Staying Curious
When we’re born, we have no idea who we are, where we are and what we are. All we do is cry, eat, poop, sleep, repeat. But as we get older, we start to roll over, crawl, walk, then run. As children, we have so many questions about the world. But why is it that when we get older, this curiosity starts to diminish?
There can be many factors that can result in decreased curiosity, but I am a firm believer that no matter how old you are, you should always be curious. Curiosity breeds creativity, and creativity helps you improve upon a skill, and then your passion for that skill grows, and as you stay curious, you will always want to improve on that skill. It becomes a circle, and I have noticed this quality in many friends and colleagues who are always working on improving themselves.
Take 15 minutes to think about what sparks your curiosity. How do you channel it? For example, if I’m curious about how the web works, I would go online and read about it. If there’s something I don’t understand, I would try to get a high-level overview on how the different pieces work, and then I would dive deep into each topic. I would then work on ingraining what I learned by drawing a diagram on how the web is architected, and then I would draw relationships among the individual pieces as you can see in the diagram below. I would be able to provide a general overview of each piece in this diagram without…
