Purposeful Curiosity

As a mentor or an adviser to several start-ups, I have seen more than one team fail to find its first customer or secure external funding because it focused on finding answers that didn’t exist instead of pivoting when necessary.

Whether it is accomplishing a personal goal, such as graduating from college, or achieving a professional milestone, like getting the job you’ve always wanted, starting your own business, or launching a new product, you should feel grateful for everything that you have accomplished. But, like Jemison, you shouldn’t let it end there. Your best perfo

Purposeful curiosity is a love affair, not a one-night stand. It’s a big world, and there are many places where no one has been; there are still many discoveries to be made in every area of study. You could live until you are one hundred, and you’d still just be finding your way around. Being purposefully curious is about being constantly inquisiti

Turn students from passive recipients of information to curious owners of their learning journey, advised John Underkoffler, the previously mentioned cofounder of Oblong Industries. We must encourage students to delve deeper into topics that spark their curiosity. Curating relevant information will enhance their confidence and incite curiosity in o

“What is the bigger picture? What is the relevance of my curiosity project? How can my curiosity journey help other people face their challenges or achieve their aspirations? How can I have a positive impact on other people?” This won’t be a sprint. It will be a marathon.

The last time I led a field trip with my students to Silicon Valley, we spent some time in the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto, California, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to helping people imagine future possibilities to make better decisions. Our guide to the future was Sean Ness, a director at IFTF. “Focus on the future of X,” he t

To get inspired, the preternaturally curious people I interviewed tend to ask five questions time and again: •What if? •Am I sure? •What’s next? •Have I looked closely enough? •Have I looked everywhere? Let’s ask these questions ourselves and go into a little more detail as we try to understand how they can help us become inspired.

However, what many of my colleagues were underplaying was the importance of looking at what we don’t know or understand; such examination is the underpinning of all good academic inquiry.

To make the leap down the rabbit hole, you must take several steps: Get psyched about your curiosity project. Grant yourself permission to explore. Declare your interest to the world. Hand yourself over to your curiosity.

The word curious stems from the Latin cura, which means “care.” Fueled by interest and compassion, self-curiosity starts by replacing your nasty inner voices with kinder ones.