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Exploring the light switch, same as ever, and others’ opinions

Welcome to the Intentional Dollar weekly newsletter — great work taking this small step to move your money forward. I’m Logan, a Certified Financial Planner™, and I’m excited you’re here!

What’s inside?

• One tool to experiment with

• Two quotes from others

• Three questions to dig deeper

• Four lines of poetry for the point

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_{One tool to experiment with:}

The Light Switch:

How powerful is a single question?

Edwin Land changed photography with one single question, “Why do we have to wait for the picture?”

Before Polaroid, film had to be developed in a darkroom. Land knew this, but his young daughter did not. One day, after snapping a photo of her, she asked why she couldn’t see the picture without having to wait. An innocent question. One that others would scoff and reply, “because that’s just the way things are.” 

Not Land. He ran with the question rather than from the question. 

By doing so, Land was able to explore and test and create one of the most cutting-edge technologies of his time — the Polaroid. 

Questions have the unmatched ability to transform your life, my life, and the lives of those that come after us. 

The right question is like a light switch in your mind. Turn the light on, you get rid of darkness. And with light, you can vividly see precise solutions that were previously hidden. 

Each Thursday I send out three questions. The questions are meant to be homework prompts to think through and write on — an excuse to spend time alone and intentionally dig through your mind to see what’s there. 

But a question is only as good as the time you spend with it. Deflect and defer and you won’t get any light. Debate and dance and you might just see. 

Let’s go back to the reason we ask a question. It’s to learn something new. It’s the act of sticking a probe out in the air to fill a gap in our present understanding. 

So how might you ask a good question? What does a bad question look like? 

A good question has the following traits:

• It is actionable. This means you can take steps today to use the question to provide a little more insight than you had before. 

• It is the right size for your current need. Big questions like ‘what’s the meaning of life’ are hard to handle in one bite. You can make a question any size you want — precise for a detail or broad for general understanding. As a personal preference, my nature is to start small and let the questions snowball into a larger block of understanding. Smaller questions are easier to digest and work on in one short period. 

• It is open. What’s this mean? That is an open question. Is this an open question? That’s a closed question. Closed questions don’t spark discovery or conversation. If you ask someone a bunch of closed questions, you will end up without someone to talk to.

• It is not backhanded, it has good intent. Don’t ask, “why did you spend that money when I told you not to?” That’s not a question really, it’s a verbal wrist slap.

There’s a proper question sequence Warren Berger found to ask the right questions — and it progresses like this:

1. Why?

2. What if?

3. How?

This question formula is intended to produce experiments, and with experiments, fresh ideas. 

The ‘why’ helps you pinpoint a problem area. The ‘what if’ stimulates your creativity and gives you new ideas to test — and do test them. The ‘how’ gives you small steps to follow to get the idea off the ground. 

Here are two progressions (on coffee of course):

1. Why do I always overspend on coffee?

2. What if I bought a fancy coffee maker instead?

3. How can I produce a similar cup of coffee without going to Starbucks each day? 

1. Why do I go to Starbucks each morning? 

2. What if I got up earlier to make my own fancy coffee?

3. How might I get up earlier? 

You can see that the third question pulls you into a new zone. This is how you find unique experiments to run.

But not everyone likes questions.

Some worry about asking dumb questions. The truth is, there are no dumb questions. But there are lazy questions, and lazy questions have the wrong intent. They wear a facade of curiosity and attempt to impress rather than inquire.

With this said, you should take care to avoid the trap of not asking questions for fear of what others think. It’s a generous gift to ask a question. Your ask might be sitting on the tip of another timid tongue. One too afraid to appear foolish for not knowing. 

It’s strange but it shakes out this way: to learn you have to be willing to expose what you don’t know.

E.E. Cummings said, “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”

_{Two quotes on same as ever:}

Morgan Housel wrote a beautiful book on the things that don’t change — Same as Ever. Understanding what’s always been true can give insight to what will be true.

_{Three questions on others’ opinions:}

1. Why do I care what others think?

2. What if I expose myself to more of these situations?

3. How might increased exposure decrease this constant concern?

Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.

_{Four lines of poetry for the point:}

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