The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a consistent basis. If you ask better questions, you will have better focus and better results…

~ Rich Diviney

Early in my career, I had a job where I traveled a lot. My office was in Chicago, our manufacturing plant was in Nogales, Mexico, and our customers were all over the country. There were many reasons I had to be in places where I didn’t live to be effective.

During that time. I also had young children, so for me to be gone a lot was an incredible strain on my wife and left me missing out on some of the most important moments of my children’s lives.

Because of that, I put pressure on travel time. I kept asking, “How little travel could I get away with and still succeed at the job that I was doing?” At one point, I concluded that I could travel as few as 11 days a month and do a good job, but that was about the minimum I could do.

The power of a new question

There came a point where I realized that 11 days was still too many, and I decided to reduce my travel to zero days a month. That changed the question I was asking. Instead of, “How little can I travel and still do a good job?” I started to ask, “Is it possible for me to travel zero days a month and still make a living?”

When I decided that I wanted to travel zero days a month, I got a completely different answer! I removed the restriction, “and do a good job.” In fact, my desire to travel zero days meant that I needed a completely different job in a completely different industry

When I was asking, “How little can I travel and do a good job?” I thought it was impossible for me to reduce my travel to less than 11 days a month. But here I was just a few months later with a new job in a new industry with zero travel days.

Are you asking yourself good questions? Are there different questions you could ask yourself that could lead you to different answers?