It's okay to ask bad questions.
Inertia — 164
If I had an hour to solve a problem…I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper questions to ask, for once I know the proper question, I can solve the problem in less than five minutes.
— Albert Einstein
In Scotland this week, which has some of the most beautiful rural landscapes I’ve ever seen. Its geological history has left me in awe. It has been one of the smoothest holidays so far. It’s been a remarkable place to straighten out my thoughts. And even though it’s my first time visiting, I feel strangely at home.
The best thing about being in nature is its infinite patience. It’s a place to let ideas off the lead and play with them, to separate and understand them better—one idea at a time. It’s hard to figure life out with loose ideas in our heads.
Nature listens. It sings and can clear our woes. If you ever feel the need to pause on being you for a bit, nature facilitates it. It’s fresh air for the soul, a timeout from all the hustle—because no one can be expected to think quietly with a hundred nearby obligations tugging at you from all sides. There’s nothing like being alone with the trees, the sky, and you. No roles to play. No expectations to meet. It’s therapeutic, like a mini-vacation where you don’t have to be anything other than a simple being.
It’s a good place to write down or go through any questions you’re stuck on. Questions—good or bad—are a good window into our minds, like a river of preconceptions and assumptions that shape our identity.
From time to time, someone comes along and changes the world by asking the right (and wrong) questions no one else dares to ask. They avoid sticking to one mindset that asks the same questions repeatedly and aren’t afraid to be wrong or sound foolish.
Our world values great questions and answers. It lives off of it. Newton and Einstein became who they are because of the foundations they laid by asking many profound questions. Frankly, the next landmark creation is likely hidden under one question no one has bothered to ask.
I tend to enjoy asking all kinds of questions, no matter how stupid they sound. Even though some say there are no bad questions, I still think there are. Because it’s not about that; bad questions act as a crucial guide. So, we need to ask bad questions because it’s through them that we bring ourselves closer to the great questions and discover something remarkable. It’s hard to know what good looks like if you don’t know the bad. In the spirit of indulging ourselves in purpose and personal success, we need to ask the wrong things (and be okay with it) to know what’s right.
Back to nature. Mind wandering and tinkering with ideas in a blanket of trees is a beautiful place for memory consolidation. We all use our brains to replay different memories and deem them important or not to our conscious awareness. And understanding those bubbling thoughts takes time and patience, often found in nature. The more we do this outside of nature, the more likely we suppress ourselves because we’re already overwhelmed by everything else. The more tension we hold from this, the harder it is to feel quiet and still. More stress = more time off our lives.
Many great minds advocate walking and spending time outside with your thoughts, away from where you typically deal with all your other duties. Here, you’ll find better questions to ask, clear your queue of thoughts (a frequent challenge for us all), and indeed be able to work on one thing at a time.