Question and Question

This week at The Happy Homunculus, it's all about feedback for us and our homunculi, and if we're ever going to get and use quality feedback to be awesome, then we need to work on a few mental-ninja-skillz.  Yesterday, we practiced not speaking and used our aural acumen as a first step to learning something new.  Today, we're going to take things a step further and prompt for more information: forget Q&A, today is all about Q&Q.

I have a question!

While listening is a critical skill, it has it's limitations when used alone.  In particular, it's passive: you don't influence the course of discussion.  Now, this can be a great way to learn totally new stuff.  However, if we want to get information that is relevant to our situation, or just plain interesting to us, then we need to steer the convo a bit.

So, today, we're going to practice asking questions.  The Daily Mind Game for today is to try to ask as many questions as possible without freaking people out.

Question and Question

Task: When speaking, only use questions.

Info: Don't lose sight of social norms here.  You don't want people to catch on to our little game, so only ask questions when it seems appropriate.  In addition, if the situation requires that you give some input, do so.  We don't want to be weirdos.  That being said, try to ask as many questions as possible today and really listen to the answer.  I've tried this, and as someone who loves to hear himself talk, this was a tough challenge.  I kept catching myself opening my big mouth!  Give it a try for yourself.

Goal: Maximize time spent asking questions.

Further reading:

- http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2011/08/the-art-of-asking-questions.html
- http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/ask-questions.html

And, check out Working with Emotional Intelligence for even more on this topic, and others.