Jacqueline Chen

Accepting that where you are right now is okay is incredibly powerful and an integral part of learning to like yourself. You don’t have to love where you are; you just have to be okay with it as a starting point.

Instead of letting your lazy brain take over, you want to make sure you are solving the right problem. You decide to unask the question. You refuse to limit reality to a dualistic approach — innovation is about creating new solutions, not choosing among existing options.

Question substitution is a time-saving, but lazy way we use to preserve mental energy. As Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in this MIT Sloan piece: “When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”