Learning & thinking · a life skill
Simple Curiosity Lists
write the question down before it goes
Most questions you wonder about are gone by the evening. A curiosity list catches them. Tonight you write down five, rate how much you want to know each one, and chase the top one properly: a guess first, then the answer in your own words, then a try at recalling it tomorrow.
- Easy to start
- Medium impact
- Learn it in 1 week
- Five questions, one chased
The guess was wrong, and that's fine. Being wrong first is part of what makes the answer stick.
Tonight, with a pen
Try it now.
A page of a notebook or a note on your phone. About fifteen minutes tonight, and one minute tomorrow.
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Write five questions
Things you've wondered about this week and then let go. One line each, phrased as a question.
Stuck? Look around the room and ask why one thing in it works the way it does. -
Rate each one
How much do you want to know, from 1 to 6? Go with your first answer.
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Pick the top one
Tonight you chase one question properly, not five quickly. The rest stay on the list.
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Guess, then look it up
Write your guess before you search. Then write the answer in one line, in your own words, not the first sentence you find.
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Tomorrow, try to recall it
Cover the answer, read the question, and say the answer out loud. Then lift the cover and check.
A low rating isn't a failure. If nothing on the list rates above a 3, write five more. The point is to find the one you really want to know.
Your list tonight
Write the questions, rate them, chase the top one.
Tap a dot to rate each question. The card picks the one to chase, asks for your guess first, and writes tomorrow's check.
Chase first
Rate a question to see it here.
Tap a dot beside each question: 1 if you barely care, 6 if you'd stop what you're doing to find out.
Tomorrow's check
Answer covered. Say it out loud first.
Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. It's gone when you leave the page, so copy tomorrow's check somewhere you'll see it.
Why rate them first
People remembered more of the answers they had wanted to know.
Matthias Gruber, Bernard Gelman and Charan Ranganath showed people trivia questions and had them rate, for each, how curious they were about the answer. Each answer came after a fourteen-second wait. Only questions people didn't already know were kept.
Later, people tried to recall the answers. Answers to the questions they'd rated 4 to 6 out of 6 were recalled more often than answers to the ones they'd rated 1 to 3. That held about twenty minutes later in the main study, and a day later in a second group.
They also showed a stranger's face during each wait. Faces seen while people were curious were recognised a little more often, but only by a small margin. The clear effect was on the answers themselves.
The honest limits: these were trivia questions in a lab, not questions people brought themselves, and a day is not a month. Curiosity was rated, not assigned, so the questions people wanted to know may differ in other ways too.
About 20 minutes later
the main study, in a brain scanner
A day later
a second group, tested the next day
The idea
Why it works.
A question you want answered is a small itch, and the answer scratches it. That moment is when learning comes easiest. The list keeps the itch from fading before you get to it.
The guess matters too. Committing to an answer, even a wrong one, gives the real answer something to land against. And writing it in your own words, then recalling it the next day, turns a fact you read once into one you can find again.
When it goes wrong
Habits that help.
- Write it when it comes. A question noted in the moment survives. One you plan to remember later usually doesn't.
- One question, done properly. Five answers skimmed tonight are mostly gone by Friday. One guessed, written and recalled tends to stay.
- Don't search before you guess. Once the answer is on the screen, it's too late to find out what you thought.
- Keep the rest. Tonight's other four are tomorrow's list. Cross a question off only once you've recalled its answer.
Practise this in HourLife.
In Someday: Ideas that show their age. A parking lot for ideas you're not ready to act on. Review it monthly and turn the ones that last into goals, tasks, or desires.
