3 min and 10 sec to read, 792 words
Do we learn facts? Some people surely think so – they would list the key 10 facts they would want to learn about something and then memorize them, but this does not work at all for me. I think I learn best, and think best, in questions and answers (I would say that, though, being inordinately interested in question to the point of having written a book about them). So, for me the best way of learning something, or exploring something, is to build on a simple Q&A-pattern. I find the questions I think are interesting and then try to figure out the answers, and proceed from the new answers to new questions. Doing so, systematically, is not just effective for learning, it also ends up being a lot of fun.
The Q&A-format is a thinking style. We find it in many philosophical texts; arguably the platonic dialogues are advanced versions of this style (and yes, I do think dialogues can have even more advantages, so sometimes it is worth writing dialogues instead – but it just tends to feel too pretentious sometimes (why? perhaps because the propositional thinking style has dominated us for so long?)) and we find a staggering number of questions in the work of philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein – often rhetorical, and often meant to be the wrong question. This is interesting in itself, this ability to identify questions that are not quite the questions we should ask — and then look for a better question.
This idea of “the better question” may be one of the most helpful mental tools for us to employ as well. Often when we approach some kind of problem, we accept the question as given and spend very little time on exploring why the question has been framed the way it has.
A new question is almost always better than an answer to the wrong question.
This is also an interesting way to work. List the questions you think you would like answers to, and then work through them until you have the best possible set of answers – and then periodically revise these questions and answers to make sure that you understand things better. This is the core of the Amazon method of starting from the end — it is not just the writing of the press release, it is the writing of the Q&A, but I would argue that the way this is used today actually misses a trick: even coming up with the ideas should be represented by a Q&A process.1 Arguably Amazon does do this, though — see here for an example.
Questions also allow us to think through how to prioritize our work — since no-one can profitably work on more than 5-7 questions, well, you have to pick your questions wisely. As a manager, it is interesting to ask the folks that report to you which questions they are working on solving, rather than what they have been doing. Knowledge work is fundamentally inquisitive, so knowing the questions you work on is essential.2 A better name for knowledge work would be questioning, really. We are all questioneers.
Thinking in questions also helps understand others. If you the questions people around you are asking themselves you are likely to understand them better — and then predict their actions. This is helpful in competitive analysis as well as couples therapy, I suspect. And exploring your own guiding questions often will tell you something about yourself. Are you really, truly answering questions that are your own – or are you answer questions that others have put in your mind? One measure of psychological health is the degree to which you own your questions, and determine which questions to ask.
But back to learning. I am experimenting with spaced repetition3 I am using Obsidian and spaced repetition in that context, with the SP-plugin. , and am finding that this format too is really powerful for questions and answers – and the way you frame the questions really matters. As I am building up my decks, it occurs to me that these collections of questions and answers are powerful tools in my extended mind, and deciding which questions I want to be able to answer from memory is a decision about who I am and what I can do – my skills are, in many ways, the questions I can answer.
So, from now on this blog will be written as a series of questions and my best effort answers to these questions – even when the data is bad. And then I will revise and explore these questions to try to get a better sense of the world, our challenges and interesting ideas.
Footnotes and references
- 1Arguably Amazon does do this, though — see here for an example.
- 2A better name for knowledge work would be questioning, really. We are all questioneers.
- 3I am using Obsidian and spaced repetition in that context, with the SP-plugin.