Curiosity is an indispensable fuel for the discovery of anything new. While curiosities are embedded within us as we are born, there are ways to boost the level of it. In the article “Five Ways To Cultivate Curiosity And Tap Into Your Creativity”, published on Forbes, the author Josh Ritche not only points out various benefits of being curious but also suggests 5 ways to cultivate and maintain our curiosity.
In the beginning of article, Ritche defines curiosity as “a strong desire to know or learn something”. Apart from this, the author critically points out that the lack of curiosity in a company will lead to a stagnation in its products and services, which could be detrimental.
Following this, Ritche gives out five tips to boost our curiosity. First and foremost, reading is crucial as it allows readers to accumulate the wisdom of those accomplished without going through the failure they experienced. Secondly, the author expects readers to slow down and take time. In my perspective, slowing down allows people to think about a problem from different angles, discover nuanced yet intriguing points in daily lives, and stay away from routinely thinking. The third point is to practicing asking good questions, like “why”. The implied reason is that good questions accelerate our accumulation of knowledges. Besides, the writer also attaches great importance to prioritizing listening than saying. To my knowledge, the writer encourages us to ponder upon the question before sharing our opinions. Last but not least, the author hopes readers to hang out with child more and see how genuine curiosity works in practice.
Reflecting on the content that I have learned from the article, I believe the author is conveying a message that curiosity is something that we all have. Yet, it is, for sure, something that requires cultivation for it to prosper. Like the 5 things that author have mentioned, they are numerous ways for us to improve our curiosity, while the principle is that we should not take things we see for granted. Instead, we should constantly ask questions so that we can find undiscovered things. Otherwise, we could lose our curiosity.
In my opinion, curiosity and learning is closely connected. Essentially, they are the same thing; both are about the craving for new knowledge. Therefore, developing curiosity certainly benefits learning. Nevertheless, people with good grades are not necessarily people with immense curiosity. Learning is a narrower concept than curiosity. While curiosity is about the effort to understand all unknown things in life, learning is just about the books. Thus, good students might be able to receive and actively learn the materials on books, but they might not be interested in finding out the unknowns in the real life.
To sum up, curiosity is definitely something that is beneficial in all ways. Yet, at the same time, curiosity also requires constant practice to keep it from fading.