Ha ha. I feel like I can rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to put my all in it, like a Days on the Road, Less Traveled never looking back.
Alright, I sat down to record this and I ask myself.
What would be amazing? What would be awesome if I was going to share it with you and I decided to pull something out of my secret stash. So you know if you go to someone's house magic you go to some billionaires house. You walk through the front door, the gates opened the butler, takes your coat. You walk through, you know, somebody walks by with an hors d'oeuvres. Platter you grab it? You like the tuna, you keep walking forward. He says, what would you like to see my collection collection? You don't know what it's going to be shoes watches
Ours, he takes you down into the cellar and it shows you the wine collection starts talking about it. That's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to take you to my collection but I don't collect wine. I don't collect watches or cars I collect questions. And so this podcast is all about some of the great questions. For my question stash. I have been keeping a note you know notebook or a notepad of great questions because I have this phrase which is
Ask a better question, get a better answer and it's really come true for me in my life. I've been able to connect with people or get to the heart of the issue or find out information that I needed to find out just by asking a slightly different question. It's kind of amazing. Just phrasing things differently will have a totally different result so I'm going to go through Rapid Fire. I'll try to keep this short. So we'll go through Rapid Fire. If people are interested, we could always talk more about this later but I'm going to go through quickly of some great questions. So let's start with the light-hearted stuff.
These are slight improvements when you're talking to other people. So one of the worst questions. That's the most common question is just oh, hey, how's it going? Hey, how's your day, right? And that results in fine. Good. Right. And that's it kind of a dead end question as far as I'm concerned. So I like to frame things a little differently. When I see somebody that I want to talk to, you know, we for meeting or whatever it is, I'll say something, you know, just a little bit different, doesn't even matter, like the words don't matter.
It's just trying to get to something specific that will get beyond the Trap of fine or good. So I might say, you got a little pep in your step today. Would you would you have for breakfast or you look happy? What were you doing right before this, right? So, somebody could just pop on a zoom and I'll hit him with that. You look happy. What were you doing before this? Oh actually, I was on a call with moral law or I was actually just cooking food, doesn't matter what it is. I got him talking it was a genuine question and they start open up a little bit more.
Instead of just getting stuck in the cookie cutter. Fine, and good trap. Okay, what else? If you want to get to know somebody?
Instead of saying, oh what do you like to do and then they'll start to think about like hobbies and just sort of say generic I like to travel, I like the movies. Of course, everybody likes the movies instead. What I'll do is I'll say, I'll say, you know, I only ever see you at the office. What's an ideal Friday night for you? What do you like to do, right, take me through. I don't you wake up our take me through ideal Sunday morning, right? And then people will start to tell me what they actually do in their life. So instead of thinking
About vague generic things that they like to recall something specific that they do as a habit. And that will actually tell you a lot about a person. They like to go hiking every Sunday with their friends or, you know, I always, you know, me and my daughter we have this teeth brush routine and then we watch the cartoons and I make her pancakes, whatever it is, you'll get something real out of it. Okay, so those are some quick light hearted ones. Let's go to work related. Okay, so here's some and I, by the way, each one of these, I have a long list, I'm just gonna
Hop between categories. Okay, so work-related I've said this one before in the Pod, but one question, many bosses, and managers ask is, they're asking about a timeline for something. I always did this, I worked with Engineers. I don't know how long stuff takes to make. Sometimes I thought things would be really complicated and they're like, oh, that's one line of code. And other times, I thought things would be simple in there like that, six months of refactoring code, if you want that. And so I used to always ask it when will we have this done, right? When will that get done? And people hate getting timelines and there's just a generic, like, problem with this.
