Interview: Seth Goldenberg
Seth Goldenberg is a designer, activist, and social entrepreneur who harnesses the ability of questioning to catalyze innovation and cultural change. He’s the founder and CEO of Curiosity & Co., and his work has been featured in The New York Occasions, Wired, and Quick Firm. His new e book, Radical Curiosity: Questioning Generally Held Beliefs to Think about Flourishing Futures (Amazon, Bookshop) hit cabinets this week.
I could not wait to speak to Seth about happiness, habits, and creativity.
Gretchen: What’s a easy exercise or behavior that constantly makes you happier, more healthy, extra productive, or extra inventive?
Seth: Drawing. I started my path as an artist, exhibiting my work in galleries by the age of 11. Drawing was a means of seeing, of listening and making sense of the world. In my youth drawing grew to become a ritual as central as respiratory. Actually, in a chapter known as “Might We By no means Develop Up” I describe drawing as a ritual for inventive wandering and considering. Immediately I take advantage of drawing as a visible language to develop new concepts, discover methods to speak psychological fashions and experiment with methods for change. Drawing by no means ceases to present me a ritualistic pleasure as an artist and an entrepreneur.
What’s one thing now about happiness that you just didn’t know if you had been 18 years previous?
After I was 18 years previous I used to be attending the Rhode Island College of Design. A inventive schooling there felt surprisingly isolating. The Bauhaus mannequin of creating was personal and manufacturing oriented. I now learn about myself that I’m lit up by collaborating with others. A social connectedness with an ensemble staff is the place I thrive. And greater than this, I really feel fulfilled by a way of goal. I really feel a deep accountability to meaningfully contribute to the world. I discover private happiness cooperatively working with others on thorny, depraved challenges, which have a shot at making extraordinary contributions to civic society.
You’ve finished fascinating analysis. What has shocked or intrigued you – or your readers – most?
I don’t apply educational or conventional analysis. However I view the apply of Radical Curiosity as itself a life-style of lively analysis. I like to consider analysis because the pursuit of latest information or the creation of latest knowledge. To conduct breakthroughs, we have to query every little thing. Possible in methods that can make us uncomfortable. When issues have gotten this wobbly on the planet it’s time to query the very roots of our assumptions. This may upend core beliefs and problem our very values. Radical Curiosity codifies how I and my design studio have made a lifetime of questioning. What has shocked me is how uncommon radical questioning is amongst leaders, throughout each business. It’s what has compelled me to write down the e book.
Would you describe your self as an Upholder, a Questioner, a Rebel, or an Obliger?
I took the quiz and the consequence was an Obliger. I might have envisioned some hybrid throughout Questioner (simply sayin’), a Insurgent (as my work is to upend fashions as a sort of activist) – however I additionally perceive that there’s a distinction between how I see my work and its aims versus my tendencies in conduct, as a frontrunner in day by day apply. I’m deeply social and look after individuals, champion them, and fall intellectually in love with their tales. Obliger doubtless rises to the highest as a social-emotional intelligence representing my look after others above all else. A delight to undergo the expertise of the quiz, thanks!
Does something are inclined to intrude along with your skill to maintain your wholesome habits or your happiness?
As an entrepreneur who based a posh enterprise, my day isn’t finished. The duties are non-linear and numerous. Usually my life is unpredictable, shifting throughout a rare vary of actions from mentoring a staff member to balancing a finances to envisioning new fashions for public well being for tens of tens of millions throughout dozens of nations to collaboratively inventing a brand new transformative journey startup enterprise – all in the identical day. Oddly, this sort of life nourishes me and retains me in a sort of circulate as a thinker and inventive downside solver in methods I cherish however can also come at a price of wholesome habits. It begs the query – what’s a wholesome behavior? I ponder how we’d redefine the connection between wholesome habits and happiness? That is doubtless a few of the thesis of your work, which is inspiring. I doubtless have habits that I may not even determine as habits that deliver me well being or happiness. Possibly, for me, actively figuring out habits that yield happiness is itself a sort of design challenge. Like the choice to fill my studio with shiny pink playing cards to ideate on as we push pin ideas on the wall brings me deep pleasure – excavating this as a recurring conduct to know why it yields pleasure would possibly assist me know what “interferes” vs “accelerates” my interpretation of well being.
Have you ever ever been hit by a lightning bolt, the place you made a significant change very instantly, as a consequence of studying a e book, a dialog with a good friend, a milestone birthday, a well being scare, and so on.?
Sure! I’ve just lately been identified with Kind 2 Diabetes found as the results of a hospitalization. It was an enormous well being scare. I’m determining the way to personal the prognosis, perceive the sources of this situation for me particularly, and have a look at methods to alter my way of life. Particularly I’ve zeroed in on meals. In search of out a sort of meals literacy that may inform how I transfer ahead. Paradoxically, meals is an enormous a part of my life. I believe it’s and might be much more central to all of our lives. My studio has activated meals as means to deliver communities collectively, assemble social cohesion to tackle greater than we might alone, and to intensify a multi-sensory expertise as a celebration of aliveness. My lightning bolt has led to exploring the event of a brand new enterprise targeted on meals that retains that aliveness however does so in service to well being. It’s a grand experiment, and I’m studying a lot alongside the best way. And discovering that many past me search meals safety, meals literacy, and meals as a cultural custom that celebrates life.
Is there a selected motto or saying that you just’ve discovered very useful?
Decelerate as a way to velocity up.
Has a e book ever modified your life – if that’s the case, which one and why?
Artists monographs, extremely visible collections of the our bodies of labor of prolific artists reminiscent of Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Julie Mehretu have modified my life. The mixture of the visible storytelling and cultural context is mixed mixture that has propelled my work and my creativeness. I believe the essence of their influence might be boiled all the way down to permission. These books had been treasures for me rising up in a largely eliminated, rural, pre-internet actuality the place they broke aside the inherited languages that I assumed had been the one ones I might communicate by means of. They gave me permission to search out my very own genuine alternate voice that I used to be not seeing round me.
In your subject, is there a typical false impression that you just’d prefer to appropriate?
My work is usually misunderstood within the area of Design Pondering. Which is a apply I’ve nice respect for and do borrow from. Definitely, my time as a frontrunner at Bruce Mau Design, usually thought-about one of many godfathers of the sphere, helps situation my appreciation for this area. However I’ve additionally been a critic of the boundaries of design considering. I consider that the challenges we face at the moment are wildly complicated, entangled, built-in, and deeply imprinted into tradition.
Radical Curiosity (Amazon, Bookshop) is a chance for me to each present my deep appreciation of many disciplines, practices, psychological fashions, and professions – in addition to problem and create a brand new lexicon for the way to remix and mix methods of working which can be applicable for the second we’re in.
As Audre Lorde says: There isn’t any such factor as a single-issue battle as a result of we don’t reside single-issue lives.
Writer photograph credit score: Stephanie Alvarez Ewens
