Ask a lot of questions

The power of moonshot thinking

Moonshots force you to reason from first principles. If your goal is 1 percent improvement, you can work within the status quo. But if your goal is to improve tenfold, the status quo has to go. Pursuing a moonshot puts you in a different league—and often an entirely different game—from that of your competitors, making the established plays and routines largely irrelevant. Some moonshots are too impractical to materialize in the near future—if ever. But you don’t need all your moonshots to take flight. As long as your portfolio of ideas is balanced—and you’re not betting your future on a single moonshot—one big success will compensate for the ideas better left to novels and movies. 

The business of moonshots

Shocking the brain through moonshot thinking doesn’t mean we stop considering practicalities. Once we have our wacky ideas, we can collide them with reality by switching from divergent to convergent thinking—from idealism to pragmatism. This is where it is vital to ask the practical questions that allow you to work out what is achievable and potentially profitable. 

What’s missing

If you focus on what’s right in front of you, you’ll miss everything that’s just out of view. Ask yourself, “What’s missing?” When you think you’ve exhausted all possibilities, keep asking, “What else?” Make a deliberate effort to repeatedly turn your head and check your blind spot. 

Eight fundamental principles to get you started. 

1. Ask a lot of questions.

2. Channel your inner six-year-old.

3. Say “I don’t know” more often

4. Explore bad ideas.

5. Stress test all opinions, including yours.

6. Learn to dance with criticism.

7. Pay attention to things that don’t make sense.

8. Embrace failure.

Too afraid to fail

Humans are wired to fear failure. To ward off the bogeyman of failure, we keep a safe distance from it. But this natural tendency to avoid failure is a recipe for failing. Behind every rocket unlaunched, every canvas unpainted, every goal unattempted, every book unwritten, and every song unsung is the looming fear of failure. 

The much-quoted mantra “failure is not an option” is misleading. Doing anything ground breaking means taking risks, and taking risks means you’re going to fail, at least some of the time. A moratorium on failure is a moratorium on progress. 

This is not an endorsement of failure for the sake of failure. Failure, by itself, isn’t enough. You must reflect on it, learn from it, and improve on your next attempt. 

What have you failed at this week?