Ask why

Start to ask yourself why things are the way they are. Start to ask why to internal and external rules and constraints. If you ask why enough times you will get to the root cause of any issue. In business, there’s something called the 7 whys.

The principle is simple, if you’re faced with a problem, ask yourself why that problem exists in the first place. If you do this 7 times, you will find the root cause, and that is the thing you should work on.

Don’t ask why about things you don’t care about, or it won’t be interesting enough to trigger the strong force that it can trigger.

As soon as you have a simple question, there are nearly unlimited resources to find the answer, but the trigger to make you want to find the answer is always curiosity.

If you have found yourself going between a motivated state, some actions, and then quitting, I would say you are lacking curiosity.

A badly drawn diagram explaining this would be like this:

This cycle is simple, and the timeline is short. I, for one, was curious about the impact of this article, that created the motivation to write it, and now I’m putting it into action by actually writing it, no more than 30 minutes have elapsed and the cycle is complete.

Motivation has been compared to showers — in the sense that it doesn’t last long, so you need it daily — but people underestimate exactly how little time it lasts.

A 15 minute shower keeps you clean enough for a day. 15 minutes of strong enough motivation triggered by a lot of curiosity can be enough for weeks of actions. Or, in some cases, generate years of research, as is the case for scientists looking for an answer to a problem that caused tremendous amounts of curiosity.

Every action you take upon your curiosity should create more curiosity, if it doesn’t, you may be working on something that is not your true interest.

Finding your true interest can be found by asking yourself and getting down to the root of the issue. In other words, be curious about what your true interests are, and I guarantee you will find them.