Curiosity Over Competence

Introduction

Last week, I worked on a fellowship application that posed the question:

"How would you go about identifying great builders?"

What questions would I ask, and what would I look for in their answers? Simple enough, I thought, but for nearly 30 minutes I couldn't articulate any thought that I was satisfied with. All of my instinctual responses seemed trite, and given how much I still need to grow to be considered a "great builder" myself, it felt difficult and even a bit silly for me to answer with any certainty.

So I took a different route. Instead of writing down the first thoughts that came to mind, I tried to approach the question more sincerely. I made a list of several peers that I admire and think of as "great builders" of some sort, and tried to identify common traits.

After working through every member of that list, one simple quality bubbled to the top: curiosity.

Why it matters

Of course resilience, work-ethic, and intelligence are all important, and they predictably emerged as common themes across the list as well. But, upon some genuine reflection, I don't find that any of them correlate to "greatness" in this exercise as cleanly as curiosity does.

For the sake of the argument, I've met dozens of exceptionally bright and/or hard-working individuals. But, the overlap between that set of people, and the list of peers I considered "great builders" was surprisingly small.

And I think the reason is quite straightforward — being smart and competent does not make you more likely to want to stand out. In fact, depending on the environment, I actually think the opposite may be true.

Those who are most successful by traditional metrics are more likely to follow traditional paths (ie. optimizing for grades and high-paying jobs). I think this is slowly starting to change as entrepreneurship becomes more "high-status" and accessible, but it still mostly holds true for now.

Conversely, those who lead with curiosity get to be untethered by traditional expectations, and are thus able to benefit from the massively underrated tailwinds of genuine interest. How can you beat somebody that has fun doing their work?

As a result, for these people, competence is often a byproduct rather than a prerequisite.
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This discovery made answering the question much easier. In order to assess one's capacity as a builder, I'd simply ask about their curiosities.

“Tell me about something you've built purely out of curiosity?”

Though simple, I suspect the answer would be quite telling, and the delivery of the answer may be even more revealing. It’s not difficult to talk about, or even embellish, your accomplishments, but it’s quite difficult to feign true curiosity.

The peers on my list have all demonstrated not only a supreme understanding of their field of interest, but also an earnest desire and infectious enthusiasm to share that understanding with me.

I only hope I can give the same impression to someone else one day.