Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

July 2023

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise sh... See more

But curiosity without direction can be a taxing and ultimately unproductive endeavor. Choice is how we tame and channel and direct our curiosity, where we choose to allocate our time and energy, and ultimately, what we choose to pay attention to.

The beauty of the rabbit hole, and the warren you create by falling down it, is how it activates your curiosity to generate new, reflective pockets of information and knowledge. And the better you become at “finding,” the more portals emerge, and the farther you get from a complete sense of having found. The state of curiosity is one of abundance: ... See more

Thinking about curiosity as going beyond the need for quick answers also highlights the power of what happens when we engage with un­­cert­ain­ty: having to ponder and anticipate answers can improve learning and memory, and curiosity can facilitate brain states that help us encode new information. Learning new things can be tough, but harnessing cu... See more