Say Goodbye to Energy-Sucking Questions

Did you hear of the concept of an “emotional vampire”?

According to Mark Manson, emotional vampires […] tend to drain the emotional energy out of everyone they come in contact with. They’re exhausting. They need constant attention.

Photo by Jean Vella on Unsplash

There exists a similar concept with questions: Energy-Sucking-Questions - let’s call them ESQs.

What are ESQs?

Essentially, these are questions (i) you cannot define or (ii) from which you cannot derive actions. You are stuck with the question.

An example of an ESQ is: “What is the meaning of life?” This might be a philosophically interesting question, but you cannot derive an action from it.

But how should you deal with these kind of questions?

Awareness is a first step. If a question seems odd, check if either (i) or (ii) is true before you dive deeply into it. The next step is the re-framing and reformulation of a question.

The goal is to keep them actionable. If you want to do that, check out this article.

But what if a question cannot be reformulated in an actionable way?

There’s a straightforward answer, though it might be tough to accept: let go of the question. Don’t waste your energy and time chasing an answer that simply can’t be found.