Rekindling Curiosity

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I must have been about three years old then. My father had taken study leave and was doing some building in my village like all Igbo men. He would typically wear his wide straw hat that looked like something one would wear on a summer holiday in Hawaii and get his hands dirty with the masons, carpenters and everyone else. He always liked being fully involved in his projects. On one of those days, he must have come down from the roof to ease himself by the open urinary when I came close to take a peep. He asked vehemently in his characteristically authoritative voice, "What are you looking at!"

Just a Curious Three-Year-Old

Notice I ended the report of this quoted enquiry with an exclamation mark not a question mark. He didn't expect me to answer the question of what I was looking at or what I expected to find out about the exit point of the liquid that was emanating from the urethra. His question was not an enquiry, it was caution. He could have said, "Will you back off!" Incidentally, times have changed since the eighties. Today, I often use the shower with my five-year-old son, and I don't ask him any questions about his curiosity. Yes. Curiosity.

My quest to intrude on my father's cherished privacy was not because of some deficiency in my moral rectitude as a three-year-old. It was simply curiosity. I could have asked, "Papa, what are you doing there?" or "Why are you ... there?" like today's three-year-olds are more likely to do.

A Little About Curiosity

The eagerness to investigate, the drive to ask questions, the quest to find answers, the habit of using that search engine. Traits of a curious mind? Two incredibly curious minds sit next to me in the office. I celebrate them. A day or two ago we had a conversation about Info-Tech Research Group and the chat I had with Ashley. In minutes, Francis had dug up Info-Tech's Data Management Framework which aligned with a certain project he was working on. We still have such active minds in the workplace, but they are few and far between.

Curiosity seems to elude us as we grow up. We tend to think we have known enough; enough to put food on the table. Enough to earn our "lofty little" titles. Dr. Diana Hamilton considers curiosity one the most critical determinants of performance in the workplace but asserts that, "?only about 24% of employees feel curiosity in their jobs on a regular basis". Francesca Gino believes that Scientific breakthroughs in the human experience are the result of curiosity. Curiosity leads to deeper engagement, superior performance, and more-meaningful goals according to Kashdan et al.

Why Do Most of Us Stop Asking Questions?

Internet Live Stats claims there are 8.5 billion searches per day on Google. OpenAI's autoregressive Language Model ChatGPT had to have its infrastructure scaled up recently due to the overwhelming barrage of enquiries from across the globe. Quora boasts of up to 5000 questions daily. Surely all this means that people are really asking questions, right? But it does seem that most people ask questions because they NEED to not because they WANT to. Most questions are triggered by the immediate problem that needs to be solved not by a true quest for understanding things around us (hypothesis).

"Some people think that as we grow up we lose our curiosity, and that’s not entirely true. We do lose some elements of diversive curiosity or the ability to be surprised. But actually epistemic curiosity, that love of knowledge, appears to be roughly constant across all ages." - Mario Livio

Researchers believe curiosity is a part of our genetic constitution as humans. Without it humanity would not have come this far. On the other hand, some agree with my assumption that curiosity wanes as we grow. Mario Livio solves the riddle by saying that our epistemic curiosity is what typically wanes. If I understand the definitions well, what most of us do on Google is driven by diversive curiosity. But what we really need to cultivate is epistemic curiosity - the quest to build understanding.

Let's Get a Little More Practical

Two of my colleagues who inspired this article, Francis and Kessie, have the ideal kindly of curiosity in my estimation. They are able to explain concepts and structures in detail when asked. They have thoroughly investigated such concepts. Their quest for knowledge does not stop at the knowledge required to do their jobs or the latest fad. They can explain how the organization works, who holds what position and why it matters; what the nation is going through, what other organizations are doing, what regulators have detailed in their publications and more. A curious mind is always searching, even beyond the boundaries of immediate need or the knowledge required for one's role.

A curious mind is the go-to person in his/her field and beyond. A curious mind does more than gather information needed to pass examinations. A curious mind wants to know about things that are not necessarily his/her business. A curious mind uncovers several layers of the onion and connects the dots across the enterprise. A curious mind goes through thick and thin to find out why and why not. A curious mind is worth cultivating.

How Does One Cultivate a Curious Mind?

I have had the privilege of working with quite a lot of smart people who had large doses of curiosity. The following tips are the result of a combination of observing such people and a little research. I will just discuss three of these tips and allow the reader to extend the conversation.

• Consistent exposure to sources of knowledge - books, seminars, conversations and more help us grow new neural connections they say. We are better equipped to ask the right questions when we are well versed in what others have said about a concept. The more we discover, the more we discover what we are yet to discover. This effort has never been easier in the history of the world given the plethora of sources and channels available for free learning.
• Occasional change in context - A change in context could mean conversations with other teams, embracing new roles within the organization or changing jobs entirely. Starting something new is similar to becoming a child again - the new environment triggers the desire to know. And each time we change context, we try to compare what we knew before with what we are faced with now, creating more opportunities to ask "why". In fact, a change in context could even mean taking a holiday and visiting a new city where everyday encounters like walking on the street of a new city can trigger new questions.

• A habit of reflective thinking - In 2009, John Maxwell wrote a 160-page book "How Successful People Think" where he outlined eleven types of thinking. In the book, he defined reflective thinking as "The ability to revisit the past in order to gain a true perspective and think with understanding". Imagine making it a habit to reflect on the events of each day of work - the terms people used, the statements they made, the proceedings of meetings, the questions your boss asked, the challenges you faced and so forth. Such an exercise would unearth meaningful enquiry that you can research further on or take to the next engagement. The wise have more questions on their lips than statements.

Epilogue

We are born curious. Then we relax a bit and get used to what we call "normal". Yet everyone agrees that curiosity is a vital skill in life and in the workplace especially in this age of the knowledge economy. While curiosity tends to wane as we cross the age of five or so, there are steps we can take to rekindle this vital human trait. We hope this helps. And do have a very merry Christmas.

So, what would you like to explore next?