# Ask better questions to get better answers

> The quality of an answer is capped by the quality of the question. This is truer than ever when you are asking an AI.

Source of the line: Popular saying. Essay by Cosmin Cojocar. Theme: questions. URL: https://cosmin.dev/creative-thinker/ask-better-questions/

"Why is the app slow?" gets you guesses. "Why does the first paint take four seconds on a cold start on mid-range Android?" gets you an investigation. The second question already contains half the answer: what, where, when, for whom.

A better question narrows the search space. It states what you already know, what you have ruled out and what a useful answer would look like.

This matters more than ever now that so much of our thinking goes through AI models. A model answers the question you asked, not the one you meant. Context, constraints and the shape of the expected answer are the difference between a generic paragraph and a solution you can ship.

## Try this

Before you ask a colleague, a client or a model your next question, rewrite it once with three additions: the context, what you have already tried, and what a good answer would let you do.