Saturday, March 29, 2014

Questioning – a sure shot way to Excellence

Let us look at the following quotes
  • I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself. (Elon Musk)
  • Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. (Vinod Khosla)
  • The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity (Albert Einstein)
  • In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted (Bertrand Russell
  • He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever Chinese Proverb
  • Questioning is to thinking as yeast is to bread making.Questioning is what converts the stuff of thinking into something of value.( Jamie McKenzie)

If we read through quotes from some of the eminent persons mentioned above, It becomes clear that questioning is critical for enhancing our knowledge as said by many eminent personalities from all walks of life. Most of our scriptures as well as scientific works are actually answers to questions asked by some one. So a question comes to mind that can we use this technique of questioning to improve our level of excellence effectively? I think we can!  

As we know and discussed in previous blogs, “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and professional life.  The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence  

When we want to improve our level of excellence, we need to first identify what level we are in and what needs to be done to move to higher level, then execute them to reach to the higher level of excellence. We can actually use questioning for this purpose. If we question the “status quo” in our life and ask why for the same, we will get the answers to what we need to do to improve. Whenever we feel comfortable in doing a specific activity and feel that we have achieved all the things necessary to do this activity and consider ourselves as experts or we do not find difficulty in doing the specific activity; it is time for us to question ourselves to check what can be done to better the same, what would push us to the zone of uncomfortability for the next level. As soon as we feel comfortable and being human we prefer to be in the level of comfortability, we stop improving our excellence and as the time passes, we start falling down. So questioning oneself regularly and answering the questions by being truthful to oneself provides us the way to the next level of excellence.  It is very easy to question others but questioning oneself requires courage as one feels that everything one is doing is the right and best way of doing things. Even if we question ourselves, it requires further courage to answer them truthfully. We actually know what can be done to improve our level of excellence but either do not admit it or we are lazy to take those additional efforts and continue to use shortcuts which keeps us at lower levels of excellence. So questioning status Quo and answering it truthfully surely takes us to the next level of excellence. 

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