Most of my essays are, as much as anything, letters to myself. You, dear reader, might think that those “write off” and “don’t measure” are directed at you. Nah, you just get caught in the crossfire of the writer's advice to his future self.

This essay is no different. I’m sorry 😅.

I owe my life to curiosity. The people who surround me, the passions I pursue, and even these letters that I’m typing — all are the products of me being curious.

My duty is to cherish this curiosity. You might assume that curiosity comes so naturally and is so strong that it doesn’t need protection. I wish…

Curiosity has plenty of natural predators.

Against shame

How many times have you heard something like this:

“You don’t know THIS?! That’s elementary school material!”

Someone bringing you down by identifying a gap in your knowledge is arguably the most terrible incentive to learn that there is. If you notice me doing that, hit me in the right knee¹.

It might work for this particular gap (“Y chromosome → male”) or even this domain (genetics), but shame is a perfect way to kill the natural curiosity over the long term.

I’ve come aaall the way on this one:

1. be shamed into learning;

2. refuse to learn but be extremely insecure about the gap;

3. be somewhat insecure;

4. just smile at any attempt at knowledge shaming.

What helped is the trust in that, due to my natural curiosity, I will eventually learn a ton of stuff — just in an unpredictable order. Judging by my amateur Jeopardy results, it’s working 😃.

Also, I consider the ability to figure out stuff on the fly (and not erudition) my strong suit, so there’s less of an identity crisis at stake.

Against need

Speaking of trivia games…

Another external motivation to learn that can displace the innate curiosity is the necessity:

“Pastoureau is often featured in trivia, so I’ll read his books to be more successful.”

I promised myself a long time ago that I would never force myself to read Joyce or watch Soviet-era films to improve my results in trivia. I play games to learn, not the other way around².

The same goes for professional development:

“I will learn machine learning because it’s in demand right now“

Nope, thank you.

I exercise curiosity for the sake of it, even if I can’t remotely explain how spending two hours on Wikipedia reading about ‘90s indie wrestlers might prove useful.

I might get interested and learn something marketable (e.g., coding), but that would be a lucky coincidence. That being said, I’ve been extremely privileged because the things I’m curious about happen to sustain a well-paying career.

Against time

Just as inspiration has a shelf life, so does curiosity.

“I’ll read it later.”

If I’m fascinated by airships right now, I won’t just save a book on the topic to read someday. I will finish the book in a week and go to Friedrichshafen³:

Sometimes these brief obsessions materialize as pet projects (see voting systems guide) just before the curiosity’s manic phase ends. It’s nice to have something ~tangible to look back at.

Against format

Here’s another classic:

“Why are you sitting at the computer all day? Go read a book!”

In my childhood, the only proper way to learn was by reading books. I wasn’t a fan. Sitting in one place for (cumulatively) tens of hours staring at identical black-and-white pages felt like punishment. Apart from the ⚡ series, I had finished fewer than 10 books by the age of twenty.

Instead, I learned most from watching stuff on YouTube (think CGP Grey, Tom Scott, Kurzgesagt) and Coursera (from gamification to the history of rock) — while feeling guilty I wasn’t reading books.

Nowadays, my preferred inputs are listening > watching > reading. Most books I’ve finished have been audiobooks. I’ve listened to 218 hours of podcasts this year (~38 min a day):

The guilt is long gone. Now it feels self-evident that there are no “right” and “wrong” ways of exercising curiosity. As with happiness, love, and hanging toilet paper, everyone has to figure out what works for them⁴.

¹I might be genuinely surprised that you don’t know something, but it won’t come with shame. The urge to exercise curiosity is much-much-much (I can’t stress this enough) more important than knowing any particular thing.

²Cool story: I wasn’t on speaking terms with my teammate for half a season (largely) because of that. We won a national championship together (his “pass”, my “goal”) without shaking our hands at the start of the day.

³My curiosity’s manic phase expired just as I was about to build a helium Zeppelin in my apartment 😅.

⁴Another cool story: When accepting his MVP trophy on my favourite game show, Mikhail Karpuk said “read books”. Since then I had a dream of winning the same trophy just to say “don’t read books”. I won. I didn’t say that 😐.

Favourites

• (📚 23 hours) Speaking of audiobooks, I’m currently listening to The Lord of the Rings narrated by Andy Serkis (yep, the one who played Gollum in the movies), and it’s such a treat! The best fiction book narration I’ve ever heard and the most impressive solo acting performance I’ve witnessed.

• (🎬 20 min) If you are into cars and haven’t discovered Revelations by Jason Cammisa yet, I envy you. This series is just enthusiasm materialized in video form. I can’t believe these documentaries are available for free on YouTube (thank you, Hagerty!), such is their production quality. To pick one, here’s the story behind one of the most ubiquitous vehicles in America, The Grumman LLV.

• (📃 10 min) Size of Life — another cool project from Neal Agarwal. Beauitful hand-painted illustrations, occasional fun copies, and even a banana.

This was issue #12, find more at antoniokov.com.

What else should we protect the curiosity against? Reply to this email or reach out on socials.