The quality of your questions reveals the quality of your thinking.
And most people ask terrible questions. Own it.
We used to be praised for knowing the answer.
Now? It’s about knowing the question.
We’ve already outsourced memory with Google.
Now we’re outsourcing thinking with AI.
What matters most today isn’t knowledge. How could it… when everyone has the same access to information (for the most part)?
We’ve become experts at getting answers instantly, sure. But browse internet forums for nearly any topic and you’ll see a pattern. There is an scary lack of the ability to ask thoughtful, high-quality questions.
Good answers don’t appear out of thin air. They come from good questions.
This isn’t just about Google or AI. It’s bigger than that. It’s related, yes, but it’s bigger. Google trained us to throw words at a search bar until something useful appeared. Now AI is training us to be even lazier. Just copy-paste a prompt and hope.
We’re living in a world of shortcuts. Google remembers facts so we don’t have to. AI thinks so we don’t need to. And those shortcuts are making lazy people, lazier.
Questions Reveal Thinking
The best thinkers don’t have the best answers, they ask the best questions. The act of arriving at a precise question requires clarity, curiosity, and critical thinking.
Consider how this plays out:
In Business
- ❌ Weak: “How can I increase revenue?”
- ✅ Precise: “Which specific customer segment drives most of our profit, and how can we better serve them?”
In Relationships
- ❌ Weak: “Why doesn’t my partner understand me?”
- ✅ Precise: “What assumptions am I making about my partner’s perspective, and how can I clarify my own intentions more clearly?”
In Personal Growth
- ❌ Weak: “How do I become successful?”
- ✅ Precise: “What does success genuinely mean to me, and what daily habit am I currently neglecting that could lead me there?”
The Danger of Shortcut Thinking
Relying too heavily on instant answers from the AI oracle or search engines will, without a doubt, weaken our critical thinking muscles. No bueno. The more we outsource our questioning to technology, the more superficial our questions, and therefore our thinking, become.
When we stop asking precise questions:
- We waste time chasing irrelevant or superficial answers.
- We make poor decisions based on incomplete or misunderstood information.
- We overlook critical details that can dramatically alter outcomes.
- We become passive, allowing others or technology to guide our thoughts instead of actively engaging in our own thinking.
Reclaiming Our Ability to Question
We’ve traded curiosity for convenience.
But asking better questions starts with slowing down. It means choosing depth over speed. It means thinking for yourself before outsourcing the process.
Smart questions don’t come from shortcuts. They come from friction, clarity, and attention.
If we want better results, we need to wrestle with the question first.
Inquiry in the Age of AI
Your ability to ask good questions defines the quality of your thinking, decisions, and outcomes, in business, relationships, and life itself.
Today as we begin to outsource thinking to the AI gods, the most critical skill of those who work WITH this tech vs those who get swallowed by it, I believe, will be precision inquiry.
The people that write clearer prompts, write clearer objectives, define problems more crisply – those that ask better questions – will be the ones who come out on top.
What do you think will be the most critical skill of the near future?
