Questions

If I could ask the world every question I had and get answers immediately, my path to success would be considerably smoother.

Alas, I do not have any such ability – but I still need that information.

In absence of instant answers, I often forget or fail to consider my most important questions.

Since the world isn't going to go out of its way to teach me (and my Twitter following isn't large enough yet), I need to store and organize all of my questions so that I can focus on the right ones and answer them in time.

To do this, I'm trying an experiment.

I'm going to write down every single question that I have about financial independence, indie hacking, real estate, and personal development. The tricky ones, the ones you can't just Google. The unkept secrets of the business world.

I'll prioritize them by importance and write answers out as fully as possible as I find them. I'll do my best to include all relevant context with my questions, and interlink questions to one another wherever possible to build a sort of Zettelkasten.

I plan on using a construction for my questions and for my organization similar to the one Thomas Aquinas used in his comprehensive summary of theology, the aptly named Summa Theologica.

His approach is genius. Structuring information as questions, objections, and answers rather than bare unqualified statements leads to a method of thinking that is always seeking to understand matters from their root.

It will help me both organize the information in an intuitive way and identify the right questions to ask, and it should also help me identify the obvious, important questions that are oh so easy to miss.

The problem is, our brains optimize for conserving energy in the present, without counting the cost to the future – yet another broken remnant of our hunter-gatherer days.

We shy away from asking hard questions, when often those exact questions are the ones we most need to answer.

By asking the five whys, seeking to build understandings from first principles, and trying to think outside the box, I will systematically identify the gaps in my thinking and identify critical insights that I might otherwise miss.

I'm going to do this all in public in order to help others, build an audience, and most importantly force myself to think critically for fear of saying stupid things.

I hope you find it useful! You can take a look here.