Curious Mind
Kinn is probably one of the most useful apps on my phone. It is a learning app with a wide offer of courses on different topics such as geography, history, art, math, technology, etc. Each course has a set of flashcards to repeat and practice the learned material based on spaced repetition technique.
Although I am much interested to read and learn about subjects like history, art, psychology, and so on, my mind is not good at memorizing facts and information. This has been the story I told myself since I was a kid at school. I always did much better at math and physics rather than history and geography or biology.
But on Kinnu, it is different. The information in courses are structured to be manageable, and the flashcards reduce the effort to practice and retain the material. It feels rewarding understand a topic, and have an overview of it with all the key information in mind without getting lost in details.
There are many similar tools and sources of information to learn and expand our knowledge. Courses, apps, tutorials, books, blogs. But my personal perception is we are not becomming more informed than past generations. Or better to formulate, our progress doesn’t seem to match the vast amount of resources at our disposal.
The society wants us to be specialists rather than generalists. At work, specially office jobs, specialists are the ones who have an advantage. Another reason is information overload. We have easy access to information, but a big part of the information we consume daily is nothing more than noise. You know what I mean if you already spent an hour browsing through social media without knowing what you are really searching for.
I was inspired by Leonardo DaVinci a few days ago, and couldn't stop wondering how he managed to master so many science fields and skills. He left more than 13000 pages of drawings and notes on different topics. He was a genius, that's true. But we shouldn't forget he lived 7 centuries ago. There was no internet, no printed books, no proper education system at the time. He had a curious mind and a wide range of interests. And he nourished his curiosity with his observations and available knowledge at his time.
For curious minds, this is the best time to be alive in human history. Focus, filter out the noise, and you have endless resources to learn and feed your curiosity.
*the title of this post is inspired by a phrase in Kinnu which says “maid for curious minds”.