INSPIRING CURIOSITY IN A DISTRACTED AGE
Written by Carissa Morais. Images via Unsplash.
Photo by Gilles Lambert.
Digital media is having a moment.
Of course, Covid-19 overstayed its welcome and we now find ourselves sipping homemade soy lattes over Zoom or endlessly refreshing our News Feed. We’ve been increasingly distracted and reacting in a split second to almost everything around us, whether it’s global news or the sheer fun of chuckling at trending memes. While there are many reasons why we spend large chunks of time online, we can at least agree that much of our intention stems from curiosity: regardless of whether we are #stalking or searching for burnt cheesecake tutorials (for the life of me, I still don’t get how this became a lockdown trend).
Too often, we’re caught in an endless spiral of scrolling. You know it all too well: the soft glimmer of “night mode” as your thumb breezes past tweets and Tik Tok videos, while you lay in bed, supposedly “sleeping”. Honestly, I have no qualms with social media — besides the fact that it’s my bread and butter — but what is it that evokes the itch to reach out for our phones? Simple. It’s curiosity.
Curiosity ain't a bad thing. In fact, most of the breakthrough discoveries and innovations throughout history were conceived from a place of curiosity. It is a basic human attribute to seek new experiences and information. Harvard Business Review cited that “when our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more-creative solutions.” Brilliant, innit?
Photo by Mollie Sivaram.
Personally, I’ve always had a curious spark since I was four. I remember times when I couldn’t watch cartoons in peace because at the back of my mind, I was enveloped in a flurry of thoughts: Who drew Donald Duck? How did the sound come about? Where did this idea come from? How did it end up on my TV screen? It was an endless pool of unanswered questions (if you’re an early 90s kid like me, you probably didn't have a phone at the age of six). The same happened as I grew up and began understanding how things work. So much of what I have accomplished in my travels, career, friendships and creative projects have stemmed from the seed of curiosity.
I don’t know about you, but I find myself struggling recently and it’s because my attention is pulled across several open tabs in my mind. Unfortunately, I have to admit that social media and Netflix are the main culprits. In fact, the more I consume, the less I create. I’d like to think that some of us might be in the same boat. We desperately yearn to create, yet we find ourselves feeding our curiosity for everything that doesn’t directly relate to us.
This might sound counterintuitive but no, quitting social media or shutting our phones are not the answers to nurturing curiosity. In fact, it’s more about shifting our perspective of how we view curiosity. Rather than placing our energy into satisfying our need for wanting to know what’s happening around us, perhaps we should look into how curiosity makes us feel alive — whether it’s picking up a new skill or creating something new. Now, for the fun part: leveraging digital media as our ally by utilizing it as a tool for research, inspiration and learning. Which brings me to the heart of this article: how do we cultivate curiosity amidst so much distraction?
Photo by Noah Buscher.
Think like an explorer
Sometimes, we limit ourselves to using tools for only one thing: as an example, utilizing social media to connect with people. What if we start seeing social media as a search engine? If you do, you might find yourself bumping into new concepts, fresh ideas and different ways of doing things. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about home organization and kitchen cleaning hacks from looking up Tik Tok videos on home improvement (just so you know, it’s not all about filters and dance challenges). A few weeks ago, I decided to log off Instagram only to realize that I use the app to search for new restaurants and local food recommendations, which is cool because I get to see responses and a “preview” of the menu from different perspectives.
It can be very tempting to get caught in an Instagram Stories binge, but here’s where you draw the line: set an intention for every time you find yourself on social media. Instead of seeing it as a distraction, change your perspective and view it as a point of learning. Personally, I enjoy Pinterest, Tik Tok and Youtube as a source of knowledge and inspiration whenever I am curious about a particular topic or idea.
Photo by Artem Maltsev.
Normalise asking questions
…but don’t stop there. Seek out the solutions and be resourceful to discover the answers for yourself. Years before the internet, it would have been impossible but right now, we have knowledge at our fingertips. It can be really tempting to go surfing the web and end up falling into a hole of endless consumption. Hence, remind yourself that digital media is your ally to inspiring curiosity. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t need to keep getting answers and solutions from other people constantly because if I wanted to know something, I could just Google it. This is also the result of having a smart manager who always retorted with “Have you looked this up?” or “Have you done your research?” whenever I asked her a question. It definitely made me tap into my curiosity and think twice before asking trivial questions, when what I could do instead was be resourceful and seek out the answers. Make it a habit to ask questions with curiosity as an intention, as opposed to criticism.
Having said that, while it is a great practice to source for answers on your own, make it a habit to seek out individuals who are smarter than you. There’s so much to learn from people if we just ask.
Photo by Tibor Krizsak.
Have empathy
Probably not what you’d expect, but the truth is, empathy is underrated. We don’t realize that empathy starts with curiosity, because if you want to understand how others are feeling or how a situation came about, you’d normally ask questions. Too often, we jump into “problem-solving mode” when challenges arise. We forget to take a step back, ask questions and reframe the problem — which essentially means that we’re seeing a situation from a different perspective. It definitely requires you to be curious, to ask questions and to seek out solutions that drive action.
Let’s look at it from a personal context: someone expresses a problem that he/she is facing. The easy route would be to give that person a hug and utter the timeless cliche that everything will be okay, but what would be even more powerful is if all you said was “tell me more”. Because the truth is, you don’t know what someone else is going through. Which means that before trying to understand (or assuming that we understand), we have to develop understanding, so that it leads us to ask questions and be open to listen and learn. That’s when you put your phones and other distractions aside. The positive outcome here is that you’d have a better understanding of what someone is going through and the said individual would have a sense of relief, having cleared his/her thoughts with someone who showcased undivided attention. Also, your questions might provide opportunities for a new solution to the problem.
If you think about it, curiosity can thrive in a world that’s distracted because it is up to us to define and shift our energy. Plus, we are so #blessed to access information in a split second. We can either take the easy route and become digital junkies, or leverage on the vast ocean of knowledge at our fingertips and turn it into an opportunity to create, to try something new or to see a situation from a different perspective.
