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We are what we consume, not just physically but mentally. And right now everyone is getting fed the same average information, whether that’s with the same AI platforms or influencers or industry conferences and reports. What you let into your mind shapes you, and you should not be outsourcing that decision to the usual players.
This episode of Unseen Unknown is about staying professionally curious, how to find ideas worth your attention, how to actually digest them, and how to become the kind of person other people learn from. Watch above or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
In brief, here are eight things we dove into:
1. Know where to starve.
There’s so much information in the world, and you can try to consume everything and still feel unsatisfied. That’s not because you need to read or watch more. It’s because you’re not going deep on the things that nourish you. You have to deliberately choose where to feast and where to starve.
Especially now, when AI is serving us all from the same average, you should be feasting on what’s outside that average. The outliers and weird edges.
Something new we’re doing at Concept Bureau is every six weeks, each of us goes deep on an outlier subject and teaches the group. I’m starting with ancient matriarchal religions.
2. Devotion is greater than discipline.
To really be curious is to come to something with an open mind and heart. To erase your ego and absorb it as it is, without imposing context or meaning (at least not at first). That’s why real learning is no different than a spiritual act. It’s so all-encompassing that you lose yourself in its hugeness.
Plenty of people learn by staying disciplined and following routines. But the people who understand are the ones who become devoted. They give themselves over to an idea the way the rest of us might fall in love with a person, and that creates a level of knowing that can’t be reached any other way.
3. Be with obsessed people.
This is where devotion really matters, not just in yourself but in the people you learn from. When you find someone who’s devoted to an idea, who loves it with their mind and their heart, that’s the best kind of teacher you can have. They make you feel it. They infect you with their passion, and you encode what they teach you on a much deeper level.
This matters because the connections between ideas don’t usually surface in our minds as logical things. They surface as emotional ones. Our wayfinding feelings - what some would call intuition - are what lead us to the big ideas. Which is why the people who feel deeply are the ones worth learning from.
4. Risk something to learn something.
How far can your curiosity really go if you never put it out into the world?
Writing, building, debating, making something and showing it to strangers - these are all ways of forcing an idea out of your head and into a place where it can be tested. It never feels good to stumble while trying to give shape to something that feels real but won’t easily take form. But you have to try anyway.
Curiosity is action. You take an idea, wrestle with it, see how far it can stretch, and find out what it actually is. Doing that in public forces you to be honest about that work. It’s a risk, and you can’t have curiosity without it.
5. Read pre-internet.
The feed has changed but human nature hasn’t. That’s why pre-internet books are worth reading. They were written from first principles, by people who didn’t have a Google search or an AI prompt to lean on. Neuromancer, one of the seminal texts that created the cyberpunk world, was written on a typewriter by a man who had never touched a computer.
And because human nature hasn’t changed, every scenario humanity has been through is a relevant simulation of one we’ll go through again. Every disaster, every movement, every hope has a precedent. Read books older than you and you’ll see it.
Every generation thinks it’s an anomaly, but it’s hard to find proof that any of them actually are.
6. Use rituals for letting go.
If you’re not optimistic, you won’t see possibility in the world around you. When you’re tired, carrying grievances or anxieties, or you’ve picked up on someone else’s low energy, your curiosity is dampened.
I have rituals for letting go when I need to approach something like a child, with enthusiasm and positive expectation. I’ll lay down in my office and put on a meditation audio. I’ll write my worries on a piece of paper, fold it up, and set it on the side of my desk for later. I’ll watch a sad movie that I know will make me cry. I’ll play with my kids to shake out stale feelings. I’ll go for a brisk walk. I clear my mental and emotional state before trying to learn something new, because to reach the altar of devotion, you have to come unburdened.
7. Stop trying to be productive in conversations.
This is one I have to constantly remind myself of. I have the disease of “How can I use this?” in every conversation. When someone says something especially interesting, my immediate thought is: Where does this go in my mental map of knowledge? How can I use it in a deliverable? What puzzle piece is this filling in?
I’m so eager to put good information to work that it gets in the way of just letting it land. We have to deprogram ourselves from always needing to be productive, because the constant need to be productive gets in the way of learning and staying open.
I’m telling you this as much as I’m telling myself - we don’t need to know what something means when we first encounter it. We just have to be willing to receive it.
8. Play to change how you see.
True play requires safety. When you feel safe, your brain behaves differently.
We’ve found in our practice that when we play, we get spontaneous, brilliant insights. Play for us looks like inside jokes, never-ending meme threads, charting every ridiculous wellness trend on a 2x2, having messy conversations, doing creative workshops together. It lets us look at the same things in remarkably new ways.
The podcast producer Eric Nuzum calls this “turning the jewel,” taking a topic and turning it over and over to see how it catches light in different contexts. Play does the same thing. It lets you see the same things from totally different angles, because you become a different version of yourself in the process. And often, that different version is the one who can actually learn.
Strategist’s Instinct
My partner Jean-Louis is doing another free lightning lesson, this time on Training Your Instinct as a Brand Strategist on Thursday, May 21st.
We usually have hundreds of people sign up for these. You won’t want to miss it. He’ll show you how to strengthen your strategic gut, find tension, and build better judgment.
This free lightning lesson is just a small taste of our masterclass on how to Build A Culture Brand. Registration for our second cohort is now open.
I’m especially proud of our reviews:
One Last Thought
When you’re stuck in your writing, ask yourself:
“Am I writing through my head, or am I writing through my heart?”
The head can only take you so far. The moment you get stuck is when you need to start using your heart to channel the words into existence.
Hi, I’m Jasmine Bina. I’m a brand strategist and cultural futurist.
If you love this newsletter and need more:
My course on How To Build A Culture Brand
My private brand strategy community Exposure Therapy
My agency Concept Bureau
