A More Beautiful Question (30 page)

How many people does it take to change a light bulb for a senior citizen?
¹⁸

In her inquiry into how to improve quality of life for older people, the British social designer Hilary Cottam found a key determining factor was “being socially connected and not having to worry about minor things like changing light bulbs.” In 2007, Cottam’s design group spent a year doing contextual inquiry while immersed in the lives of elderly residents in a poor London suburb, then began testing their theories with the Southwark Circle, a neighborhood network that combines the functions of a concierge service, self-help group, cooperative, and social club (members pay a small fee, and may barter services as well). Creating “social circles” for seniors lessened the need for costly at-home visits by social workers—while also providing more of a sense of community. Interestingly, Cottam found the ideal social circle as you get older “should include six people from very different roles,” including family, friendly professionals, same-age peers, and young people.

For those concerned about not knowing what questions to ask, the work of the Right Question Institute (as well as Hal Gregersen’s question-storming exercises on page 154) shows that if you force yourself to sit with a problem or a topic and try to think of appropriate questions, you will almost certainly come up with many. The challenge, though, is not just to think of questions, but to then think
about
those questions—culling the best ones, improving them, and figuring out how you might begin to act on them.

Questioning should be done as a matter of habit and process—otherwise, it’s not likely to find a place in busy schedules. In applying a rigorous system of inquiry to everyday life, aforementioned tools and techniques such as contextual inquiry, connective inquiry, and experimentation all can be useful. But it all starts with slowing down, stepping back, and trying to shift perspective in order to see your own life—and the problems, opportunities, and challenges worth tackling—more clearly.

Before we “lean in,” what if we stepped back?

For people geared to achieving success or just getting things done, the idea of slowing down or, worse still, stepping back, can seem counterintuitive—and seemingly at odds with cultural messages urging us “go for it” or “lean in” as we pursue challenges and embrace opportunity. But while the notions of “stepping back” and “leaning in” might seem contradictory, someone who pauses, at times, to question and consider can also fully engage, act boldly, and seize opportunities. Stepping back to question can actually help with leaning in by providing a clearer sense of direction and purpose.

Finding the time and space to question, in a cultural landscape that doesn’t encourage it, is challenging. If questioning might be considered a form of slow thinking, we have to get away from the fast thinking that is required in everyday life—especially in the current fast-moving, info-overloaded environment.

In one of his lectures on creativity, the comedian John Cleese talked about the need to find one’s own “tortoise enclosure”—that
¹⁹
sheltered, quiet place where you can go for extended periods to escape from the distractions of the outside world so that you can think without interruption. Cleese discusses this as a means of enabling oneself to write or engage in other creative activities, but going to the tortoise enclosure can also enable deep questioning (which is a form of creative thinking).

In today’s world, stepping back or retreating to one’s creative shell may require unplugging from the Internet. While the Web is a great source for quick answers to practical questions, it’s more apt to keep you skimming the surface and jumping from one idea to another, as opposed to focusing, without distraction, on one deep question. The Internet also bombards you with other people’s thoughts, ideas, and expertise—which may leave little room for your own creative thinking. And it’s a source of endless interruptions, with every e-mail or tweet providing an excuse to stop thinking.

One of the current proponents of “unplugging”
²⁰
is the filmmaker Tiffany Shlain. A very plugged-in person (she specializes in Web-based films and has a large presence in social media), Shlain drew attention when she wrote about adopting a “tech Shabbat,” on Saturdays, so that she and her family could have more time for reflection and quiet pleasures.

“It’s completely changed my life,” Shlain told me, referring to the weekly disconnect. “I find I’ve saved certain thinking for that day—big-picture thinking. While I love the kinetic thinking that happens when you’re on the Internet, I also really value having a thought and not being able to act on it. It’s great to just let that thought marinate and grow on its own.”

Shlain said one of the benefits is that she is almost forced to grapple with her own questions instead of automatically going online to seek out answers. “On Saturday, when I’m stopped from doing that, I get to just sit with a question in a different way than I normally would,” she told me. (One of the big questions she’s “sitting with” these days involves our “love/hate relationship with technology. We’re so enamored of it that we’re not asking questions like
What is all of this technology taking away from us?
”.)

In the current environment, it may be necessary to develop a routine and a habit that allows for quiet detachment and provides an opportunity to think deeply. This may start with logistical questions such as:

Where is my tortoise enclosure?

When is my tech Shabbat?

Having the time and a place to question is only part of it; discipline is required to “sit with a question,” to create mental space for it by pushing aside the mundane “small thoughts,” as Eric Maisel calls them. Such thoughts “steal neurons” when we’re trying to think deeply. Practical questions (
What should I have for lunch later on? What time do I need to pick up the kids?
) have no place inside the tortoise enclosure, where the focus should be on larger Why and What If questions. The author William Deresiewicz has written, “Thinking means concentrating on one thing
²¹
long enough to develop an idea about it . . . It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my brain come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.”

What if we start with what we already have?

When innovators look at the world around them, they’re often looking for what’s missing. But while questioning your own life, it’s also important to look, via “appreciative inquiry,” not just for what’s missing, but also for what’s there.

