My reflections on making curiosity practice attractive and easy

At the end of 2023, along with my other colleagues I was set a professional development challenge – to become more curious around the research industry, our clients’ world and/or their customers. This blog series is a reflection on the curiosity techniques I’ve found effective to date in helping me build a curiosity practice.

I have always been someone who loved learning, someone who annoyed people with ‘fun facts’ and needed to know how and why, not just what. It’s what drew me to research and what makes me love what I do.  However, when you’re busy working on projects it can be hard to carve out the time to be curious and explore beyond the briefs we’re given.  

Curiosity training has given me permission to make the time and equipped me with principles that not only embedded the practice within my routine, but also made it fun. Some of the principles that have really helped make my curiosity practice attractive and easy:

1)     My curiosity practice is focused on a topic I love

When it came to choosing a topic to focus on it was hard to narrow down the choices – did I want to focus on a specific industry or a topic that felt particularly challenging, or a topic I knew nothing about yet? There was a lot to consider. Ultimately though, I knew I needed to pick something that excited me – something I’d want to explore and become part of my professional identity. I chose consumer trends because it’s a topic I find fascinating, and I knew I would enjoy the exploration.

2)     My curiosity practice has become something I crave

In Curiosity Training we learnt why ‘Craving’ is an important step in forming habits – craving creates dopamine, dopamine creates desire and desire drives action (James Clear, Atomic Habits). To ensure a habit like my curiosity practice really sticks, I need to make it something I crave. One way to do this is temptation bundling, combining your regular practice with something you love. For example, I love walking, so I combine my curiosity podcasts with a morning walk; I love coffee, so I combine my afternoon curiosity reading with a hot cup of coffee. It’s fast-tracked these habits into my daily routines, and they’ve quickly become moments I look forward to.

3)     My curiosity practice is rewarding

Through my curiosity practice, I’ve built up knowledge about consumer trends both broad and specific – but the curiosity doesn’t just stop there. Discovering a trend is often just the jumping off point for diving deeper into a topic. It’s helped expand my knowledge and grow my expertise. Nothing quite beats seeing a new marketing campaign or a new service launch – or even something in the news and know what the trend is behind it. I’ve found my curiosity practice rewarding, not only in how I work with clients but also because it’s fed my love of learning – I’m discovering the how and why and arming myself with a fresh supply of “fun facts” that are useful, relevant, and insightful.  

The Customer Closeness Company have a specialist team delivering Customer Curiosity training to our clients. If any of the curiosity practice principles sound interesting to you, get in touch and we can discuss how we can use these principles to help you and your colleagues become more Customer Curious.