Six Unusual Questions for Daily Introspection

One question is already 95% of the successful completion of the task.

I have collected a few unusual ones for you to ask yourself every day.

As Robin Sharma wrote: “Ask the right question, and I promise: the answer you are looking for will pop up by itself — when the time comes.”

“Is my water hot?”

If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will immediately jump out.

If you throw it into cold water and then gradually heat it, the frog will get used to the temperature. He will not notice anything and will die.

Burnout works the same way. It cannot be noticed immediately. Your “water” heats up gradually. This fatigue builds up until it gets hot to the limit.

Ask yourself every day, “Is my water hot?” Pay attention to even small changes in your attitude to work. Small problems are easier to deal with.

“What do you want right now?”

Recently I heard an interesting idea. If you see that a person who was always cheerful and initiative suddenly became indifferent and detached, this is a reason to rejoice for him.

Respect apathy, because it signals that it’s time to change your usual actions. May change work, daily routine, or environment. Many of us may have never achieved anything if not for the feeling that we are already “at the bottom.”

To get up properly, you need to push off the bottom and swim out.

If you see that your colleague, close friend, or relative is indifferent to everything, ask him: “What do you want now?”

If this person is you, then give yourself some time. And then answer the question: “What do I want right now?” What’s the easiest, simplest, and most affordable thing you can do to change the present?

“Where are you now?”

I don’t believe you can be a fully balanced person. Some areas of life will always “sink” a little. For example, a career will require us to give up our personal lives, or vice versa. It is much more important to stop on time and ask yourself the question: “Where am I now?”

It helps you return to the present moment and remember if all your actions are so important.

And this question also pulls us out of the state when we live on “autopilot”. For example, when we exaggerate that everything is bad with us.

“Is it time to start a riot?”

IKEA was considered a bunch of madmen.

And there was a reason: the new business model, the sale of furniture by catalog, the structure of stores and the percentage of sales to employees — everything went against the existing order, but every time it brought success.

All the broken templates became the building blocks of the company that exists today.

Ask yourself the question, “Is it time to start a riot?” To do the same as IKEA.

The point is not to declare war on a routine for the sake of war itself. It is important to find ideas that no one else has used before. Follow your own path, not imitate.

“What am I doing?”

When a person works a lot, travels on business trips, takes work home, they say about him: “How productive he is!”

Productivity is not about working harder.

Someone who sets goals and achieves them can be called productive.

He sets a plan and executes it, does not stay late at work, and leaves on time.

In a sense, each of us is already productive.

If you go to rest with friends in the evening, but you cannot relax and are busy with your thoughts, then you will not do what you want. This is unproductive.

Working on vacation is also unproductive because you need a vacation to relax.

Ask yourself, “What am I doing?” To see if you are productive right now.

“Is my head empty?”

The head is a bad place to remember ideas. It is believed that the brain is able to simultaneously hold no more than 3–4 tasks at a time. In practice, there are many more.

One of my acquaintances thinks: “It is not written down, so this does not exist.” I agree with him. It’s stressful to think all the time about not forgetting anything.

An idea came to mind — you need to remember it.

We remembered that we had to buy milk home — we must not forget it until evening.

We read a cool joke — you need to use it at the presentation, just not to forget!

Ask yourself several times a day: “Is my head empty?”

This will be a signal that it’s time to write ideas out of your head in your phone notes; move the meeting from thoughts to the calendar; write the case in the diary.

This will give your head peace and freedom for new thoughts.