Not so curiously brave.
Looking Outside Curiosity.
Curiosity killed the cat is a saying (or proverb) about the dangers of poking your head into areas it doesn’t belong in. It’s also a warning of the consequences of exploration, after all, discovery of new things follows risk to discover. In both respects, it begs the question why curiosity has this inherent association with danger, when our human drive propels us naturally to learn what we don’t know, to discover what’s new, to uncover secrets, to progress forward in order to better ourselves. Curiosity is only natural.
We have placed this importance on the bravery aspect of curiosity that to be curious is to be courageous, to be unique in a way, to do what others are too fearful to. Perhaps that’s a part of the reason why curious behavior is on the decline, there is too much inherent risk attached to being curious.
But curiously, what we’re talking about here is simply the art of being human. We are, as human beings, naturally observational, competitive and protective. We gather intel, learn and act on what we don’t know in order to keep propelling ourselves forward through our lifetime.
There is an interesting article from a decade ago by the BBC which calls us curious to a fault, going back to that naughty cat - we read, watch, engage with what we shouldn’t. They call it useless and time wasting behavior. If we think about that seriously for a minute, it suggests that being inquisitive, letting our minds wander into areas that are, on the surface, not utilitarian, is not bettering us as humans.
What does that mean for creative thinking? What does it mean for diversity? For learning? That seems counterintuitive to our natural human motivations.
If we look across the modalities of curious behavior that Sarah DaVanzo outlines on the show, we see exhibits of action that could indeed be seen as time wasting. Think about a teenager spending 80 minutes on Tik Tok a day. They might be making a video (doing) or scrolling through others’ (seeing), they might cry at a dog adoption video (feeling) or get an idea for room décor (thinking). The problem might be that we normally consider any one of these things in isolation as wasteful behavior, but what about when combine them? Surely, the act of thinking - pausing, reflecting, considering, probing - is the most critical one in propagating curious behavior that is worthy of our time.
Curious action without curious thought is aimless. But curious thought in itself without curious action is fruitless. In fact, you could say practicing curious thinking, while critical, is not pushing us towards that aspect of curiosity that is so distinct and so revered - bravery.
Lastly, incidentally we also have the scaredy cat saying. You are damned if you do act on curiosity and damned if you don’t. There is more to unpack in our relationship with fear … and perhaps overusing cats for analogies.
5 ways Sarah DaVanzo expands the idea of living curiously.
1 | Inquiry and inquisitiveness doesn’t stop with ‘thinking’.
The biggest misconception about curiosity is that it's just intellectual inquisitiveness. That's a trope, that asking questions and conducting online research is one of four modalities of curiosity. There are many other manifestations of inquiry and exploration. And I think that we fall back on, is that person asking lots of questions and ergo that person must be highly curious. Whereas like animals, some people observe intently. Some people experiment. Some people feel and put themselves in the ways of visceral experience. We can go on and on about all the different ways in which people explore, but I think that's a misconception. And if you can break out of that mindset of thinking about just asking questions in the more classical intellectual way, then all of a sudden it opens up a whole new realm of actually creating new synapses and connections, and really exercising your curiosity or an exploration and discovery muscles.
2 | If you are certain, you cannot be curious.
The people who mark themselves as being superior to the general population and especially their peers in their community tend to not actually be displaying the full spectrum of curiosity behaviors. So one could ergo there's a hubris; the more confident you are in your curiousness ironically seems to indicate that you might be closing off to ways of stretching your curiosity. What we found is that those that put themselves as average or even subpar to their peers or general pop tend to actually display curious behaviors in all the four modalities at a much higher level or cadence. So that’s what I've learned which is that curiosity is plastic, and it can be malleable. And open mindedness is a very, very critical aspect to unlocking curiosity.
3 | Explorers are curiosity officers.
I think the world of professional insights, data analytics, insights and foresight they could have another title which our Chief Curiosity officers. I mean, that's really what the job is is to be exploring, right? And to be unlocking the information, knowledge, understanding, insight, wisdom, that kind of trajectory. Whether it's for now, next or future. It's just the temporality of the same behaviors. And so if you were then to say OK, I'm going to reframe my job as a Chief Curiosity Officer, then I have to keep exploring in new ways and be provoking my communities and my teams and my brands and my company and so forth to be exploring.
4 | But exploration comes with consequences.
It takes work. It takes too much work to to try to empathize or to understand and have those difficult conversations. And also we have cancelled culture, right? We have some very dangerous behaviors in society that discourages people from potentially having those challenging conversations because they're afraid of tripping up right and mishandling them because the consequences can be so.
5 | And curiosity, like creativity, can be quickly stifled.
There's a Venn diagram that's for sure creativity on the on the left and curiosity on the right. And there's an overlap. They feed off of each other. But there are a lot of other inputs into creativity like for example, time and pressure. That's one of the biggest creativity killers. So it also happens to be a killer of curiosity too. In the research I published in the Insight Alchemy actually highlights the biggest curiosity killers from a very large piece of research amongst insights professionals around the world. Time and pressure and closed mindedness or knowing the answer, or feeling like one knows the answer because one's been there before, can be some of the biggest door shutters on curiosity and creativity.
Listen to the episode:
About Sarah.
Sarah DaVanzo is innovating the future of data, analytics, insights, and foresight. She spent two decades working internationally in 22 countries, in F500 companies, consultancies, agencies, and start-ups. Today, Sarah is the Chief Data Officer (Curiosity, Analytics, Intelligence, Insights, Foresight, Futures) for Pierre Fabre, responsible for APPLIED CURIOSITY; driving curiosity to collect & analyze data to amplify intelligence & insights while fueling foresight & futures. Previously she led Consumer & Market Insight & Foresight (including Cultural Intelligence & Futures) for the L'Oreal Groupe driving corporate and product innovation.
Curious? Check out Sarah's latest curiosity experiment called Insight Alchemy as well as her non-profit called CURIOUS FUTURES.
You can find Sarah on LinkedIn.
