Do You Inquire Well?
Twitter is my guilty pleasure.
I know it warps the world - and my view of it.
I know it biases towards the extreme. And populist. And popular.
I know it's disruptive and makes me anxious. Although maybe the familiarity of that appeals. The mind and nervous system is perverse, after all.
Yesterday someone was talking about a tool they use. Not for putting up pictures. But wrestling the mind. The telling of the tool fits into the obligatory sub 2 min video necessary to twitter to skittish minds. Like mine.
It was shared by a once upon a time child chess grand master. Presumably when he was a child. He's not that anymore. Now middle aged, with a skater ethic who says fuck.
MIQ
Most Important Question.
(See what they did there?).
The general thesis being: it’s more important to understand the right questions, the right area of focus, than rushing around busying for solutions. In his chess view of the world, there's no point envisaging 50 moves deep if the second is wrong.
This tallies with Einstein - everyone's go to for a wise quote: spend a disproportionate time understanding the right questions, not busying for answers. He said. Sort of. Maybe.
MIQ goes like this:
Towards the end of the day, spend a few dedicated minutes marinating in the problem at hand. I'd say make this a whole body exercise, drawing on the wisdom of your three brains.
The objective to understand the most important question, not find solutions.
Marinade.
Think.
Sit.
What is the most important question which needs resolving and / or clarifying in what I'm working on?
Then park it. Leave it. Step away. And disappear back to life. The objective is not answers then and there. But later. Put it into and on your sleep to deliver the necessary wisdom. Make it a chat between the two consciousness-es.
Your ask, essentially, is for your sub conscious and your conscious mind to collude and deliver you wisdom over the night. Wake up to insight.
I tried it last night.
I had very vivid dreams.
And woke up with an intensity and a pervasive anxiety.
In the haze of my morning, after my own morning sit, I was reminded back to the importance of holding outcomes lightly. Or not at all.
I often talk with clients about focusing on the inputs - of a process, a journey - and letting the outcomes take care of themselves. Important but hard.
In a roundabout way, this is what I was pointed back to this morning. Letting the outcomes take care of themselves, however we feel, whatever we wish.
This feels important for wise leaders. This important for navigating challenging times.
How are you with discomfort?
I was listening to a talk given by Sujith Ravindran. He a life loving contemporary mystic from India. I spoke to him on my Peripheral Thinking podcast a year or so ago. He was talking about the importance of detachment. He went further; suggesting the size of your return or reward is linked to the extent of your detachment from the outcome. In short: expect little, enjoy much.
Between my MIQ experience and Sujith’s insight we're reminded to two questions / provocations:
To what extent do you give without expecting in return? In other words, detach from outcome.
How are you with discomfort?
Maybe it all starts here.
Your ability to lead in challenging times.
To deal with the noise of a twitter-verse, whether online or off.
Your ability to hold outcomes lightly; giving without expecting in return.
All this requires an ability to sit with discomfort.
Here's a little tool I use to ease into this. It's called Just Three Breaths. Part of the ‘Stop Breathe Go’ toolkit of LeanMind. It's for people too busy to meditate.
Have a listen here. And download if you wish.
Too Busy To Meditate? Try this!
Have a play. Maybe practice when you're triggered. Or feeling a wave of anxiety. Or trying to hold the outcome lightly. Or just before marinading in your MIQ exercise.
Or, at the very least, try Just Three Breaths before and after losing minutes/hours/days of your life in a shouty, nervous, scared Twitter verse.
And… if you’d like more of these insights, sign up to my weekly email here