Curiosity is a Superpower
Remaining always curious can lead to so much that improves you as a person and provides opportunities for an interesting personal and professional life.
What I read: “The Curiosity Matrix: 9 Habits of Curious Minds” by Anne-Laure Le Cunff.
Someone recently asked me if I felt I had any superpowers. I thought about it for a minute. After a few moments I answered, “I’ve remained an incredibly curious person all my life.”
I’ve written about the importance of curiosity before. Engaged curiosity is indeed a superpower because it can lead to so much good. It nudges us to learn new things. It prompts us to get to know other people better. It can inform our self-reflections which hopefully make us better people. It can lead to entirely new professional paths. It can form the foundation of groundbreaking innovations and discoveries. In many ways, humankind’s curiosity is the reason for the entirety of humanity’s progress.
I read Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Ness Labs newsletter regularly. Highly recommended. What a brilliant and articulate mind. But the article about the habits of a curious mind made me immediately stop what I was doing and read it. I believe that if we can embrace these nine simple habits, it can open up new horizons personally and professionally. These nine habits taken together create a single superpower anyone can foster in themselves.
As Anne-Laure Le Cunff mentions at the start of the article, all healthy humans from the time they’re babies display curiosity. Curiosity may indeed by innate. But while we all might exhibit curiosity to some extent, we’re not all equally curious.
Some people tend to be more systematically curious than others. Those curious minds are generally adventurous, creative, less risk-averse, and seem to seek and enjoy exploration more than others.
Those people who are the most deeply curious tend to share some common habits that support the curiosity that leads them to growth, both personally and professionally. I’ll let you read the entire article to see all nine of them, but here are a couple.
2. Forming connections between ideas. Instead of thinking about the world in a linear way, curious minds think in maps. They practice networked thinking and combinational creativity, and find delight when discovering an unexpected connection between two ideas. Their mind is a garden and the world a giant playground where ideas can seed their imagination.
This is how my brain works all the time. I find most of life fascinating. I read and learn across a wide spectrum of topics and perspectives. I could grab almost any book off a library shelf and probably discover something in it I find interesting. Part of the impetus for and satisfaction from my own curiosity is the constant connecting of dots between seemingly disparate sets of information or ideas.
One of the ways I encourage such mental connections is through note taking. I take notes all the time. I write stuff down throughout my day. I wrote about it in “Life Hack: Write It Down” and I’ve alluded to my constant note taking elsewhere.
If curiosity is my superpower, then note taking is my magic superhero garb that powers that curiosity. Notes, along with reading and writing, is how I make sense of the world. Part of that making sense is encouraging connections between information and ideas to create new insights and perhaps entirely new perspectives or sets of information or ideas.
9. Welcoming the unpredictable. For curious minds, the fact that the world keeps on changing is a feature, not a bug. They believe that their response determines how much disruptions affect them, and they choose to respond with curiosity. They surf with chaos to not only survive, but to thrive in chaotic times.
This can be a tough one for many people. Myself included. As much as I espouse fully embracing the inevitable change in my own life and the world at large, the unpredictability of life can be challenging.
Just last night I was chatting with a friend through text. He asked to take the conversation to a telephone call and I hesitated for a moment because I knew that would take longer than I had mentally reserved for the chat. Then I thought, what if the world blows up tomorrow? That’s honestly what went through my head. What if all of humanity’s calm was upended for some reason and I’d never get to talk to them again.
I know. That’s an extreme thought. But what it emanates from is that I consciously know the only constant in life is change and try to position my thinking amid that reality. I called my friend immediately and we had a lovely catch-up conversation.
Historian James Clifford once said, “Cultures do not hold still for their portrait.” I’ve never forgotten that quote. It’s one of the few that I can say off the topic of my head because it so concisely encapsulates that change is a feature of life and the world, not a bug.
Whatever you can do to encourage your own curiosity, I can say with total confidence you’ll never regret that effort. Remaining curious is the pathway to a better life, a better career, and a better you.
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