Curiosity is a superpower

A line from James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter made me reflect:

“Being curious and excited can take you far, especially over the long arc of a life. The person who is a voracious lifelong learner will figure it out eventually. A strong reader with a healthy dose of curiosity and a willingness to try things is hard to stop.”

That might sound like an obvious statement, but I like it because it gives curiosity more credit than expertise.

Expertise is valuable, but it is also tied to what we already know. Curiosity keeps pulling us towards what we do not know yet. It makes us read outside our field, try unfamiliar tools, ask questions that may sound basic and follow connections without knowing where they will lead.

That feels increasingly important now. Things are moving too quickly to rely only on what we learned five or ten years ago. AI is an obvious example, but probably not the only one.

I used to think learning was mostly about accumulating knowledge. I increasingly see it as maintaining curiosity.

Knowledge eventually gets old. Curiosity has a way of renewing itself.