How to Nurture Your Curiosity
Seeking Quick Answers Shuts Down Curiosity
Ian Leslie, in his book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends Upon It, builds a strong case for the value of putting in the extra effort to develop curiosity.
“The very reason we have technology is to make things easier. But making things easier can come at a cost–there can be hidden value in difficulty. It’s a principle that seems to apply with special force to the way we learn. The harder things are to grasp or memorize, the more our brains rise to the challenge.” Ian Leslie
The hidden cost of googling a question the first time it jumps into your mind, is that you don’t give your mind a chance to transform a puzzle into a mystery.
Puzzles vs. Mysteries
Puzzles are questions with answers, while mysteries are continuing questions leading to deeper thought, a consideration of alternative viewpoints, and analysis.
Our culture loves quick answers delivered in sound bites. You can hear reporters pressing the experts they interview to give yes or no answers; to agree or disagree with simple statements; to predict the future with certainty. Many experts hesitate to do so, not because they are hiding something, but anyone who values intellectual inquiry knows that it doesn’t lend itself to sound bites.
The way to turn a puzzle into a mystery is to ask questions. Getting quick answers shuts down that questioning process. Instead of Googling specific questions, such as “What is the world’s largest shark?” Read a Wikipedia or Encyclopedia entry about sharks and, as you read, train yourself to ask more questions.
“The Internet closes information gaps and, by doing so, forecloses curiosity. It has a tendency to turn mysteries into puzzles and puzzles into instantly answered questions…The Web solves the puzzles for us before we’ve had a chance to flex our cognitive muscles. As a result, we can allow them to waste away.” Ian Leslie
Raise Your NFC
NFC stands for “Need for Cognition.” It is a scientific measure of intellectual curiosity. Created in 1984, the psychology test measures “the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking”.
“Psychologists use a scale of NFC to distinguish between individuals who like their mental life to be as straightforward as possible and those who derive satisfaction and pleasure from intellectual challenges.” Ian Leslie
John Webb Young, an advertiser, described a similar idea in his book, A Technique for Producing Ideas. He explains how famous economist Vilfredo Pareto divided the world into speculators and rentiers.
“Speculator characteristics: constantly preoccupied with the possibilities of new combinations. All those people who speculate how to change and improve things. Rentier: routine, steady-going, unimaginative, conserving people whom the speculator manipulates.” John Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas (1965)
Future Jobs Belong to the Curious
The jobs of the future belong to the speculator, those with a high NFC. Easy jobs with easy answers will be outsourced to other nations or A.I. Creative individuals with curiosity will become the valued employees.
“The truly curious will be increasingly in demand. Employers are looking for people who can do more than follow procedures competently or respond to requests, who have a strong intrinsic desire to learn, solve problems, and ask penetrating questions.” Ian Leslie
Diverse vs. Epistemic Curiosity
Googling for an answer sounds like an act of curiosity. However, Ian Leslie makes a point to distinguishing diversive from epistemic curiosity.
Diversive curiosity is what babies are born with, it is an interest in novelty. It is a question that pops into your head that you have an itch to know the answer to.
“Diversive curiosity can be a strength, leading people to take in more from their environment. But it can quickly become aimless, distracting, and frustrating. In our digital world, diverse curiosity is constantly stimulated by ever-present streams of texts, e-mails, tweets, reminders, and news alerts that stimulate our hunger for novelty.” Ian Leslie
Epistemic curiosity, on the other hand, is the type that sustains your interest. It can turn a simple question into a lifelong passion. This is when the thinker continues to seek more knowledge on the topic, keep asking questions and going deeper. This type of curiosity takes more effort.
This is the type of curiosity that takes pleasure in reading a book, instead of a blog. Epistemic curiosity leads us to seek experts with specialized knowledge and ask them questions.
“It is hardly possible to overstate the value in the present state of human improvement of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.” John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848)
Epistemic curiosity asks you to have a mind like an octopus: reach out with all eight arms and fondle ideas in your tentacles; turn them around and look at them from different angles; ask questions and consider different solutions.
