Jake

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.

In an ongoing study, Wilson observes college students who are left alone in a room, with no phone or other distractions, for 15 minutes. "They hate it," he said. "One would think we could spend that time mentally entertaining ourselves. But we can't. We've forgotten how."

A major difference between my friend's team and most teams is that my friend's team was composed of people who had a track record of being highly effective across a variety of contexts. In an earlier job, my friend started a job at a large-ish ($5B/yr revenue) government-run utility company and was immediately assigned a problem that, unbeknownst... See more