The main premise of appreciative inquiry is that positive questions, focusing on strengths and assets, tend to yield more effective results than negative questions focusing on problems or deficits. Strength-based questioning focuses on what is working in our lives—so that we can build upon that and get more out of it. This is important because self-questioning can easily drift toward dissatisfaction, regret, feelings of helplessness:
Why don’t I have more money, a better job, a bigger circle of friends?
—and so forth. What is missing or lacking can point to opportunities for progress and improvement, but such questions can also evoke negative feelings, and as appreciative inquiry guru David Cooperrider points out, people are more likely to take constructive action when they feel hopeful and recognize all they have going for them already.

Happiness researchers such as Tal Ben-Shahar,
²²
author of
Happier
and
Being Happy
and a professor at Harvard University, believe it’s important to “cultivate the habit of gratitude.” Simply by asking, at the end of each day,
What am I grateful for?
and writing down the answers in a “gratitude journal,” people tend to be “happier, more optimistic, more successful, more likely to achieve their goals,” according to Ben-Shahar.

Ben-Shahar’s point was echoed by the filmmaker Roko Belic, who believes that “gratitude is a shortcut to happiness.” Belic has spent years trekking around the world and trying to answer his own questions about why some people are happier than others and whether it’s possible for someone to
become
happier. The answer to his questions can be found in his documentary film
Happy
, but one of the key findings is that people who value and appreciate the basics—family and friends, a sense of belonging to a community, the simple pleasure that comes with engaging in a hobby or learning something new—tend to be a lot happier.

Belic’s questions about happiness had been percolating for some time prior to his making the film. His first Why moment came at age eighteen, when he traveled to Africa as part of a group raising funds for refugees of the Mozambique civil war. “These were people who had suffered tremendously,” Belic said, “but when we got there, we didn’t find people who were miserable or angry. We found people who were just beaming with life, ecstatic at the smallest and tiniest things: seeing a ballpoint pen, looking at a magic trick, seeing us run around carrying each other on our shoulders. They had a genuine spark of joy that seemed to be missing in a lot of my friends back home.” So Belic’s question at that time was:

Why is it that people who have so little and have suffered so much seem to be happier than other people who are more fortunate?

Years later, when Belic was working in Hollywood, a similar question was raised by a friend of Belic’s, the Hollywood director Tom Shadyac. Shadyac had read an article about how Americans, despite being relatively prosperous, tended to be less happy than people in other, poorer countries. “Tom said to me, ‘I know this personally because I’ve been surrounded by talented, good-looking, lucky, healthy movie stars who are not as happy as the gardeners who tend my garden.’” So the new version of Belic’s question became:

If being a beautiful, talented, wealthy movie star doesn’t make you happy, then what does?

He and Shadyac joined forces to try to find an answer by way of their film. The journey to make it took Belic all over the world, including impoverished locales in India, Africa, and China. Regardless of circumstance, Belic found that “community and connectedness” formed the common thread among the happiest people. “It does not mean that to be happy you have to be very social or outgoing or have a million friends,” he said. But the happiest people he encountered —including some living extremely modestly—had a strong connection to those around them. “They laughed and really enjoyed being around the people they love.”

This link between happiness and strong relationships is hardly a startling revelation. Yet, as Belic points out, “most of us spend more of our time working to make money—often to support a lifestyle that involves bigger houses or nice cars and clothes—than the time we spend with our friends.” Belic believes “these simple questions, like,
What is important to you?
can lead you to realize that you might want to do some shifts that could actually increase your happiness just by having your lifestyle reflect your values a little bit more.”

When Belic examined his own life, he realized that he, too, had failed to devote enough time to being with friends and doing simple things that he truly enjoyed doing. “I always thought that as I got older, I would see my friends more; we would play more; we would go on adventures even more. But by the time I was in my thirties, I was seeing my best friends maybe once or twice a year. I was trying to be a responsible adult and devote myself to my career. I’d accepted this idea that kids play and adults work. As part of that, I’d stopped surfing, which is something I used to love doing with friends.” The lessons learned in the film prompted Belic to ask how he might strengthen human connections and enhance simple pleasures in his own life—and spurred him to resume surfing with a close friend.

Belic’s self-questioning led to other changes, as well. For example, he began to ask,
Why don’t I know more of my neighbors?
Belic knew, from his film research, that in the happiest communities, “everybody knows each other,” yet in his West Coast neighborhood, people tended to stay in their comfortable houses and keep to themselves. Belic wondered,
How might I find that sense of community and connectedness I experienced in those small villages in Africa and India?
When he visited a friend at
²³
an upscale trailer park in Los Angeles—where front doors opened into shared areas and neighbors practically couldn’t help engaging with one another—Belic promptly pulled up stakes and moved there.

To make changes in his own life, Belic asked, in effect,
What has worked for me before—and how can I bring more of that into my life now?
Appreciative inquiry is usually focused on building upon current strengths, but sometimes by looking into the past, you can glimpse what might improve your life in the present and future.

Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project and the life coach Eric Maisel each suggest that we ask ourselves some version of the question
What did I love doing as a child?