Ask useful questions
Some of the most useful questions I've found:
What's on your mind?
- A broad, brain-dump question. It can start a conversation with yourself or others.
What have I not done?
- It unearths open loops in your mind that may have been taking up your working memory.
What truths am I ignoring because they make me uncomfortable?
- We like to avoid things that make us feel uncertain and uncomfortable. Asking this question leads the mind to process avoided information and form a clearer picture of reality.
What are the strategic facts?
- Useful for business to gather all the relevant pieces of information.
Why not?
- It's a simple one. It re-orients the mind from coming up up with reasons why not do something, to come up with reasons why do something.
What if ...?
- What if opens your mind. If you're stuck, ask what if 10x and you'll probably come up with something useful.
What worked? What didn't?
- These two are useful especially after a significant event like a conference or a pitch, but they can also be used at the end of a day.
What's stopping you right now?
- This question often helps you to bring your obstacles into your conscious mind and then deal with them intelligently. Worth asking often.
How would I use this?
- For any sort of information you read. Information serves transformation. If we don't use it, it's next to worthless.
How am I making things harder than they need to be?
- We have a tendency to over-complicate things and not put things into proper perspective before we rush forward in our busyness. This question can reveal hidden assumptions about how you complicate your own life.
More questions to be added, but these have proven themselves useful to me, over and over again.