As we enter the New Year, it’s an opportunity to step back and reflect in an increasingly hectic world. In an earlier post, I suggested we need to find time to reflect in a world increasingly dominated by flows – it’s a healthy form of friction that can actually enhance our ability to generate more insight from flows. Embrace the New Year as an invitation to reflect.

One area for reflection is what we are doing to accelerate our learning. We need to explore and understand the implications of the need for lifelong learning, as I suggested here. We live in a world where the learning imperative continues throughout our lives and, if that weren’t enough pressure, we’ll need to learn faster with each passing year as our world changes more rapidly.

Reflect on questions

OK, how do we do that? Well, it all begins with questions. What are your questions? Isn’t this a great time to step back and reflect on what are the big questions that would help us to achieve much greater impact in all parts of our lives? We’re under so much pressure to have answers during the year that we have little time to reflect on the questions that matter.

So, step back and take this opportunity to reflect. I suspect that most of us will find this challenging at the outset. We’re not used to asking questions. And, be careful because, once we start thinking about this, we’re liable to find that there are an infinite number of questions that could be asked in all parts of our lives.

One interesting exercise is to reflect on what parts of our lives are generating the most questions. We often have a greater curiosity about some parts of our lives relative to other parts. Why is that? What is sparking that curiosity? As I’ll suggest below, the answer to this could be revealing.

But, what are the questions that really matter to you? That motivates us to think about where and how we could have impact in our own lives and the lives of those around us. Most importantly, we could reflect on what’s the impact that would be most meaningful to us, both in terms of impact on our lives and impact on the lives of others? What’s the impact that would be most exciting and fulfilling to us?

And, don’t just focus on impact. Reflect also on the approach that would be required to answer these questions and whether engaging in the effort to find an answer would be exciting in itself, independent of the impact that could be achieved. Would the effort itself excite you?

By the way, put aside the questions that you could answer just by going to a search engine and finding someone who already has an answer. Those are the easy questions and you should certainly go to a laptop and find the answers to them. Focus instead on the questions that require you to create new knowledge through action – that’s the most powerful learning in a world that’s so rapidly changing. These are the questions that will cultivate imagination, creativity and emotional and social intelligence.

Find the questions that matter 

Be careful now, because we’re approaching the two by two matrix that all consultants love. On one dimension we have the extent to which the impact is meaningful to us and on the other dimension we have the extent to which the effort to find an answer is exciting and fulfilling to us. Guess where you might want to focus? Of course, it’s on the questions that fall into the upper right-hand quadrant – the questions that offer the most meaningful impact for you and the most excitement in terms of the effort required to get to the answer.And, before you lock in on the questions that matter, be sure to reflect on whether there are other questions that haven’t yet occurred to you that might fall into this same quadrant.

And, what if you couldn’t come up with any questions that are truly meaningful or exciting for you? Don’t lose hope. As we’ll see below, it likely means that your curiosity has atrophied and needs more exercise. Carry a notepad with you (or a note app, if you must) and just take a minute to write down any questions you come up with as you go through your days. Make the effort to uncover questions and then make the time to reflect on them on a regular basis. Look for the patterns that will begin to reveal what is drawing your curiosity.

Digging deeper

So, what can this reflection on questions produce for us? It can certainly help us to focus our time and attention in the year ahead on quests that can yield more meaningful impact and a more exciting way to spend our time. (Did you ever notice that quests are stimulated by powerful and exciting questions?)

But, let’s dig deeper. Reflect on the questions that you asked at the outset. How easy was it to come up with these questions? If it was very easy, you have a strong curiosity. If it required more effort, chances are that your curiosity has been suppressed, which isn’t surprising since we work and live in institutions that find questions annoying at best, and dangerous at worst. You’re supposed to have answers, not questions. Questions are a sign of weakness.

We all have the capability for curiosity, but many of us have not had an opportunity to exercise it and, as a result, it’s atrophied. It turns out that curiosity and the related human capabilities of imagination, creativity and emotional and social intelligence are foundational capabilities to drive learning (see more on this here). We need to find opportunities to exercise and cultivate these capabilities and it starts by asking hard but rewarding questions.

