100,000 Whys

A few years back, I asked my husband to help me out on my mission of learning UI/UX design. He’s a trained interaction designer who I knew could reliably teach me about typography, user flows and design principles.

He was very happy to help, but we hit a roadblock.

If you grew up in China, you might recognise a book series, titled “100,000 Whys”. It’s popular science books for kids answering different questions on a range of topics.

Apparently — and unfortunately, for my husband — I seem to have internalised this “100,000 Whys” as a modus operandi.

Within 2 hours, I managed to seriously piss my sweet, patient husband off.

Him: “You ask too many whys!”

Me: “Well… why do you say that?”

Him: “Some things are just the way they are — there is no why!”

Me: “But why is that the case?”

Him: “You’re at it again!!”

Our marriage is still intact, but I don’t think he’s going to willingly teach me anything new again.

Unfortunately, learning can be a really tedious process for everyone involved.

Starting with “Why” is important, but it can easily become a bottomless pit.

In order to make my learning more sustainable, I had to find a solution that will (A) allow me to keep learning through questioning, while (B) stop driving my teachers up the wall.

So here’s the thing. There isn’t truly 100,000 Whys — in order to make the books humanly readable, they could only focus on 10s of Whys at a time.

I told myself to do the same and to narrow down my Whys. I’m probably still a really annoying learner, but at least I can keep my teachers around for longer.

Asking the right Whys > 100,000 Whys.

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