{"id":10539,"date":"2012-03-04T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/news_blogs\/john\/?p=10539"},"modified":"2021-12-11T20:43:05","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T01:43:05","slug":"the-best-question-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2012\/03\/04\/the-best-question-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Question Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought so highly of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/gp\/product\/1590523903\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=wwwccccorg-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=15121&amp;creative=330641&amp;creativeASIN=1590523903\">The Best Question Ever<\/a><\/strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.ca\/e\/ir?t=wwwccccorg-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=15&amp;a=1590523903\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\">&nbsp;by Andy Stanley that I bought a copy for each staff member, each of my children and my wife. There&#8217;s&nbsp;an endorsement! Stanley claims&nbsp;the best question ever (no &#8211; it&#8217;s not WWJD?) would have prevented&nbsp;your greatest regret&nbsp;and that it will&nbsp;foolproof your life. At about 45,000 words, it is a relatively small book and for that reason, if I&nbsp;tell you&nbsp;the question I&#8217;ve given away the guts of the book &#8211; and that&#8217;s not fair to Stanley or his royalties, so let me just tell you why, at less than $10 per book,&nbsp;you should want to give this book away by the caseload to those you love and care for as I did.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One simple question will address every <strong>decision<\/strong> you&#8217;ll ever need to make &#8212; it&#8217;s not just about morality and ethics, but applies to business decisions, personal decisions and any other decision you must make<\/li>\n<li>You already know the answer when you ask the question, so it&#8217;s not hard to answer<\/li>\n<li>The question will shine a blazing spotlight on any self-deception you&#8217;ve created<\/li>\n<li>The question is no gimmick &#8212; it really is a thoughtful question<\/li>\n<li>Everyone can benefit by using the question, but the question is especially helpful as a check and balance for anyone in ministry who holds decision-making authority<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Stanley finishes the book with a number of great observations about our use of time, two of which are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the sobering one: There is no cumulative value to the urgent (or even trivial) things that we allow to interfere with the important things, and<\/li>\n<li>the encouraging one: There is a cumulative value to investing small amounts of time in certain activities over a long period.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, for instance, whatever I frittered my time away doing instead of say, exercising or studying or being present with my family, has no value. You probably can&#8217;t even really remember what you did instead of the more worthy things. However, reading a book a month on a topic will make you an expert in that topic in a relatively short time. <em>The Best Question Ever<\/em> is not about time management, but it is about the many decisions, big and small, that we make each day.<\/p>\n<p>I saw this book on my bookshelf last week and pulled it off to read while flying to BC.&nbsp;I benefited from it just as much as I did the first time I read it several years ago. If you want to live a significant life, however you define that, this simple question will keep you on track.<\/p>\n<p>Read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review of a book that helps people make business and personal decisions by asking a very simple but thoughtful question. <a href=\"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2012\/03\/04\/the-best-question-ever\/\" class=\"linkbutton\">More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ts_fic_featured_image_caption":"Used with permission.","footnotes":""},"categories":[624,623,89],"tags":[42,109,4,579],"series":[],"class_list":["post-10539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-great-leadership-healthy","category-healthy","category-leadership-personal","tag-decision-making","tag-discernment","tag-favourite-reads","tag-attractive-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10539"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}