“I wonder” is one of my favorite ways to start a sentence.
Wondering can be the first step toward a new understanding. It’s a place to start seeking new information, new places, new people or new experiences.
In 2011, analyzed some 200 prior studies trying to determine the factors behind academic success. Her work identified three elements that independently moved the needle on grades: raw intelligence, hard work (or conscientiousness) and curiosity.
Interestingly, curiosity’s effect on success was roughly the same size as hard work’s.
I wish I had read about her research 15 years ago — when my children were younger and I might have been inclined to better nurture curiosity in them.
This week, I went down a curiosity rabbit hole.
In 2024, defined curiosity as “a quality related to an intrinsic desire to seek out new knowledge and experience.” I like that the definition includes experience — that’s my favorite kind of curiosity.
divided curiosity into two kinds: wanting to know more because something is interesting and, secondly, wanting to know more because not knowing is uncomfortable.
Only the first kind — the interest-driven kind — showed up as a meaningful predictor of success. The second kind fizzled out. In other words, wondering itself is important, but why we wonder and what we do next matters a lot.
I called my older daughter in Florida. She was busy at work but said she would give herself a seven on the curiosity 1-10 scale. I asked what she had been curious about lately. Without missing a beat, she said, "Oppenheimer — how did Nolan have a 'practical' atom bomb test?"
Then with further thought, she said, “Elizabeth Holmes — what was her deal? And 'La La Land' — the use of colors in costuming.”
It was a short conversation. Still, I couldn’t help but smile.
I called my younger daughter in Colorado and asked what she was curious about these days.
She is working full time as a high school administrator and going to law school part time, so some of her questions were about the psychology of professional learning spaces, why certain things are pushed so hard and why people, particularly those in leadership positions, act the way they do. She is also curious about criminal law, civil rights, civil systems and the intersection of civil and criminal law.
She told me that since seeing an early "Ted Lasso" episode with the line "Be curious, not judgmental," she thinks about what the quote means every day. Both she and the show attributed the quote to Walt Whitman. However, , a detail that delighted me.
Apparently, even a quote about curiosity needs a curious reader.
I loved that. Curiosity means checking the things we think we know, too.
Curiosity isn't just about knowing more. It can change the way we look at other people — and ourselves, for that matter.
Instead of making assumptions about why someone behaves in a certain way, we can wonder:
- Why did she say that?
- Why does he believe that?
- What am I missing?
- Why am I responding to this person in this way?
Vladimir Nabokov called curiosity “insubordination in its purest form.” The thought makes sense considering his experience with authoritarian societies that demanded obedience rather than questions.
But it also works on a much smaller scale.
A child who asks “why?” for the fourth time is doing a small — and, yes, sometimes annoying — version of the same thing.
The child is refusing to accept that the first answer is necessarily the final answer.
My daughters are grown now. I had assumed the window for teaching them curiosity was behind me, but my curiosity rabbit hole convinced me that it isn't.
suggests we can become more curious at any age.
Psychologists Madeleine Gross and Jonathan Schooler created an app called to help boost curiosity.
They studied participants who spent three weeks on small daily assignments designed to encourage curiosity: trying an unfamiliar podcast instead of a familiar playlist, asking a friend what they'd learned lately or pausing long enough to notice an ordinary moment instead of moving past it out of habit.
By the end of three weeks, their curiosity scores had gone up, along with their sense of meaning. Boredom had gone down.
Gross has a theory for why children ask “why” so relentlessly. Childhood doesn't hold more mysteries. As adults, we often stop noticing them.
Maybe curiosity simply asks us to notice, regardless of age. Then, to keep asking questions and following the interesting thought.
Maybe the trick is to resist the temptation of believing that we already know. I believe curiosity makes us better versions of ourselves — and can lead to happier lives, careers and better relationships.
Thankfully, my daughters are still curious. Maybe they could have been more curious had I gone down this rabbit hole earlier?
Regardless, I'm happy that I'm still curious.
I wonder what’s next.