Digging even deeper

But, there’s more. It turns out many of us will find it easy to come up with questions in certain areas of our life, but much more challenging in other areas. As I indicated earlier, we often have a strong curiosity in parts of our lives, but not others. That can be revealing.

Those areas of natural curiosity may be important indicators of something that I call the passion of the explorer. If we’re truly serious about lifelong learning, we need to commit to discovering and cultivating the passion of the explorer that lies within all of us, even though for many it’s dormant and still waiting to be discovered. (For more on the passion of the explorer, see here and here.)

Why is this passion of the explorer so important? It turns out it provides us with a powerful and sustaining motivation to cultivate the learning capabilities I mentioned earlier as well as the motivation to achieve increasing impact in the domain of our passion. That motivation will ensure that we will learn faster and faster throughout our lives.

If we find it easy and stimulating to frame lots of questions in some area of our lives, pay attention to that. It could help us to become more aware of the passion of the explorer that we’ve already started to pursue or reveal a passion of the explorer needing to be discovered.

Regardless of how easy it was to come up with the questions, reflect also on those questions in the upper right-hand quadrant of the questions that matter framework that I described above. If you believe those questions could lead to impact that is meaningful to you and that pursuing those questions would be exciting, you may also have uncovered your passion of the explorer. People with this kind of passion are driven to achieve higher and higher levels of impact in their chosen domain – that impact is very meaningful to them – and they are excited by the effort required to achieve that impact. Now, that’s a breakthrough insight for you to build on!

But there’s more

Don’t stop now. As you begin to lock in on the questions that are most meaningful and exciting to you, there’s another level of reflection that could open new possibilities. For each of the motivating questions you’ve identified, ask who else might also be motivated by those questions? It’s actually very rare that you would come up with a question that’s only motivating to you – there are often others who would also be excited by the same question. Who are they? Where are they? Seek them out – they could help you get to a better answer faster and provide you with support and encouragement along the way.

You don’t know anyone like that? Well, then, spread the word about the questions you’re pursuing. Share the questions with your friends and associates and ask for help in finding people who might also be pursuing similar questions. Frame the questions on a blog post or other forms of social media and see who responds with ideas or just an offer to help. Use the power of pull to shape serendipity and discover people you never even knew existed but who share your interest/passion in these questions.

Who knows? Your questions might even help you to frame a powerful personal narrative that will be an inspiring call to action for others to join you on your quest to address a significant opportunity that exists out in the future. By asking for help from others you will start to build deep trust that will further motivate them to collaborate.

So, what’s holding you back?

There are likely a lot of things – lack of time, pressure from others to deliver specified results, atrophied curiosity, the list goes on. But there’s one thing that is increasingly holding more and more of us back. That’s the growing feeling of fear. In a rapidly changing world characterized by mounting performance pressure on all of us, that’s a very understandable emotion. But it’s also a very limiting emotion. An important first step to overcoming that emotion is simply acknowledging its presence. Start with small moves – framing questions – and seek the questions that excite you and will help you to address and overcome that fear. Then find others who can help to reassure and support you as you all move forward together in seeking answers to those questions.

Here’s some contrarian advice: forget about resolutions. Resolutions are about finding ways to exercise discipline in pursuit of something. Rather than discipline, find the things that really excite you and cultivate your awareness of the questions that could really make a difference in those areas. Far better and ultimately more rewarding to pursue things because you’re excited by them, rather than because you are forcing yourself to pursue those things. As you become more aware of the excitement and personal importance of these activities, no one will be able to stop you from pursuing them. It’s the questions that can generate that excitement and focus your efforts.

Bottom line

It all starts with questions. Take some time to surface those questions and to reflect on them. You might be surprised by what you discover. It may be the beginning of something truly remarkable and fulfilling. And what better time to begin the journey than our entry into a New Year?