Asking questions — the why and how

Very often we think “I will look so stupid asking this question”, “Everyone around me knows this, I don’t”, “They are going to judge me if I ask this” and so on…

But have you ever wondered what will happen if you start believing that your questions are not being judged?

This mentality shift is a huge one and obviously difficult. We’ve grown up with no answers to our questions or a giggle from the other corner of the classroom or a “this is not meant for you”. So it makes sense that many of us have stopped asking questions because we fear judgement.

If you want to let go of this habit of not asking questions, consider the following paragraphs as encouragement for the same :)

How to make the mentality shift

We all have times when we are clueless and helpless about anything and everything. It’s not your fault, so whom should you turn to for your answers, especially when you feel under confident about asking?

The internet is at your service! I learnt this the hard way. In my second year, I had a bunch of assignments and I turned to the concept of “Internet search first”. Trust me, it made my assignments much easier — I was less dependent on anyone else and learnt way more than I intended to. With time, this became my go-to strategy, first check on the internet and then ask anyone else. This helps in two ways — First of all, you can save the time of the person you plan to ask questions to. Second, by googling you can find much more information than just one direct answer. Moreover, since you know no one is judging, you start trying to get answers for more questions on the internet. Slowly you will start asking more questions to people too.

Any day, if a question pops in your head and you are unsure about asking it, ask yourself this — will I find it on Google? If the answer is yes, check out that source first. If you find your answer, great! If not, then ask a human. If you already know you will not find it on Google, then ask a human! This will increase your confidence while asking questions. This is because after checking on the internet, you’ll have surety that the answer is not-so-obvious or in simpler terms your question will not look stupid.

Whenever you ask a question just keep one thing in mind — it is going to help YOU the most, no matter what. More on this later.

How can you ask questions that matter

In the past, I’ve been the kind of person who had no questions after a presentation and not many topics to have one-on-one discussions on. Here, I will quickly list a few things I tried to follow in the past which made me a more curious person eventually -

• Thinking of the five W’s and one H — If you are attending a presentation and feel that something is missing but aren’t able to articulate, think of Why/Who/When/Where/What/How. If you feel you don’t have the answer for any of these, voila! You have your question(s) ready.
• Read — At first glance this advice seems to be old school but I am not talking about reading books, I am talking about reading people’s experiences. This is something I started when I was searching for a piece of information and ended up reading a Medium blog on it. The blog was well written which led me to check out other blogs by the author. The blogs were about her lifestyle and work which gave me a different perspective of life. Eventually I started reading more blogs on lifestyle and it introduced me to a bunch of ways people live, think, act and react to situations. This eventually helped me step out of my bubble and be curious about other people’s lives too. Thus, making conversations more interesting.
• Prepare — When you know you are meeting someone for discussion on a specific topic, try your best to prepare a list of questions you need to ask. This prevents awkward silences, repetitive questions and helps both sides utilise their time well.

How asking questions helps you

Long story short, asking questions

• Helps you help yourself — whether you are asking questions on the internet or to a person, you are the one learning and growing by asking questions.
• Helps you have more engaging conversations — when you ask interesting questions you get to know about interesting things. This makes the conversation fun and memorable.
• Increases your curiosity — let me be honest, we don’t always find the answers to all our questions. For some, we just need to put extra effort to find them, making the fruit even sweeter.

So go on and ask questions without the fear of judgement!

Hi there! Thank you so much for giving this blog a read. You can reach out to me via mail (miloni.mittal@gmail.com) for any queries or for a small chit-chat :)