Curiosity
Like necessity is the mother of all inventions, curiosity is the mother of all learnings. In order to keep learning new things and to keep getting better, we need to have a curious mind. A mind that wonders why things are the way they are? Why is it that we eat food? What are the problems that are currently present in the world? Why does it snow in certain parts of the world and in certain seasons(during certain months) ? Why do we have rainfall? Sometimes we might find the answer and sometimes we might not. But the idea is to keep your mind active and curious. To me the way I look at curiosity is seeking new possibilities and understanding new things. In case you have a question about how does the building hold so much load, you are being curious. When Newton asked a question on why does the apple fall down from the tree, he was being curious. When Thomas Edison asked why can't we create a bulb from a halogen he was being curious. In fact, all the scientific discoveries that we have made as humans, we have started with a sense of curiosity. Today human kind has come so far that we can produce electric cars, we have airplanes flying, we have trains that were initially run on coal now running on electricity. Humans have come a far way and we are just going to get better. We have instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp through which we can communicate with someone miles away. Technology is a real boon to the society who knows how to use it. In fact we are in the age of artificial intelligence where we can have agents do the work for us. We have chatgpt, GitHub copilot, etc that write our code for us. What's the reason that we have made so much progress? It's definitely collective intelligence and work, but there's a strong case of curiosity as well. Human beings have been curious to learn and understand more and more. We have found meaning in inventing and looking at a problem from a curious set of eyes. This is the reason we have come so far. As I write this, I feel today people are getting overwhelmed by emotions and curiosity is taking a back seat. When was the last time we asked questions to our friends about them and not about us. Curiosity is also a way for connection.
Benefits of being curious:
1. Improves social connections: When we are curious, we are more interested to learn about people rather than worrying about being interesting. So naturally a curious person will always ask more questions and be interested in the lives of others rather than being interested only about himself/herself. This way curiosity helps you improve social connections.
2. Improves your breadth of knowledge: When you are curious about something, you ask yourself or someone a question. For an example, you might be curious to understand why does the stock market behave the way it behaves, you might be interested to know how do aeroplanes really work, or how are tea leaves made, etc. When you are interested around the world, your knowledge will grow.
3. Better at work: When you approach your life with a curious mindset, you are going to be better at work as you will understand things much more deeply. You would want to know more and more about a certain topic that's unknown to you. For example, if I don't know python programming language, I can be curious about it and learn more about what's python, how it works, etc and this will drive motivate me to learn something new. (I know python, but this is just for example)
4. Fear is reduced: Imagine there's a girl that you want to talk to and impress. Or if you are a girl, let's say there's a guy you are interested in. If you go with an approach of curiosity you would be able to find more connection and depth. Your anxiety of approaching a girl will go away and you would be interested to get to know the person and connect with the person genuinely. This is one example, where fear is reduced. Imagine you fear a particular topic, for example, System design in computer science is something you fear, but if you go in with a curious mindset on how does Facebook really work or how does instagram work or how does paytm work, you will really enjoy learning about those topics and you will see it as an opportunity rather than a performing metric. You will learn more and more about these things as you go by.
5. Provides self-confidence: When you remove fear, what naturally follows is self confidence. When you have the knowledge and you are hungry to learn more, you will feel more self confident and self assured about what you can do at work or with friends or with people around. You will be confident that you will hold a conversation well. You will be able to take more challenges and do things better than before.
Ways to build curiosity:
The next question is how can we become curious practically?
1. Embrace the unknown: Understand that not everything in life will be known to you. You will learn and grow as life go's along. By embrace the unknown what I mean is, go to places you have not visited, try foods that you have not tried, meet new people you have never met, play new board games you have never played, truly experiment with more things and see what you can learn about the situation. If you are a beach person, go to the mountains. Discover new possibilities. But this time go with a mindset of curiosity and growth not of ego and strong headedness. Go do things that make you feel uncomfortable and sometimes insecure but with a mindset of curiosity.
2. Ask questions: Keep asking questions wherever you are. Be someone who wants to know how a building is made even if it does not concern you. Be someone who wants to learn about guitar and how people play the guitar even if it does not give you any benefit. Ask why do we have the concept of time? Why are people addicted to their phones? Why is it that some people are confident and some are not? What makes you special and what makes the person you are talking to you special? What's one thing that you can do better? What things are working in your life?
One great way to keep asking questions is going for a walk and asking about everything that you see while walking. What breed of dog is that? What brand is that shirt? What's the specialty of green colour in parks? These questions will make sure your mind is active and you will also be happy when you understand these things. You will have defining "Aha !" moments.
3. Foster a growth mindset: The definition of growth mindset is that we don't know everything but we can learn everything. If there's a better way to do something, figure that out. Let's say you didn't do well in a particular exam, don't be sad and disappointed to that you didn't do well. Rather focus on curiosity, ask why didn't I do well in this exam? Was it a concentration lapse, was it a preparation lapse, or was it just that I haven't solved a similar problem before and was not able to solve the problem today as well. Ask yourself what can I do better? Can I practice more types of problems? Can I learn certain concepts well enough? Whatever it's that you need to do go ahead and do it.
4. Practice active listening: When you speak you don't really learn anything new. When you ask and listen to the other person actively with an intention to learn rather than to judge or comment anything about it, you will realise that there's a lot of things that the other person knows and you don't. Listen with the intention that you want to learn something.
5. Embrace diverse perspectives: There's a very famous exercise that a lot of people ask to do. Let's say you support a political party and you have a view point of why you are supporting that political party. Now, go to a friend or a neighbour or anyone you know who's supporting a different party and ask his/her view point. Don't comment or judge the view point but this way you will always be able to gauge the situation objectively rather than with your own personal perspective. If your captain is saying we should take bowling if we win the toss, ask why bowling? Check with a team mate who's got a different opinion and understand different perspectives. This will open up your minds to see new possibilities and new horizons that you didn't think were possible for you to think.
6. Foster a sense of wonder: Like I said previously, develop a way of viewing the world as a book that you are reading. If you see something, think about the why, the how and the whats. Think about why do you get snow and what's the difference between snow and hailstorm? Google the answer if needed but have an open perspective and view the world as a book that you are reading with eyes of curiosity.
7. Read widely: In order to get exposed to different thoughts, ideas and perspectives read as much as possible. If you read a lot of self-help, read an autobiography, if you read a lot of romance novels, try reading a mystery novel, this will expose you to so many threads of ideas that it's impossible to not be curious about it. Read things that don't interest you as well, because that will give you a fresh perspective about the world.
8. Have a curiosity journal: Whenever you encounter something that you don't have an answer to, just jot it down in your curiosity journal and revisit that page later.
9. Follow YouTubers/Influencers that share knowledge: There are many YouTubers and influencers like Dhruv Rathee that you can follow. They share content that's interesting sometimes. I had a fascination about world war 2 and learned everything from these YouTube channels. So realise the resources at your disposal and use them wisely rather than the apps using you for their benefits.
10. Limit judgements: Don't judge anything as boring or dry or not worth the time. Rather adopt a mindset that says that everything's a story that's worth exploring and understanding. Don't think it's not going to be useful even if I know about it. You never know what knowledge will be useful when.
11. Use technology wisely: Use technology wisely, listen to podcasts, audiobooks, online courses, YouTube tutorials, etc. in order to learn and grow. Don't mindlessly scroll through internet and social media.
Exercise:
Question everything:
In order to get curiosity in your daily lives, question everything about an observation. For example, I see a cup in front of me. I can ask 5 questions like these.
1. Who invented the cup and when was it invented?
2. Why is the shape of a cup cylindrical?
3. What type of materials were used to make this cup?
4. Has the design of a cup evolved over time, if yes then how?
5. What's the volume of the cup I am holding right now?
These are the 5 questions. This way you can question about anything and understand more about that topic.
Explore something new:
Go to wikipedia and find out any topic that you never have tried understanding and read that article for 10 minutes. Try connecting the dots with something that you have already learned. You will truly enjoy this exercise.
In summary, I just want to say that curiosity is a habit and a way of life. It's not something that you do once a day, you can do it many a times in a day and the fastest way to build this habit is to practice it daily. At work, be curious, in your relationships be curious, be curious about your own personal growth and see your life change. Have a great one !
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