Mental Pivot #61: The Innovative Question Cycle
Insights from Warren Berger’s “A More Beautiful Question,” the problem of inert knowledge, and the rise of parasocial relationships.
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss
Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question, explores the topic of asking questions. The act of questioning appears simple at first glance. But, as Berger argues, that simplicity sometimes causes us to overlook the power of systematic inquiry. It’s an effective thinking tool we all possess, but don’t always use (at least not as much as we did when we were children—the demographic comprising the most prolific questioners).
Questions can accomplish a wide range of tasks. They can be used to obtain information (e.g., “what time is it?”). They can be used as a springboard to explore ideas or gain a deeper understanding (e.g., “why is the sky blue?”). They can be used to contemplate alternative scenarios (e.g., “what if I did this instead of that?”). They can also help us solve problems (e.g., “how can I get a better night’s sleep?”).
The Right Question Institute is an organization dedicated to fostering curiosity and inquiry. They provide the following summation on the purpose of questions: “Questioning is the ability to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.”
Some of us are better at asking questions than others. But anyone, given sufficient practice and intentionality, can get better at actively asking questions in the normal course of everyday life.
Berger describes many strategies for accomplishing this in his book, but one that resonated with me is the framework he calls “the innovative question cycle.”
This innovative question cycle consists of three questions:
Why?
What if?
How?
Together, Berger asserts, they help us uncover creative opportunities, develop new ideas, and initiate change.
The first question (“Why?”) is an observation about the world. Why are things the way they are? Why can’t we do it this other way? Why must this be so?
The second question (“What if?”) is a consideration of alternative scenarios and possibilities. What if we did things another way? What if the opposite were true?
The third question (“How?”) is a way of taking the vision or inspiration of the first two questions and offering an actionable path forward. How can I bring this thing to fruition? What steps do I need to take, and how will I accomplish it? How can I make progress towards this goal?
To better illustrate the framework, Berger recounts a story about Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid instant camera.
Before the advent of smartphones and selfies, analog film cameras reigned supreme. Edwin Land’s invention was a revolutionary breakthrough in photography. And that breakthrough was, in part, the result of a particularly compelling question.
In 1943, while on vacation in New Mexico, Land was taking photographs of his family with an old-fashioned film camera. His three-year-old daughter, Jennifer, asked him why she couldn’t see the picture immediately. Land explained to her that film in his camera had to be taken to a photo lab to be developed first. But the question she asked intrigued him: “Why can’t I see the photograph immediately when I take a picture?”
Like many good questions, his daughter’s question prompted followup questions, setting Land’s mind in motion. He started to wonder. What if you could see a print photo immediately after taking a photo? Would it be possible to develop the photo without taking the film to a development shop? Could the film be developed in-camera? How could this be accomplished?
As the story goes, Land—an expert in optics and polarization—spent the next hour figuring out the general principles of how an instant camera might work. It took several more years to research and develop a working product. In 1947, his company produced the first commercially available instant camera, the Land Camera. With this groundbreaking device, photographers could snap a picture and have a sepia-tone print in-hand one minute later.
The question Land’s daughter had asked a few years earlier had been answered.
The story neatly fits into Berger’s innovative question cycle. Specifically:
Why: This question asked by Land’s daughter sparked the exploration of the idea (“why can’t we see the picture immediately?”). It challenged the status quo and sparked Land’s imagination.
What if: This question imagined a new possibility or alternative reality. In effect, Land started speculating. “What if there was a camera that didn’t need to use a photo lab for film developing?” and “what if the photo lab was inside the camera?”
How: This question offered the practical steps for achieving the intriguing idea posed by the “what if” question. Land’s technical-know-how was crucial in answering the many questions about how he would achieve the vision imagined in the first two questions.
Inspired by Berger’s question cycle, I’m making it a goal to exercise my questioning muscle this week by being more active in my inquisitiveness and asking more intentional “why” and “what if” type questions. Does it work? I have no idea, but I can already tell you that it’s been a heck of a lot of fun—particularly those “what if” questions.
