MFM Mini - A Guide to Asking Better Questions

yeah i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking back lie alright i sat down to record this and i asked myself what would be amazing what would be awesome if i was gonna share with you and i decided to pull something out of my secret stash so you know if you go to someone's house imagine if you go to some billionaires house you walk through the front door the gates open the butler takes your coat you walk through you know somebody walks by with an order platter you grab it you like the tuna you keep walking forward and he says oh would you like to see my collection he said my collection you don't know what it's gonna be shoes watches cars he takes you down into the seller and he shows you the wine collection and starts talking to you about it that's what i'm gonna do right now i'm gonna take you to my collection but i don't collect wine i don't collect watches or cars i collect questions and so this podcast is all about some of the great questions for my questions stash i have been keeping a a note you know a notebook or a notepad of great questions because i have this phrase which is ask a better question get a better answer and it's really come true for me in my life i've been able to connect with people or get to the heart of the issue or find out information i needed to find out just by asking a slightly different question it's kind of amazing just phrasing things differently we'll have a totally different result so i'm gonna go through rapid fire i'll try to keep this short so we'll go through rapid fire if people are interested we could always talk more about this later but i'm gonna go through quickly of some great questions so let's start with the light lighthearted stuff okay these are slight improvements when you're talking to other people so one of the worst questions that's the most common question is just oh hey how's it going hey how's your day right and that results in fine good right and that's it kind of a dead end question as far as i'm good concerned so i like to frame things a little differently when i see somebody that i wanna talk to that you know we we for a meeting or whatever it is i'll say something you know just a little bit different it doesn't even matter like words don't matter it's just trying to get to something specific that will get beyond the the trap of fine or goods so i might say i got a little pep in your step today you know what you what do you have for breakfast or you look happy what were you doing right before this right so somebody could just pop on a zoom and i'll hit him with that you look happy what were you doing before this oh actually i was on a call with blah blah or oh i was actually just cooking food doesn't matter what it is i got him talking it was a genuine question and they to start to open up a little bit more instead of just getting stuck in the cookie cutter fine and good trap okay what else if you wanna get to know somebody instead of saying oh what do you like to do and then they'll start to think about like hobbies and just sort of say generic i like to travel oh i like the movies of course everybody likes the movies instead what i'll do is i'll say i'll say you know i only ever see you at the office what's an ideal friday night for you what do you like to do right take me through i don't you wake up or take me through ideal sunday morning right and then people will start to tell me what they actually do in their life so instead of thinking thinking about vague generic things that they like they'll recall something specific that they do as a as a habit and that'll actually tell you a lot about a person they like to go hiking every sunday with their friends or you know i always you know me and my daughter we have this teeth brush routine and then we watch the cartoons and i make a pancakes whatever it is you'll get something real out of it okay so those are some quick light lighthearted ones let's go to work related okay so here's some and by the way each one of these have a long list but i'm just gonna hop between categories okay so work related i've said this one before on the pod but one question many bosses and managers ask is they're asking about a timeline for something i always did this i worked with engineers i don't know how long stuff takes to make sometimes i thought things would be really complicated and they're like oh that's one line of code and other times i thought things would be simple and they're like that's six months of ref code if you want that and so i used to always was ask when when will we have this done right when will that get done and people hate getting timelines and there's just a generic like problem with this some people will always sand bag so they'll always say a long time and try to like deliver faster than that some people wanna make you happy so they tell you an optimistic timeline but it always ends up taking it longer and so these things were so inaccurate so i heard a better question from dan k he's this he's the i know chief product officer at twitch what i was there and what he would say is he goes you know i know we don't know the exact timeline but when would what if if i said that this was gonna launch in august or september what month would you be surprised oh wow we didn't launch it by then so he said when would you be surprised if we didn't have this done and that was just that created kinda like the first it got people's guard down they weren't being asked for an estimate in in a traditional way and the second thing is that they would take that and they would start to kinda like like when you would be surprised by it not being out means that's sort of like the bottom bar like it's definitely gonna be out by then and then he would you know follow up and say okay great and you know so best case scenario what are you thinking right and he would get a more accurate time range using that rather than just saying when is this gonna be done so better question you got a better answer some other questions i like to ask in the work context sometimes i'll list of people explain something and it's a really big heavy plan and i'll just say men all that sounds really hard what would be easy and this question had annoys people because they're like it was easy i would have told you but in reality when you asked them and you asked them what would be easy they actually do come up with an answer that's pretty good similarly if somebody says a big plan like a long like we're gonna do this and then this and then this i'll say oh okay like that sounds like a huge plan like it what you know my brain i'm not as smart as you so like imagine we were all like that imagine we all had half the iq we have today what would be the dumb simple plan we would do to make some progress and i'm trying to get them to think outside the box think differently because people get stuck one track thinking and they have blind on to all the other possibilities so i'm trying to just break that pattern and get them to see some other possibilities some other ones i will ask you know if i'm leading if i'm if i manage somebody and they manage people i'll say hey you don't have to tell me this answer but it's a good question to ask yourself what's a what's a con what's a conversation you've been avoiding who we're all avoiding some conversations whether it's personal professional another one will be i'll wake up in the morning and i'll think about work and i'll say who needs my help today