Judge a man by his questions rather then by his answers.

Voltare

On the other hand, we have Ted Lasso, “Be curious, not judgmental.” (Yes, lots of questions about who said it first, but Ted made it popular again.)

James Buckhouse also had the right idea in his article How to Finish What You Start: “Creative diligence is the ability to combine radical curiosity and thoughtful rigor to solve creative problems and produce extraordinary art.”

Our world, in many places and many ways, is skewing away from radical curiosity and thoughtful rigor. AI can make things happen for us with little friction. And maybe it’s the friction that keeps us from curiosity. Friction slows things down, makes them harder to achieve or understand. Better to be efficient, right? Efficiency may be the god of the industrialist, but art has never been efficient. Getting through the messy middle is much less efficient than avoiding it all together and getting right to the end, all wrapped with a ribbon.

There are millions of books, it seems, on how to be more efficient. Much less on how to be more curious. Maybe we need to find more questions and less easy answers?

Welcome to my latest exercise in an attempt to reach my goal of being a prolific writer in 2025. So, in addition to writing 1 short story each week (Because Ray Bradbury said you can’t write 52 bad ones – challenge accepted!) I will  post an entry from my Commonplace book and a short note on why the quote spoke to me on that day. I can hear you now – sucky stories and random quotes? Sign me up.

For more information about the blogging challenge, see http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/)