I’ve written in the past how much it annoys me when planners say “they’re curious” as if they’re the only people in society who are possessors of that trait.
Seriously, police officers, lawyers, doctors, scientists – and probably my Mum – embrace curiosity more in their lives than the average planner.
That’s not meant to piss on the discipline that has given me – and hopefully continues to give me – such an interesting life, but just to highlight that for all the talk we make about ‘being intellectually curious’, we don’t tend to find things that fundamentally changes or challenges the way we work or the things we achieve through our work.
Sure, there’s some people that achieve it … sure, there’s a bunch of reasons why things don’t happen as much as they could or should … but for the amount of planners out there in the World, the amount of things we fundamentally change through our ‘curiosity’ is small.
Maybe the ugly, unspoken truth is that unlike people in say, Silicon Valley, planners tend to be only curious about the things that are already out there, not the things we could discover or create off our own efforts.
As the quote above says, anyone can run towards the light, it’s the people that actively turn towards the dark that can be deemed the truly curious.
As I said, this is not meant to piss on the planning discipline – we do a lot of really good, important and valuable things – but maybe we wouldn’t be so discounted by so many if we didn’t keep banging on about things that we – as a discipline – so rarely demonstrate in our work, at least in a way that is fundamentally different to everyone else.
Another reason why I value planners who have empathy rather than those who say they’re curious and can only demonstrate it through a brief or a powerpoint presentation.
God, I’m in a shitty mood today aren’t I. Sorry.