Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

A lot of people have eyes that look but don’t see.

there is a rising premium on people with a high ‘need for cognition’. Need for cognition, or NFC, is a scientific measure of intellectual curiosity.

Henry James

‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.’

recurring pattern in the history of innovation is the combination of something with its inverse to form a single invention: the clawhammer joined nail removal with nail driving; the pencil was joined with the eraser. By combining the hitherto opposed roles of businessman and hippie, Jobs provided a walking example of the same pattern.

‘social loafing’ — the widespread tendency of individuals to decrease their own effort when they start working collaboratively.

As a culture, we have a persistent tendency to pretend that asking ‘what’ can be substituted for ‘why’. When we can, we avoid the murky waters of emotion and causation, and focus only on the measurable.

enduring (epistemic) curiosity;

‘grit’