I’ve noticed myself using “I’m curious” as a softening phrase without actually feeling “curious”. In the past 2 weeks I’ve been trying to purge that from my vocabulary. It often feels like I’m cheating, trying to pretend like I’m being a friend when actually I’m trying to get someone to do something. (Usually this is a person I’m working with it and it’s not quite adversarial, we’re on the same team, but it feels like it degrades the signal of true open curiosity)
Dunno about that. On one hand, being curious seems nice on the margin. But, the whole deal here is when I have some kinda of agenda I’m trying to accomplish. I do care about accomplishing the agenda in a friendly way. I don’t obviously care about doing it in a curious way – the reason I generated the “I’m curious” phrase is because it was an easy hack for sounding less threatening, not because curiosity was important. I think optimizing for curiosity here is more likely to fuck up my curiosity than to help with anything.
I went through something similar with phrases like “I’m curious if you’d be willing to help me move.” While I really meant “I hope that you’ll help me move.”
My personal experience was that shifting this hope/expectation toba real sense of curiosity “Hmm, Does this person want to help me move?” Made it more pleasant for both of us. I became genuinely curious about their answer, and there was less pressure both internally and externally.
I do still feel flinchy about that because it does come across less friendly / overly commanding to me. (For the past few weeks I’ve been often just deciding the take the hit of being less friendly, but am on the lookout for phrases that feel reasonable on all dimensions)
It basically is a command. So maybe it’s a feature that the phrase feels commanding. Though it is a sort of ‘soft command’ in that you would accept a good excuse to not answer (like ‘I am too busy, I will explain later’).
I think it’s not the case that I really want it to be a command, I want it to be “reveal culture”, where, it is a fact that I want to know this thing, and that I think it’d be useful if you told me. But, it’s also the case that we are friends and if you didn’t want to tell me for whatever reason I’d find a way to work with that.
(the line is blurry sometimes, there’s a range of modes I’m in when I make this sort of phrase, some more commandlike than others. But, I definitely frequently want to issue a non-command. The main thing I want to fix is that “I’m curious” in particular is basically a lie, or at least has misleading connotes)
I’ve noticed myself using “I’m curious” as a softening phrase without actually feeling “curious”. In the past 2 weeks I’ve been trying to purge that from my vocabulary. It often feels like I’m cheating, trying to pretend like I’m being a friend when actually I’m trying to get someone to do something. (Usually this is a person I’m working with it and it’s not quite adversarial, we’re on the same team, but it feels like it degrades the signal of true open curiosity)
Have you tried becoming curious each time you feel the urge to say it? Seems strictly better than not being curious.
Dunno about that. On one hand, being curious seems nice on the margin. But, the whole deal here is when I have some kinda of agenda I’m trying to accomplish. I do care about accomplishing the agenda in a friendly way. I don’t obviously care about doing it in a curious way – the reason I generated the “I’m curious” phrase is because it was an easy hack for sounding less threatening, not because curiosity was important. I think optimizing for curiosity here is more likely to fuck up my curiosity than to help with anything.
I went through something similar with phrases like “I’m curious if you’d be willing to help me move.” While I really meant “I hope that you’ll help me move.”
My personal experience was that shifting this hope/expectation toba real sense of curiosity “Hmm, Does this person want to help me move?” Made it more pleasant for both of us. I became genuinely curious about their answer, and there was less pressure both internally and externally.
The direct approach: “I’m curious [if/why …]” → “Tell me [if/why …]”
I do still feel flinchy about that because it does come across less friendly / overly commanding to me. (For the past few weeks I’ve been often just deciding the take the hit of being less friendly, but am on the lookout for phrases that feel reasonable on all dimensions)
“Can you tell me [if/why]...”?
It basically is a command. So maybe it’s a feature that the phrase feels commanding. Though it is a sort of ‘soft command’ in that you would accept a good excuse to not answer (like ‘I am too busy, I will explain later’).
I think it’s not the case that I really want it to be a command, I want it to be “reveal culture”, where, it is a fact that I want to know this thing, and that I think it’d be useful if you told me. But, it’s also the case that we are friends and if you didn’t want to tell me for whatever reason I’d find a way to work with that.
(the line is blurry sometimes, there’s a range of modes I’m in when I make this sort of phrase, some more commandlike than others. But, I definitely frequently want to issue a non-command. The main thing I want to fix is that “I’m curious” in particular is basically a lie, or at least has misleading connotes)