“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” ~ Leo Burnett
We are all born curious. You just need to look at how children play, constantly ask questions and try everything that is unknown. However, at some point in our unfortunate education, this curiosity is somewhat appeased. A myriad of rules, norms and conventions appear that are slowly killing our curiosity. As Einstein said, “it is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education”.
However, well understood and well managed curiosity can be a source of significant improvements for your personal productivity.
It must be well managed because if you let only curiosity guides your life, it can soon become a distraction that constantly invites you to experience new things without ever building anything or taking advantage of the value of what you have already found.
And when I say well understood, I don’t mean common curiosity, the one that takes you to see what your friends are doing on Facebook or what are the trending topics of the day on Twitter.
The worthy curiosity is the one which comes from never being completely satisfied with your current set of knowledge and skills. It’s what pushes you to find and learn new skills. Skills that have a meaning, because they will make you a better person, a better professional, or just because they will allow you to take a specific project with more success opportunities.
Why curious people are more productive?
- Curiosity leads you to clarify your thoughts. Summarizing, it helps you discover what lies inside yourself and find out where you need to direct your life. This allows you to set goals and focus your efforts on what really matters.
- Curiosity leads you to want to understand how things work, not just accept them as they are. By understanding how processes work, you are able to optimize them, make them more efficient and productive.
- Curiosity helps eliminate stress. You stop worrying about those skills that you don’t have—your weaknesses—because you know you’ll acquire them or make them better soon. Curiosity forces you to learn and allows you to be more positive.
- Curious people are not overwhelmed with the many things they have to do. Curiosity pushes you to remain committed and become as proficient as possible.
- Curious people are proactive, rather than passive. A proactive attitude makes you see the problems from different angles and try to find alternative solutions to develop your tasks more efficiently.
- When you’re curious, many ideas come to you because your mind is always active and is able to recognize new patterns as they appear. A lot of new possibilities open up for you.
- Curious people are never bored. There are always new things that catch your attention. Your life has more variety and excitement.
How to reawaken your curiosity?
To develop an inquiring mind 1 you must be open to everything. To learn and unlearn. To not take anything for granted.
Obviously, to be curious, you have to like learning stuff. If you are someone who thinks that learning is fun, then you have great potential. Otherwise, frankly, it will be complicated.
Travel, meet people, different cultures, different ways of understanding life. Get out of your usual environment occasionally.
Read a lot, and read about everything. The world is not monothematic. There are many interesting things out of your usual world that will open your appetite to learn and apply new things in your every day, at work and in your life.
Be curious. Never stop being a kid.
1 Notes:
- 5 Ways To Develop Curiosity, by Lifehack
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