Why Better Questions Produce The Best Software Business Ideas?
Become the next Larry Ellison, Steve Wozniak, or Bill Gates by asking yourself the important questions
“No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives” — Neil Degrasse Tyson
Software engineering is about problem-solving, and that's the whole beauty of it. Having the ability to take any problem and solve it creatively is very powerful. However, you have to put on a different thinking hat in business and project management.
It's less about "how to solve a problem," more about "what the problem is about." if you want to start that next billion-dollar business.
In other words, you have to come up with something new. You aren't looking for answers, and you are looking for questions.
Since we have so much knowledge and answers at our fingertips, asking great questions is a superpower nowadays. In Silicon Valley, they know this. Questions are the new answers; they are the root of innovation.
If you were to trace back any innovation, you most likely arrive at a simple question being asked.
These are primarily questions of "What?" and "Why?" move to "What if?"
- Why can't you get your 10-year goals in 6 months from now?
- Why does that lonely tree grow in that place but not in a place where I live?
- What If I did the opposite of the next 24 hours?
- What would be an excellent app to help children learn effectively and with pleasure about mathematics?
- What if I could travel the world with less than 10 euros? What would that look like?
These questions seem strange to ask. But put yourself in the mind of a nine-year-old, and they look at the world fundamentally differently and can develop ideas all day long.
It's just that our current educational system and social circle beats that curiosity out of them.
Merge that child-like curiosity with a healthy dose of practicality, and you get an effective executive. That's what great entrepreneurs are.
These so-called silly questions spark our curiosity and develop out-of-the-box thinking.
Don't believe me? Ask yourself how often you thought something was accurate when it wasn't. The answer is probably you have been wrong many times.
We hold many wrong assumptions about the world. And in the end, it screws us up.
Our beliefs are formed through many filters created in the brain that are susceptible to logical fallacies and cognitive biases,…
Our brain does a beautiful job of abstracting away unnecessary details about reality, and it only retains the pieces of information that are most important. However, this process isn't perfect. Not only is your brain wired in a specific way unique to you(detail-oriented vs. Bigger picture perspective) it also has many biases. You can't trust what comes out of your head.
We must triangulate different beliefs with people that disagree with us. Questioning forces you to break some of the boundaries on the sphere of comfort you have created yourself.
It's the best tool for learning anything and also finding great answers. In today's society of uncertainty and change, questioning is one of the primary tools to navigate the world.
So can you develop great questions? THE ANSWER IS YES.
You only need to change your thinking.
Catching the right butterfly
“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions … to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority … then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.” — Carl Sagan
First, you are a creative person.
As software engineers/developers, we can build the most incredible technologies to change the world. But creativity matters to all of us; We are all capable of being more creative in our work (and our lives)
So try to see yourself as an artist and see your work as poetry you put into the world, and your good name is written on it.
Even if you don't care about creativity, maybe it's time you should.
In the twenty-first century, what the market values are the ability to produce something rare and valuable," says the author and consultant Cal Newport. An entrepreneur's success is about finding and developing creative ideas.
So, where did your creativity go?
Just as asking the right questions can inspire creativity, asking the wrong ones — questions rooted in faulty assumptions — can inhibit creativity. That's why we want to start with the right frame of mind. We have to drop our egos and tap into our awareness.
Observation is an excellent place to start. You have to see opportunities where others see problems.
Meaning you keep thinking of new ideas instead of moving forward with an existing software project. You must pick one butterfly and pin it down to develop an idea.
Find some way to give rudimentary form to your idea (outline, rough sketch, collage, beta website)
Ask yourself if you aren't sure about your idea.
- Have other people with my motivation and ability accomplished something remotely similar?
You're not looking for just an idea, per se — you're looking for a way to improve things.
"It is the discovery and creation of problems… that often sets the creative person apart," according to Csikszentmihalyi and fellow social scientist Jacob Getzels.