Some people will always sandbag. So they're always say a long time and try to like deliver faster than that. Some people want to make you happy, so they tell you an optimistic timeline, but it always ends up taking longer and so, these things were so inaccurate. So I heard a better question from Dan Clanton. He's this use the chief product officer at twitch when I was there and what he would say is he goes you know, I know we don't know the exact timeline but
When would you what if I said that this was going to launch in August or September? What month? Would you be surprised where we didn't launch it by then? So he said when would you be surprised if we didn't have this done? And that was just that created. Kind of like the first of God people's guard down, they weren't being asked for an estimate in the traditional way. The second thing is that they would take that and they would start to kind of like like when you would be surprised by it not being out means us
Like the Bottom bar, like it's definitely going to be out by then and then he would need a follow up and say, okay great. And you know, so best-case scenario, what are you thinking, right? And he would get a more accurate time range, using that rather than just saying, when, is this going to be done? So better question, you got a better answer. Some other questions I like to ask in the work context. Sometimes I'll listen to people explain something. And it's a really big heavy plan, and I'll just say men, all that sounds really hard. What would be easy?
And this question of noise people because they're like off it was easy, I would have told you but in reality when you ask them and you ask them what would be easy? They actually do come up with an answer, that's pretty good. Similarly if somebody says a big plan like a long like we're going to do this and then this and then this I'll say oh okay like that sounds like a huge plan like it what? You know my brain I'm not as smart as you so like imagine we were all like that. Imagine we all had half the IQ we have today. What would be the dumb? Simple Plan? We would do.
Make some progress. And I'm trying to get them to think outside the box, think differently because people get stuck in one track thinking, and they have blinders on to all the other possibilities. So, I'm trying to just break that pattern and get them to see some other possibilities. Some other ones. I'll ask, you know, if I'm leading, if I manage somebody and they manage people, I'll say, hey, you don't have to tell me this answer but it's a good question to ask yourself. What's a, what's it called? What's a conversation? You've been avoiding.
Whoo, we're all avoiding some conversations whether it's personal, professional, another one will be, I'll wake up in the morning. I'll think about work and I'll say who needs my help today. Oftentimes, those people in the company that are struggling either, personally, professionally, we kind of put off dealing with it because we don't have to the fire is not burning yet. The house is not burning down but you kind of want to address it when it's a little spark before the house burns down. So who needs my help today?
Okay, let's go to self-talk, right? The most important dialogue happens in our head and so here's some of the ones that I ask myself on a daily basis. So this one's work-related, I'll say if I could only work two hours today but I still wanted to be a huge success. What would I do in those two hours? This is a way of cutting through all the BS. All the busy work, the small things that are easy to just eat up our time. And just say, okay, if I
Only get only work for two hours today. What would be at what I work on for those two hours? Another one, you know, I would say I've asked this question out loud before. What would Sully do? I have a friend Suli who? I think it's just amazing at business. He just has a knack for just finding the fastest path solution for just being, like kind of a PhD in common sense. So, I just step back and say, what would we do or similarly. If I'm talking to somebody else, I'll say
Sounds like you're stuck and you don't know what to do, but you've always given me. Great advice. So what would you advise yourself in the situation? If you were giving advice to yourself? What would you say if you weren't you or I'll ask them. Yeah, I know you don't know the answer but if you did know, if you did know the answer, what would you say to people that really fucks people's phones people's minds? They don't know what to do with that one, but it is actually pretty useful as a way to again, shake their pattern, get them to think differently.
Questions, I will ask ask myself. Let's go back to this. What are my anti goals? I can often think about what I want, but sometimes it's very useful to think about what I don't want. I learned this from Andrew Wilkinson. He used to talk about anti goals meaning instead of thinking about what's the perfect life and how do I want to make my life better? He thinks about what's misery, what do I hate? And let me just avoid misery right invert? And just instead of thinking about what's the dream, think about, you know, what sort of thing about having? Think about hell and and then just make sure you avoid.
You end up doing pretty well then.
A question. I ask myself another one. I like here, I like this one. Am I playing a stupid game Nepal? Has this phrase play stupid games when stupid prizes, right? If you're at a carnival and you go up to you know a little water squirt gun game, where you got a squirt, the water and a little hole. And if you could do it the best out of everybody, you know, you win, the giant stuffed animal and then there you are. 40 minutes later you've put 85 dollars into this game and you win and you win the $6 stuffed animal that you could had to begin.
