Recovery Questions for Clarity, Insight, and Better Decisions
Most confusion isn’t caused by low intelligence — it’s caused by compressed language.
People think they disagree about ideas, when they’re reacting to unexamined assumptions embedded in words. Language regularly deletes, distorts, and generalizes information. The result is statements that sound precise — and fall apart when examined closely.
In this essay, I show a practical method I use to think clearly: Recovery Questions — simple follow-ups that “recover” missing meaning and turn vague claims into testable statements. The approach is inspired by the Meta Model from NLP. The use case is plain and practical. It helps you uncover what’s really being said, before you argue, commit, or act.
You’ll see how this works through examples and a set of common patterns that routinely create confusion — along with the questions that clarify them.
If you want better decisions, better conversations, and fewer costly misunderstandings, start with the words.
Read the full analysis → Substack