How To Be Curious
The late novelist David Foster Wallace tells a wonderful story about ‘incuriosity’ in his commencement speech This Is Water:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, hows the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
We can all be blind, at times, to the world around us. We might think we know how stuff works, what drives our people, that we’ve got the solution to the problems. But do we really?
A team of organisational development (OD) professionals I once worked with was tasked with helping the senior leaders of their organisation to have better and more frequent ‘talent conversations’ with their people. The OD team, convinced of the value of this activity, had spent months developing easy-to-use tools and frameworks to help the leaders. But they struggled to get any traction. It took another few months of trying to adapt the tools to make them even better, until someone asked: “wait a minute, do these leaders even want to have talent conversations?”
The answer was a resounding ‘no’. The OD team had assumed that the leaders were keen, but in fact, they were terrified. Not because they didn’t know how. But because they saw the conversations with these ambitious people as creating a threat to their own job security.
This is a case of not seeing the water you’re swimming in. When you’re so close to your own perceptions of how the world works, you can forget to ask the bigger questions that really matter. Knowledge overwhelms curiosity. There’s a correlation between the amount of knowledge you think you have and the amount of curiosity you demonstrate.
fMRI research suggests it looks like this:
When there’s a gap between what you think you know, and what you think could be known, you’re curious.
Let’s break it down a little more:
When you have no knowledge of something, there’s nothing to be curious about. Think of the young fish in the water. That’s ignorance.
When the old fish swims by, you start to get curious. What’s he talking about? That’s wonderance.
When you realise you’ve actually learned something new, when you ‘see the water’, you can apply that knowledge to your world. That’s confidence.
When you think you know everything, you think there’s nothing to be curious about. You know it all, right? That’s arrogance.
In a world that values answers, its tempting to rush towards the right-hand end. Ryan Holiday, the author of The Obstacle is the Way, says when your ego gets bigger than your ears, your curiosity starts to die. When people keep calling you Superman, soon enough you start to believe you are. The trick is to stay curious at all times. To stay in that place between wonderance and confidence. Know what you know, and be humble about it. In a world where yesterday’s solutions are less effective at solving today’s problems, those who can stay curious will help us create new ways forward.
Transportation expert Wanis Kabbaj is a good example. He’s been trying to solve the increasingly huge traffic problems that rapid urbanisation presents us with. He asked: “what if traffic flowed through our streets as smoothly and efficiently as blood flows through our veins?” By simply asking that question, and being in ‘wonderance’, he’s taken our thinking in a new direction that just might yield new solutions. Check out his TED talk on that here.
Fortunately, we aren’t fish. If we choose, we can see the water. We’re born with an innate sense of curiosity: that strong desire to know and learn. Unlike other living things, we’re wired to ask “why?” Curiosity is one of the critical meta-skills for interesting times. When your tried-and-true methods don’t work like they used to, then its time to dial up your curiosity. If you want to reinvent how things happen in your world, your starting point is curiosity.
Here are six ways I try to keep my own curiosity sharp:
Expand My Mind: I deliberately read and listen well outside of my usual bubble. I subscribe to podcasts that cover a wide range of subjects, like NPR’s TED Radio Hour. I’ll go into a news agent and buy magazines that I wouldn’t usually read. I love Blinkist to help me absorb 15-minute book summaries in written and audio format.
Expand My Experience: It can be squirmy at times, but I’m always reminding myself to get out of my comfort zone. Walk a different way to work. Surf bigger waves. Hang out with people who think differently to me. Visit a new country each year. Go test myself.
Ask Better Questions: I aim to be more like Wanis Kabbaj. I try to make my default questions “why?” and “what if?” If I sound like my three-year-old self, thats a good thing. It opens up new possibilities.
Cultivate ‘Beginner’s Mind’: I’ve snowboarded forever. Last year, my kids challenged me to get on skis. What, waste a day on the slopes feeling like a beginner? Yep. I did it, and the feeling was cool. That feeling of learning something completely new gives a natural high thats hard to beat. It’s not limited to sports. It could be new language, a new skill, anything. I’ve written about that idea before.
Notice others: I spend a lot of time in coffee shops. It’s a great place to (discreetly) do people-watching. I’ll observe someone, and imagine what it might be like to be them. It helps me get out of my own head, and remember that everyone has a unique perspective on life.
Notice myself: As much as possible, I’ll reflect daily on my experiences, and what I made of them. Even just five minutes of journaling a day can help hone my self-curiosity. The go-to questions I ask myself, and write the answers to, are 1) What were three cool things that happened today, and why were they cool for 2) Whats one thing today I could have done differently, and what difference would that have made?
Curiosity is the driving force behind human development. More than ever, the world needs you to be curious. Where could that be true for you?
About This Author:
Digby Scott – Leadership Development Centre (Published 8 February, 2017, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-curious-digby-scott )