They found in their research that the most successful artists tended to take an existing situation and look for ways to rework it. They were less apt to try to solve problems straightforwardly by following instructions.
The "problem finder" goes looking for trouble. The creative process can encompass finding (and even making) the situation and fixing it with an innovative solution.
Problem finders look at the world around them, focus on something in particular — a situation, an existing creation, a theme — and inquire deeply about it:
- What is lacking here?
- What is happening that doesn't make sense?
- What is the story that is not being told?
Tom Kelley says frustration is such a rich source of creativity and innovation that all of us should try to tap into it by creating our own "bug lists" — documenting all the things encountered in everyday life that seem in desperate need of improvement — and then referring to that list regularly as we're searching for creative endeavors to tackle
One question to ask about anything you're trying to observe more closely is
- What might I notice about X if I saw it first?
But don't get hung up on finding the perfect starting point — the brilliant opening sentence.
Begin with whatever you have right now, even if it's a partial idea, an incomplete or flawed prototype, or the middle of a story that has no beginning or end.
Insights will come.
- Ask, What if I allow myself to begin anywhere?
Lastly, not every idea will excite you. So you have to choose which ideas are worth solving for you. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I look forward to thinking about this topic?
I ask myself when considering a new idea.
- Will I want to commit to this six months or a year down the road?"
"Four Whys" approach
- Why does this problem matter? Use research to clarify what is at stake by digging deeper into who is affected and how. Consider the significance of that in terms of overall effect and future ramifications.
- Why does the problem exist? Try to get to the root causes that put this problem into motion. (This may necessitate additional "whys" to get all the way down to the root.)
- Why hasn't it been solved already? This will make clear the obstacles you are up against(and may uncover past efforts that hold lessons).
- Why might that change now? What are the conditions and dynamics that might bring about the desired change?
Having asked the "Why?" questions and gathered the various bits and pieces of research. You will hit a moment of creativity—You will put bits and pieces together to form insights.
It's a stage that demands deep thought and focus — as well as an environment conducive to that. You can't do this type of work from everywhere, and you have to retreat and find some alone time. Some places let you tap into deep thinking like walking in nature and traveling to a new home,…
If you find yourself struggling with Assumptions, you hold what you think is true. Ask yourself:
- Why do I believe what I believe?
It's essential to find those assumptions you hold you think are true about an idea. If you can dispel them, you can quickly get to the root causes and principles.
The "jugular question," per Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arno Penzias, forces you to consider the basis of those beliefs.
- What would I like to be true?
A "desirability bias" may make you think something is true because you want it to be true.
You can even take the opposite approach to find out what is true.
- What if the opposite is true?
This question is inspired by "debiasing" experts and Seinfeld'sGeorge Costanza.
This simple question often is used to find out what is really true about how you see things.
But aside from the questions, your attitude is also important
Humility Is Gold
Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself — it is thinking less about yourself
Humility nowadays has gotten a bad rap. Being humble is seen as being weak. But to navigate reality, you need to have both good mental maps and be humble/open-minded. You can acquire good mental maps from believable people or good common sense. But it's best to have both
Tim Ferriss once said:
'You are never as good as they say you are and never as bad.'
The more I think about it the more it is true.
It is essential to be open and humble about what you don't know.
It's easy to think you possess excellent skills and overestimate yourself when people trust you and have some success.
You should care more about finding out what is true than about what you say is true.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be confident, and you have to believe in yourself. But you must be "humble enough to admit when you don't know something."
This goes against our natural tendency because many people want to defend what they believe. But it's best to consider multiple perspectives, evaluate evidence, and make thoughtful decisions.
So don't let confidence turn into arrogance. The moment you think you are a master is when you will stop learning, and it's a very shortfall from greatness to irrelevance. Try to keep your ego in check if you care about learning, finding the best ideas, improving your work and life.
You are only one great idea away from changing whatever you set your eyes on 😉.
