Sunday Journaling Prompt: Unlearning 101, how to solve the curiosity conflict 📔🖋️✨
Our brains are wired for competing curiosity and execution. Quick hacks for creatively-driven Empresses who need to stay curious but also GSD amid brain fog.
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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
So, thinking about the prompt for this Sunday’s journaling prompt (and our recent salon) got me brooding over this thing I call The Curiosity Conflict and how to unlearn a few things around it.
I refer to this struggle—where your exceptional creativity, driven by curiosity, clashes with your productivity and focus. In essence:
High curiosity fuels creative thinking and idea generation.
Yet, high curiosity can also hinder focus and execution, leading to unfinished projects.
This conflict can create a frustrating cycle that leaves you feeling stuck despite your abundance of ideas and your love for learning. Factor in midlife brain fog and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Curiosity is closely linked to the brain's reward system, particularly influenced by dopamine. When you encounter novel experiences or ideas, your brain releases dopamine, motivating you to delve deeper and learn more. This dopamine response plays a crucial role in driving exploration and curiosity.
Studies indicate that individuals with heightened curiosity exhibit increased brain activity in reward-related regions. This heightened sensitivity to potential rewards often drives curious individuals to seek new experiences and engage in exploratory behavior.
However, this same reward-seeking mechanism can hinder focus and decision-making. The surge of dopamine triggered by multiple exciting ideas can make it challenging to concentrate on a single project, leading to a desire to explore all possibilities simultaneously.
Essentially, the curiosity conflict arises from the brain's struggle to transition from exploration mode to focused execution, posing a significant challenge for those seeking to harness their curiosity effectively.
Managing the tug-of-war between exploring new ideas and focusing on a manageable load of projects is integral to maintaining a functional life. Here are five strategies tailored to help you navigate and leverage your curiosity effectively:
Embrace JOMO: This is the joy of missing out. Recognize that having diverse interests is a strength. While your curiosity may highlight potential missed opportunities, remind yourself that focusing on one project doesn't mean abandoning other ideas permanently.
The Curiosity Parking Lot: This is something I use constantly in meetings. Maintain a dedicated space, like a notebook or digital notepad, to jot down new ideas as they arise. Periodically revisit these ideas, rating them based on your long-term interest. This practice helps you prioritize and identify ideas with the most potential for further development without stifling your curiosity.
Time Shielding: Allocate specific time slots to transition from exploring new ideas to developing an execution plan for one chosen idea. Break down your chosen concept into actionable steps, considering the resources needed. Use AI to clarify and refine your plan. You can even upload your plan to ChatGPT and say, “Put on your strategist’s hat, am I missing any steps here? Is the order right?” See what it spits back.
Employ the Sister System: Collaborate with someone in your network who excels at implementation and execution. Just as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak complemented each other in the early days of Apple, aligning with a "buddy" can help bridge the gap between an idea and the thing that needs to get done.
Get Metacognitive: Practice regular reflection on your progress of balancing curiosity and execution. Make three columns in your journal: Plus/Minus/Next. Reflect on what's working, what’s not, and where to focus your efforts next. Cultivating metacognitive awareness enhances your ability to focus your curiosity effectively into action.
All of the above are great for countering brain fog no matter what your area of work or art may be. Remember, the curiosity conflict is how we’re wired. It’s a natural part of the creative process, and with the right approach, you can channel your curiosity into fulfilling works and endeavors. So…
Your prompt this week: write about how you transition curiosity into a plan. 🤍
You may be able to meditate your way toward action items. My GenX mind resists such quietude, so I am a list girl. My lists have lists, lol. Until next time.
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
*By the way, as a disclaimer, I am not a therapist or a physician. I’ve only been to the medical school of me (and talking to women in branding for 29 years), so take all of the above as mere entertainment and not at all as legit medical advice.
My lists have lists too! It helps me keep track of all the things I'm curious about, but also keep me on track so that I can actually accomplish some of my goals in the midst of brain fog. I especially love your 5 tips of embracing JOMO, the curiosity parking lot, time shielding, employing the sister system, and getting megacognitive. In fact, I need to go make a list of those things...
I don't even know how to express the level of my frustration about this very subject, and it's only gotten worse since I turned 50. I've never been plagued by "paralysis by analysis", but now every day is like, "how in the hell am I going to explore/learn/develop all the fucking ideas and questions an curiosities that are CONSTANTLY ringing in my brain before i DIE?" and if I'm not careful it just drags me down into a mushy, uninspired place where I'm just trying to distract myself by thinking about the next thing I'm going to eat. Hell with it. Chocolate.