How would you handle the chaos?

Curiosity is a topic that most of us can never run out of interest in. But you may ask what is the connection between curiosity and chaos?

Tapping into our curiosity is such a powerful approach that it can be used in a variety of contexts, from resolving conflicts to innovation to handling chaos.

So the question is that how do we choose curiosity to handle the chaos in our life - be it at work or outside of work?

One of the principles of chaos, if we can look at it from a theoretical perspective, is the underlying unpredictability. And that is exactly where you can tap into your curiosity.

The world is extremely complex and unpredictability is not an exception but a rule. In that case, our expectation of clarity and steadiness is near wishful thinking. The only way out is to be curious about the possibilities the world throws in front of us.

“When you’re curious you find lots of interesting things to do.” — Walt Disney

But how do you develop curiosity?

In the paper the Usefulness of the Useless knowledge, the author Abraham Flexner deeply championed building institutes that nurture human curiosity.

“Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times.”

It is one thing to just celebrate our inherent curiosity and another thing to curate it for ourselves in a systematic manner. If you ever lived in an environment where you didn't have to worry about the outcomes but blindly pursue something because you are interested in it, you will be able to appreciate the value of curiosity even more.

Did you ever do something without having the burden of deliverables expected from you?

Developing a beginner's mindset

If you look at children, you have the answer about how to develop a beginner's mindset because in their case they already operate from that space.

But in the case of adults, a beginner's mindset is not something that happens all of a sudden and needs a certain amount of effort to let go of our baggage while retaining the childlike curiosity. And this baggage is what makes us value our experiences and learn from the everyday life we live through.

That is why developing a beginner's mindset becomes an interestingly complex problem. If you've any ideas as to how you foster shoshin, do let me know in the comments.

the major hurdle to being open-minded is that we are naturally inclined to seek out information that supports our current views and beliefs – a human foible known as ‘confirmation bias’

Ditch the degrees, Scale up your skills

Today the world demands more equitable practices in the workplace. So how can skills help? I strongly believe that the quality of work you do is a great demonstration of the skills you already have or developing on the job.

If you are interested in a skills-first mentality and want to participate in the burning debate around skills, you may like this interview with Ryan Roslansky .

I wanted to know if you are already seeing this trend coming live in the job postings you notice on LinkedIn or outside or even inside your workplace.

Did you recently hear about someone being hired for the skills they bring to the table due to their proof of work or do you think the recruiters are still asking about the degrees people hold from the past?

Do let me know in the comments or send me a DM, I would love to chat on this topic.

Manager Maps

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Book(s) Discovery:

1) LIVEWIRED by David Eagleman: These days almost every day we hear about the progress made in AI and that technology will replace humans in so many spheres of our life but I can never stop wondering at how beautiful our human mind is.

I am always looking for opportunities to understand the inherent nature of our ever-changing brain and in that bookshelf dedicated to this topic, I would offer you to add this one.

In textbooks, media advertisements, and popular culture, the brain is typically portrayed as an organ with different regions dedicated to specific tasks. This area here exists for vision, that swath there is necessary for knowing how to use tools, this region becomes active when resisting candy, and that spot lights up when mulling over a moral conundrum. All the areas can be neatly labeled and categorized. But that textbook model is inadequate, and it misses the most interesting part of the story. The brain is a dynamic system, constantly altering its own circuitry to match the demands of the environment and the capabilities of the body. If you had a magical video camera with which to zoom in to the living, microscopic cosmos inside the skull, you would witness the neurons’ tentacle-like extensions grasping around, feeling, bumping against one another, searching for the right connections to form or forgo, like citizens of a country establishing friendships, marriages, neighborhoods, political parties, vendettas, and social networks. Think of the brain as a living community of trillions of intertwining organisms. Much stranger than the textbook picture, the brain is a cryptic kind of computational material, a living three-dimensional textile that shifts, reacts, and adjusts itself to maximize its efficiency. The elaborate pattern of connections in the brain—the circuitry—is full of life: connections between neurons ceaselessly blossom, die, and reconfigure. You are a different person than you were at this time last year, because the gargantuan tapestry of your brain has woven itself into something new.

See you next week in?. Check out?all the previous editions here .