You Don’t Need More Answers


I’ve noticed lately that there’s a whole lot of waiting going on. Waiting for permission, waiting for resources, waiting for the market to be right, waiting for a brilliant idea, waiting for…whatever. But the most prevalent kind of waiting, I’ve noticed, is waiting for answers. But here’s the thing: we don’t need them.Waiting for answers is often a kind of procrastination driven by fear of the unknown. It could be a fear of failure (What will happen if I get this wrong?) or fear of success (Am I really worth this kind of success? Can I sustain it? Am I really a fraud?). We crave answers to our questions because we somehow think that the right answers will mitigate our risk.

But it won’t. Why? Because on the other side of every answer – every single one – is more questions.

Everything worthwhile – life, business, relationships, creating – is less about getting the answers right, and more about getting the questions right. The better we get at zeroing in on the right questions – the ones that really matter – the quicker we’ll gain traction and the more comfortable we’ll be with the uncertainty.

Do you know what your questions really are? The ones that are keeping you from moving forward? The ones that strike fear in your heart? Once you come to terms with them, movement becomes infinitely easier because you realize that it’s questions all the way down.

Stop obsessing on and being paralyzed by answers. In my opinion, each answer only leads to more questions. As such, life is the process of exchanging questions with ever-better questions.

Thoughts?

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  • Greg

    Thank you. It’s time I quit waiting for answers – frankly they’re the same ones I’ve been hearing for the past few years. Time to start asking my own questions.

  • Prisca Jarf

    So true! I experience this quite frquently! Thanks for the motivation to get moving!

  • http://www.accidentalcreative.com Todd Henry

    Greg, this is something I’m writing as a way to remind myself as well. I think I can fall prey to the paralysis of analysis and not move out of fear of getting it wrong. That’s a miserable way to spend time and energy.

  • http://www.accidentalcreative.com Todd Henry

    Glad it’s helpful, Prisca!

  • http://twitter.com/jimweible Jim Weible

    Thanks for the good reminder. I once created a character as a farce of myself known as Mr. Mediocrity. “His” super power was analyzing things and people to death. Somehow, it is easy for us to believe that being ‘right’ is preferable to being unique or brilliant and that waiting for “the answer” will ensure our need to be right.
    Good thoughts. Now will the thoughts become brilliant actions?

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  • Fractalshift

    I think the need for answers now is so we have someone else to blame…If we go and find our own answers, and then, subsequently discover later that the answers we found are wrong, who can we blame but ourselves. That requires self-actualization, and self-reliance…hard to come by in an environment heavy with fear.
    We can assuage our fears by reliance on others to give us answers, we aren’t comfortable with uncertainty. There are social reasons why (I think) we are this way but I’ll save that for some other time. I’ll just sum it up by saying: Fear of our own strength and weakness is at the heart of our need for answers, maybe we should try to trust ourselves and let go…we may find it’s not so bad being the captain of our own ship.

  • Teresa Duffy

    Waiting is indeed a form of Resistance, and as Pressfield refers to in his book “The War of Art”, Resistance is out to kill our Genius. The waiting period is the most fertile ground for Resistance to take root, and if we wait too long before moving forward, cognitive exhaustion followed by atrophy will set in. So, if you think about it, to wait is to spend time being negatively/cautiously productive; and productively is always welcome. But doubtful productivity yields nothing. (I recently emerged victorious from a battle with lots of questions while in the waiting field, so this is kinda cathartic to write out.)