What Kills Curiosity and What To Do About It?
This great topic was raised by Arthur Lok in a discussion in the Innovation Management group on LinkedIn. It made me wonder and reflect on my own level of curiosity, what this term means to me and how it effects innovation.
I think we lose our sense of curiosity as we begin to build a power base that we feel we need to protect. We have something to lose and then we begin to focus on how to protect this rather than expand and build further on what we have.
So are we just defensively minded? Such a mindset definitely make incumbents more vulnerable to new innovation brought to market by companies and entrepreneurs having nothing to loose.
I think this goes for products, services and thus corporate revenues as well as the knowledge base we build as individuals. If what we know today provides a good living perhaps we are not that open to challenge this and develop new points of view. Unfortunately, this does not work in times where just standing still is the same as getting behind – at a very fast pace.
It is fairly easy to point out what kills curiosity. I gave an example above and you can find others in the LinkedIn discussion. The more interesting question is what we can do to avoid killing our curiosity. I hope we can start a discussion on this here. Let me start off with one of my suggestions;
Try out new technologies. It took me years to get the value of cell phone texting and I am still not that good at it. In retrospect, I see this as a sign of me getting older and losing my curiosity. This lesson taught me to be open towards new technologies and not write them off as fast as I might have done.
Twitter is good example. I was initially annoyed but I stayed in there and today it gives me much value. TweetDeck is a great source of new insights – just use the search function.
What do you do to stay curious?
Stefan,
It’s great to have more discussions here.
I think Logic and object-based mindset is one of the thing we need to challenge.
Logic. All the logic is based on cause-results analysis. But if you can get all the things by analysis, there is no curiosity. It is difficult to change this, but to experiece, rather than to think/analyze, could be one of the way. The Power of Now could be a reference.
Object-based mindset. We are always pursuing our targets. Every thing is based on achieving objects. What if we enjoy the journy of exploration and get the by-products of objects?
Still, it is easy to say and hard to do.
Some years ago I read a book on Zen Buddhism and have taken away a valuable lesson from that reading. The lesson, and my interpretation of it, is that the process of achieving a goal is more important than the goal itself. Keeping this in mind helps me be aware of opportunities that present themselves on the way to a goal, and applies to personal life as well as work life.
I’m a supplier quality engineer and a CQE. By nature, I am detail-oriented and math-driven. I love process improvement work, as well. The lesson I mention above has been very useful in my work. Process mapping often helps disclose opportunities for streamlining a process; curiosity as well as logic and structure contribute to proper process analysis. A focus on process rather than goal has helped me to keep curiosity alive.
I’ll be interested to see others’ thoughts on this topic. Curiosity is an essential to me, and something that many corporate cultures do not encourage. Negotiating and engendering support from one’s company is also an essential when applying one’s curiosity: sometimes this leads to unexpected places and requires extra resources.
One of the problems I’ve seen is that one needs to constantly show results and justify one’s existence. It’s easy to measure how many hours and lines of code a programmer does each day. How do you measure daily innovation?
Great question to which my initial answer was along Elver’s explanation – that is extremely difficult to justify (financially or logistically) the act of curiosity and the endeavors that go along with that (playing/experimenting/the act justifying it/questioning its benefits and detriments/building on the ideas, etc).
However, your pure point of ‘lack of inertia’, is a valid presentation as well. It often is a challenge to revise the status quo. It’s been documented that the ideal of ‘novelty’ can be life changing and biologically changing via chemical and brain altering resultants. I always question which came first, but it has been argued and clinically demonstrated that ‘doing’ creates change – the example given that brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand creates visible changes to previously learned synapses in the brain. So to advocate your ‘try out new technologies’, I would add ‘embrace novelty’. Continue to appreciate the status quo but create novel nuances daily. This could be restated in the analogy of ‘Respect Wisdom AND Learn Continuously’.
Another possible idea to stay curious.
If you get the chance, spend more time observing and interacting with children / young people! Such an amazing experience… see the way they think and do things, the questions they ask, etc.
Personal experience: I spend a couple of hours per week as volunteer with a UK business and enterprise education charity (www.young-enterprise.org.uk), advising a group of students running their own ‘virtual’ company. I gain so much from the experience – well recommended!
Being 62 and having an unrelenting curiosity I somewhat resent your implication that aging and losing curiosity go hand in hand. What I do believe curiosity goers hand in hand with is usefulness. I’m curious about things because what I learn is useful to me. The key to maintaining curiosity is to continue to find ways to make what I learn useful. At different points in my life curiosity might result in learning, performing, improving, changing, or sharing. For example, an exciting new stimulus for my curiosity is my ability to share what I learn in Twitter (@MiNutrition). That is useful and therefore is motivating to me. So I would say that the key to maintaining curiosity is how engaged you are…not how old you are.
Paul, don’t take it personally. My own reflections on this is unfortunately based on my own experiences of getting older
I like the linking you make between curiosity and usefulness. Thanks.