“What distinguishes one (diversive curiosity) from the other (epistemic curiosity) is the accumulation of specialized knowledge. Epistemic curiosity is hard work; it involves sustained cognitive effort. That makes it tougher, but ultimately more rewarding.” Ian Leslie
7 Ways to Stay Curious
In his book, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends Upon It, Ian Leslie lays out seven ways to stay curious.
1. Stay Foolish
Indulge your questions and curiosities. Don’t worry about looking stupid. There is always a learning curve to acquiring new information and habits. Learn to love Shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” Approach new topics with eagerness, openness and no preconceptions.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
2. Build the Database
True epistemic thinking relies on a storehouse of knowledge. Modern education acts as though the acquiring of facts has no value. However, the more you know about a diverse range of topics, the easier it is for your mind to make connections.
Setting goals, like taking the Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge, can help you acquire new knowledge and explore novel topics.
“To some minds each fact is a separate bit of knowledge. To others it is a link in a chain of knowledge.” James Webb Young
Googling an answer to a question, when you have no prior knowledge, gives you a random fact. Direct instruction and education gives you hooks in your mind to hang new facts upon.
“Knowledge, even shallow knowledge–knowing a little about a lot–widens your cognitive bandwidth. It means you get more out of a trip to the theater or a museum or from a novel, a poem, or a history book. It means you can engage with the person next to you at lunch on a broader range of topics, contribute meaningfully to more meetings, be more skeptical of dubious claims, and ask better questions of everyone you encounter.” Ian Leslie
3. Forage like a “Foxhog”
This references a proverb by Ancient Greek poet Archilochus. “A fox knows many things but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” The argument in the proverb is that it is better to be a specialist and know one thing well, than to be a generalist with many tricks. However, in today’s society, it is best to be a combination of the generalist and the specialist: a “foxhog.”
4. Ask the Big Why
When faced with an initial question, stop with the first answer and ask “why?” Keep asking why and push a closed question into an open-ended one that encourages the exploration of additional disciplines, ideas and solutions. Questioning is an important technique for teachers and parents.
As an example, I learned a random fact, that mistletoe translates to “poop on a stick.” So I asked why? Following this chain of questions led me to write Magical Mistletoe about the natural history of this parasite, as well as its rich mythological history.
5. Be a “Thinkerer”
A combination of the words “think” and “tinker.” A “thinkerer” plays with ideas and solutions. She explores and tinkers, seeking refinement and deeper thinking, rather than simple answers. Model-making and approaching problems through different lenses helps one “thinker” with problems.
6. Question your Teaspoons (Nothing is Boring)
“If you’re paying attention, everything in the world–from the nature of gravity to a pigeon’s head, to a blade of grass is extraordinary.” John Lloyd
Seeking easy answers often makes topics dull. To appreciate a subject we need to slow down and spend time exploring it. John Lloyd, founder of the Boring Conference in London, argues that nothing is really boring if you pay attention.
For example, nearly everyone knows the bare-bones version of the Space Race. We were motivated by the U.S.S.R.’s launch of Sputnik to put a man on the moon. But when I dug deeper into the story I found amazing facts (Kennedy received a puppy from the dog that the Soviets sent into space) and other fascinating areas of inquiry: The Space Race — When Science Was Cool.
7. Turn Puzzles into Mysteries
Don’t let a simple Google search be the end of your question. Why were you asking it in the first place? It may be a hint that you can turn your puzzle into a mystery.
“When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.” B.F. Skinner
Conclusion
The future belongs to the curious. However, it may require some effort on your part. Google is a tool. It can shut down your curiosity or provide a gateway into greater exploration. Push yourself to open the gate.
“Rather than a great dumbing down, it’s likely that we are at the beginning of a cognitive polarization–a division into the curious and the incurious. People who are inclined to set off on intellectual adventures will have more opportunities to do so than ever in human history; people who merely seek quick answers to someone else’s questions will fall out of the habit of asking their own, or never acquire it in the first place.” Ian Leslie
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