Anti-beginners Mindset

“Approach things with a beginner’s mindset.”

Bullshit. It’s the wrong frame.

How you want to approach things is with curiosity. Curiosity is what opens unknown doors. It’s how you see the unseen.

A beginner explores things and while they’re exploring, they do have the fresh eyes to quickly spot things overlooked. However, here’s how they get blindsided: a beginner does not know (yet) how to ask the right questions. It takes them time to start figuring things out because they’re trying to find patterns.

When you have a level of expertise, it’s your job to see and find patterns (both obvious and non-obvious), get curious and ask the right questions. This is the Anti-beginner’s Mindset.

How can you get to ask the right questions?

Don’t start with why.

Asking WHY makes things personal AND complex.

Why? (pun intended)

Because the one asked will try to explain a thing, behavior, event. If it’s too close to them (eg. the owner and their decisions re: their “ugly” website), it becomes a judgment on what THEY decided. So they get defensive.

Just reframe it.

Do think with why, just reframe it with How, What, When.

• Why do you work like this? → Explain to me. Justify, TO ME, YOUR decision. Get defensive.
• What made you take this approach to working like this? → Takes you out of the focus, gives you distance from the question, makes you think of the process, decision-making, gain altitude.

Want to start asking better questions?

Get yourself a copy of “A more beautiful question” by Warren Berger

No time to read? (bc your kindle is full of unread books — just like me 😅)

→ Here’s a 3 minute video

Or, if you have 11 minutes, here’s also a deeper dive.

How are you questioning things?

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog