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9 Reasons to Ask More Questions
Reclaiming your inquisitive nature can make life better in a few critical ways
I have a three-year-old nephew who, like a lot of three-year-olds, asks a great deal of questions: Can you drive faster? What do plants eat? Why can’t we poop in the tub? Sure, it’s cute, even if it’s also a little exasperating. But for adults who’ve lost that inquisitive nature — which is, ahem, most of us — it should also be aspirational.
Asking questions isn’t just a useful mechanism for getting the salt passed to you at the dinner table. It’s also an undervalued skill set. And while it may sound strange to describe such a simple rhetorical device this way, that’s exactly how psychologists think of it: as a remarkably powerful strategy for improving one’s life in surprising, sometimes counterintuitive ways.
The problem is most adults treat asking questions like we treat touching the door handle of a public restroom: sometimes necessary, but also unpleasant and best avoided whenever possible. One 2013 survey found that four-year-old girls are the most prolific askers, averaging one question every minute and 56 seconds — but it’s not uncommon for that same girl to ask zero questions per day by the time she hits junior high.
The reasons for this decline are varied. Some of us, experts say, become too egocentric to invite viewpoints outside our own. Others are terrified of being seen as a nuisance (a particularly common fear among women, studies show). And still others are afraid of seeming ignorant or incompetent in front of peers, a worry that kicks into overdrive in adolescence and never really goes away. “There are so many vulnerabilities surrounding this,” says Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question and The Book of Beautiful Questions. “It can really feel like questions are a dangerous thing.”
Ask someone for help, and you validate that person’s intelligence, making them inclined to feel more positively toward you.
The good news is that these fears are wildly misplaced. In fact, your most successful and respected peers are likely serial question askers. If you can get past the insecurities and learn to harness the…
