Boredom

Everyone I know who's independent-minded is deeply curious, and everyone I know who's conventional-minded isn't. Except, curiously, children. All small children are curious. Perhaps the reason is that even the conventional-minded have to be curious in the beginning, in order to learn what the conventions are. Whereas the independent-minded are the... See more

The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. Few adults are equally curious about everything, and it doesn't seem as if you can choose which topics interest you. So it's up to you to

find

them. Or invent them, if necessary.

Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid

curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at

random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up

entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always

asking why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of

drying up, curiosity... See more

The word "aptitude" is misleading,

because it implies something innate. The most powerful sort of

aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests

are often acquired tastes.

"Boredom has at its core the desiring of satisfying engagement but not being able to achieve that," Eastwood said. "And attention is the cognitive process whereby we interface with both the external world and our internal thoughts and feelings. So it falls logically that attention must be at the core of the definition."

In a recent series of studies at Cornell University, psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Clayton Critcher asked participants to think about what they'd be doing if they weren't in the lab: Some were asked to think about leisure, others about obligations. Then, all participants completed a jigsaw puzzle. Afterward, they were asked if their minds had... See more

Curiosity seems to be more individual than fastidiousness about truth or resistance to being told what to think. To the degree people have the latter two, they're usually pretty general, whereas different people can be curious about very different things. So perhaps curiosity is the compass here. Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas,... See more

Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently

trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having

fun. That's why he's so good.

Another way to increase your curiosity is to indulge it, by investigating things you're interested in. Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions.