Curiosity: The #1 Skill to Have in the 21st Century

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Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it’s actually the secret to some of the most successful people in the world today - and it can be for you too.

Thanks to the Internet’s simultaneous democratization of learning and compression of the learning curve, curiosity is the single most important skill to succeed in the 21st Century.

As David Perell notes:

“The internet is especially beneficial for those who are intellectually curious, those who wish to manage large networks of loose acquaintances, and those who wish to absorb lots of information at phenomenally fast rates.”

I would argue that a curious generalist (or as @Web would say, polymath), who has a track record of training their curiosity muscle, can in a “race” to master a new skill or area of work, chase down and beat a specialist in that area in any mid-to-long distance version of the “race.”

Sure the specialist might still win the 100-yard dash version of the head to head matchup but put the generalist up against them in the 400 or 800 and the generalist is going to win most of those races thanks to the abundance of knowledge and speed of the internet you have sitting in the palm of your hands. 

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Be Curious by Asking Great Questions

What’s the best way to know a generalist has a “well-toned” curiosity muscle? 

They can quickly ask great questions on just about any topic without the need for a warm-up, lengthy introduction, or additional research. The quality of questions one asks around new concepts, new challenges, and new intersections of diverse interests demonstrate the strength of their curiosity.

Asking great questions is not just at the big Elon Musk question level of “What if we could land and re-use a $20M rocket instead of always having to replace it?” but also down in the “Why do we do things that way?” level that so many people take for granted on a daily basis in corporations the world around. 

Clayton Christensen illuminates this skill further :

“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”

How many holes are you digging each day? How many holes have you already dug that are waiting for hypotheses, ideas, or answers to come across your brain/desk/life?

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Collect and Connect Dots to Discover New Innovations

Another major benefit being curious is what happens after you dig those holes in your brain. You begin to collect lots and lots of dots that may or may not fit perfectly in those holes, but then later you are able to connect those dots which help lead to new discoveries, answers with new angles or insights, and ultimately toward innovation. 

Steve Jobs drove this benefit home in his famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech:

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. 

As David Perell taught me in Write of Passage, Richard Feyman also points this out with the importance of his concept of 12 Favorite Problems.

“You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’” - Richard Feynman

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How to Train Your Curiosity Muscle

1. Write Down Your 12 Favorite Problems - keep a note dedicated to each one and review the list weekly to keep them fresh in the back of your mind.

2. Keep a Curiosity Journal and Collect Dots - in your digital note-taking app or notebook and end every day with at least 1 thing you were curious about that you want to learn more about. Don’t go to bed without creating at least one new hole to be filled in with dots later. 

3. Run a “Curiosity Sprint” by Counting to 4

   • Write down 1 question/hole you want to fill in

   • Find 2 books that could help answer the question, then do a quick skim or find a summary or Twitter thread of the core ideas.

   • Read 3 articles on the question topic

   • Follow 4 people/experts on Twitter that consistently create or curate information around your question to get smarter on that topic/area of interest