Question Yourself

I had once came accross a quote that sound something like this: Knowledge and information is to be questioned, not received without any argument.

The older educational system and Malaysian mindset were so against this quote mainly because we will be bantered at if we asked too much question. This attitude is by far the worst murderer to intelligence and innovation.

When you received a piece of information, you should question it either it is correct or wrong, is it rellevant or not, does it apply to you, etc. I've always like to question myself these 2 questions when I'm studying or learning something new:

1. "What is..."
2. "What if..."

The "what is" question is the basic of gathering knowledge. You asked a lot of question when you were little, to get to know things. In this case, even the name will help you understand. (Did you know that our beloved prophet Nabi Adam A.S.'s mu'jizat is the name of things in this world? Without that we probably can never understand the things here, can never develop any language, etc.)

Whereas the "what if" questions are what spawn invention. When you're asking yourself "What if I do this? What happened?" You're basically trying on a new way to do things. It is essential in speeding up the learning process because the answers to this question might have already be there even before you asked it. The best part is that since you yourself think it out without the need to be spoon-fed, you understand it by intuition, better.