Skirting Curiosity

I’m skirting around the edges of Curiosity, interested to learn more, but wary of jumping into a new research piece too fast: i’m trying to use this lockdown time to complete ‘The Learning Science Guidebook’, followed by ‘The Humble Leader’ (both of which are 95% complete), and then to get onto ‘The Social Age Guidebook’, for which i have the manuscript about 80% complete. Getting these out of the way will clear my mind for something new (and i’ve already distracted myself by writing the Campfire series…

I guess that is the risk of curiosity: it takes you down a lot of precarious branches on a very big tree.

For now, i am doing two things: using some illustrations and short form writing to build out some ideas, and having conversations in my research community about how/what to explore further. Certainly some aspects are of interest: leadership behaviours around fostering curiosity, aspects of curiosity in both individual learning, and learning design, and an organisational view on the value it brings (if we can overcome constraint).

In terms of format, whilst a Guidebook would be fun, i have a sense that it may suit more the format i used for ‘Social Leadership: My 1st 100 Days’: a guided, reflective, and activity based journey through the topic.

Perhaps ‘100 Days of Curiosity’ would be an interesting angle.

For now, i will continue to #WorkOutLoud on some ideas, whilst also keeping some momentum into the other projects that need some love…

The two illustrations today reflect this approach. The first piece i though of whilst out walking with the baby: if there is a mindset of curiosity, then what are the specific behaviours? Really this is a way of forcing the abstract and attractive conversations (we wish to be more curious), with actual behaviours, and potentially measurable activity.

The second is really just rather playful, but starts to explore consequence and the social damping down of curiosity: it asks the question ‘If curiosity killed the cat, why risk it?’. If i go down the path of a 100 day book, then this would be an activity to explore when we have felt limited in our curiosity.