The Seven Important C's That Will Make You Curious

Support, action and confidence as defined by the book The Curious Advantage, and how I use them to face the dragon.

Greetings, readers of Pragmatic Curiosity.

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Summary

• 🫂🫶 Curiosity needs support: context and community let your curiosity flourish, while curation helps focus it.

• 🎬🏃 Curiosity requires taking action: we need to creatively make new connections, construct something new and evaluate critically.

• 😎😎 Curiosity expands confidence: if confidence is gained from failing, curiosity puts us in situations to gain confidence.

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Curiosity is your superpower.

The Curious Advantage is a book written by Paul Ashcroft, Simon Brown and Garrick Jones. In it they propose that curiosity is the greatest driver of value in the digital age, and define a model of curiosity - The Seven C’s.

The Curious Advantage, by Paul Ashcroft, Simon Brown and Garrick Jones.

The Seven C’s

The book defines the seven C’s of curiosity:

1. Context

2. Community

3. Curation

4. Creativity

5. Construction

6. Criticality

7. Confidence

The Seven C’s, as shown on the website for the book.

Each C is a vital aspect of curiosity, together serving as a map. The C’s can be grouped into different categories:

• Supporting our curiosity

• Actioning on our curiosity

• Growing through our curiosity

The supporting C’s

To be truly curious we must be in an environment that supports curiosity.

Context and community

To support curiosity we must understand the context. By exposing ourselves to a broader context, we are more likely to undertake curious exploration.

Communities power our curiosity. At work, you’d prefer to do tasks that interest you. Your curiosity is stifled if you never get to do those tasks. The alternative is sending the same mail and filling the same Excel sheet. Forever.

A fate no one deserves.

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You’d also rather have a supportive spouse/friend encouraging you to try new things that make you excited, right?

If we can surround ourselves with people and organizations that support curiosity, we get more engaged in learning and do better.

Curation

Curation is a vital skill today.

AI’s crap out more content than we can ever hope to scratch the surface of. It doesn’t matter what it is - there is an abundance of content. We cannot keep up.

We need to be intentional, and home in on the things that are important to us.

Be ruthless in cutting out the noise, and protective of your time.

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One way I’ve protected my time is to simply block most phone notifications. I don’t care. I’m not obligated to react immediately.

I’ll get around to it, and I’ll even be quick when its related to people I care deeply about.

I’m also quick to curate my timelines on various social medias. Do not get caught in the maelstrom of negativity and dogshit content. Mute people. Block people.

If you encounter something you don’t quite have the time for at that moment, save it. Devise a system to come back. Spend time on that thing rather than doomscrolling.

I’d love to hear which curation methods you employ!

The actioning C’s

Once the support is in place, we can engage in cycles of curiosity.

Creativity and construction

Creativity causes us to put our curiosity into action. We think differently, make new connections and learn.

Construction should occur once creativity has created a new connection. We learn by constructing. You can construct many things — new connections, physical items, documents, music, businesses.

You are only limited by your creativity.

Criticality

The final point in the cycle is criticality. Our creativity and construction has led to new territory. Now, we are continually faced with decisions to make and a need to evaluate what we are doing.

We need to think critically and be aware of bias.

I’ve found criticality to be essential in my education and career as a software developer. So many new things release, all the time. You’re constantly swamped, and some individuals ALWAYS get sucked in.

Hell, I was one of them at one point.

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Lack of criticality has led to the term hype-driven development (a play on words related to other terms in software engineering, such as domain-driven and test-driven). A new way of doing something is released, buzzwords abound, and people start convincing themselves they ABSOLUTELY have to learn this new thing RIGHT NOW, and change existing solutions to accommodate it.

A few months later, it turns out the new thing might not have been the greatest thing since the invention of curated, short-form, dopamine inducing, negativity-riddled, algorithm-delivered content.

And now, the time that could have been spent on fundamental concepts has been wasted.

Don’t get caught in the vortex of newness.

The growth C

When I was younger I was very timid. Sometimes I still am, much to my detriment. I’d always admire the people who seemed to just be it. Walking in, thinking you’re the fucking man - that people should be excited to see you.

That never came naturally to me.

At this point I’m starting to believe it never will. There’ll always be something inside me that seems to prevent me from fully believing in myself. But I still try.

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One of the ways I try is through the connection between curiosity and confidence.

Many people seem to believe confidence stems from being great. Certainly, being absolutely cracked at something will make you confident within that domain.

But you also can’t be inside that domain all the time.

And, newsflash, no one is great at everything. I would never even entertain that thought of myself, and if someone says they are — walk away from that dummy.

Most people aren’t even amazing at one thing.

One of the major reframings I have found to be useful in supporting curiosity.

Confidence is having experienced failure repeatedly but persisting. You learn to approach new situations with the confidence that you can try, and always get back up.

And how do we find new situations to approach? We action on curiosity.

It becomes a virtuous cycle. You try something. Whatever happens, happens. Your confidence grows. The cycle of curiosity restarts. You try something. Your confidence grows.

Facing the dragon

I’m currently building my confidence to take the plunge into the world of DIY and home-improvement.

I was aways a nerd. In elementary school we had these classes where we built stuff out of wood. All my friends loved them, as a reprieve from the usual monotony of school.

I was the weirdo who couldn’t build anything and I somehow always hurt myself.

I hated it, and never wanted to show up. I convinced myself it was just something I, fundamentally, couldn’t do.

Promotional image for the game Dark Souls 3. How I sometimes imagine myself leaving the comfort zone.

Nowadays, I like to think I know better.

I like to think I can learn. It still feels like a sort of a final boss. Someday soon, I will pick up my sword and shield and pack my healing potions, march forward, and face that dragon.

Which dragon are you building the confidence to take on?

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