November Read

Title: Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It

Author: Leslie, Ian

Call Number: 153.8 L635C 2014

Subjects: Curiosity

Number of Pages: 216

ISBN: 9780465079964

Book Description from amazon.com:

I have no special talents,” said Albert Einstein. “I am only passionately curious.”
Everyone is born curious. But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning, and discovering as they grow older. Those who do so tend to be smarter, more creative, and more successful. So why are many of us allowing our curiosity to wane?
In Curious, Ian Leslie makes a passionate case for the cultivation of our “desire to know.” Just when the rewards of curiosity have never been higher, it is misunderstood, undervalued, and increasingly monopolized by a cognitive elite. A “curiosity divide” is opening up.
This divide is being exacerbated by the way we use the Internet. Thanks to smartphones and tools such as Google and Wikipedia, we can answer almost any question instantly. But does this easy access to information guarantee the growth of curiosity? No—quite the opposite. Leslie argues that true curiosity the sustained quest for understanding that begets insight and innovation—is in fact at risk in a wired world.
Drawing on fascinating research from psychology, economics, education, and business, Curious looks at what feeds curiosity and what starves it, and finds surprising answers. Curiosity isn’t, as we’re encouraged to think, a gift that keeps on giving. It is a mental muscle that atrophies without regular exercise and a habit that parents, schools, and workplaces need to nurture.
Filled with inspiring stories, case studies, and practical advice, Curious will change the way you think about your own mental habits, and those of your family, friends, and colleagues.

My Read:

            The following are sentences and paragraphs I found helpful and interesting:

“A puzzle is something that commands our curiosity until we have solved it. A mystery, by contrast, never stops inviting inquiry. When we first meet a new problem, our instinct is to treat it as a puzzle: what’s the answer? Then, after gathering the knowledge we need to solve it, we sometimes start to think of the same problem as a mystery, one that will sustain our curiosity forever. A passing interest can be transformed into a lifelong passion.”-page 183

“…it’s important, therefore, to spread our cognitive bets. Curious people take risks, try things out, allow themselves to become productively distracted. They know that something they learn by chance today may well come in useful tomorrow or spark a new way of thinking about an entirely different problem. The more unpredictable the environment, the more important a seemingly unnecessary breadth and depth of knowledge become. Humans have always had to deal with complexity; felling a wooly mammoth is not simple.”-page 17

“Highly curious people who have carefully cultivated their long-term memories, live in a kind of augmented reality; everything they see is overlaid with additional layers of meaning and possibility, unavailable to ordinary observers Fashion designer Paul Smith says that ‘I got eyes that see. A lot of people have eyes that look but don’t see.”-page 145

“The thing that’s toughest to teach is the intuition for what are big questions to ask. The intellectual curiosity..if you’re going to have an education, then have it be a pretty dives education so you’re flexing lots of different muscles…You can learn the technical skills later on, and you’ll be more motivated to learn more of the technical skills when you have some problem you’re trying to solve or some financial incentive to do so. So not specializing too early is important.”/Nate Silver-page 153

“As the authors of a more balanced assessment of Big Data put it, even as we make the most of its potential, ‘There will be a special need to carve out a place for the human: to reserve space for intuition, common sense, and serendipity.”-page 163

“If you are a manager or a teacher, then, is it best to encourage employees or students to explore their curiosity?...Curiosity is likely to lead to better work, but only if it’s allowed time to breathes.”-page 176

“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go.”/Clay Christensen, the Innovator’s Dilemma-page 89

            In the book, the author lists seven ways to stay curious. They are:

1-      Stay foolish

2-      Build the database

3-      Forage like a foxhog

4-      Ask the big why

5-      Be a thinkerer

6-      Question your teaspoons

7-      Turn puzzles into mysteries

Out of the 6 ws/h (who, where, when, which, what, why, how) to help a person think this book is focused on the WHY.

Did you recently ask yourself some “why” questions? Well, why not.