oftentimes there's people in the company that are struggling either personally professionally and we kinda put off dealing with it because we don't have to the fire is not burning yet the house is not burning down but you kinda wanna address it when it's a little spark before the house burns down so who needs my help today okay let's go to self talk right the most important dialogue you know happens in our head and so you know here's some of the ones that i asked myself on a daily basis so the this one's work related i'll say if i could only work two hours today but i still wanted it today to be a huge success what would i do in those two hours this is a way of cutting through all the bs all the busy work the small things that are easy to just eat up our time and just say okay if i really could only work for two hours today what would be what did i work on for those two hours another one you know i would say i i've asked this question how loud for what would sully do i have a friend sue who i think is just amazing at business he just has a knack for just finding the the the the fastest path solution for just being like kind of a phd in common sense and so i just step back i say what would absolutely do or similarly if i'm talking to somebody else i'll say sounds like you're stuck and you don't know what to do but you always was given me great advice so what would you advice yourself in the situation if you were giving advice to yourself what would you say if you if you weren't you or i'll i'll ask them yeah i know you don't know the answer but if you did know if you did know the answer what would you say people that that really fucks people's folks people's minds don't know what to do with that one but it it is actually pretty useful as a way to again shake their pattern and get them to think differently questions i will ask ask myself let's go back to this what are my anti goals i can often think about what i want but sometimes it's very useful to think about what i don't want i learned this from andrew wilkinson he he used to talk about anti goals meaning instead of thinking about what's the perfect life and how do i wanna make my life better he thinks about what's misery what do i hate and let me just avoid misery right invert and just instead of thinking about what's the dream think about you know what's instead of thinking about heaven think about health and and then just make sure you avoid that and you end up doing pretty well then a question i asked myself another one i like here i like this one am i playing a stupid game naval has this phrase play stupid games win stupid prizes right if you're at a carnival and you go up to you know the little water squirt gun game where you gotta squirt the water into little hole and if if you could do it the best out of everybody you know you win the giant stuffed animal and then there you are forty minutes later you've put eighty five dollars into this game and you win and you win the six dollar stuffed animal that you could had to begin with and it's just a reminder there are many examples of this i've done this many many times i've worked on dumb startups worked on dumb ideas right i played a stupid game and if you play a stupid game you're gonna win a stupid prize so i try to stop and ask myself am i playing a stupid game an example of a stupid game is trying to win a argument on twitter or convince somebody to you know change their mind and when it doesn't really matter you convince people i'm right that that sort of thing is is an example of a stupid game that you can play another question to ask is this the beginning or is this the end this is great for relationships you get in into break breakups are tough is this the beginning or the end feels like the end but it's also the beginning and you gotta ask yourself if i treat this like the end then yeah i'm gonna feel a certain type of way right i'm gonna feel the way you feel at the end but if i view this as the beginning i'm gonna feel very differently so i gotta ask myself is this the beginning or the end they happen at the same time similar one that's a little bit kind of like self healthy in that vein is is that the thing or am i a thing that's just a reminder of where is the power when a situation is overwhelming you you're saying oh man i'm making that the thing no no i'm the thing so you're making it about yourself so it's if somebody else is acting in some way that you find stupid are you making are you making them the thing or are you the thing it's about taking back control and being able to own parts that you control and control your own experience that way another one for work that i like is if i wasn't already doing this would i do this this goes back to my phrase inertia is a bitch when you're a lot of times the things that we were doing we're only doing because we were already doing them and so it's worth having an honest question i wasn't already doing this would i be doing this if i wasn't already in this job would i be in what i apply for this job if i wasn't dating this person would i asked them out on a date alright so so you wanna avoid doing things that you wouldn't do if you weren't already doing them and i'll leave you with a couple more that i think are are fun i like to ask this for myself and for others which is like what's something you're happy to overs spend on right we all have things that we're really cost conscious about we're really frugal with penny pinch i we have other things that we're willing to splurge on so what am i happy to overs spend on right i always picked this for me this was books i i will always buy a book instantaneously whether i plan to read it or not whether i had money or not i will always buy a book because that's sort of a potential knowledge a potential life change that i could have for ten bucks and socks socks is another one i hate fuss with having mismatched socks or not enough socks so i will overs spend on socks i will buy a hundred of my favorite pair of socks and then when they're those are done i'll just buy a hundred more i'm happy to overs spend it just gives me joy and so similarly it's a way to get to know somebody else it's a good way to get to know yourself and to get to know somebody else what are they willing to stupidly overs spend on even though they know maybe not the the best most logical solution okay those were some rapid fire questions from my questions stash i don't know if this is entertaining to you i don't know if that was helpful to you but i will publish that on my my newsletter if you if you subscribe you'll get the written version of that because those are probably hard to remember so go to go to sean por dot com just pop your email in there and i'll put it in i'll put it into the welcome sequence where i put just a a list of little question bank of some of my favorite questions i don't give you all of them these are precious i've been hunting these for a long time but i will give you you know whatever twenty twenty five of these that i really like ask a better question get a better answer alright that's all for me i hope you enjoy this many episode let me know what you think tweet at me or email me i'm sean at sean dot com hey my first million listeners this is steph again from trends dot c now most of you probably know trends as the idea and newsletter because that's what we do we 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feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road travel never looking back