The Right Questions

One of the most underrated mental models is the ability to ask the right questions.

For every level of perspective or situation, you can connect a set of questions you should keep in mind by default. These default questions serve as a mental framework that activates automatically when you find yourself in familiar contexts.

Default Questions for Common Situations

When you find yourself in a moment where you want to do something but don't know what to do, this is a good time to revisit and keep in the background questions related to priorities:

What can I do to create value? - Maybe with the right approach, releasing a mini-feature, starting a small project, or improving something that matters?
What can I do to create margin? - What actions would give you more breathing room, more flexibility, more options?
What can I do to gain time? - Which activities would save you time in the future or create systems that free up mental space?

These questions help break the paralysis of not knowing what to do. They're not about finding the perfect answer, but about finding something that moves you forward in a meaningful direction.

How can you improve your ability to ask good questions?

No matter what topic we're dealing with or what problem we face, one of the first approaches should be:

In this situation, what questions should I ask myself?
What would give me the most leverage based on my current skills?

How can you improve the quality of your days? How can you become more efficient and spend less time at work?

What do you need to get a remote job?

English and communication skills
Ability to sell yourself
System design knowledge
Strong coding fundamentals
A standout project on GitHub (or something that makes a difference)
A personal website

Should you become an entrepreneur? How can you free yourself from the need to have a job? Maybe gradually.

How can you measure the impact and work you have done?

Living Within Constraints

Imagine you only had two hours a day to dedicate to your goals. How would you use them?

Constraints often feel limiting, but they can also sharpen focus. They strip away distractions, force you to prioritize, and sometimes even unlock creativity.

The real question is: what matters enough to deserve those hours?

Thinking in Time Horizons

One way to frame this is by looking at three scenarios:

What could happen in 3 months?
In 6 months?
In 5 years?

The 3-month horizon deserves the most immediate attention—it’s where daily effort compounds. But it’s also important to think longer term, to see how each scenario might evolve. That’s second-order thinking: not just asking what’s next? but what might follow after that?

The Four Foundations

Behind every scenario are four domains that shape a fulfilling life:

Physical health – the foundation for everything else.
Relationships – the people who give life meaning.
Work and purpose – the sense of contribution and satisfaction.
Financial freedom – the ability to choose, though the meaning of “freedom” is worth questioning.

Balancing these areas isn’t easy, but they create the compass that points toward peace, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

The Power of Leverage

The next layer of questions is about leverage:

What gives me an edge?
How can I use my strengths?
Am I moving in the right direction, or just moving?

Clarity here can save years of wasted effort.

When Opposites Are Both True

I’m fascinated by mental models that contradict each other but both hold truth. Life is a complex system, and context changes how a model applies.

Take entrepreneurship, for example. In Silicon Valley, the mantra is fail fast, fail often. Yet DHH, one of the authors of Rework, argues the opposite: that failure doesn’t teach you what will work—it only shows what doesn’t. Both ideas carry weight, but their usefulness depends on when and where they’re applied.

Feynman's Background Questions: Keeping Understanding Alive

Richard Feynman believed in keeping fundamental questions running in the background of your mind. These aren't problems to solve, but questions that help you verify and deepen your understanding of anything you encounter.

While learning or encountering new information, Feynman would constantly ask himself:

What do I really know about this? - Not what I think I know, but what I can actually explain and verify. This question exposes gaps in understanding before they become problems.
Can I explain this simply? - If you can't explain something in plain language to someone else, you probably don't truly understand it. Simplicity reveals depth.
How can I verify if this is true? - What evidence supports this? What would contradict it? This keeps you from accepting information passively.
What happens if I change perspective? - Looking at the same thing from a different angle often reveals new insights. What does this look like from another person's viewpoint, another time, another context?
What are the implications? - If this is true, what follows? What are the second and third-order consequences? This question helps you think through the full picture.

These questions don't require answers immediately. They run in the background, filtering everything you learn and experience. When you hear something new, test it against these questions. When you're studying, use them to check your understanding. When you're making decisions, let them guide your reasoning.

The power isn't in having the questions written down, but in making them a habit, a constant mental framework that evaluates everything you encounter.

Returning to the Right Questions

Most of us run on autopilot. We stop questioning, and life becomes momentum without direction.

But when you pause and ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?
What truly matters to me?
What's the goal behind my actions?

—you suddenly feel the power of questions. They don't just provide answers; they shift your entire perspective. Sometimes the right question is more valuable than any solution.

Follow-up Questions

How can I develop the habit of keeping these questions active in my mind without it becoming mental overhead?
What are the situations where asking too many questions becomes counterproductive?
How do these background questions differ from the specific problems I keep in mind (as Feynman suggested)?
Can I create a personal set of background questions tailored to my current learning goals?
How do I identify which default questions apply to which situations, and how do I refine them over time?
When I find myself not knowing what to do, how can I better activate these default questions automatically?

This way, the piece flows from constraint → scenarios → foundations → leverage → paradoxes → background questions → the right questions, like a natural spiral inward.