Curiosity is a Muscle to Build

by Don Hall
(republished from The Attention of Fools Substack)

There’s a grim little truth most people choke down with their oat milk lattes and algorithmically curated TikTok feeds: the vast majority of adults have the intellectual curiosity of a corpse. Not a fresh corpse, either—more like one embalmed with repetition and propped up on the couch of routine, nodding politely as life continues to happen somewhere else. The human brain, that meaty hard drive designed for questions and chaos, slowly atrophies when left unchallenged. It gets flabby. Soft. Complacent.

In the past few years, I’ve found two things that I feel are fundamental to my availability to move forward that have atrophied: my desire to trust and my curiosity about people. The trust thing is obvious to anyone who has read any of my recent books and, given that I believe trust is given rather than earned, has its own set of challenges to rebuild. The curiosity thing? A completely different approach is required.

The trick nobody tells you in those TED Talks with the shaved-head messiahs and PowerPoint parables: curiosity isn’t a spark you’re born with, bestowed by a liberal arts fairy. It’s a muscle. You have to build it. Break it. Rebuild it. Every damn day. Like abs or patience or the will to live after scrolling through the comments section on a local news article.

We’re not born curious so much as born hungry. There’s a difference. Babies don’t ask questions; they scream until their needs are met. Curiosity comes later—when the screaming stops working and the world starts pushing back. When you poke something with a stick and it hisses. When you ask a question and someone says, “Because I said so,” and instead of swallowing that answer like gruel, you spit it out like gristle. That moment, that friction, is where curiosity begins.

And like any muscle, curiosity dies if it isn’t used. That’s the modern epidemic—not COVID, not politics, not even the low-grade depression of being terminally online. No, it’s the spiritual rot that sets in when people stop asking “Why?” and start asking “What’s trending?”

Let’s get specific. You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. The friend who only reads headlines and parrots them like some digital myna bird with an X feed. The coworker who treats new ideas like allergens. The family member who says, “I just don’t want to think about that stuff.” These aren’t failures of intelligence. These are gains in intellectual laziness. They’re jacked in all the wrong ways—bench-pressing bias and deadlifting denial.

Meanwhile, curiosity, that twitchy impulse to know more, to break it down, to poke the goddamn bear and see what happens, is gathering dust in the corner like an unused Peloton.

Why?

Because curiosity is uncomfortable. It’s disruptive. It rarely leads to neat conclusions and often drags you into places you didn’t plan to go. It makes you admit you might be wrong. It forces you to look like a fool before you get to look like a sage. And that is terrifying to the performative adult, a creature raised in the echo chambers of grades, likes, and dopamine feedback loops.

The truth is, cultivating curiosity is a revolutionary act. And I don’t mean that in the “buy my course and become your best self” kind of way. I mean it in the “grab a wrench and start dismantling the machine” kind of way. Because curious people break shit. They don’t settle. They wander. They risk. They interrogate the sacred. They burn down ideas that don’t hold up and build new ones in the ashes. And that’s dangerous to institutions, to traditions, to comfort.

Let’s look at it through the lens of metaphor, because metaphors are the dumbbells of intellectual writing. Curiosity is Rocky Balboa doing one-armed pushups in a freezing Siberian barn while Drago injects steroids in the warm luxury of Soviet steel. Curiosity doesn’t win because it’s more efficient—it wins because it refuses to be told what’s enough. It doesn’t stop at the summit. It asks what’s on the other side. That’s why the curious are always tired and a little unstable: they’re mentally overtrained and existentially sore.

Building this muscle starts with destroying the idea that there are “smart people” and “dumb people.” That’s just a classier way to say “I gave up trying.” Intelligence is potential. Curiosity is kinetic. The difference between a genius and a drone is whether they keep lifting questions after the first failure. Most people do curls with confirmation bias, never bothering to pick up the heavier weight of genuine inquiry.

