Questioning is crucial. Imagine where humankind would be if we never questioned the obvious. If Newton would not have questioned himself what made that apple fall down. If Giordano Bruno would not have wondered how the Earth could be flat. Look at small children: as soon as they learn how to talk they start to ask questions, and they ask, and ask, and ask again, exasperating us to the limit. This is their way of learning. Nobody could argue that we learn a lot between the age of 3 to 6 years. Regardless our future development, most of us get lots of knowledge in such a short time: we learn how to eat, how to draw, how to be polite, how to go to the toilet, how to play, how to dress ourselves or how to manipulate adults. If learning through questions is so successful, why wouldn’t we keep on doing that later on in life?  
You could say, and I would agree, that we still do question, even in our adult life. Yes, but how many of us, and how many times are we doing it in a conscious way? The best learning comes from conscious actions: only when we are aware of what we do, we can see which step led to success or which step led to a dead end. Only then we can have feedback and we can adjust the input in order to get to the results we aim. The cycle of questioning, as I see it, has four steps:

  1. The question itself: as I wrote in a previous post, both the question and the person we ask are important. Speaking of this, I remember what happened to me once as a student. I was attending an important physics contest and the professor allowed each of us to ask him one single question, for which he would have given us the answer in private. I knew less than my other colleagues as I did not study properly. Yet, I won the runner up place per university in that contest. I was amazed by that result and I went to ask the teacher how that was possible. Well, he told me that during the contest, I put the best question, which gave me the possibility to solve the most difficult problem of the test, thus scoring very high, despite other topics frugally treated. None of my well prepared colleagues thought of asking that, nor did they know the answer.

  1. Listen: once you launched your best question to the most appropriate person, then shut up and focus on what that person is telling you. A most common failure is that while people are talking to us, we continue our internal dialogue or we already think what to reply next, thus losing the essential of the other person’s speech. Try this in one of your next conversations: focus on the partner’s words, release signals that you are listening (you can show approval by slight head movements or you can say “yes” from time to time) and try not to issue any judgements, but only ask questions. You will be amazed to see that your partner considers you a very communicative and easy going person. And you’ll also notice that speaking less you understand more.
  1. Evaluate: you put your question; you got the answer, then what? Then you should ask yourself if what you got was what you needed. Suppose that you asked for an advice and you got one. Is that advice good for you? Is it in line with your objectives? What would happen to you if you followed that advice? Where would you be in a period of time? Would you be happier? Try to imagine yourself some weeks, months or years later. Try to see what changes that decision may bring for you or for your beloved ones. If you are happy with what you saw, then do it, otherwise give it up, since you don’t want those imagined things to happen.
  1. Take action: don’t leave things at the level of dreams: make them happen! Break your objective into smaller steps and try to accomplish one step at a time. Soon you’ll be amazed of how close you got to the final objective. Self discipline plays a major role here. I have some days when I don’t feel like writing at all, yet I know that one good article each day brings me closer to my objective of making this website a reference amongst its kind. So, even when I’m not in the mood, I allocate some time for writing, not as much as usual, but some half-hour. Then I find myself caught in the chosen topic and I end up by spending not half and hour, but three hours, and here it is my daily story, ready to go online.

As this cycle goes on an on, we become more aware of us, our questioning skills sharpen and we can get what we want from our contacts. We gain experience with every single question we ask, we gain control with every answer we listen to, we get wiser with every thoughtful evaluation we do and we get higher with each congruent action we fulfil.  ÂÂ