Note: There’s a 2-hour presentation by Berger on YouTube that covers most of the ideas in his book. It’s worth watching if you want to explore the topic further.
Now onto this week's recommendations…
Thinking Tools:
Have We Forgotten How to Read Critically?: “Since the internet has made the entire world a library with no exits or supervisors, many readers treat every published piece of writing as a conversation opener, demanding a bespoke response.”
Inert Knowledge: The Problem of Knowing without Understanding: “A student has inert knowledge if they memorize a math formula and are able to repeat it, but they don’t understand what it means or what its implications are.” The article also discusses a helpful framework called “Bloom’s taxonomy” which provides a map for moving beyond inert knowledge.
It’s Harder than It Looks to Write Clearly: Francine Prose ruminates on the challenges of communicating clearly with others. To demonstrate clear writing, she invokes Camus, Chekhov, and Abraham Lincoln and a host of helpful examples (she presents numerous examples of convoluted writing too).
Read Less but Read It Twice: Rolf Dobelli advocates for selective, careful, and repeated reading. Regarding the latter, he claims an order of magnitude increase in comprehension: “If after a first reading I remember 3%, after a second reading I remember 30%.”
What We Don’t Want to Know: Journalist Shayla Love writes about “deliberate ignorance”—the conscious choice not to see or use knowledge. It’s a phenomenon that challenges the conventional wisdom that knowledge is virtuous and ignorance is vice.
Reading Enrichment:
How the Rise of the Celebrity Instructor Transformed Our Relationship with Fitness: Jacqueline Kantor not only looks at the significant shifts in the fitness industry during the pandemic (e.g., the surging popularity of services like Peloton), but also the more important trend of “parasocial relationships.” As she defines it: “parasocial relationships are connections formed between an individual and a public figure in which the former comes to feel they know the latter as a personal friend.”
I Grew Up in a Crematorium: Jo Browning Wroe reminisces about an unusual childhood. Her father was the superintendent of a crematorium in Birmingham, England. The author and her sister, lived in a house on the grounds and would roller-skate in the crematory, play in the gardens, and once played organ for a funeral service with then regular organist called in sick.
Mortgages Are a Manufactured Product: Patrick McKenzie illuminates the business and supply chain behind the American mortgage industry: “Civilians think that a mortgage is a loan between a bank and a customer, and think of it primarily as services work. This is a materially incorrect worldview.”
No Way to Be Human: We Occupy a Nearly Natureless World: Alan Lightman laments the disconnection from nature many of us experience in our technology-laden, screen-filled, and highly urbanized lives. He cites current psychological research in which happiness and life satisfaction are correlated to a connectedness to nature.
There Will Never Be a Creator Middle Class and Why That’s Good: John Bardos elucidates the dynamics that result in a winner-take-all online economy.
Odds & Ends:
Bookstash provides summaries of top books recommended by “famous folk.” Famous folk includes people like Jeff Bezos, Tim Ferriss, and Warren Buffett. The books selections are almost exclusively from the business and self-help category. You can scroll through the site’s collection or click “pick my book” to receive a random selection. Clicking on a title brings up a summary that includes anywhere from 3-13 key points from the book.
Pony Messenger is an email client that delivers messages once a day (e.g., morning, afternoon, or evening). You read that right, it’s an attempt to mitigate information overload and foster more mindful communication (naturally, this isn’t practical for everyone). I read the tool in the Atlantic article, “The Subversive Genius of Extremely Slow Email.”
The State of Mobile in 2022 is a free report from mobile market research firm, App Annie (you will need to register personal info to access it). Key highlights: users spend an average of 4.8 hours/day on their mobile devices (yikes), the Chinese market dominates overall app downloads, and more than 200 apps grossed over $100 million from global consumer spending (the majority were in the video game category).
Cross-Promotions:
Refind is a content discovery tool that sends curated articles to your email inbox or via mobile app (iOS and Android). Focus your attention on what’s really relevant to you.
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