Photo Credit: Colin Purrington @Flickr

The niche is learning, the brand is knowledge

You embrace cluelessness. Life long learners seek to collect not only experiences, but attitudes and perspectives. There is never too much knowledge, but there is always too much information.

The professionally curious know the difference. One seeks to enlighten while the other seeks to titillate or entertain.

Juggling multiple pathways

You are a cultural investigator, knowledge hunter-gatherer and lab scientist. Being a modern-day anthropologist requires studying how people interact with people, technology, food, music, clothes and the gazillion other things inhabiting the world around them.

Documenting life in multiple platforms is motivated by the benefit facilitating discussion, not stimulating exhibition (OK, maybe sometimes).

Wisdom is not wikipedia

Traditional definitions and rote wisdom sometimes demand that you go against your true nature. Being professionally curious calls for exploring what is deep within our questioning souls. Everything is right with the world when you are allowing your brain to wander (and wonder) into constantly unfamiliar territory.

People who talk about pushing the knowledge envelope like to think they are soul-searchers constantly crossing boundaries. The professionally curious don’t bother with pushing envelopes or stretching boundaries. They are forging new, limitless territory. This requires imagination, not being a knowledge dare-devil.

Not bound by conventional definitions

The notion of “good work” is an idea that constantly challenges you. The definitions do not rotate – they become something else entirely. Meaningful work derives from labor you feel is tangibly important, has creative weight and results in gaining knowledge (not information).

Therefore, you are discovering new ways of conceptualizing what work means to you. Titles, indirect descriptions and anything that remotely stinks of pretension sends you screaming. Professionally curious people are not curious about who is who – but who does what (and why it’s important).