The Power of Curiosity and How to Develop It

The more I observe brilliant people, the more I notice that one distinguishing characteristic they have is immense curiosity. I’m reminded of this quality when I read two articles by Bill Gates where he listed his favorite Teaching Company courses. There are two things I notice:

1. He watches a lot of courses in addition to reading a lot of books.
2. He watches courses on diverse topics, ranging from economy to chemistry to linguistics to medicine.

Another good example is Nathan Myhrvold (whom I wrote about in my post about polymaths). Just watch his talk at TED and you will see that his interests range from cooking to photography to nuclear technology to archeology and more. I can give you other examples but I think the point is clear: immense curiosity is a distinguishing characteristic of brilliant people.

Why Curiosity Is Important

How does curiosity contribute to someone’s brilliance? Why is it important? There are two reasons I can think of:

1. It gives you a fresh perspective. Most people have just one or two lenses to see a problem through, but curious people have many different lenses. As a result, they can see something that many other people can’t. That’s what happened in Nathan Myhrvold’s company when someone found something that had eluded experts in the field:

Wood was a physicist, not a doctor, but that wasn’t necessarily a liability, at this stage. “People in biology and medicine don’t do arithmetic,” he said. He wasn’t being critical of biologists and physicians: this was, after all, a man who read medical journals for fun. He meant that the traditions of medicine encouraged qualitative observation and interpretation. But what physicists do””out of sheer force of habit and training””is measure things and compare measurements, and do the math to put measurements in context. At that moment, while reading The New England Journal, Wood had the advantages of someone looking at a familiar fact with a fresh perspective.

A physicist who “read medical journals for fun” is definitely a curious person. And he had the advantage of a fresh perspective.

2. It gives you fresh ideas. Using the term from The Medici Effect, curiosity gives you Intersection experience where concepts from different fields collide with one another and produce fresh ideas. Since curious people get more Intersection experience, they consequently get more fresh ideas.

Seven Ways to Develop Your Curiosity

Now that we’ve seen how important curiosity is, how can we develop it? Here are several things you can do:

1. Don’t label something as boring. This is the first thing you should do. Whenever you’re about to label something as boring, stop yourself. Why? Because doing that will close one more door of opportunities. What might seem boring at the surface may actually be interesting if you just dig a little bit deeper.

2. Expect things to be fun. Rather than expecting things to be boring, expect them to be fun. This small change in your mindset can make a big difference. Once you do it, it will be much easier for you to find the fun side of practically anything.

3. Absorb other people’s enthusiasm. Often something seems boring because it’s delivered poorly. That’s perhaps one thing that makes great teachers great: they can connect their students to the fun side of what they’re teaching. So one way to develop your curiosity is to watch the talks of those who are enthusiastic about their fields. Don’t just absorb their knowledge; absorb their energy too. One good place to start is TED.

4. Question relentlessly. Whenever you deal with a topic, have questions in your mind. Find their answers and raise new questions. Questions keep your mind engaged. They can change your learning process from something dull to a treasure hunt.

5. Create a challenge. By creating a challenge, you will want to prove to yourself (and perhaps to others) that you can make it. One good way to do that is by creating a project: build something real out of what you learn. Another way is to create a contest with your friends to find out who can do something faster or better.

6. Connect to what you already know. Things will be more exciting if you can connect what you’re learning to what you already know. Why? Because that improves your understanding of the world and allows you to see new possibilities you’ve never realized before.

7. Diversify. Avoid boredom and find new possibilities by exploring new topics. Read books in new genres. Meet people with different professions. Add variety to your life.

The core is simple, actually. All the advice above can be summarized to just one: make things fun.

Photo by fdecomite