Curiosity isn’t dangerous. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s so important. It’s crucial for focus and essential for learning.
Today, however, it can be seen as dangerous. Creators branch out and try something new, and the algorithm punishes them for it. We act outside the norm, and we’re seen as odd. Kids are playing less and less, and they’re not discovering as much about the world.
When our curiosity is limited, how then are we supposed to find ourselves? If we don’t know ourselves and our passions, how can we find our flow states?
What is a Flow State
What is a flow state? It’s a moment of intense focus, where you lose all sense of yourself and all sense of time. You’redoing something you truly enjoy and can keep at it for hours on end.
People report a feeling of happiness from working in their flow state. These moments of immersion, “enhance our sense of growth and purpose in life,” says David Robinson in a Guardian article about flow states.
It’s like a drug with all the benefits, and none of the negative side effects.
The Root
Flow states start when we’re very young. Do you remember making up games on the playground? Do you know just how important those games were in shaping who you are today?
It might seem trivial, but those moments of play were moments of curiosity, helping us learn about the world around us. They taught us how to handle disagreements and how to behave around others. Most of your life skills you learned while playing.
The problem now is that kids aren’t playing as much. They spend most of their childhood indoors and behind screens, and “their attention [is] constantly managed for them by adults for their whole lives,” says teacher Donna Verbeck.
This takes away kids’ ability to grow, explore, and develop these important skills for themselves. As a result, kids are more anxious than ever.
“Children evolved to be curious and to explore their environment,” says Peter Gray, a professor and research psychologist at Boston College. If you take away that opportunity to be curious and explore, it’s harder for them to find their passion, thus taking away a first opportunity at finding their flow state and experiences with deep attention and focus.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic
A key to unlocking your flow state is ensuring you have the right motivations.
If whatever you’re doing is pushed by an intrinsic motivation, you enjoy doing whatever it is that you’re doing, and you need nothing more out of it.
If whatever you’re doing is pushed by an extrinsic motivation, you’re doing it either because you have to or because you’ll be getting something out of it.
Take one of my best friends, Bryan, for example. He went into college as a music major because he loved to sing. After getting there, though, his motivations changed. Music became a job, not something fun; his motivations changed, and he was only doing it for the grade.
Creators also face this. Like YouTubers The Try Guys, for example, they wanted to branch out and make new content that they enjoyed, but the algorithm wouldn’t push the different videos. They couldn’t grow, explore, and be happy like that, so they launched a new platform where they could do what they wanted. Their intrinsic motivation for making videos became extrinsic when they could only make a certain type of content to make money. They made their motivations intrinsic again when they launched their own streaming service to make what they wanted.
With kids, it’s the same. They’re forced to learn about whatever adults and the curriculum dictate. They don’t get to choose to learn about something because they care about it or are genuinely curious.
Like Johann Hari says in Stolen Focus, “I always loved learning, and I always hated school.” The same can be said for countless people. It’s who we are; we have the desire to learn and grow, and it’s how we survive. We just want to do it on our own terms and learn about the world in the way that we want.
The importance of curiosity
Curiosity isn’t something that we should be scared of. It’s something to embrace. It’s how we learn about the world. It’show we find out who we are.
Without curiosity, our attention spans would be even worse than they are now, as evidenced by the youngest generation, stuck to their iPads and stuck inside.
“Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone”
If we don’t push ourselves to learn about the world the way that we want to, we’ll never unlock our flow states. We’llhave an even harder time focusing. We won’t find our passions, the thing we could do for ourselves, while it only feels like 20 minutes have gone by. We’re losing out on the happiest moments of our lives and forcing today’s kids along for the ride.
We need curiosity. To grow and develop skills that will help us throughout our entire lives. To play and to discover what is in this world that we love to do. To unlock our flow states and go through life happier and more fulfilled. To live our lives to the fullest.
So no, curiosity didn’t kill the cat; it saved it.
Life: Designed 
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