Asking questions can be really hard. Figuring out what you want to know. Narrowing down the question means clarifying in your own mind what you are trying to understand.

Working out what you need to find out from the other person and therefore how to frame the question – both to get the information you want and also to convey certain emotions. The questions we ask can vary depending upon whether we want to be argumentative or conciliatory. Asking something that we know will bust their balls or goes into territory that’s difficult or a source of previous arguments, and likely to create another argument. Or choosing another question, another way of framing things to take a different route, elicit or create some other answers.

That all means that asking questions means choosing. In asking one question, things go down one line of thinking and opens up some areas whilst potentially also closing off others. Sometimes those questions have a short-term impact – what shall we have for dinner? Would you like to watch this film or that one? For others questions can determine a much longer-term direction something goes in. As I narrow down the focus of my PhD at the moment, that means choosing which things I let go of exploring more deeply and which things take up my days and weeks and life. A dizzying array of forks in the road, and maybe they won’t make that much of a difference overall but that sense of the power of the question to shape things feels palpable. Sometimes a delicious, exciting thing and sometimes sad at having to let go of some aspects to have something that feels manageable and coherent.

Which gives a real sense of how questions can shape or open up possibilities, the freedom asking questions brings. Would you like this? Can you do that? Questions can take you into different worlds – would you like this job, to go on a date with me, put it all on red or black? The answer only exists because first there was a question.

And that life changing potential is true if you’re the one asking the question too – something which had seemed implausible or impossible crystallises in your head or heart around a question. It might be a question to yourself – can I do this? Should I do this? What do I want? Can I bear this? How can I make things better? But when you’re feeling stuck it can feel like there aren’t any questions – because questions mean choices and being stuck can feel like you don’t have any choices. That’s not to say that asking a question can lead to an answer, or not immediately at least. Sometimes the question is just a wondering about what to do and then it can feel unclear. It opens the door to possibilities though…

That then suggests there isn’t a set number of answers. Or answers which are ready and waiting to be found. They aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered, the right question acting as a code breaker to crack open a chest to get the answers within. Lots of things become answers because first there were questions.

Reading Maller & Horne’s (2011) piece ‘Living lightly: How does Climate Change Feature in Residential Home Improvements and What are the Implications for Policy?‘ I was struck really forcefully with that sense of how we can spend a long time asking the same questions, and how that can potentially shape so much. Eventually we might get part of an answer, but maybe that can take too long and asking a different, seemingly harder question might have been better.

Part of their research was trying to understand people’s views about the environment and how important an issue it is to them, as well as finding out what environmental activities they undertake. The people involved agreed that it was a really important issue. When asked what activities they undertake they were all able to offer examples. These examples were in the realms of recycling, turning off appliances and light switches; monitoring their bills; food growing and similar. The writers suggested this showed that behaviour change campaigns had worked because those activities were all ones which people had been asked to do through campaigns over years.

So the questions that had been asked of whether people could recycle or switch lights off, had been somewhat answered in the affirmative. Yes, that is something that people can do, they can absorb those things into what Shove describes as their day to day practice. Maybe imperfectly but still, people can associate themselves with that activity and do it enough to feel like it’s true to answer that these are things they do.

Turning to home improvements people were talking about making though, those environmental views and actions didn’t translate for the most part. They lived in a separate compartment and there wasn’t really much of a shift. Some were thinking about solar or water tanks – measures in Australia, where the research was undertaken that had been increasingly discussed. In the things that could really make a difference people weren’t motivated, couldn’t see the connection, or disconnection, to their other views on environmental matters.

Perhaps asking a different question of people – can you retrofit your homes rather than can you reuse a plastic bag, wouldn’t have generated a different answer. We’ve spent decades asking smaller questions, getting imperfect answers on those, for instance in relation to recycling. We haven’t seen those answers translate into more positive responses on actions that would have a bigger impact – such as whether people would improve their homes or not. Could a long time trying to get imperfect answers to bigger questions be more impactful than a long time asking smaller questions?