Hyper Curious

For all of us who are motivated to learn new things, Tom Vanderbilt is an inspiration. In this episode, we talk about the beginner's mind and why adults stop learning, how absorbing new skills triggers your curiosity to look at the world around you with a fresh perspective, and why we should be inspired by kids.

Key takeaways:
Why he wrote Beginners
The main traits of hyper curious people
The risk of being a generalist
How the pandemic induced collective behaviour change
Don’t rely on goals

Show Notes

For all of us who are hyper curious, who are motivated to learn new things in our lives, today’s guest, Tom Vanderbilt, is an inspiration. 

“One of the greatest ways to kickstart a desire to stay curious, to stay intellectually humble, to admit that you don't know everything that's out there, is to take up a new skill in which you have no background.”

Tom is a journalist and author of New York Times bestseller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and Beginners: The Joy And Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Tom writes on many subjects for many publications, including Wired, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and the New York Time Magazine. 

In this episode, we talk about the beginner's mind and why adults stop learning, how absorbing completely new skills triggers your curiosity to look at the world around you with a fresh perspective, and why we should be inspired by kids when they playfully try and fail and learn, as opposed to having a big goal to get to.

“Skill learning could help combat stress and build resilience because you no longer feel as if your life is dependent on a few things.”

From the importance of openness to experience, to mastering what you’ve learned by repeating and practicing it, to why the disruptive pandemic has forced us to change and given us a good excuse to learn new things. 

“A lot of life is very habitual. We're not even aware of how much is habitual and one of the greatest ways to induce behaviour change is to have a disruption in one's life.”

If you’re a founder, starting a company or changing career, this is a truly curious episode that will hopefully inspire you to be a lifelong learner.

On today’s podcast:
  • Why he wrote Beginners
  • The main traits of hyper curious people
  • The risk of being a generalist
  • How the pandemic induced collective behaviour change
  • Don’t rely on goals

Links:

What is Hyper Curious?

For the change-makers, explorers and entrepreneurs by heart or practice, Hyper Curious podcast is a celebration of what’s best in human beings: OUR CURIOSITY.

Get ready to change your perception of what it means to be an 'overnight success'. Here you will listen to the most intriguing U-turns and A-ha moments of our guests, and how embracing changes (rather than fearing it) keeps them curious and evolving.

Your host is Beta Lucca, a successful BAFTA-winning entrepreneur and Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech who has failed, succeeded, and built a multimillion-dollar gaming business. Beta brings her upbeat energy, bold attitude and multipotentialite mindset to interview your favourite authors, poets, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, founders and artists.

If you don’t know them already, you definitely will now!

Listening to these incredible human beings is the perfect start of your day. One that will provoke you to think differently, laterally, upside down, and offer you new fresh perspectives to help you act boldly. You’ll finish each episode feeling energised, inspired and empowered to reinvent your world and reinvent yourself.

For more information, visit http://hypercurious.fm