In my years in IT, my specialty has become custom solutions. Whatever the problem, I know that myself and my competent team can solve any technology-related problem. But one of the greatest leasons I’ve learned about the process came only over the last year. And that one thing is: Why?
After focusing on the other questions of problem solving: What is it? How will we do it? What’s the objective? When? Who? Where? I’ve realized that I’ve wasted time solving some problems along the way that probably never really needed to be solved to begin with. But we never knew it, because we never asked … Why?
Sometimes the “why” is the hardest part to answer. Why are we doing this? Why is it such a priority? Sometimes it still boils down to a gut feeling, but the primary concern is asking. If after you answer that question, you still feel it warrants moving forward, then do so.
I find in these days of multi-multi-tasking that when I have many projects all hanging over my head, it is easy to pick a project for the wrong reasons. But if I take the time to ask and answer “Why?” I sometimes realize the project is not a priority or an outright waste of time.
Maybe I’m the only idiot that never thought to ask the obvious, but I’m pretty sure that if everyone took the time to ask it, we would have never had ["The Garbage Pail Kids Movie"](http://x-entertainment.com/articles/0765/ “Review”) on the flip-side we probably would have missed out on the classic ["Napoleon Dynamite"](http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/napoleondynamite/epk/index.php “ND Official Site”).
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