I hit 100 unanswered questions in my draft folder and it made me stop

I was cleaning up my computer files last week and found a folder called 'Ask Later'. I opened it and saw I had saved 100 different questions over the past year. They were things like 'why do we park in a driveway but drive on a parkway?' or 'how do birds know where to migrate?' I never actually looked up the answers. I just kept saving them, thinking I'd get to it. Seeing that exact number, 100, made me realize I was treating curiosity like a chore to be done later. It wasn't about finding answers, it was just hoarding questions. Now I try to look up at least one right when I think of it. Has anyone else had a pile of questions they never got around to answering?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaronowens1mo ago

Sounds like you're running a museum for unanswered questions.

the_evan4d ago

Oh, I've been there. What finally worked for me was setting a rule to look up the answer to any question I wrote down before I could add another one to the list. It forced me to either find out or let it go, and honestly, most of the time the real answer was less interesting than the question itself. I also started a little notebook just for the really good ones and the weird facts I learned along the way, which made it feel more like a fun collection than a pile of homework.

evanh271mo ago

Maybe the folder's real purpose was just to prove you were still asking questions at all.