How to Strengthen Your Curiosity Muscle

Curiosity is best defined as the motivation to learn, be open to new ideas, and explore novel environments and situations. With this meaning in mind, there are obvious reasons for one to harness and develop their curiosity.

First, curiosity is an important dimension of leadership effectiveness; so, if you want to manage or lead people, it helps to display curiosity, not least because this will help them harness their own curiosity.

Second, curiosity enables the ability to keep learning, an essential if you want to future-proof your career and yourself. My latest book I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique illustrates how the skills required to keep up with our changing work environment are evolving so quickly that honing our curiosity muscle is now a survival mechanism.

Third, employers are asking for it; curiosity is frequently listed as one of the most critical and sought-after dimensions of talent, no matter what job, industry, and seniority level. For example, at ManpowerGroup, our recruiters and talent agents often hire on curiosity, which our clients appreciate. The reason is clear: While we may not know what tomorrow’s jobs will be, employees’ motivation and ability to upskill and reskill for those jobs will significantly increase if they are curious.

So, what can you do to build and exercise your curiosity muscle? Here are five science-based recommendations:

Ditch all excuses.

Everybody wants to be curious, and few things are more intellectually fulfilling than harnessing our curiosity, whether for trivial or deep existential matters. However, too many things stand in the way of unleashing our hungry minds. Common barriers include being time deprived, having to focus on predictable tasks and deliver “sure” results, and being in boring or unstimulating work environments.

However, these are merely excuses. In reality, there is nothing actually stopping us from harnessing our curiosity. It’s really just about picking the right priorities and making a deliberate effort to learn, to have novel experiences, and to close the gap between what we know and want to know. This is why people in the same team or organization will display very different levels of curiosity, even when they are managed by the same boss.

So, don’t expect your manager to harness your curiosity – it’s your own responsibility. For some practical examples that may help you drive incremental increases to your workplace curiosity, consider:

• Setting aside 20 to 30 minutes per day even if it’s after hours or before your work shift starts to be intentional about cultivating curiosity.

• Sharing ideas with colleagues, particularly around long-term strategic issues or how to improve existing processes and strategies

• Getting into the habit of asking “why” as often as you can, so that you get to the nitty gritty of things and start to explore things in depth rather than superficially.

Find the right angle.

One of the most obvious issues we must address in order to boost our curiosity, is the “what” question – that is, I’d love to be curious, but curious about what? Unsurprisingly, it is a lot easier to display our curiosity with regards to things that we are already interested in. Identifying your intrinsic motivation will help. In the words of Charles Bukowski, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” (OK, not literally.) Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is it that you’d love to know more about?

• In what area would you love to be an expert?

• What are the questions and topics that could occupy you for ages, that make you lose track of time?

Likewise, it’s important that you find “white spaces” – that is, time and places where you can avoid being distracted by work or mundane tasks and devote yourself to deep thinking. In essence, identifying the right problem, and falling in love with this problem, equates to winning half of the battle. After that, your curiosity will be your fuel.

To be sure, there are many instances in which discovering or nurturing some curiosity about uninteresting things will help, too. The trick here will be to find an angle or dimension of the problem that matters more to you. For example, you may not be interested in technology, which can make working on a tech-problem tedious and uninspiring. However, with a little bit of thinking and exploration you may find certain human or psychological angles that matter deeply to you that also connect to technology: how tech impacts productivity, morale, alienation, or wellbeing. Discovering the angle that matters turns extrinsic and mundane tasks into meaningful and useful activities and invites your curiosity to boost expertise.

Change your routine.

Research shows that one of the most common habits of creative and curious individuals is that they are allergic to routine, which quickly elicits boredom and disengagement in them. In line, injecting changes to your typical routine will create novel experiences, which can trigger new ideas and questions.

Just think about changing the people you work with, deal with, or see on a typical day; switching when and how you perform your daily tasks; what route you take to work; where you eat; or what you do on the weekend. Even small changes to routine can have a big impact on your mindset and curiosity: where you place your laptop, who you go for lunch with, what virtual meetings you join (or stop joining), and what new hobbies you start outside work.

Since the brain is fundamentally lazy, we tend to optimize our lives for familiarity, avoiding novelty because it can create stress, anxiety, or more work. Whenever you are in a new situation, you have to work out what to do, as opposed to going into autopilot. Small changes to your daily routine will inject novelty and variety to your life. Even random variation can result in novel interests and trigger your curiosity.

Experiment.

The main advantage of curiosity is that it’s usually fun. Indeed, curiosity enhances focus, concentration, and creates a state of flow, optimal for creativity and experimentation. See this as an opportunity to try things out, to combine new ideas, and to ask deeper, more meaningful questions, which can transport you to unknown places and develop niche expertise.

Interestingly, advances in AI, notably generative AI, have belittled the value of human knowledge, because AI will always know more answers to more questions than any human. And yet, AI still relies on humans to ask the questions or prompt it. Even if it learns to prompt itself, it will simply be replicating human prompts.

With this, it is clear that one of the uniquely or exclusively human qualities is the ability to experience free-floating curiosity. That is, curiosity that is agentic, in the sense that it comes from us — from our intuition or personal interest, as well as serendipitous. Even when we know the starting point, we never quite know where it ends.

So, set yourself up for experimentation, going outside your comfort zone to inquire about new topics and understand stuff you never thought about. Science shows that novelty seeking is one of the most consistent predictors of curiosity. Try things out, especially if they are not obviously related to your values, preferences, and experiences. Discover the joy of new interests, guilty pleasures, and variety. And as HBS professor Amy Edmondson notes in her latest book, be curious enough to learn from your errors, turning them into smart failures.

When bored, just switch.

Harnessing your curiosity muscle should be a pleasant experience, more like swimming than heavy weightlifting. If you find yourself stuck, losing interest, or satiated — much like when schoolkids are forced to finish repetitive boring homework — then switch to another task, giving your mind the freedom to both wonder and wander. Your curiosity should be propelling you towards effortless learning and joyful concentration, just like a wave propels a surfer or the wind propels a sailboat.

This is the difference between self-driven exploration and experimentation, which unleashes your deep curiosity, and extrinsic-based learning, which tends to work against it. So, instead of suppressing your genuine interests and passion for learning, let these guide you to the places you actually want to go.

A final point to consider: just like any psychological trait, curiosity is partly nature, partly nurture. This means that we all have a natural predisposition to be more (or less) curious, irrespective of where we are, and the environment we are in. That said, there’s a great deal of room for improvement. The best estimates indicate that curiosity is around 50% nature, which means that we still have around 50% that is malleable, albeit much of that will cement in adulthood. Thus, while its unlikely for someone who is naturally uncurious to suddenly achieve Einstein-levels of curiosity (and vice-versa), we can all strengthen or tweak whatever baseline level of curiosity we have. But, like all skills, it requires dedication.

Are you ready to flex?

Copyright 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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