Ask AltoTRY · 6 MIN
Curiosity Trail
TAIU
A short, unserious record of what you followed this week.
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Tool 65 · Develop yourself
What still makes you want to know more?
A guided 12 to 16 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Curiosity doesn't need a business case.
What are you interested in before you start asking whether it's useful?
The usefulness question tends to kill the interest that was worth having.
What you have read this month is better evidence than what you say interests you.
What you'll look at
- 01Recent attention
- 02The pull
- 03The older one
- 04The evidence
A note from Mark
Curiosity has driven a lot of my life.
People. Businesses. Countries. Why something worked. Why something failed. How two things that appear unrelated might actually connect.
I've also learned that curiosity loses some of its value when you immediately demand an outcome from it.
You don't have to build a business from everything you're interested in.
Sometimes following the question is enough.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
What pulls you
02
The part that does it
03
How long
04
What to protect
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What keeps pulling your attention
- 02What it is about it
- 03How long it has been there
- 04What you have actually done about it
- 05The older curiosity
- 06The rival reading
- 07What deserves protecting
- 08What remains unresolved
- 09Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
What genuinely holds your attention.
02 · Test it
Follow the question one step further this month without deciding what it is for.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Look at behaviour rather than at stated interests.
- 02
Find a second curiosity that has lasted years.
- 03
Work out what the two have in common.
- 04
Give it more room without asking it to justify itself.
- 05
Leave it alone if it is already in good shape.
Test it
- 01
What have you actually done because of it?
- 02
Has it lasted, or is it new?
- 03
Would you still be interested if nothing came of it?
The alternative
Repeated attention is not always curiosity. It can be novelty, which fades on its own. It can be work necessity dressed as interest. It can be status, or the influence of people around you, or avoidance of something else that needs attention. Test which one this is before giving it more room, because only one of them rewards the space.
Think about this
- What you have read, watched or asked about lately without needing to.
- The part of the subject that keeps pulling you back.
- When the interest first appeared.
- What you have actually done because of it.
- Which older curiosity has lasted, and what the two share.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Keep looking
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Free, proper courses if you want to keep learning.
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READ · RESEARCH
The Psychology of Curiosity
George Loewenstein
Treats curiosity as a response to a gap between what somebody knows and what they want to know. It explains why interest can be intense and still not indicate a vocation.
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Recommended by the TAIU community
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We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.
Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Further thinking
The Psychology of Curiosity
George Loewenstein
Why We Do What We Do
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
Peak
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
See the thinking ↓
Article
The Psychology of Curiosity
George Loewenstein
Treats curiosity as a response to a gap between what somebody knows and what they want to know. It explains why interest can be intense and still not indicate a vocation.
Book
Why We Do What We Do
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
The readable account of self-determination theory, written by the man who spent forty years testing it. The finding that matters here is that rewards and approval reliably change why people do things, and that behaviour which survives without either is telling you something the rest is not. It gives you a usable test rather than a feeling.
Book
Peak
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
Ericsson spent his career studying how people become genuinely good at things, and the answer is boringly specific: structured practice at the edge of your current ability, with feedback. It belongs here as a corrective. Where an exercise finds that low confidence is an accurate reading of a real gap, this describes what closing the gap actually involves, and it is not a mindset.
Book
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The original work behind absorbed attention: the conditions are a clear task, immediate feedback and difficulty roughly matched to skill. Useful here as a discriminator. Attention that absorbs you and attention that merely holds you feel similar in the moment and leave you in completely different states afterwards.