Curiosity: Wide or Deep?
An underused skill and a force that breaks, builds, and connects
The Day I Broke the Airplane
Curiosity bit me early.
I was maybe four or five when my father brought back a shiny toy plane from a trip.
It had moving parts. Flashing lights. A whirring engine.I don’t remember how long I played with it, but I do remember what happened next.
Within a few hours, I had it open on the floor, wires exposed, screws rolling under the couch.
I had to know what made it tick.That’s curiosity. It breaks things, before it builds.
Some kids play. Others dismantle.
And some of us still do. Just ideas, habits, systems…
But curiosity isn’t just a trait. It’s a force. One that can either sharpen your learning—or scatter it. Drive mastery; or send you down endless tangents.
This week, we’ll unpack curiosity as a starter, sustainer, and sometimes saboteur of learning.
Plus: the curious tension between breadth and depth. Are you better off knowing a little about a lot, or going deep into one thing?
Two books offer opposing maps:
“Range” by David Epstein celebrates wide, lateral curiosity.
“Peak” by Anders Ericsson zooms in on vertical mastery through focus and repetition.
So, what happens when we look at learning through the lens of curiosity?
Let’s take it apart.
Wide or Deep? Which Curiosity Builds More?
Some days, I want to know a little bit about everything.
Other days, I obsess over one thing until it blinks.
Turns out, that tension, between scanning and digging, isn’t a bug. It’s the fuel behind two powerful modes of learning.
“Range”, by David Epstein, argues that innovation often comes from generalists, people who cross-pollinate ideas from one field to another. Think of it as horizontal curiosity: skipping between topics, building surprising bridges.
“Peak”, by Anders Ericsson, tells another story: mastery comes from deliberate practice. Repetition. Feedback. Focus. What he calls “purposeful practice.” This is vertical curiosity: going deep into the why, until it hurts a bit.
So which one wins?
Wrong question.
The better one is: Which do you need right now?
If you’re lost or bored: go wide. Let randomness refresh you.
If you’re onto something: go deep. Make it yours.
Most people oscillate between the two without noticing. But the pros? They learn when to switch on purpose.
Most things wear out when you use them.
Curiosity does the opposite.
Nassim Taleb calls it an “antifragile addiction”—it thrives on exposure. The more you feed it, the more it grows. Not just in breadth, but in appetite. Like stretching a muscle that remembers being strong.
Ulrich Boser echoes the same in Learn Better: “The more we know, the more we want to know.”
Every answer doesn’t close the loop. It opens two more.
That’s not a bug. That’s the engine.
If you’ve ever gone down a rabbit hole and come out sharper, more focused, more alive » you’ve felt it.
But here's the catch: this loop only kicks in if we act.
Scroll-hunger isn’t the same. Curiosity grows when it meets effort, not just input.
Which makes this less about collecting ideas; and more about trying them.
Curiosity That Moves the Body
There’s a difference between thinking about doing and actually doing.
We consume podcasts, read books, highlight articles.
But the doing part? That’s where curiosity either compacts into skill or evaporates.
Ness Labs puts it clearly: “Curiosity is only useful if it leads to deliberate practice.”
Stephen King didn’t become a writer by reading about writing. He wrote. Every day.
It’s easy to confuse intellectual curiosity with learning.
But ideas don’t really stick until they hit the hand, the voice, the calendar.
Curiosity is a verb.
Build a tiny prototype.
Try one sentence in a new language.
Run a one-day experiment with a friend.
One act is worth ten saved bookmarks.
Still Curious?
This week’s thread began with a broken toy airplane.
And maybe that’s the real question curiosity asks:
Are you willing to take things apart; even if it means they don’t go back together the same?
We covered two kinds of curiosity (wide and deep), stretched into social and empathic forms, looped through antifragility, and landed in movement.
Not everything needs to be mastered.
But it does need to be explored.
So this week, try this:
Track one moment when curiosity nudges you off-course.
Don’t fight it. Follow.
And then: write, try, test, speak. Make it physical.
Back in your inbox next Sunday.