Make things interest you

"Most things don't matter to most people, but they can and they should, because things are interesting"

As I write this, I'm watching a Hank Green video called "I'm not a hard worker" (YouTube titles can be algorithmically determined so it may vary). The idea of the video can be distilled to: "How can I actively engage myself in a topic and make it interesting to me?" He leads with: "interest is the opposite of depression". This resonates with me. I find joy by engaging with things, and I am at my most "down" when nothing is interesting me. I fully intend on returning to this post when I'm feeling depressed for useful strategies to help.

Notably, an intentional distinction is made here between topics that naturally interest you versus topics that do not. How can someone take an initially uninteresting topic and make it interest them through some active process? He breaks it into 10 steps:

1. Find a resource at an appropriate level and let it confuse you. Why? Confusion is motivating. When you are curious about things you don't understand, this drives action. You want to learn more. I suppose the fundamental prior here is that you are a curious person, which Hank, and I, would heavily advocate for. Being curious is good. You should want to engage with problems and try to solve them in effective ways. I certainly do.
2. Make the extra click. This is a step that AI is extremely well-adapted for. If you run into something you don't understand, don't just leave it at that. Ask the next question or go look it up separately. If it still doesn't make sense, go deeper until there's part of it that does. Every new understanding is built upon scaffolds of prior ones. We build mental models that reference existing ones. Or at least I do; I think this is normal. Understand a smaller piece of a big thing, and you're one step closer to understanding the whole thing. That's progress!
3. Write things down. I'm literally doing this right now and spend basically all day doing it. Much of my writing is for digestion by Claude, but I make a point of doing this, writing a blog, specifically to keep the part of my brain engaged that can do this. I am slightly concerned that if I lean too much on AI, I will lose something, the part of me that's capable of putting together complete thoughts. That's part of the point of this exercise.
4. Notice what's built to hook you. The phrasing Hank uses is "extreme salience". Your attention is a valuable resource and noticing what is consuming it is a great skill. Not only how much of your attention, but also which part of your attention. What is your reaction to this thing and is that reaction useful to you? Foster attention relationships with utility and try to discard the ones without it. This doesn't happen overnight and it takes ongoing effort to maintain it.
5. Be infected by the enthusiasm of others. Have you listened to someone passionate about a topic and felt it reach you? I know I have. It's so plentiful in the modern internet of mass media. Seek out and listen to people who are passionate. Let it infect you and let that motivate you to be more curious.
6. Look for reasons. Any domain can be viewed from multiple angles. Reframe a problem until it hits on one of your prior interests. I often compare my job to puzzle games. Problems arise and my job is to navigate the complexity and noise to arrive at better solutions. That's an extremely abstract statement, but it perfectly describes both playing a game and consulting. The problem spaces are entirely different, but with the proper framing, the experience can be analogous.
7. Go where it matters. The example used is John's book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, but this can also be online spaces. When I'm interested in a new hobby or topic, often the first thing I do is search for a YouTube video on it. I did this with bouldering earlier this year. Once your brain is engaged in something, it will start running in the background. You are what you do.
8. Choose your feed. I've already written a post about this: Dripfeeds and user decisions. If you're not choosing the content you consume, the choice will be made for you. A direct quote is sufficient here: "Before, this is so hard, before opening the app, have something in mind you want to look for and don't let the recommendation algorithm make all your choices for you."
9. Guess first. I love this and don't do it enough. I can easily relate it to my personal daily AI use. Before asking Claude a question, am I coming up with a suggested answer first? Does Claude build upon my answer or is it inventing it from prior context for me? I do both over the course of a day, but I will actively try to lean more on the former than the latter. Keeping your brain engaged as an active participant is a worthy long-term investment even if it takes more effort and a bit of extra time. It's extremely tempting to just throw the problem at Claude and see what it does before actually engaging your brain. I am often guilty of this. Engaging before hitting send/push/deploy is even more important. Don't be the person blindly sending out AI slop without any testing or review.
10. Self-reinforcement. As you learn new things, it will make you curious about more things in a never-ending cycle. No one can know everything; there are simply too many things! Every topic can go deeper and interacts with other topics in interesting ways. Indulge your curiosities and be a lifelong learner!

As we move into a more automated world, staying engaged and intentionally finding spaces to stay human becomes more and more important.