Start with curiosity, motivation will follow
There’s one single thing, a secret ingredient, so to speak, that all successful people have, and it’s something you can start to develop right now, right as you’re reading these words.
Motivation is talked about a lot, and it’s definitely important. But this other thing — unlike motivation — is much more under your control, and it’s the trigger of motivation.
It’s something that public schools try to rid young people of, and they do it quite well, if the metric for success is having everyone in a box. It was decided that age was a good way to group children, instead of, for example, interests, or curiosities.
This thing? Curiosity
/kjʊərɪˈɒsɪti/
noun
a strong desire to know or learn something.
Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back
Curiosity is a trait that all people in successful positions have, from scientists to philanthropists and entrepreneurs.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. — Albert Einstein
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. — Walt Disney
Everyone is naturally curious, children start to try and figure out the world around them from a very young age. It’s important to be curious about the limits of the people and things around you, but most importantly, it’s important to be curious about your own limits. If you never questioned your limits when you were learning to walk, you’d still be crawling.
Ask why
Start to ask yourself why things are the way they are. Start to ask why to internal and external rules and constraints. If you ask why enough times you will get to the root cause of any issue. In business, there’s something called the 7 whys.
The principle is simple, if you’re faced with a problem, ask yourself why that problem exists in the first place. If you do this 7 times, you will find the root cause, and that is the thing you should work on.
Don’t ask why about things you don’t care about, or it won’t be interesting enough to trigger the strong force that it can trigger.
As soon as you have a simple question, there are nearly unlimited resources to find the answer, but the trigger to make you want to find the answer is always curiosity.
If you have found yourself going between a motivated state, some actions, and then quitting, I would say you are lacking curiosity.
A badly drawn diagram explaining this would be like this:
This cycle is simple, and the timeline is short. I, for one, was curious about the impact of this article, that created the motivation to write it, and now I’m putting it into action by actually writing it, no more than 30 minutes have elapsed and the cycle is complete.
Motivation has been compared to showers — in the sense that it doesn’t last long, so you need it daily — but people underestimate exactly how little time it lasts.
A 15 minute shower keeps you clean enough for a day. 15 minutes of strong enough motivation triggered by a lot of curiosity can be enough for weeks of actions. Or, in some cases, generate years of research, as is the case for scientists looking for an answer to a problem that caused tremendous amounts of curiosity.
Every action you take upon your curiosity should create more curiosity, if it doesn’t, you may be working on something that is not your true interest.
Finding your true interest can be found by asking yourself and getting down to the root of the issue. In other words, be curious about what your true interests are, and I guarantee you will find them.
Psst: If you think I’m full of shit, tell me! I’m super open to feedback; if you like what you read, follow me for more, either on medium or twitter @mndflp :)
