It looks like people over 50 lose their curiosity. I’m not sure that’s true.
People over 50 get comfortable. They avoid friction, and it’s friction that forces learning. Coming up, your job provided that friction: new systems, new bosses, problems that forced you to learn new things.
Move up the ladder and your work becomes second nature. Your words become lore. Less friction. Less people pushing. Less learning. Less curiosity.
I noticed it in myself. Coming up I was always an ideas guy. Thing was, I acted on nearly none of them (slight exaggeration). I didn’t lack curiosity. Nothing was ever due.
No consequence to not acting, and over time curiosity calcifies.
Here are three ways you stop being curious, and what to do about it.
Way 1: You became an expert
The first one’s counterintuitive. You got good.
You’ve spent years working towards being the person people turn to for the answers. It’s nice. It’s comfortable. It’s also fatal to curiosity. You stop asking questions.
I’ve spent three decades in broadcasting getting pretty good at being the guy who has the answers.
The problem is everyone expects you to be the expert. So you keep the question that might out you as not knowing to yourself. Over time, that curiosity atrophies.
The antidote: ask one question in public that you don’t know the answer to. Something that shows you’re not afraid of not knowing.
Tiny step, I know. But that’s how you get momentum. A big leap into learning rarely sticks. Small steps do.
Way 2: Consuming isn’t learning
This one’s hard to spot because it feels like curiosity.
You watch the documentary, work through a stack of podcasts, skim the best Substacks, bookmark things you’ll never open. You feel informed. Nothing changes.
Hands up, I do this all the time.
Samuel William wrote about this trap on his Substack: three years spent consuming videos, courses and podcasts, “learning bits and pieces about many things,” and then realising his life hadn’t changed. He learned the fix from a mentor in his early twenties: learning is behaviour change. If your actions stay the same after a book, an article, a video, you didn’t learn anything. You were entertained.
What to do about it: put something in your calendar. An article, a class, a chat with someone who’ll ask you questions. Curiosity is powered by a deadline.
Way 3: You think you’re too old to look stupid
This one, on reflection, is the stupidest.
Ego Is the Enemy, as Ryan Holiday titled his book. Hit your 40s and 50s and you decide you’ve got a reputation to uphold. Being a beginner at anything starts to feel like a threat to your sense of self.
So the guitar lesson never happens. The new software stays unlearned. The newsletter draft stays exactly that, a draft. The podcast pitch stays in your notes app. Because what if it’s terrible.
I’m dyslexic. I started writing in public anyway, at an age where I could reasonably have decided I’d missed the window. I was sure I’d look stupid. I did, sometimes. The surprise was how little people cared. They were interested in what I had to say.
I say this a lot: make the bet small enough that looking stupid is survivable, and your ego barely notices.
The old adage, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, might be true. You’re not a dog. Get out and be curious.
Try this
All three ways back are the same move: make it small, make it public, make it due.
Small so you start. Public so it counts. Due so it happens before you feel ready.
Staying curious is how you stay relevant.
If you’ve been sitting on an idea for years, the free One-Page Small Bet is a one-page way to start. Three steps, and a date inside 48 hours.
Want to go further? The Small Bet Kit below takes the same idea through five short lessons, with a coach to talk it through.
Stop planning the big leap. Make a small bet.
Most of the people I’ve interviewed on the podcast didn’t reinvent themselves in one dramatic move. They started a small thing on the side, and one day they looked up and it had become their actual job. That’s a small bet, and I’ve built a kit to help you make one. It’s five short lessons, a worksheet, and a coach you can talk to that asks the awkward questions and shrinks your idea until it’s embarrassingly small. Two weeks, one real first move, no quitting your job required.
It’s US$15. No hustle, no 5am alarms, and nobody telling you to bet the house.
[Get the Small Bet Kit] → https://generalistalan.eden.so/small-bet-kit
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