 Hi, I'm Nathan and curiosity is the worst. It's an endless dungeon crawl spawning Monsters of insatiable interest wrecking weekends with intangibles like Creativity hands up if you finished this game see a Teenager wandering library shelves. I once thought that curiosity was Whitman's noiseless patient spider till the gossamer thread You fling and somewhere oh my soul today. I want to kill that spider This winter I asked a dozen friends about curiosity undress a corporate researcher who maintains He maintains the itch for knowledge by bridging communities Balancing breadth and expertise like these famous footballers philosophers Casper an activist theologian told me that curiosity is being a humble listener He takes special care to learn little facts about many fields and cultures So that he can affirm people who aren't especially confident Casper often reaches out to people for a personal story Acknowledging the whole person and not just looking for the knowledge. He wants that they possess My friend mark who is a culinary polymath. He's a publisher and he's made Visionary technology for writers for 25 years. He drives full speed with curiosity He writes the day is long and sleep is not terribly important Don't let the guilt of chores deferred quell your curiosity and be mindful of time's winged chariot To use time best mark keeps immaculate lists Jamila who I've watched cling to curiosity across Multiple jobs and night classes Disagrees with mark. She's she writes. It's tricky to be curious with purpose or results When you're tired or feel filled up like your brains a wet sponge Perhaps we need the right kind of time Anna who's a data vis designer told me that curiosity needs enough Time to be bored Feeling that I had done all the sleeping and TV watching I needed to recover from the working week She actually structures her work and schedule to fit in that boredom a Consistency that motivates her work, but if you're if your schedule doesn't permit this kind of boredom Perhaps you can scale down your aspirations My friend Dan keeps learning in the spaces between his work with small projects and Darius Kazimi's piece thoughts on small projects is a great guide to this approach But when we scale down we sometimes miss our deepest passions or our greatest impact Mimi calls this idle curiosity. She says that a deeper curiosity is driven by a broader purpose and real-world challenges Maybe it's research for a meal exploring the physics of surfing or the learning involved in social action Mimi urged me to connect new inputs back to my core interests in a virtuous cycle that continues to deepen engagement This desire for impact can be in tension with curiosity Christina and Tim described the parallel need for talking and making together Curiosity and influence draw us into themselves With more opportunities or more questions around the corner and people who spend all their time making Have fewer chances for impact while people who spend all of their time on visibility can lose their substance over time Maybe the hardest Challenge of curiosity is self-awareness My friend Ethan says that droughts of satisfaction Sometimes happen when we're most engaged with the things we love when we're too busy to celebrate those things and enjoy the richness of what we've learned and made together our Loves become obligations on the invincible Gantt chart of despond My dad is one of the most dedicated curious people I know of the Timo immigrant who moved to the United States for love without even knowing English He is a night shift structural welder and mechanic Who's actually created the foundations on many of the skyscrapers and stadiums that you visit during the daytime? He wrote to me that the consistently curious person knows that discovery brings the most absolute joy He's avoided promotion several times to stick to his craft and stay curious We've left behind the noiseless patient spider, but curiosity has no boss level or speed runs to Curiosity castle It's a multiplayer co-op as my friends helped me realize Something a joy that thrives in relationship. So let's be curious together at this conference