Staying CuriousThat feeling you get when you discover something new has always inspired me.
That feeling you get when you discover something new has always inspired me.
It happens in the classroom. It happens with friends. It happens by myself.
I get it when I’m reading something or when we launch something big. Or when I am just having a conversation with a group of friends.
That feeling…motivates me.
A lot of my internal motivation is fueled by natural curiosity. I think I have always been this type of person — the type who follows his/her interests over the necessary norms.
And this has been representative in my actions and decision making over the past few years. For both better and worse, I am the type of person that tends to follow my intuition and gut curiosity.
For the better, it has helped me learn new things (about both myself and the professional world) really quickly. I consume tons of content. I create and experiment with tons of ideas. I tend to just start on things rather than waiting around. I tend to just go for it rather than weighig all options.
For the worse, and a tough part about dealing with internal curiosity, is balancing my desire to try new things with focusing on existing ones. I have always been warned to beware of “spreading myself too thin.” And I think this has had serious effects on the way I learn, how I spend my attention, and the decisions I make.
Curiosity also means that I have to fight off things like FOMO (fear of missing out) by building conviction for my own ideas.
Of course, there are other factors that drive my choices, but, I think being fueled by natural curiosity is definitely a good thing for my personality.
As people get older…do they become less curious people? Does society stop them from chasing intuition? Do we just get tired?
How do you continue to stay curious ?
Honestly I am not sure the answer, or if there even is one, to any of these questions.
I do think that there are ways to constantly expose yourself to new and fresh ideas that will challenge and sharpen your perspective. Perhaps in life, as you get older, your perspective gets restricted to the ideas you surround yourself with.
This only reinforces the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. Now right means something different for everyone, and that definition is sure to evolve over time, but at the least, constantly auditing how and where you spend your time (and with who) must be valuable to maintaining your curious state.
Other things, like injecting purposeful time to read, try new things, and think creatively is super valuable. I have to put purposeful blocks in my day dedicated to doing these new things in order to get them done.
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on October 3, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.