Know how to ask the right questions?
You have an advantage in today’s Google economy.
Google can give us millions of results on any question you ask.
So, if you know how to ask the right questions, you’ll get your perfect answer from any corner of the world – from the collective human encyclopedia.
Now, just for a moment.
Think about this.
What have we learned in our education system?
The exact opposite.
You got questions, and you got rewards for answering the perfect one answer correctly.
For a simple question – what’s 6*9?
If we write 54 we were given perfect marks.
The answer is perfectly right.
But it’s not about the answer, but the way we have been trained to look at things.
Quite opposite, what if the question was –
What are the ways you can get 54?
Countless answers open up – 6*9, 9*6, 27*2, 50+4, 60-6,… I can go on and on.
Credit for the above analogy – Dr. Pavan Soni
Just think about it.
One question just closed your thinking loop.
The second one – it just made you creative to come up with multiple solutions – it opened up your thinking loop.
Every phase of life and every phase of generation needs different skill sets to thrive.
In older times, we had to remember all the stuff in our heads. It was essential.
Not anymore – a simple search gives us the most direct results in milliseconds.
It is great if you understand the core purpose of information or any tech – those are enablers.
Now we can focus on things to do with that information.
If you look at our education system, it has to evolve for the times.
I’ll be writing my way of looking at it sometime.
But all I want you to remember is to understand the purpose of information or any tech.
This is true for any rules, laws, or ideologies out there.
Those are all enablers to help us make better decisions and live better.
There is no essence in the literal meaning of those words and structure unless it enables us to achieve its purpose.
Asking the right questions was always a super skill.
And this privilege has become accessible to anyone at the tap of a finger now – information is democratized now.
Today’s system much more values the right questions than the perfect answer.
Doesn’t mean the old way is bad, it sure is one of the solutions. But we have better now.
Especially today when we drown in information on literally anything that we can think of.
So, ask the right questions to achieve the right purpose.
Probing OR asking the right questions is a powerful tool to gain well rounded knowledge on any aspect of life be it spiritual or material. The characteristc trait that makes one like that is curiosity and I am not sure how the formal education system can cultivate curiosity in a person.
Good to hear your perspective!
I believe curiosity is an innate trait for all human beings. Just look at kids – there’s no limit to their questions, which all come from their unsatisfied curiosity. But when we get older, most of us lose that trait. So, there’s something happening in between. We could understand that our current formal education system is designed for carving out employees. There’s nothing wrong with employees, but a primary trait of a good employee is to obey the rules of the company. And at most times, this comes with a price – keeping their unique ideas and thoughts to themselves. A system cannot function efficiently when everyone has an opinion on everything. And thus these inhibitions creep up into our lives. And therefore we lose our innate trait of curiosity and our skills of creativity.
The purpose of our formal education system has to change as we have evolved from the industrial revolution age.
And one thing we all can do to keep our curiosity and entertain our creativity is to protect our hobbies. We all had some kind of hobbies as kids. Just nurture them – not to gain anything external, but for the sole purpose of intrinsic motivation.
Hope this makes sense.