There's immense power in asking the right questions.
Finding the right answers can be valuable too - but I'd argue finding the right questions is more important than finding the right answers.
To some extent, if you ask the right questions, the answers don't matter as much as how easy it was to find appropriate answers, proof of progress, or meaningful momentum.
I shot this short video on the power of asking the right questions. Check it out.
The exercise of asking the right questions is really an exercise in the power of framing - of digesting or accessing information differently. There's power even in the reframing of the same question: "How do I survive the pandemic shelter-in-place quarantine?" vs. "In what ways has the pandemic shelter-in-place quarantine improved my relationships (or productivity, or health)?"
In my experience, asking someone what they want often results in a response about what they don't want. Yet, when the obstacle becomes the path forward it becomes easier to find the "hidden" gift.
You control what you make things mean and how things make you feel. In many respects, this is the difference between feeling sad or happy or feeling like a victim versus someone in control of their destiny. Your ability to control your perception is the difference between feeling like life happens to you or for you.
It's the same when tackling a research problem. When I hear "it can't be done" my first thought is usually "It can be done ... just not the way you were thinking about it."
The most important advances in society were impossible until they weren't. The examples are too numerous to list. But imagine telling someone in the middle ages that you could communicate with people around the globe in real-time, while seeing their faces, and sharing documents. They'd try you as a witch faster than you could say "Zoom!"
The term Moonshot, in a technology context, is an ambitious, exploratory, and ground-breaking project that was considered to be impossible (like going to the Moon).
Success is often a function of using Moonshots to set direction, then asking the right questions, being willing to see things differently, and finding a way to move in the right direction while gaining capabilities and confidence. As long as you are doing those things, the trick is to keep going until you get there. The result is inevitable if you do those things and don't give up.
Onwards!
