The Strange Thing About Asking Questions

This is a story about how I learned to tidy up.

I always thought I was so good at organizing and cleaning. I arranged everything based on floor plan (making it “user friendly” as tech people like to call it).

About a month ago, I came across a book about tidying up. I cringed. Who the heck would write a book about putting your stuff away and more importantly, what kind of human being would read it?!

Out of curiosity, I got a copy and started reading.

About 20 pages later, I realized I’d been doing it all wrong.

The book addressed discarding first before organizing. The methods described in the book were easier and more effective.

​Had I not been curios to learn a new way to organize, I probably would still be rolling my socks like little ugly potatoes.

This happens a lot.

I often hear people say “Do you know how long I’ve been doing this? 20 years!!!” after their young peers gave them good advice that would save time or money.

When I hear someone say they have "20 years experience" (for many, it really means 1-year experience that's been repeated 20 times) I always have an urge to ask them “Oh, really? Are you 20 times faster? Are you 20 times better than you were?” “Are you getting 20X more done than you once did?”

You see just because you've been doing something for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at it.   

Okay, yes, there are a lot of advantages to building expertise in a certain area: You know shortcuts, you’ve seen many similar situations before and you know how to react.

But if you never bothered to learn doing things the right way, you're missing a huge opportunity to become better.

The danger of figuring it out by yourself
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We were taught in school to figure it out on our own. (It probably will be called cheating otherwise.)

I used to suck at cooking. When I was in college, I once invited a friend over for food.

There were a few steps to cook the dish and not long after I began a lot of smoke came rolling out of the kitchen.

And the next thing we knew, the fire alarm went off and we had to wait outside in the Rochester winter air along with other resentful residents in the building.
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My neighbors wondered “What happened? Who did this? I will XXX (please insert one way you know to murder a person here)!!!”

So to avoid being the center of everyone’s derision I pretended to be innocent and said to my neighbors “Yeah...I don't know. This is ridiculous…”

My friend’s face twisted in disgust and amusement.

Later, when we got back inside, my friend said “I had no idea you were so bad. Let me show you how to cook.”

He explained to me that the first step of preparing a meal is to have everything you need in place so you don’t panic. This changed how I cook, from then on, I never had fire alarm go off because of my cooking.

The way you have always done something isn’t necessarily the right way.

One of the problems is this:  People don’t ask questions.

We rarely ask for help. Sometimes out of ignorance (how would I know there’s a better way to prepare food and not stress myself?) and sometimes because of our egos. We are don’t want to admit that we don’t know it all. 

So we say to our friend who offered to help “Thanks. But I’m handling everything perfectly well on my own.”

Ironically, the better you get, the more you ask and accept help, which in turn, allows you to become better. It’s a circle. The trick is to start it, and the way to start it is to ask for help.

So my proposal is simple:

​Dude, ask questions

Asking questions of the right people does so many things: You get your problem solved and you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 

But what questions should you ask? 

How about starting with the obvious?  Things you spend a lot of time doing but aren’t very good at.

For example, do you know people who only spend a little time reading and replying to their email but get things done beautifully? Email, the tool we spend over 8 hours a day on. Maybe you could ask this person how they are able to efficiently manage what others consider a big issue. 

Whether it’s email, cooking, tidying up, these are things we spend a lot of time on. Wouldn’t it make sense to ask someone (who appears to be better than yourself) for their tips on how to improve? 

Of course, some questions are more important than others. But genuinely asking questions about how others do something can pay off big.

Ask questions. Who knows what will happen?