January 8, 2010 – The Rex Blog

I know it can get me into trouble sometimes, but I really think curiosity is one of my strong points.

It helped me in engineering because I was always asking, “Why does that work?”

And it has helped me in learning about human systems as I ask, “Why do people do that?”

It helps to break down arguments logically as I’m curious why would someone think that way, or what assumptions are they basing their beliefs and position on?

I guess it goes along with my drive to continually learn things. I always check out way too many books from the library than I can reasonably read, but I’ve figured out the formula: curiosity + free = lots of library books stacked everywhere.

The foundation of real learning, is that you really want to learn. And that comes from curiosity – the desire to know what is unknown.

Someone can teach you a lot of things, but if you don’t care, or don’t really want to learn, then you won’t.

Curiosity is also connected with creativity. You have to be curious about what you can create, so you create something to satisfy that curiosity. When you create something you are making something known that was previously unknown.

Seth Godin has a great, short little post about how we might be missing out by not teaching kids how to be curious, and not letting new hires ask why.

It turns out that curiosity is also the basis for improvement.

Do you want to spread your word?

The main way people are spreading word about their ‘stuff’ is to ask people who can reach a lot of people to talk about it. In other words, they ask famous bloggers to blog about it.

This is somewhat analagous to trying to get your commercial on TV during the Super Bowl instead of putting it up on a local PBS channel. But I think there is less money that exchanges hands, even though it is probably more effective advertising.

So if you want to try and ask a famous blogger to promote your stuff, Chris Brogan has some great tips. And it involves a little more effort than slappin’ down dollar bills. This is the ‘Trust Economy’, maybe more work, but probably more valuable than cash.

There’s also another tactic you can use in this new economy. Instead of asking a famous blogger like Chris Brogan to promote your stuff, you can also easily ask someone else you already know (built trust with) to blog about your stuff. Sure, their blog may not go out to hundreds of thousands of people, but maybe they might reach a few people. And who knows, maybe those few people might tell a few more people about your stuff, and so on.

If you get enough small time people blogging about it, you just might reach a big time audience.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you want me to mention something for you, just go ahead and ask. It could be a mutual benefit for both of us. (If your thing is really cool.)