Question everything

When we talk to our family, friends or colleagues at work, we learn something new every day. Each one of us has different interests and follow different things which brings so much of opportunity in every conversation. While the topic of discussion can be anything, the conversation will always reflect the interests of each person involved in some way. It can be in their sense of humour, their reasonings or analogies and examples.

At Newton, we have a great team and the interests range from Astrophysics to Zombie apocalypse. And, we are always discussing stuff — work related or just having water cooler conversations. There is just so much of interaction going on each day. After being a part of several conversations, I have realised an important thing — questions are powerful. When questions become a part of the conversation, the people involved will think and use their areas of interest as strengths to either tackle them or ask a counter question. While a normal conversation demands a bit of acceptance from everybody involved, a conversation filled with questions has a takeaway for everyone.

Recently, I was discussing cryptocurrency with a few friends. Until a point, we were just sharing thoughts based on the information we had and our understanding of the subject. Now, when we started asking questions to each other, we moved from cryptocurrency as a technology to its financial impact across countries and the plausible opinion of governments across the world on it. Our channel of interaction greatly expanded. A friend used his finance knowledge to put forth his points while another one shared his thoughts powered by his love for numbers and data. Some amazing insights started flowing and asking questions gave us a more holistic understanding of the matter. We learnt a lot more than we’d have during our short tea break.

While this a very useful hack, it survives on a simple requirement that everyone involved in the conversation must use it. It just cannot work if only a few are asking questions. And if you are thinking that asking questions will make you seem lesser, let me clarify — No, it won’t! It will in fact make you capable to answer a few things as you keep learning.

Ask me a question in the comments below :)