There’s enough variance, even among hyper-intellectuals, that you should talk all answers as “this seems to work for some”, rather than “this will work for you”.
I’ve never been able to override my curiosity for very long, and have pretty much stopped trying. I _HAVE_ developed a skill of finding topics that my curiosity will take me deeper into, and in framing the tasks that aren’t hour-to-hour exciting (I’m a fairly senior software developer at a large company, so there’s plenty of “just work”) as critical parts of the larger experiment of “understanding at the gears-level how this project/product/organization works”.
Also I’ve found it helpful to remind myself to ask about impact rather than just knowledge. How am I applying what I learn, in order to filter the future branches of reality such that I experience more-preferred ones? Thinking about explore/exploit balances and making sure I’m spending a reasonable fraction of my effort in exploit mode (and then learning from the results) has been fairly compatible with my curiosity-driven approach to life. I’ve trained myself (or been lucky enough) to think of “how will this work out in reality?” as an important thing to be curious about.
There’s enough variance, even among hyper-intellectuals, that you should talk all answers as “this seems to work for some”, rather than “this will work for you”.
I’ve never been able to override my curiosity for very long, and have pretty much stopped trying. I _HAVE_ developed a skill of finding topics that my curiosity will take me deeper into, and in framing the tasks that aren’t hour-to-hour exciting (I’m a fairly senior software developer at a large company, so there’s plenty of “just work”) as critical parts of the larger experiment of “understanding at the gears-level how this project/product/organization works”.
Also I’ve found it helpful to remind myself to ask about impact rather than just knowledge. How am I applying what I learn, in order to filter the future branches of reality such that I experience more-preferred ones? Thinking about explore/exploit balances and making sure I’m spending a reasonable fraction of my effort in exploit mode (and then learning from the results) has been fairly compatible with my curiosity-driven approach to life. I’ve trained myself (or been lucky enough) to think of “how will this work out in reality?” as an important thing to be curious about.