American President, Franklin D Roosevelt, went on a fishing trip while the Battle of Britain raged and solved a problem baffling the bureaucracy.

…he came up with the whole idea of lend lease on a fishing trip because he was away from the turmoil of Washington where the bureaucratic structure couldn’t figure out how to lend money or lend supplies to England because of neutrality acts… A good yankee bargain… a simple thing, but no one could figure that out in Washington. 

Doris Kearns Goodwin, in conversation with Tim Ferriss

The fishing trip gave FDR time, but he came with a question.

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit. 

Clayton Christensen via Jason Fried via Leisa Reichelt.

Like grit in an oyster, the question is the starter. The necessary irritant, and then there’s the white noise to work it through. The sort of time where ideas can tick over. Where you’re not being strictly productive, but your attention is your own. Runs, walks and showers. Especially showers.

Both sides of the ledger matter.

And Clayton Christensen’s framing points us to how much. It weaponises questions, making them agents of change, opening up fissures that weaken old beliefs and make space for new ones.

A question and time. Is that it? The secret to the-making-of-progress in ideas and the re-making of the status quo? Hiding in plain sight.

And it’s an alarming thought too, when technology captures and demands our attention. Turning it away from questions and transforming the white noise into active, but often  not productive time, for the-making-of-progress.

Try this at home kids

How can we create scaffolding in our everyday lives with our kids for questions that resonate and time to work them through?

Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital uses train trips. In conversation with Shane Parrish he talks about using train trips with his kids to deep dive on questions and topics. He also talks about using questions to plant seeds in his kids’ minds to encourage critical thinking.

And then here’s a different take on putting questions to work. You could try asking your child – What would Batman do?” (or insert name of alternative  hero of the hour.)  This one has the added benefit of supporting improvements in executive functions in five year olds (skills used for planning and doing tasks, organising, regulating behaviour, working memory, impulse control, and attention).

Thanks to Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) for his great interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin (@DorisKGoodwin), Shane Parrish (@farnamstreet) for his great interview with Josh Wolfe (@wolfejosh), Leisa Reichelt (@leisa) and Jason Fried (@jasonfried) for bring Clayton Christensen’s (@claychristensen) insight to us.