What I learn from my 4 year old

How can we re-learn the ability to be inquisitive?

We all were as inquisitive when we were 4 year old as my son is. But later on something changed and we stopped asking questions. So, it is not a matter of re-learning the ability to ask questions so much as to re-discover what we already know from childhood.

One method that has helped me immensely to re-discover this ability is when I decided to ask questions every day on a particular field/task that I did and started asking questions related to that field/task. Also, I have realized that the most basic questions gave me the best insights. Questions like:

· What is my objective in this field or task or project?
· Why is this objective important?
· Why am I doing this particular task?
· Does this task help me achieve my objective?
· How am I doing this task? Is there a faster/easier/effective way to do this task and achieve the objectives?
· What happens if I decide not to do this task from today? Does the main objective gets affected? How badly? If it does not, then why do this task?

The key is not only to ask these questions, but also to actually write down the answers. Then read through the answers and see if these answers still make sense to you. Once I started doing this on a daily basis for one area in my life a day, I slowly realized that I was able to re-discover the habit to be inquisitive.

This ability helped me immensely in only doing tasks that actually had a good impact on my objectives (personal or professional) and a quantum leap in my productivity.

What does this mean to me at a more personal level?
· I now have more time to spend with my 4 year old son.
· I use this time to enhance/enrich my relationship with him by engaging in activities that are the most crucial for his up-bringing &
· I also have enough time for myself apart from spending quality time with my wife, son and also completing my professional obligations.

I am much more happier than I ever was.

I will try to explore the other question (“What can we do so that it becomes ingrained in the DNA of our team or organization?”) tomorrow as it is time for me to go home to my 4 year old son.

What I learn from my 4 year old

I have been trying to spend more time with Yuvan, my 4 year old son recently and have realized that there is so many things I can learn from him.



He is constantly striving to learn about new stuff. He naturally has the tendency to ask questions like What is this ? why is this like it is ? How does it work ? why does it work like this only ? and when I answer his question, he starts off with more questions on the answer that I give. At some point, I can not keep up and just tell him to stop or just divert his attention.



As we grow up, i think we loose this ability to question things around us and then stop learning. A lot of this is got to do with the schooling that we get. If we ask too many questions in school, the teachers get upset; The parents do not have time to answer these questions. Also, as we grow up we realize that answering questions is more fruitful than asking questions. This is when we loose the inclination to ask questions.



How important is this ability to ask simple questions ? I think what organizations lack is this abillity to constantly keep questioning about what they do and why they do it. This leads to complacency and silos creeping in the organization. This could be one of the biggest reason for resistance to change.



This leads to the questions :

How can we re-learn the ability to question ? What can we do so that it becomes ingrained in the DNA of our team or organization ? I will try and explore these questions in detail in the next blog in the series.



Love

Mukesh