The Why Method

Hey - It’s Michael.

Had quite a few revelations these days. Life keeps on surprising me. Enjoy the newsletter!

You’re in this meeting but it feels off. You follow that project but somehow it doesn’t feel aligned with what you want or is needed to succeed. You’re in a conversation and afterwards you regret saying xyz. A big decision is ahead of you and there are too many options, or too few, and it’s hard to go on.

You try to look for help in others. Everybody else seems to have it figured out, yet when you look closely they’re just as lost. It’s a mess.

Work (or Life) sometimes seems complicated, but it really is not. It is very simple indeed.

All you have to do is listen to yourself.

You ask and you listen.

The method is simple. In anything you do, ask yourself Why until you get to the core of your motivation.

This will free up a lot of energy or let you drop the thing at hand easily if it doesn’t fit the goal (or what you truly want).

You can use this method of asking Why when you:

Principle:

Ask yourself why until you get to your core motivation

Imagine this process like the great sculpting of Michelangelo. He takes a block of marble, prepares, sketches and finally frees it of all clutter to reveal the statue (= the core motivation or reason).

There is always a reason why you do something.

Whether this reason is aligned with what you really want or needed to succeed is a different question. Find out by making your choice conscious. Find out by asking Why until you get to the bottom.

Write down the answer to your Why, ask it again. Write down the next answer. Keep going until there is no new information.

Before you say something, ask Why five times.

Before you have a meeting, ask Why five times.

Before you follow a small project, ask Why five times.

Before you go after this monthly goal, ask Why five times.

Before you take this big decision that affects your whole year, ask Why five times.

Before you chose your life partner, ask Why five times.

A real-life example for a decision I made the other day:

I was introduced to a highly successful person in my field, someone with a busy calendar, someone most people never get attention from, even if they tried hard.

Yet I declined the first meeting invite.

Why? I had a medical appointment scheduled (that I could reschedule).

Why not reschedule? Because the appointment was health-related.

Why is this a priority? Because nothing is more important than my health.

Why? If I’m not healthy, it’s impossible to perform well.

Why? Cause I’ll be unable to think clearly & act decisively.

Why? Cause my ill body will draw energy to heal itself and resources will be short for effective work.

Why? Cause there is a physical limit to what my body can do.

So a small decision, something that I would have ruminated on for hours earlier in life, now took about 5 seconds to make. Simply because I kept asking myself Why in many different contexts.

It’s ironic. Only by getting my priorities straight and asking Why many times did I get into a position of getting such a meeting. And the reason why I declined the first opportunity is precisely the reason why I got the opportunity in the first place.

And yes, I did get another meeting opportunity.

Important note: be careful to only ask Why for questions you can actually answer. Ask it to get to your core, not to the core of others. Trying to answer Why somebody else did what they did, or said what they said is a futile action - a waste of energy - that will never give you a true answer because in fact you can never truly know.

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” - Michelangelo

Which questions I’m asking myself often can I actually answer?

See you next week - Michael