“Most great thinkers are like a knife through butter, and then they get stuck. That ‘stuck’ is your MIQ.”

– Josh Waitzkin

One of the things I’m always conscious of when writing to you is not adding more complexity to your life. Instead I want to bring clarity.

In that spirit, I just want to talk to you about one simple technique this week:

The Most Important Question (MIQ).

The concept was pioneered by former child chess prodigy turned martial arts world champion Josh Waitzkin, who said: “One of the things I’ve been doing my whole life is ending my day thinking about the most important question in what I do, then in the morning, before any input, I brainstorm on it.”

The beauty is in the simplicity.

Every great leader or team I know still gets stuck at some point and this forces you to bring clarity to chaos.

It’s also rooted in neuroscience – sleep-dependent memory consolidation research shows your brain actively reorganizes information overnight. In simple terms, the default mode network makes connections your conscious mind can't see.

So when you wake up, the critical thing is taking advantage of this by doing what Waitzkin describes as staying "pre-input”. Your mind hasn't been contaminated yet by WhatsApp messages, emails, etc, so sit quietly somewhere and write about it for 15 minutes or so.

The breakthroughs you get may shock you.

The magic of this is that it’s scalable – I will frequently advocate for a leader to deploy it in a team situation. For example:

Monday morning – Team huddle to debate and align on the MIQ of the week ahead.

Friday afternoon – Team huddle to see if the question was answered. If yes, what did you learn from that. If not, why? That’s important data. Was it even the right MIQ? Also hugely insightful.

That alignment also allows a sense of closure for the week.

Focused momentum followed by intentional reflection.

Fewer inputs. Greater focus.

🔥  LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER  

The best content I researched this week:

1. What can you learn from how freeclimber Alex Honnold trained his brain so his 101‑storey free solo last week felt like “no big deal”? This short article shows how shifting stress from ‘threat’ to ‘challenge’ can change how you perform under pressure.

2. Why You Need To Lead Like an Octopus is the provocation from Harvard Business Review. This 96-second video explains why you need to move from rigid to resilient.

3. Entrepreneur, investor and author Graham Weaver explains in 72 seconds what your most valuable asset is (it’s almost certainly not the one you think it is).