The thing about trusting people is that you just do it or you don’t. Trust is an individual choice every time. Every time someone takes a dump on the trust you’ve gifted them, a wound, then a scar forms on your soul. Thus, the muscle built for that isn’t bigger, just tougher material. Those scars don’t disappear with limited use like your triceps get sloppy when you skip the workouts for two weeks. Being skeptical and looking for understanding via questions require a regular routine of use to keep it healthy.

Being curious—actively, ceaselessly inquisitive hurts. The same way leg day hurts. The same way writing a eulogy for an old belief hurts. You’ll get sore. You’ll get tired. You’ll want to quit and go back to the warm womb of certainty. But if you keep at it, something changes. You get stronger. Faster. Better at spotting bullshit from across the room. Better at listening. Better at empathy. You stop confusing knowing with understanding. You stop needing answers and start loving the questions.

Of course, this kind of curiosity doesn’t fit neatly into capitalism’s spreadsheet. It doesn’t monetize well. Real curiosity asks, “Why do I need this product?” and “Who profits if I believe this?” and “What happens if I walk away?”—questions that don’t lead to conversions or sales. So instead, you’re fed novelty in place of curiosity. You’re told “explore” by algorithms that guide you to more of what you already like. Curiosity becomes a brand—quirky, harmless, commodified. Think Zooey Deschanel in a lab coat.

Real curiosity is not twee. It’s dangerous. Ask Galileo. Ask Malcolm X. Ask Rachel Carson. Ask anyone who’s ever looked at the status quo and said, “Yeah, but what if…?” and then been promptly crucified for it.

So how do we build it?

Start with boredom. Boredom is the gym where curiosity trains. Turn off your screens. Sit with your own damn mind. Let it wander. It will feel weird at first—like that first day back at the gym when your muscles shake and you realize how far you’ve fallen. But that wandering is the warm-up. Follow it. Let your mind ask: What’s behind that door? What would happen if I contradicted myself out loud? What don’t I know about something I claim to believe?

Then go deeper. Interrogate your interests. If you love a film, don’t stop at liking it—read the screenplay. Study the cinematography. Ask why that shot made you feel something. If you hear a political opinion, don’t just react—trace it back. Who benefits? What data supports it? Where did the data come from? What was left out?

Read outside your comfort zone. Listen to people you disagree with, not to convert them, but to understand the scaffolding of their logic. You don’t have to respect every opinion, but you should at least learn how it was built.

And write things down. Curiosity is fleeting unless captured. Journal. Sketch. Make maps of ideas. Draw connections. Curiosity isn’t just about asking questions—it’s about metabolizing them.

Most importantly, get used to looking stupid. Because curiosity demands humility. You have to say, “I don’t know,” and mean it. You have to admit that the world is more complex than your opinions. That your enemies are more human than your strawmen. That truth is often inconvenient, contradictory, and not yours to own.

This, of course, makes you a weirdo. A dissenter. An outsider. Good. Build that muscle anyway. Because the future belongs to the curious. The flexible. The unflinching. The ones who refuse to die mentally before their bodies give out.

You want an edge? A secret sauce? A hack? Here it is: never be the smartest person in the room. Be the hungriest. Be the one lifting heavier questions. Be the one who doesn’t stop asking, even when the answers are uncomfortable, incomplete, or nonexistent.

That’s the workout. Daily reps of doubt. Sets of skepticism. Super-sets of intellectual risk. Embrace the burn. Feed the muscle. Stay sore.

Because curiosity, when built, doesn’t just change your mind. It changes your life. It reroutes your trajectory. It rewires your relationships. It makes you ungovernable in all the right ways.

The system doesn’t want that. It wants docile. Predictable. Clickable. A good little boy who colors inside the lines and never asks why the lines are there in the first place. It wants passive consumption not active exploration.

So be a traitor to that system. Lift curiosity like it’s a weapon. Use it to dissect the sacred. Use it to find beauty where others see chaos. Use it to connect dots no one else even notices.

And if you ever find yourself satisfied, content, certain?

Hit the gym. You’re getting soft again.