Curiosity is self-perpetuating
A history of album art + the excesses of rationalism (Issue #328)
When I first joined Medium, our CEO would occasionally Slack me about decisions I’d made. “I’m curious why…” he’d begin, before mentioning a story I’d curated or post I’d drafted. Honestly, this freaked me out at first. I took “I’m curious” to mean “I’m suspicious” or “I vehemently disagree but am trying to be polite.” It took me a solid year to figure out that, actually, he was literally just curious — and explaining the reasoning behind my decisions made me better at my job. In retrospect, I’m glad I had to do that.
On Medium, behavioral researcher and author Maria Keckler, Ph.D., has a similar memory of a colleague (in Keckler’s case it was the VP of Operations at her former company) who led with curiosity.
“What struck me most was what she didn’t do,” Keckler writes. “She didn’t jockey for airtime. She didn’t interrupt or grandstand or push her point. […] Influence didn’t have to look like volume or certainty. It could look like curiosity, with an edge of empathy and wisdom.”
This is a pattern I’ve noticed among the friends and coworkers I respect most: they’re highly curious, but somehow generous about it, too. They ask clarifying questions so they’re sure they understand. They ask why and usually aren’t satisfied with the first answer.
In another story from the Medium archive, Markham Heid argues that curiosity is the secret to happiness. Not only does psych research point to the fact that curiosity correlates with a decrease in cognitive and physical decline as you age, but “social curiosity” (an interest in people who are different than you) leads to stronger relationships. Curiosity is self-perpetuating, too: “The more you interact with new experiences or information,” a psychology professor quoted in the story explains, “the more you realize you don’t know, which makes further exploration more attractive.”
Keckler recommends using AI to prompt curiosity. (I’ve done this, and it’s somewhat useful.) If you want to take a beat to think more deeply about something, use an LLM as a brainstorming intern. Give it the outline of what’s happening, and ask:
- “What perspectives am I not considering?”
- “What’s an uncommon counterargument?”
- “What could go wrong or be misinterpreted?”
💿 We’re also reading…
- A Mayo Clinic doctor’s appointment booking hack: “Try to schedule your appointments earlier in the day. And an earlier appointment has less risk for the doctor to be getting behind. Sometimes the first appointment after lunch is ideal. Ask the scheduler for these time slots when you are making your appointment.” (Dr. Ed)
- A brief history of advertising in NYC, which, according to Larissa Hayden: The Lecture Vault, became the industry’s epicenter because (due to geography) it was one of the United States’ early commercial centers — and wherever there are lots of people with money, there will inevitably be people spinning up innovative and surprising ways to sell them stuff.
- The history of album art by former SoundCloud product designer Matthew Ström: Alex Steinweiss, a freelancer at Columbia Records in the ’40s, was convinced that the at-the-time boring brown record sleeves were tanking sales, and that record sleeve art would boost sales. Execs told him to prove it, and he did with this, the first piece of album art in history:
📐 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
“Rational insight is a powerful tool, and one of our worst excesses. When it becomes the only tool it brings about a mixture of certainty and naivety that makes minds brittle.” — Simon Sarris
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Edited by Scott Lamb
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