The internet age has a dark side in our work: Advice Overload. It’s just so tempting and easy to seek our answers elsewhere that we find ourselves with far too many of them, far too quickly.

However, to consider or contemplate the world around us (intuition), we don’t actually need the right answer. Instead, we need the right questions. Constant curiosity drives us forward in better ways than merely following a list of instructions handed to us.

“I’m not interested in that end point. I’m just curious the whole way.”

If best practices lead to average work, then average work is merely the failure to contemplate your environment deeply enough.

“So taken together, we get at least initial support for this idea that, when there’s a cultural fit, when things are as they should be, people don’t really think. They tend to go with the flow. But when there’s a disconnect, suddenly things are strange. They’re not so strange that consciously we think, ‘Oh, I should take less food.’ It’s just that,

That is the trigger question to better understand others: what is your first-principle insight?

Will you continue relying on experts or act more like an investigator?

You The person or people doing the work. What is your aspirational anchor? Your intent for the future, combined with some hunger you have today, some dissatisfaction. Turn your vague desire to do exceptional work into something specific and concrete. Give yourself the first filter, through which you can vet best practices as possibilities—they

They both had more empathy for those on the receiving end of their work than their peers did.