Curiosity is worth 25 extra IQ points – at least!
Kevin Kelly
The meaning of the quote
Researchers analysed data from more than 200,000 students across dozens of studies to find out what predicts academic performance. They discovered that intelligence mattered, as did effort, but curiosity mattered too. Its effect on performance was roughly as strong as intelligence itself.
That’s the idea behind this quote. Kelly isn’t handing out literal IQ points. He’s making a point about what curiosity does for you day to day. A curious person asks 1 more question, opens the manual nobody else bothers to read and chases an answer that wasn’t even required. None of that shows up on an IQ test. It shows up in what a person learns, builds and notices over a lifetime.
Physicist Richard Feynman tells a story about this in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! As a teenager, he fixed radios for cash around his neighbourhood, including ones other repairmen gave up on. He’d listen to the broken radio, think through what the crackle or silence meant and only then open it up. He was diagnosing before he was repairing.
You can see the same pattern in Kelly’s own life. He never finished college, yet built a career on reading, experimenting and following questions wherever they led.
Curiosity isn’t something you either have or don’t. It shows up in what you do when you don’t know something. A kid who takes apart a radio wasn’t born knowing how transistors work. He was willing to find out.
Try this
- Follow one question.
Pick something you’ve wondered about but never bothered to investigate. Spend 15 minutes finding the answer. Do this once a week. - Ask one more question.
Next time someone explains something you don’t fully understand, don’t nod along. Ask 1 more question and see where the answer takes you.
Stop treating “I don’t know” as embarrassing. Treat it as an invitation to find out.
About the author
In 1979, Kevin Kelly spent a night at the site in Jerusalem traditionally believed to be where Jesus was crucified and walked away with an unusual experiment. He decided to live the next 6 months as if they were his last, giving away nearly everything he owned and trying to treat each day accordingly. When the 6 months ended, he began calling the rest of his life his “bonus round.” He later told the story on This American Life.
Kelly had already taken an unconventional path. He left the University of Rhode Island after 1 year and spent much of the 1970s travelling through Asia with a camera. He took roughly 40,000 photographs, storing undeveloped rolls of film in his mother’s freezer until he could afford to process them. Some of those photographs later became his book Asia Grace.
He went on to edit Whole Earth Review and co-found Wired, where he served as executive editor. He has also written books including Out of Control, What Technology Wants and The Inevitable.
The quote comes from Excellent Advice for Living, a collection of short lessons Kelly began compiling for his adult children.
Resources
- Excellent Advice for Living (Book)
- What Technology Wants (YouTube)
- The hungry mind (Paper)
- New Beginnings (Podcast)
- Cool Tools (Website)
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Book)
Leave feedback about this