The Curiosity Conflict: Why We Struggle to Shift From Exploration to Exploitation

Thinking about curiosity as going beyond the need for quick answers also highlights the power of what happens when we engage with un­­cert­ain­ty: having to ponder and anticipate answers can improve learning and memory, and curiosity can facilitate brain states that help us encode new information. Learning new things can be tough, but harnessing cu... See more

What I call temporal curiosity is the practice of actively directing our curiosity across time – past, present, future – to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Past curiosity. Directing our curiosity towards the past can help us understand our origins and learn from history. By exploring past experiences from y... See more

But curiosity without direction can be a taxing and ultimately unproductive endeavor. Choice is how we tame and channel and direct our curiosity, where we choose to allocate our time and energy, and ultimately, what we choose to pay attention to.

While talking to a friend earlier this week, I realized that many of my best projects started out as what seemed like a distraction from more pressing work – ignoring my email inbox to read an interesting thread on Twitter or abandonning a work presentation for an hour to grab a coffee with a colleague.

These so-called distractions would plant the s... See more