Curiosity may have killed the cat (a curious phrase). But you’re not a cat.
Why improve your curiosity? The long answer
Want to improve your curiosity? You may wonder why you need to.
The long answer is that curiosity is critical to innovation, improved processes and outcomes, greater discoveries, more creativity and better learning.
I heard a recent interview with an educational expert. She was critiquing our reliance on standardized testing. The interviewer eventually asked what alternatives are there to our current standardized tests. The response? Measure the single factor that contributes most to a person’s success in any job: Measure (and apparently there are ways to do this) their desire to learn.
If a person loves to learn she or he can succeed in any field. Why? Because that person will seek out and acquire the knowledge and skills needed. And guess what is at the root of this love of learning? Curiosity.
I told you it was the long answer.
The short answer
The short answer, at least to me, is this: curiosity makes life more interesting and without it, travel simply isn’t as much fun.
For me, curiosity turns everything into a quest to learn more. An exploration. A search of discovery. I find that when I’m curious, just about anything can be interesting. The world becomes one giant mystery just waiting to be solved.
Improve your curiosity in these five ways
So if curiosity is such a good thing, how might you cultivate or improve your curiosity? Try these five exercises:
- Learn to create space for curiosity. I’m starting with this important but often overlooked reality: Curiosity requires margins. When I’m stressed and preoccupied, I have zero interest in exploring anything new. Learn to create time just to wander and then to focus on something that interests you.
- Be just a little bit curious. Rather than attempting to go through a whole day in a curious mindset, take just 15 minutes to note what normally goes unnoticed. Pay attention to as many things as you can. Scan widely. But then – and this is the key to keep from being overwhelmed with data – go deep. Let go of those things or ideas that don’t grab you. Your goal isn’t just to be aware, but to use that as an entry point to becoming more curious about those things that interest and delight you.
- Be curious about what makes you curious. This is a great way to explore your deeper passions and interests, sometimes ones that you may not even be aware of. Your curiosity type will affect this to some degree, but ask yourself why some items, situations, people and thoughts excite you more than others. Pursue those and see where they lead. This is an important form of mindfulness: being aware of what piques your curiosity is something most of us never consider.
- Let your curiosity push you further. Don’t stop with your first question. Instead ask, “What’s the more interesting question behind the initial one? What’s the deeper curiosity behind the surface curiosity?”
- Make a choice to choose to learn, to explore, to discover. And then do so in a focused way. Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media can make us curious, but too often in only a wandering, even distracted way. I can waste a lot of time in useless curiosity or invest five minutes exploring a subject that deeply satisfies me. It’s an important choice we don’t always realize we have.
Find those areas that pique your interests. Focus on those areas. Be curious about those areas and soon, you’ll not only be asking better questions. You’ll improve your curiosity.
And even more important, you’ll be discovering better answers and being curious as to what lies beyond those.
