If you want to be creative - ask Dumb Questions

The Only Dumb Question Is the Question You Don't Ask

Implicitly or explicitly, creativity always begins with a question.  And in both your business and personal lives, the quality of your cresitivity is determined by the quality of your questions-by the way you frame your approach to circumstances, problems, needs, and opportunities.  A creative approach makes life a questioning process.

 In the same way, when you bring creative questioning into your ife, you don't care what you find.  You do it for the adventure itself, without defining expectations.  Even if you rather expect red, you're as pleased to find blue.

 If you pursue a questing question, the end is usually creative, even if it's unexpected.  Columbus's question was, "Is there a sea route to lndia?" His answer was the astonishing discovery of a new continent and evidence about the shape of the world.

Asking questions as dumb as the kind you fear people might dismiss with "Of course not, dummy" takes a great deal of initial courage and eventual endur­ance.  You have to draw deeply upon your essence quality of strength because you are flouting public opinion, swimming against the current.
 

Young children ask dumb questions about everything.  

What's behind a rainbow?

What color is the inside of my brain?

 What's inside ofa rock?

Does the sky have an end to it?

You once asked questions like that, too.  That's how you leamed about the world.  But sooner or later your authorities-parents, teachers-gave you the message that such questions were not welcome.  You became more careful.  Your inner voice began to build a defense against questions.  You intemalised adult laughter, scom, and irritation, and learned to avoid the questioning creative process.  Pretty soon the questions stopped coming to you; and cynicism set in instead.

By then you had lost a very useful ability and tool. 

What do you think?