And it's just a reminder, there are many examples of this, I've done this many many times. I've worked on dumb startups, worked on dumb ideas, right? I play the stupid game and if you play stupid game, you're going to win a stupid prize. So I try to stop and ask myself, am I playing a stupid game? An example of a stupid game is trying to win an argument on Twitter or convince Somebody To, You Know, change their mind it when it doesn't really matter. You convince people. I'm right that that sort of thing is is an example of a stupid game that you can play.
Another question to ask is this the beginning, or is this the end? This is great for relationships. You get in a breakup breakups. Are tough. Is this the beginning? Or the end? Feels like the end but it's also the beginning and you got to ask yourself if I treat this like the end. Then yeah, I'm going to feel a certain type of way, right? I'm going to feel the way you feel at the end, but if I view this as the beginning, I'm going to feel very differently. So I got to ask myself, is this the beginning or the end? They happen at the same time? Similar one. That's a little bit kind of like self-help. You
in that vein is
is that the thing or am I the thing that's just a reminder of
Where is the power when a situation is overwhelming? You you're saying, oh man, I'm making that the thing. No, no, I'm the thing. So you make it about yourself. So it's somebody else is acting in some way that you find stupid, you making that making them the thing or are you? The thing is about, taking back control and being able to Own Parts that you control and control your own experience that way.
Another one for work that I like, is, if I wasn't already doing this, what I do this, it's goes back to my phrase. Inertia is a bitch. When you're a lot of times, the things that we are doing, we're only doing because we were already doing them. So, it's worth having an honest question. I wasn't already doing this. What I'd be doing this. If I wasn't already in this job, would I be into what I apply for this job? I wasn't dating this person. What I asked him out on a date, right? So so you want to avoid doing things that you wouldn't do if you weren't already doing.
Them and I'll leave you with a couple more that I think are fun. I like to ask this for myself and for others which is like what something you're happy to overspend on, right? We all have things that were really cost conscious about really Frugal. We Penny, pinch, we have other things that were willing to splurge on, so what am I happy to overspend on, right? I always pick this for me, this was books. I will always buy a book instantaneously whether I plan to read it or not, whether I had money or not, I will always buy a book because that's sort of a potential knowledge of potential life change that I could have.
For 10 bucks. And socks socks is another one. I hate fussing with having mismatched socks or not enough socks, so I will overspend on socks. I will buy a hundred of my favorite pair of socks and then when those are done I'll just buy a hundred more. I'm happy to overspend, it just gives me joy. And so similarly, this way to get to know somebody else. It's a good way to get to know yourself and to get to know somebody else. What are they willing to stupidly overspend on even though they know if maybe not the best most logical solution. Okay, those were some
Rapid fire questions for my question stash. I don't know if this is entertaining to you. I don't know if that was helpful to you, but I will publish that on my, my newsletter, if you, if you subscribe, you'll get the written version of that because those are probably hard to remember. So go to go to Shawn poori.com, pop your email in there and I'll put it in, put it into the welcome sequence where I put it just a list. A little question, Bank of some of my favorite questions. I don't give you all of them. These are precious, I've been hunting these for a long time but I will give you, you know, whatever 20
25 of these that I really like ask a better question, get a better answer. Alright, thats all from me, hope you enjoy this mini episode. Let me know what you think. Tweet at me or email me. I'm Sean at Shawn pretty.com. Hey, my first million listeners, this is Steph again from Trends dotco. Now most of you probably know Trends as the idea newsletter because that's what we do. We send you business ideas weekly and then we show you how to capitalize on them but anyone that's run a business before knows that ideas, only get you so far. In fact, if you've ever heard of Derek severs framework ideas are worth, almost nothing and execution is everything.
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I feel like I could rule the world. I know where I could be what I want to travel. Never looking back.
