How to Leverage the Power of Questions
and watch your curiosity grow
Dear Younger Tom,
There was a time in your life when you were petrified to take action because you lacked true confidence in your abilities. This is not a nice place to be and I want you to know that the world is your oyster, if you just learn how to harness the power of curiosity.
I believe that the reason for your lack of confidence, stems from not knowing what steps to take next, which led you to be cripplingly overwhelmed and so you did nothing, further depleting your self-belief.
I would imagine it’s something that a great many readers will have also experienced, so don’t worry you are not alone.
Let’s see if we can change that by building on my last letter about curiosity. In that letter we discussed a brief summary of why you need to be more curious in life and in this letter, we are going to go deeper and explore the how.
The Power of Questions and which Questions to Ask
Whenever you find yourself in the future not knowing what step to take, ask yourself a question. It can be any question, it doesn’t really matter. That might sound strange, but there is a reason why I make this rather bizarre statement.
You see, at this point of indecision, your mind is like a car on a cold frosty morning. It needs the opportunity to warm up and get its fluids pumping around the engine.
That’s what the first question does, it warms up the engine and from there, it’s simply a case of asking more questions to get it warmer quicker.
In self-development terms it’s what we call FLOW and when you are in the flow state, you are able to gain more insights and solve more problems quicker.
Get used to questioning everything as it is an underrated superpower that very few people leverage properly. If you are truly serious about building your confidence and banishing fear & the imposter syndrome from your life, you will take this advice to heart and act on it without delay.
Get Your Note Taking System Nailed Down
When I say nailed down, let’s rephrase that slightly. Get it 80% nailed down. Perfection is the enemy. Good enough is our friend here.
Trust me, you are going to unleash a torrent of ideas through questioning and you will want to capture the insights as soon as they enter into your mind.
I use a blend of the following:
Nice notepads that are a pleasure to write in (rather than cheap ones that are uninspiring to use)
I have 4 different pads so that I can keep the theme of each one separate from the others:
Fellow Creators Thoughts
How-To Guides
Ideation
Writing Strategy
Software such as Notion or Microsoft OneNote
Physical Whiteboards
Use whatever works for you and adapt as time goes on. Remember 80% is good enough.
Back to the Questions…
Let’s start with some easy ones to warm us up.
Consider these questions in relation to your own Substack and maybe it would be helpful if we framed it by thinking of a fellow writer whom we want to connect with, so that we can delve deeper into that person’s writing strategy.
Start with being relentless and asking the traditional OPEN questions:
Who is this person?
What are they writing about?
Why does this Substack exist?
Where are they based?
When do they do publish their articles?
How can I apply the lessons they write about?
Obviously, not all of these may be applicable but you see the purpose of the questions, they give you a starting point to launch from.
From here, I would suggest going deeper and start looking for answers to any patterns that you may start to see. These could be from a number of writers who consistently discuss the same themes or maybe something else.
Consider exploring a writer’s body of work and see if you can discover their:
Values
Motivation for writing
Behaviors & actions they write about
Problems they solve
I wonder if you can discover the above in your own writing?
It’s interesting isn’t it?
But I haven’t finished, there is another line of questioning we can conduct to uncover even more about our fellow authors and deepen our connection with them.
How about we approach our discovery work from the angle of an inventor? Think about the kind of questions they would ask about a Substack:
Why does this Substack exist?
What problem(s) does it solve?
Does it work as intended?
Does it help me?
Is it cost effective?
Can it be improved?
Utilize Your Findings
Now that you have an arsenal of questions at your disposal and the answers that go with them, it’s time to reflect on your findings and act on them.
Ask yourself:
What here makes sense?
What doesn’t make sense… yet?
What are some viewpoints that do make sense but I don’t hold the same position as the author?
Is there something not covered?
What insights have I got from asking these questions?
Using these Questions Should Give You Courage
It is my hope that by using these questions and getting used to questioning everything, you should gain courage in having conversations with others.
No longer will you have those dreaded silences where your mind has gone blank and you don’t know what to say to the other person.
In fact it will be quite the opposite because you will be focusing your attention on them and everybody loves to talk about themselves.
I look forward to hearing about how you used the advice above with fellow writers, please comment below.
I am proud of you, keep striving towards your goals, you will get there.
Love,
Older Tom XXX