What are you super curious about?

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Question of the week: What are you super curious about?

A couple of days ago, I was waiting in a checkout line at an office supply store when a mother in front of me turned around, looked beyond me, and asked her daughter a question with a slight edge of panic. 

“Where’s Katie?” She posed the q to a girl doing pirouettes in a soccer uniform whom I could only assume was Katie’s sister. 

“She’s over there; she’s looking at slime,” the sister answered unphased, mid-pirouette, motioning towards an end cap display.

She’s over there looking at slime. 

The fact they sell slime - or whatever it is that resembles slime - at an office supply store is just funny. It’s also probably a business conversation for another day. 

But today I want to talk about this: only the wandering, wondering child would find the slime at an office supply store. 

I peruse those end cap displays all the time, looking for gum or Goldfish; the nicknacks, the tchotchkes. I’ve never seen slime. But a child's curious eye sees the slime. 

As adults, we zero in on the grown-up things. Not always the curious things. 

The word ‘curiosity’ means a strong desire to know or learn something. The word and what it implies always feels wild and unbridled to me. Exploratory. Adventurous. Free-spirited. Which is why it feels ironic that the word comes from the Old French ‘curios; which, in turn, comes from the Latin ‘curiosus’ - which is ‘careful’; which comes from cura - ‘care’.

What if we all really, truly cared about what we were curious about. What if our curiosity was something we chose to curate?

It should be. It's damn powerful. Curiosity is actually a complex, cognitive process which sparks behaviors we associate with motivation and kicks in dopamine. Which means this: If someone is curious about something, he or she is highly motivated to explore, learn more, or make it happen. 

It’s a core value, an operating principle, a way of doing business; a way to be creative; a way of showing up; a way of being. 

When and why we lose that child-like curiosity to meander and explore and find the slime, I’ll never know. Maybe we lose its constant presence in our lives when we start self-regulating, judging ourselves, fearing the judgement of others. Maybe we lose it when we get distracted and grow busy. 

The truth is really special things happen when you’re curious. There’s a great HBR article by Karen Dillion from 2010 that shares the story of former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley meeting management great Peter Drucker. It’s a call to curiosity. But even more so what comes from curiosity - which are moments of discovery. It’s that discovery that’s the real priority.     

The entire exchange between mom and daughter at the office supply store reminded me of a class I taught several years ago. I was feeling a bit disruptive, and I thought - instead of walking in and reading off my syllabus, we’re going to do something - we’re going to make slime. So, I walked in on that first day of school with plastic grocery bags of art supplies. I put them all on the front table. I told them they had everything here that they needed to make slime. They had to figure out how and then do it together in teams. The students were college sophomores, juniors, and seniors, young people who probably hadn’t thought about slime in a good ten years.    

Some jumped at it. Some had a lot of questions. Some thought it was an entire waste of time. It was a pretty accurate assessment of how we adults regulate our curiosity. 

There were layers to it, too, I might add. I was curious what they’d do with the challenge; and they were curious about what the practice meant. 

It’s funny because in looking back on that class I’m still close with some of the students who either chose to jump into it; or who asked some questions, and then sprang into action. Which brings up another something to think about - we gravitate towards brains and hearts that match our own commitment to curiosity.

There’s a kindred spirit thing to curiosity. 

But what that exercise was about is exactly what Katie was tinkering with, too. Yes, slime; but more importantly - pursuing curiosity in the moment, wherever we are, whatever office supply end cap display you're looking at.

Here are a handful of truth sparks (ts) about curiosity for this week:

ts 1: Start to look for the word curious - or people who use it

This was a great opening LinkedIn update I read last week via one of my friends, Dana Draa. (H/T to her.) She kicked off a LinkedIn update with this: “I’m curious to know who of my contacts think they can benefit from a little 'Deliberate Discomfort.’” 

Her update was a reference to a book by Jason Van Camp, and it got me thinking about what shifts when we use the word curious out loud or in our writing - what happens when we open up conversations with that vibe. I publicly answered the question (Yes, I could benefit from a little deliberate discomfort...) which is something I never really do on LinkedIn.

Questionforyou: What place do you create when you make something about curiosity? What shifts for you or other people when you open a conversation with “I’m curious about…” or “What are you curious about?” 

ts 2: Speaking of Peter Drucker

I’ve never been more aware of curiosity in action than at the Global Peter Drucker Barcamp Session last November. Game changer, I tell you. Because of this - one person’s curiosity sparks a small fire that lights the world and fuels change. (That’s a riff on a quote by thinker and writer, Charles Handy.) At this session were young people from all over the world who were curious about something: eco-leadership, words losing their meaning, neurodiversity just to name a few topics. Barcamp Moderator Isabelle Mader wrote about the experience here. 

Here’s the Barcamp-inspired curiosity challenge to implement in your office or with your team: Think about a topic you’re super curious about; then, shape it organize it, and deliver it to others as a 30-second pitch.  

Shout-out: The Drucker Challenge 2020 topic is live. It’s a call to explore critical thinking and leadership. If you’re between 18 and 35, you should consider writing about it. I'm a huge fan of the entire experience.

ts 3: Curious intersections

As much as we think that Lent is a time of sacrifice, I think it’s a really interesting season to ask questions, to figure things out, to wander - to be curious. T.S.Eliot’s Ash Wednesday poem was his first long poem after he converted to Anglicanism. It explores a curious intersection - between struggle and hope. Warning: it's heavy, BUT here it is if anyone needs a #flashbackfriday jolt to 20th century poetry. (Maybe that's just me.)

Questionforyou: What's a curious intersection for you personally and/or professionally?

Refresher: The newsletter's title is a h/t to one of our favorite lines in David Foster Wallace's This is Water. Go read it.