How to find answers to things you do without knowing?
Something I picked up from a leadership course I did, when you have to get to root cause and how things are working. Known as the 5 whys’s (link above).
You ask ‘why is x like this? why is this happening like that?’.
I’ve come to use it every time I’m journaling, whenever I write something without a concrete idea on why it happen I ask the 5 why’s.
As per a dear friend suggestion, Chiara (link to her project/work WAMI above), my example is about a time I was watching Friends everyday. It was my ‘comfort series’, but I was watching it way too much. So I used the 5 why’s.
- Why am I watching so much?
- Because its my favorite series.
- Why?
- It makes me laugh, I like the characters and makes me feel safe.
- Right, why?
- I think its because I know the whole plot, the beginning, the ending and makes me not think about anything else.
- Why is that important now?
- Well, I’m stressed over work.
- Why is it stressing you so much?
- I’m not making enough progress on the task I’m in, and I feel guilty about it.
In this case, I was escaping from a feeling that I haven’t realised I had.
So, I made a plan on how to approach that guilt, talk to my team and get help to finish it, problem solved.
Well, you get the idea, try to answer it truthfully with the first thing that comes to mind, the further you get with it, the closest to root cause of this you are.
You discover a lot about yourself if you question the why’s of things, have you ever tried asking yourself that?