The Importance of asking "Why?"

Why?

It's the single word question we ask so much as children, much to our parents displeasure.

This is an article of generalisations, generalisations that I’ve found to be true. I don’t want you to take offence, I just want you to challenge yourself, because at the end of the day if there’s no challenge then what’s the point in having this wonderful grey matter between our ears?

We're all curious as children, we want to know the answers, we want to discover what things mean, and really we search for knowledge.

We're also uniquely unprejudiced, the world hasn’t jaded us, we haven’t discovered the frustration of politics, within our own lives, with our business, and within our world.

However, as we form opinions and become self-obsessed teenagers we're usually revelling in our own ideas and have little interest in accepting things that don't fit our world view.

This can easily carry on into adulthood. I am guilty of it, not accepting someone else’s opinion because it challenged my own, but I work very hard to be objective now. To challenge my own opinions and ways of doing things, because I want to get better at what I do and how I do it.

Opinions are usually held very closely to the heart and we will fight for them. This might be our favourite brand of shoe, it might be our favourite technology company, it might even be our favourite Sushi restaurant, whatever the case, it can take a lot of persuading to convince us to let go of that opinion.

The only problem with an opinion is that most people don't ask that key question that they once asked so frequently - “why?”

"Why do I hold this opinion? Why does it have merit? Why is this the best way?"

When probed further a lot of us can't actually answer that. It may be untangable, a feeling, or something else, but in most cases it's explainable - we just don't know why, and thus we shouldn't hold that opinion so closely.

Why? (there's that key question) Because it's only doing us harm.

I work as a Front End Developer and I have come across many of my fellow developers during my time. I can quickly tell you, as a fact, that the best developers I have encountered are those who constantly question themselves, and that the worst (or even mediocre) developers I have encountered are those who don't.

Many of the encounters with the latter group end exactly the same. I might make a suggestion, have you seen this new technology? have you tried this new method of working? have you seen this new way of approaching that problem? Their answer is universally the same "no I am not interested, I am happy with the technology I work with/the way I work/what I am doing, and I’m not interested in what you’re suggesting at all!".

That lack of interest in learning and changing is what will leave you in the past and stop you from evolving.

I can't imagine that our evolution as a species would have been quite the same if we'd all just said "No thank you, I won't have any of that adventuring, crafting, hunting, or socialising. I will just sit here in my cave and live with the things that I am familiar with.”

To this end, my message is simple and not hostile - introspection is an important part of learning to learn.

If you can't doubt yourself, then you'll never have reason to look for new ways of approaching existing tasks.

On the flipside of all this, it’s extremely important to note that the introspection process does not always have to land out of your favour.

If you know exactly why you do something and there is great reasoning for it then you have absolute reasoning to explain that to others and show them another approach.

It’s kind of like the difference between constructive criticism and verbose whinging - one helps and the other hinders.

If you can’t explain why you hold an opinion, then why hold it at all? If you know precisely why you hold that opinion and the reasoning is still relevant and valid, then you have a strong opinion that is worth holding onto.

And just remember, if everyone disagrees with you, you’re either completely wrong (if you can’t explain why) or completely right (if you can explain why).