From: New York Magazine
Stop Asking ‘What Should I Do?’
New York Magazine:
You’re stuck. You’ve got a problem — maybe an ethical dilemma, maybe a creative block — and are short a solution. What should you do?
As it turns out, you might be asking yourself the wrong question. Or, more specifically, using one wrong word: Asking “What could I do?” instead of “What should I do?” can lead you to better, more creative answers, according to a recent working paper by a team of Harvard Business School professors.
Asking yourself, for example, “What should I do with my life?” tacitly implies that there’s a right and a wrong answer to that question. It seems that the word should can cause us to think in black and white, while could reveals the in-between shades of gray. “What initially seems like a problem that involves competing and incompatible principles turned out to be a problem that can be solved when we approach it with a ‘could’ mind-set,” Francesca Gino, one of the paper’s co-authors and author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan, said in an email to Science of Us.
Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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