Productivity vs Curiosity

Part manifesto about childhood education and part personal rant

Manifesto about “The Curious Mindset“

The Growth Mindset is all the rage today.

• I don’t know it…yet.

• I can’t do it…yet.

As a platitude that’s all well and good. But surrounding students with posters about a positive mindset and forcing them to read books with good lessons isn’t likely to do much.

Cultivating a curious mindset is easier and more effective (as most of these things tend to be). Letting kids engage in unstructured play, letting them solve their own problems, and emphasizing learning from a young age naturally builds a curious mindset. Curiosity even circumvents the need for a growth mindset.

• I don’t know it → But I want to learn it.

• I can’t do it → But I want to learn how to.

Obstacles and the unknown become addicting problems to solve. You don’t need to convince yourself that you can accomplish anything with hard work, when it’s too irresistible for you to put down in the first place.

Having great parents that have worked their hardest to encourage curiosity above all else has been amazing. I know much more about the Roman pantheon, French history, and how to program than if I hadn’t been curious. But there are also issues.

Explore/Exploit

There’s a point where it’s time to start shifting away from exploring and toward exploiting. Eventually, you have to hunker down on a few key things and dive deep. This is where curiosity can become a silent killer. The latest article on AI alignment research can pull you away from your passion project, and waste an hour as you dive into rabbit holes.

The main conflict I face everyday is one of curiosity vs productivity. I love days that I let myself loose and explore just about anything interesting that suits my fancy. I love the days that I hunker down and work with dedicated focus on a specific project or on competitive programming. Both lives are almost fulfilling, but I always feel something missing.

Time spent in rabbit holes on cognitive science is thrilling, but there’s always a niggle of guilt about the “wasted time”. Time spent productively is tangible and satisfying, but there’s a small part of me that feels missing. The war between these two sides has been going on for the better part of a year, especially because no matter how much I experiment with different time-management strategies, I can’t seem to reconcile both sides in a way that feels consistently balanced.

For a while, the battle has gone towards productivity, especially as I’ve lost (for personal reasons) a consistent community to be curious with. But as I’ve discovered rationality and joined a community with some of the most intellectually curious people I’ve ever met, curiosity has started winning again.

The goal of writing this piece was to help me sort through my own thoughts and try to arrive at a conclusion. In the last few days, I’ve tried using read-it-later apps to store cool articles on new subjects, but I’ve found that it doesn’t quite feel the same as just jumping full-on into a topic in the moment. I think I’ll try to set a specific time frame everyday to explore a pre-determined topic, and see where that gets me. I think it should be a more intentional way of learning new things.