Part II of a Fix and More Dennard Dayle
Another fix and our last entry for Dennard Dayle, we promise.
The Fix
The Passage
Recall that, last week, we looked at a blogpost titled “Four Reasons Why I Write.” The piece is not properly titled. It should have been “Four Reasons Why I Write Online.”
One of those reasons was “Create a curiosity flywheel” and in a section with that title, the author wrote this passage:
I set a goal in 2020 to be more curious.
With any new habit, I knew I needed to create a flywheel if I wanted it to stick. In a flywheel, every step reinforces the next step and every spin is faster than the one before.
I started by asking "what does being more curious look like?" My answer was being curious looks like exploring more ideas and asking more questions. From there I asked, "what habit forces me to explore more ideas?"
The answer to that was writing online.
Let’s see what we can do with it.
Feedback
If someone asked you why you write online, we reckon it’s highly doubtful you would respond “To create a curiosity flywheel.” So what does the author mean?
It’s our view that most people don’t even set goals, much less a goal of becoming more curious. Furthermore, curiosity seems to be an innate personality characteristic. Some of us are curious, and others, not so much. We can improve a skill, say writing ability, by working at it. But it seems a stretch to improve one’s curiosity.
Regarding the flywheel analogy, effectively the author’s argument is this: I want to become more curious. If I impose upon myself a regular regime of writing, then I’ll have to have material. And to get material, I’ll have to look at things I don’t understand. In this way, writing online serves as a “curiosity flywheel.” OK. But to us, this is still a stretch. Truth be told, we feel the author’s end-goal is to have a presence online.
Let’s now look at the sentences beginning with
With any new habit, I knew I needed to create a flywheel if I wanted it to stick. In a flywheel, every step reinforces the next step and every spin is faster than the one before.
While most people have heard of flywheels, few have an intimate understanding of how they work. So when we read “In a flywheel, every step reinforces the next step and every spin is faster than the one before,” it makes no sense to us at all. It seems to us that the author needs to be more direct. If he wants to write online more, then why not set a goal of x posts per week and work to that goal.
Let’s have a look at the final sentences in the passage:
I started by asking "what does being more curious look like?" My answer was being curious looks like exploring more ideas and asking more questions. From there I asked, "what habit forces me to explore more ideas?" The answer to that was writing online.
It seems to us that a better way to write this would be
I started by asking what “more curious” means and, to me, it means exploring more ideas and asking more questions.
But it’s here where the logic breaks down. It seems to us that you explore ideas and get answers to questions through a program of reading and thinking. And once you get your answers with some reading and thinking, you can then write about what you’ve found.
Odds and Ends
More from Dennard Dayle’s Everything Abridged
Here are some entries for the letter M:
masquerade: A whimsical event in which masked citizens loudly upend social norms. Now known as a riot.
mass shooting: An American trend struggling to find an international audience.
memory loss: A serious condition affecting millions around the world.
memory loss: A serious condition affecting millions around the world.
mythology: Religion plus time.
memory loss: A serious condition affecting millions around the world.