Be Curious, Not Jugemental

Walt Whitman's Wise Words

Back in April, there was a night when I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and punched out 1000-odd words on the topic of curiosity through the lens of the Apple TV show Ted Lasso. It’s called If You Want to Know If Someone Is Worth Your Time, Use the Ted Lasso Curiosity Rule.

It ended up being the most popular thing I’ve ever written.

It seems that people are interested in what curiosity can do for their lives. It’s also apparent that non-curious people piss them off.

And there are a lot of them.

Alas, dear readers, I’m a little sick this week so I’m not on my a-game. It was a toss-up between sending you a new but sub-par essay (not my style), sending you pictures of my current home in North Wales (pretty but not especially useful from a simple living POV), or taking the paywall down so you can learn about my Ted Lasso curiosity rule.

I chose the latter.

Pictures of North Wales available on request.

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Good TV scenes are, in their essence, well-observed reflections of real life.

Like when Ted Lasso — the lovable mid-Western football coach on Apple TV’s show of the same name — is challenged to a darts match with the show’s baddie Rupert who assumes he can’t play.

Rupert assumed wrong.

Just before he hits the target that wins him the game, Ted comes out with this little monologue:

Guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years I never understood why, it used to really bother me.

Then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It said: be curious, not judgemental.

I like that.

So I get back in my car and it hits me. All of them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious. They thought they had everything all figured out so they judged everything and they judged everyone.

And I realized that their underestimating of me — who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious they would have asked questions. Questions like, have you played a lot of darts, Ted? Which I would have answered, yes sir, I have.

Be curious, not judgemental.

I call it the Ted Lasso rule. If you want a quick way to determine if someone is worth your time, are they curious? Do they ask you questions?

If not, are they worth even getting to know?

When was the last time someone really asked you a question?

I spend a lot of time meeting new people and it’s amazing how few of them will ask even the most basic of questions.

That would be fine if they skipped the small talk in favor of something meatier, but they don’t. They skip it in favor of talking about themselves.

I once asked someone what they did in which I got a 20-minute breakdown of their (very boring) job. I sat next to someone at a lunch for over an hour and they didn’t even ask me so much as my name. Whereas I know who they are, where they live, who their family is, and their very deep opinions on ChatGPT, travel, and the British parliamentary system.

They weren’t especially boring, but I didn’t want to spend any more time with them than I already had because they didn’t pass the Ted Lasso curiosity rule.

They never asked questions.

I suspect most of these curiosity-free people underestimate me and think I’m rather dull. In fact, I know they do.

Whereas in reality, it’s exactly what Ted says:

They’re the ones missing out because they’re not being curious.

The best people are definitely curious. And life is too short to hang with anything but the best.

The most curious people I know are the most interesting

There’s my friend Paul, a journalist who has lived or traveled in nearly 100 countries from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide to Russia where he was arrested in St. Petersberg wearing nothing but a dressing gown.

There’s my friend Vaughn whose curiosity has led him down career paths he could only dream about, from Google to consulting for a large pizza franchise just because he was super curious about pizza and made a bunch in his spare time.

Then there are my friends Steve Tsentserensky and U-Ming Lee and Rocco Pendola and my partner Sam Dixon Brown, all of whom are intensely curious which helps them all write banging articles across the internet.

These are the people who pass the Ted Lasso curiosity rule. These are the people I want to hang with. They’re the ones who are not only leading interesting lives but are interesting to talk to.

And they’re the ones that are getting the most out of their conversations because they are simultaneously learning something new whilst also making the other person feel good about themselves.

It’s literally a win-win situation for everyone involved.

So why aren’t we more curious?

Curiosity has been buried by ego

According to Forbes, you can only foster curiosity with a hefty dose of humility. You’ve gotta be OK with not being the expert.

And that is where many people fall down because it’s scary to admit you lack knowledge. Somehow, we’ve associated it with weakness.

Our modern world doesn’t make this any easier. The likes of TokTik, The ‘Gram, and Tweeetr thrive on us putting our own content into the world. Social media has made us ego monsters, massaging our evolutionary need for acceptance and dopamine.

We’re so used to putting ourselves at the center of our world that we forget to ask about anyone else’s world.

And whilst I would love to try and change the whole world’s mind on being curious, I fear we’re a long way down that rabbit hole.

Instead, I respect my time.

Your time is worth more than curiosity-free people tell you it is

Although curiosity-free people might not see it this way, when you engage with them, their actions say:

You are not worth my time.

You are not important enough.

You are not as interesting as me.

Bulls*it.

If you’ve got this far into this article, then you likely are interesting and worth talking to.

That’s why I stick by the Ted Lasso curiosity rule.

I don’t want to hang out with people who are not curious and I suspect you don’t want to either. It’s boring, it can make you feel like a pile of doo-doo and it’s no good for anyone other than perhaps that other person’s ego.

Thankfully, curious people still exist. They’re all over this platform. They’re hanging out all over the world. You probably know a few already.

So the next time you meet someone, take a moment to reflect afterward and ask yourself:

Did they meet the Ted Lasso curiosity rule?

If not, they’re out.