If You’re Not Curious, You’re Boring

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

-Albert Einstein

I really believe curiosity is everything. Those who aren’t curious about the world are boring and never accomplish anything great. I can understand how people can go through life and not want to do things he didn’t understand before. You’ve got to burn a lot of calories to understand something well enough to be able to do it. But, I simply can’t understand how people can go through life and not want to know how or why things work. In the age of Google and eHow, learning how stuff works has never been easier or required less calories.

I think that Jay [Z] is infinitely curious, which to me is. I think that has everything to do with his longevity.

-John Mayer

Curiosity is the hallmark of not only creative minds, but scientists, and anyone who produces anything new. “What happens if we do this? What happens if we do that? What happens if this happens?” That’s how you get everything from Cubism to chocolate chip cookies to AIDS vaccines. That’s how Jay Z gets to be worth half a billie, sell 50 million albums, and still be one of the most popular MCs in the world after a career that spanned three decades and countless shifts in the rap genre. He’s usually pioneering those shifts. He finds Kanye West, who fundamentally changes the way rap sounds. He teams up with Rihanna, or Beyonce, or John Mayer to change what’s allowed to be included in a rap song. He initiates.

Once again, Seth Godin sums it up brilliantly:

The difference is that the creative person is satisfied once he sees how it’s done. The initiator won’t rest until he does it.

And to the initiator goes the spoils.