"The Art of enquiry leads us to important answers, and can even change our lives."
A recent study estimated that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes of digital information last year. That is like 12 separate stacks of books that reach from the earth to the sun or three million times the information in all the books ever written.
The report sought to account for all the photos,emails,videos,web pages, instant messages and other digital content cascading through our world today. How much memory would be required to contain the above information?
You would need two billion 80GB ipods to hold all information! This leads to a growing realisation that memory is not automatically the best use of minds in modern eduction and computers are much better at data management.
How do we focus on the right data, create space when there is too much data and learn to think more effectively? The real work for each of us is to relearn the art of enquiry. As children, we learned by asking questions. There is a Chinese proverb that goes: "He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." So what does an effective question do?
Questions can change our thinking
A consultant was asked to help a group of web programmers who were way behind on a 50 million dollar project. He came and interviewed them all. After much consideration he simply asked one key question.
The question took hold and changed the way the programmers were thinking. The end result was that the project finished on time and was $15 million dollars under budget. The right questions changed the thinking of all those involved in the project.
Questions create space
A young married woman went to the doctor to seek advice. She asked to be sterilised, as her upbringing had been so painful that she didn't want to have her children experience the same thing. The doctor asked her:" What would happen if you could make your children's life better and could protect them?"
She thought about it and was stumped. She changed her mind about the operation and now has two beautiful girls that are the joy of her life. The right question created space in her thinking to look at life in a new way.
The wisest use of your mind is not just holding data, but learning how to work with the data, which requires the art of enquiry. Simply put, we must relearn how to ask questions. As with all arts, it is not an easy task to learn, and requires discipline and practice with a dose of humility. Yet, it is a worthwhile discipline that seems guaranteed to produce new levels of success for all who dare to ask.
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2 Responses to "Ask a Good Question"
April 22, 2008 7:22 PM
What you write about reminds me of education vs being smart. Just because you have a degree, this doesn't automatically mean you are wise. You might have the data, but you need another thing to make it complete - knowledge how to analyze and use it :)
It is important we differentiate between the two, especially now in the era of information and education. Getting a college degree has never been easier, staying on top of what is going on has never been harder.
Thanks for a great read.
April 28, 2008 4:26 AM
Wow, I didn't realize how much data we generated! 12 stacks of books that reach from the Earth to the sun... wow. I read that a brontobyte, which is like 10^30 bytes or something, is enough information to hold every single thing every human has said in all of existence.
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