too hard to answer? I should know what I want, right?

Well, maybe. Later that day, I decided to try to find out. I set myself the task of asking and answering the question “What do I really want?” every day for 30 days. Not just once, but multiple times, using 5×8 index cards. I ended up with nearly 500 answers, including several surprises. Obviously I hadn’t known everything I wanted.

Afterward, I put the individual items into general categories. That was even more illuminating. But the final step was what made the process priceless. I realized that all the items on my list fit under the umbrella of one or more of what I came to call Big Picture Wants. As I wrote out the words and phrases—in my case 12—of my own Big Picture Wants I knew I was on to something huge. I had been able to identify everything I wanted to have in my life.

Now that I’ve done this, I can’t imagine not being clear about what those things are. How can I set goals, make decisions or choices, or work on habits and intentions without knowing how they fit into the bigger picture? How can anyone?

When discontent strikes, we can try to make it go away quickly, or we can use it as motivation to dig deeper and examine our assumptions. If I were given a choice between being discontent and being complacent, I’d choose being discontent every time.Enhanced by Zemanta

Don’t Ask Me Why

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Why on car
Why (Photo credit: openpad)

Although I’m kind of a knowledge junkie, I’ve always argued for the limits of human understanding. I’ve been railing against the pointlessness of trying to figure out why something happened or why someone or something is the way it is for decades. Of course, I fall into the very same trap myself. My personality is such that I expect things and people to be and behave logically or at least to stay out of my way. Talk about an exercise in futility.

My assertion has always been, though, that the reason there’s no point in trying to figure out the why of someone or something is that since we never, ever have all the information, we can never, ever get a complete answer. It’s a bit of a fool’s game to believe we can answer why questions with convincing certainty.

[W]hen you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you’re perpetually asking why. –Richard Feynman

That doesn’t stop us from doing it. We think that when we know the why of something, we then understand it. And if we understand something, we can accept it or at least know how to deal with it.  It’s as if the why is even more important than the what. When it comes to people and why they are the way they are or do the things they do, why questions most often go to backgrounds or motivations. Given that we don’t even know what our own motivations are for doing what we do, thinking we can know someone else’s motivation is more than hubris—it’s delusional.

But, again, we all do this. Asking why questions is very compelling. It seems to be a built-in mechanism that operates first and foremost to explain ourselves to ourselves. Asking and answering why questions helps us construct and maintain a consistent personal narrative—a sense of personal identity. It also operates to explain the external world to us.

Good Enough for Government Work

But another problem with why questions, in addition to the fact that our answers are always incomplete at best, if not wholly erroneous, is that once we get an answer that seems satisfying, we close the door on that particular line of inquiry. Once we get a good-enough answer, the cause and effect link is cemented into place. Occasionally someone might say about something, “Well, that’s as good an explanation as any,” but we could say that about the vast majority of our explanations: one is probably just as good as another. Yet we believe in whatever answers we’ve arrived at, and we proceed as if they are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So to an extent we do create our own reality, and this is how we do it, through constructing and maintaining a very flawed and false sense of certainty about ourselves and the world around us.

We abhor uncertainty, so any explanation, even a wrong or partial one, is better than none at all.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to this process of explaining everything to myself. It’s exhausting. What a relief when I just admit I don’t know why something or someone is the way it is (or I am the way I am), and I don’t need to come up with an explanation. There’s a surprising amount of freedom in not having an explanation.

What questions seem to be a lot more open-ended than why questions. They cast a wider net, and they tend to focus more on the here and now. I wonder if asking what questions might be a way of training our attention on the present and away from restlessly searching for facile explanations just so we can maintain a comfortable and consistent narrative.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677