being passionately curious
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein
A while ago Spotify autoplayed an All-In episode with the CEO of Nasdaq. I couldn’t follow half the financial terms. The old me would have skipped it and thought, nah, I’m not smart enough for this.
This time I asked ChatGPT. Then I asked again, and again. By the end I knew the difference between the primary and secondary market, what a SPAC is, why Spotify went public through a direct listing, and why tokenised shares are a bit sus. None of it was that hard. I had just never asked.
It made me realise how often I used to undermine myself. I would decide I wasn’t smart, so I wouldn’t go and learn the thing, so I stayed not knowing it. I also used to think random knowledge took up headspace I had to save for the important stuff. But a brain isn’t a cup. It’s a muscle.
That’s why I like the Einstein quote. Being smart isn’t the starting point. It comes from getting curious about something and then actually going to satisfy it.
What changed for me is that satisfying it got easy. I’m pretty sure I used to Google things, get thrown a complex article, and get too lazy to read it. So I stopped asking. Now it’s one prompt, and I can ask as many dumb questions as I need until it clicks.1
The part I didn’t expect is that it made me more observant. When the answer is one prompt away, I actually stop and look. Every time I see a bird or an animal I don’t recognise, I take a pic and ask what it is. That’s how I found out the animal I saw on a hike was a mousedeer (never knew such an animal existed!) and that squirrels can be albino (I was mindblown when I saw it).
Sometimes one question turns into a rabbit hole. I was on the bus home when I wondered whether buses pay ERP (they do) and ended up at how LTA owns every bus and keeps all the fares, while 4 operators bid to run the routes for a fixed fee. At a teahouse in Japan, instead of randomly picking a tea, I wondered about the differences between matcha, sencha and gyokuro. Knowing the history and how each is produced, made the drinking experience much better (I went for the gyokuro!). And when I’m driving I talk to ChatGPT voice mode, which is how I know a Camry has four cylinders in a line, a Ferrari 488 has eight in a V, and a Porsche 911 has six lying flat.2
There’s so much to know in this world, and every time I learn something new it’s so fun. So here’s a reminder (mostly to myself) to stay passionately curious.
- I gave a talk earlier this year on using AI as a learning partner in my personal life. And it resonated quite well with the audience so I decided to write about it here as well. ↩
- I forget things, so in the spirit of active recall, I made a little app called Tidbits that quizzes me on what I’ve learnt. ↩