Mindset Series: Asking Questions
June 23, 2011
Hello there!
Whoever you are that’s reading this tad strange and unfocused article. If you made it this far I sense maybe there’s hope for you 
When I was first approached by Rockman to write in his strategy site I was hesitant about what exactly could I bring to the table, this being a mtg niche site, but Rockman was very clear in his intentions of making it such as something more than just tourney reports and deck lists (sites like SCG and others bore me to death). Instead he wanted to do more, to aspire to something greater than just information that rapidly decays in its value.
Still I had no clue about what to write about, since magic is a game I left behind a long time ago. He proposed that I wrote about concepts that are relevant in any game. These are concepts, ideas and vision which you accumulate through playing different games as a job, and not a hobby. When you need to make money to subsist this way (as I’ve chosen to) you have to aim at a higher level of understanding, or else you’ll get destroyed out there.
In this first article I want to touch some subjects that more than give answers, will rise questions. This I think is the single most important thing for a player that has any intention of reaching any sort of high level play, regardless of what the game may be.
This is about the importance of asking questions, to yourself or others. Many see a question as a part of an unfinished sentence, this is wrong, as the question is what matters the most, not the answer, never the answer.
Let’s make an example: Johnny is asking himself: -What is the best deck in the format?-. Now there’s a common question people ask when facing a format in which they’ll compete in. Truth be told, this is an irrelevant question. This is because what Johnny should be asking himself is: -What deck should I play?-.
You see, the difference in quality between them is that one is trying to focus the mind on knowing what the best deck is in a vacuum. and the second one suggests that there are factors to wage before choosing what strategy to follow. The power of asking quality questions resides in doing it so your awareness about the universe you are exploring is always expanding. Games are finite systems, while our minds are not. Games can be as vast as you can imagine and still be smaller than the potential for a mind to understand them.
This is why the challenge of discovering things about that universe is also in the end and most importantly the discovery of ourselves. As a player, one should always strive for mental independence, meaning not to be bound by what other people “knows”. Note that this is not a trait that necessarily goes against any sort of theory already present in that system, but one that lets you visualize the game in a non-prejudgmental way. To not be led by the herd is something to aspire, and the constant search for questions, not answers, is fundamental in maintaining mental independence, as when this is put into constant practice the quality of the questions you will be asking will improve, thus letting your mind reach points of understanding you wouldn’t if you haven’t been asking yourself (quality) questions.
As time passes by some answers may become obsolete, but what never will is the ability to ask questions to you and others, as they map the way our brains understand things. Going back to the example, ¿What is the best deck? is a question that even one weekend of time can render useless, but questions such as ¿What deck should I play? come with insight about the way you interact with the game, so it will never become obsolete.
This is part one of the high level mindset series I will be writing, so feel free to troll and flame in the forums.
SuperUnknown
Nice Work!
Sometimes you want to be another lamb of the “herd” assuming you do not have sufficient knowledge of the game environment, or simply too lazy to go beyond the analysis of how? when? Why? a deck is superior to another.
In real terms the growth of the player should be given to establish their own parameters on how to form the idea of a metagame (assuming the metagame of its own country metagame is far from the U.S. or Japan, and therefore what they perceive others setting its parameters are applied mainly to the country where they live / play). But the question is this is, you will have the best vision? its parameters are correct? then go over real terms to relative, which makes us suppose that the real complexity of the game play is not itself, is rather how to adapt our way of seeing something much more abstract that goes beyond the practical sense, get answers to questions that we generally pose is somewhat unlikely given our own prejudices and therefore the flexibility to try to answer this question easily viewed with the naked eye, can be the key to time to address what is arguably the question more complex than we can do.
Greetings