Curiosity Loops
Turn a hard decision into structured, contextual advice by asking the right people the right question.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
A repeatable method for gathering high-quality input before making a decision. Instead of vaguely asking friends 'what should I do?', you craft a specific question, curate who you ask along two dimensions, keep the ask lightweight, then process and thank respondents. It exists to counter the fact that most advice is bad not because it's ill-intentioned but because it isn't contextual to your situation.
Origin
Developed by Ada Chen Rekhi, adapted from the marketing concept of customer advisory councils she used at a startup — a group of top customers kept on DM to weigh in on product conflicts, whose 'voice of the customer' verbatims she brought into internal debates. She adapted it to personal and career decisions.
Core principles
- 01Advice is bad mostly because it's not contextual, not because it's ill-intentioned
- 02Garbage-in, garbage-out: a vague question yields a vague, useless answer
- 03Ask people who are subject-matter experts AND people who know you well
- 04Don't do what people tell you to do — take it as input and look for surprises and hard feedback
- 05Reciprocity: helping feels good, so closing the loop makes the ask a gift, not a burden
How to run it
- 1
Craft a specific, unbiased question that solicits rationale
Replace a vague prompt like 'what should I do with my career?' with a concrete one that gives people something to anchor on, e.g. 'You know me, I'm a marketer. My plan is to quit, do a web dev boot camp, then find a dev job. Do you think that's a good idea?' A good question is specific, asks for reasoning, and doesn't lead with your own view.
Pro tip Never open with 'here's what I think' — people have a tendency to agree with or please you, which biases the answer.
Watch out A vague question puts high cognitive load on others and produces similarly low-quality output.
- 2
Curate who you ask along two dimensions
Pick people on two axes: subject-matter experts who genuinely know the topic, and people who know you well and can judge how well an option fits you specifically. The second dimension is the one most people neglect.
Pro tip Tell each person why you picked them ('I trust you to give me truthful feedback') — it raises response quality and makes them feel valued.
- 3
Make the ask lightweight to protect response rate
Design the request so a busy person can answer from their couch in a couple of minutes — e.g. 'here are nine topics, pick your top two and tell me why.' Some will go above and beyond; the point is not to force it.
Pro tip Aim to get at least three or four responses, and back-calculate how many to send from expected response rate — assume ~50% for busy people you don't know well.
Watch out Too much cognitive load gives you either poor answers or a low response rate.
- 4
Process the input and close the loop with thanks
Synthesize what you heard, then go back to each person, tell them how it affected your decision and how it turned out, and thank them. This makes the exchange feel two-sided.
Pro tip Telling someone 'your input really affected my decision, here's how it turned out' feels great to them even if you only spent a few minutes of their time.
Watch out Treating advice-asking as purely one-sided is a misconception that erodes people's willingness to help again.
In the wild
Before the episode, Ada emailed ~10-11 people nine candidate topics and asked which two or three resonated and why. About 20 minutes of design produced rich, anonymized feedback on what landed and what to avoid.
→ She came out 'so much smarter' about which topics to pursue and which to drop, and shared the anonymized results with the host.
Ada and her partner were at an impasse over the age their daughter should inherit — he said 18, she said 25. Rather than dig through research papers, they ran a lightweight loop asking trusted, smart parents in their circle.
→ No one said 18; they also learned executive function peaks around age 30, which moved both their set points upward toward a better joint decision they couldn't have reached alone.
Common mistakes
Asking a vague question
'What should I do with my career next?' is unspecific, loads cognitive burden on the responder, and yields garbage answers — always make the question concrete and rationale-seeking.
Blindly doing what people tell you
The loop is an input to check the integrity of your own decision, not a vote to obey; treating responses as instructions defeats the purpose — look instead for surprises and things you strongly disagree with.
Over-using it and burning your network
Reserve loops for bigger, genuinely indecisive decisions (roughly quarterly), not everyday choices, or you'll over-bug people and lower future response rates.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders, product people, and professionals facing a big, high-stakes, or emotionally charged decision (career move, major personal choice) who want contextual input without over-relying on a single mentor.
Not ideal for
Small everyday decisions, or situations needing deep single-domain expertise where a course or one expert is more efficient than polling.
From the transcript
“A curiosity loop is essentially, you know, going to a whole bunch of people. In this case, I sent out an email very quickly to…”
“it's bad because it's not contextual”
“a question's good if it's specific, if it solicits rationale, and, you know, it's not biased”
“someone who knows you really well and can provide insight on how well does that work for you”
“Don't do what people tell you to do. Take it as an input”
“This is really based off of the the marketing concept of customer advisory councils”
“I would try to optimize for getting at least three or four responses”
From the episode
How to make better decisions and build a joyful career
Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey)