When you’re young you have a different kind of curiosity. The kind where you stay up not because you have to but because you can’t stop. Everything is a puzzle. Every new thing pulls in three more you want to try.
I drifted away from it without noticing. Life got busy. I got good at executing, being efficient, knowing what to focus on. Those are fine qualities. But efficiency and curiosity pull in opposite directions: one narrows, the other wanders. I chose narrowing for a long time.
Then AI happened. Not the buzzword version. The version where you sit down with a tool and realize it changes what one person can build. I started tinkering. Small experiments at first. Then staying up late again. Waking up with ideas. Building things on weekends, not for a deadline, not for anyone else, just to see what would happen.
It took a while to recognize the feeling. It was the same one I had as a kid learning to code. Same one from every time life dropped me into a new environment as an underdog with no reputation and no playbook. Just curiosity and a willingness to figure it out.
What I think happened is that AI leveled the playing field enough to give me permission to be a beginner again. When the tools are this new, nobody has ten years of experience. The people who move fastest are the ones willing to experiment and fail. That’s the underdog mindset, and I’ve been there before. Every time, I found my way. Not by being the smartest in the room. By being the most willing to stay in the room.
I’m choosing that again. Not because I have to. Because I remember how alive it feels.
If you’ve been on autopilot for a while, executing but not exploring, optimizing but not wondering — go find something that makes you feel like a beginner again. The discomfort of not knowing is where curiosity lives.
I drifted away from it once. I don’t plan to again.
年轻时候的好奇心是另一种。熬夜不是因为必须，是因为停不下来。什么都是谜，学了一样新的，就牵出三个想试的。
不知道哪天起，这感觉慢慢淡了。生活越来越忙，我也越来越擅长执行、抓重点、把事情做利索。这些当然都是好事。但效率和好奇心拽的方向相反：一个在收，一个在散。我收了好多年。
后来 AI 来了。不是被说烂的那个概念，是你真正坐下来用它、发现一个人能做的事被彻底改写的那个版本。我开始折腾。先是小实验。然后又开始熬夜，早上醒来一脑子想法，周末自己造东西——不是为了交差，不是为了别人，就是想看看会发生啥。
过了好一阵我才认出这感觉是什么。跟小时候第一次写代码一样。也跟每一次被扔进陌生环境、从零开始的感觉一样。没名声，没套路，只有好奇心和一股不服输的劲。
我觉得 AI 做的事很简单：它把所有人拉回同一条起跑线，让我有机会重新当初学者。工具这么新，没人有十年经验。跑得最快的，就是最愿意去试、去错、去学的那帮人。这是我熟的那种”从底层往上爬”的心态，经历过好几次。每次都找到了路。不是因为最聪明。是因为最愿意留在场上。
我决定再来一次。不是非来不可，是因为我记得那感觉有多活。
如果你也在自动驾驶模式开了一阵了——只顾执行不再探索，只顾优化不再好奇——找件事让自己重新当一回初学者吧。那种不知道答案的不安感，恰恰是好奇心住的地方。
我丢过它一次。这次不打算再丢了。