What is possible if we ask questions rather than set goals and follow ideas over answers?
Currently, or at least based on the book I read that was published in 2018 (this is relevant and not just a former history student’s attempt to insert dates wherever they can), the Physics of Time and the Neuroscience of Time struggle to reconcile the reality of time and our experience of time.
The Physics of time seems to suggest that we live in a block universe where past, present and future all coexist. Yet, the neuroscience of time suggests we experience and perceive time as a flow, contrary to all time existing at once. While both can be true — that our brain has developed to experience time as a flow where the past and future do not exist in the present and that in reality, they all exist at the same time — this reflects the best of our knowledge about time and our experience of time.
If we go back in time, prior to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, time was considered to be a universal, fixed quantity that flowed regardless of external factors. Einstein’s work on relativity showed that time is in fact relative to the observer’s motion, so neither fixed nor absolute.
All this is to say, in each case, Newtonian notions of time, the current block universe model of physics and the insights from the neuroscience of time are the best ideas we have for understanding something at varying points in history.
All this is to ask, what if we consider things always as ideas rather than answers?
And if we are looking for the best ideas, what if we reframe goals as questions, both of which evolve and grow as we evolve and grow.
Ideas rather than answers
If someone tells you they have an idea how do you respond?
What if that same person said they have the answer?
What if it is you, what is it like to suggest an idea compared to offering an answer?
What if when faced with a scenario we have faced before we come with the sense we have a good idea from previous experience of what to do rather than the definitive answer?
Have you ever had the thought and or frustration when doing something you’ve done before that second time round it is not quite as straightforward as you remembered? That in fact the answer last time does not quite work this time?
What are we holding onto or searching for when we want or feel we have an answer compared to if we are to see it as a good, perhaps even the best, but only an idea that fits a circumstance.
Ideas suggest possibility, there can be many ideas to approach one thing, likewise some things can have multiple answers but answers are fixed, they are right or wrong, and sometimes, like with the Physics and Neuroscience of time, the answers are really just our best ideas, which may give way to better ideas. Going back to the Neuroscience and Physics of Time, these thoughts are from a book in 2018, long enough ago that new ideas may have supplanted these ideas.
Consider the things that are most prevalent in our lives, they are not necessarily the only idea for that thing, simply the ideas that currently best fit our lives and the world around us. Think about how we travel, the means we use today have not always been used and will not necessarily always be used, they are simply the best ideas for now.
If we seek ideas rather than answers, then what are the questions to generate those ideas?
When we think of answers they are outcomes, like goals, a measurable milestone. While goals will often exist in a hierarchy, for example career goals likely fit into wider goals for our lives, they are all really ideas for how best to fulfil questions.
How can I sustainably grow my business?
How can I lead in a way that enables me and others to be their best?
What will bring me fulfilment in life?
What do I really want?
What is real success for me?
No doubt there are many goals that could be set as possible answers to these questions, and many other questions, but to focus on the achievement of the goal is to focus on an answer and to forget a question that can guide us to ideas for the evolving, ever changing world we are part of.
Is this just semantic trickery?
Perhaps.
Perhaps the consideration of ideas and questions is more to suggest that goals and answers, while valuable in helping us navigate the immense uncertainty of life, can also limit us. Goals and answers fix us to a course at the expense of possibilities: the ideas that emerge when we contemplate and work towards living, ongoing questions.
A mantra in the start up world is that you have to love the problem, not the solution, which, for me, reflects that we are often finding the best idea to a question, in this case a problem.
For, like the concept of something as complex as time, we may never know the definite or truest answer but we can certainly form very useful ideas from questions.
Same questions, new ideas
I came to a coaching session with the same question I had brought two months ago. My first thoughts were that I hadn’t done a good job of enacting my answer or that my answer wasn’t very good. In re-examining the question my sense was that the idea I had come up with then was not the best idea for me now, hence why I was revisiting the question.
No doubt at some point the ideas that had come from that more recent exploration will become less fitting and then it will be time to revisit the question again.
What helped in that situation was to see that things had changed, that I needed new ideas, better ideas for now, for a question that remained pertinent to me.
It may be that ideas suit us for a long time and leave questions resting, or we must return to the same question regularly at times. Nonetheless, in knowing that these questions do not have a definitive answer, only apt ideas for the given moment, we allow ourselves to accept we do not have nor need all the answers only to find a good idea for the questions that feel important now.
What are the ideas you currently live by that are really supporting you? What questions are they coming from?
What are the questions that you would value some fresh ideas from?
What are the answers you currently live by that could make way for some new ideas?
Regardless of if we adopted questions over goals and ideas over answers, what would be possible if we held things less firmly, if more often we asked what is the question we are exploring and what other ideas could be useful here?
In short, what else is always possible?
References
Buonomano, D., Your Brain is a Time Machine. The Neuroscience and Physics of Time (2018)
