It may surprise you to hear this but I’m still thinking a bunch about curiosity since my last post and in particular looking at it as a driver for how to spend my time and focus. Much of today’s Internet is about clicks, likes and engagement as what should drive how we spend our time here. The funny part about that is that it redirects us from aiming for what we want to do and share to what we think others want.
It’s a pretty great business model if you’re a platform like Instagram or TikTok. Reward the posts that keep the most people scrolling in the app, bury the ones that don’t. This is true even if there’s a small but dedicated following. If the average viewer scrolls past, then the content disappears. On the flip side if you post controversial content that will get people arguing, the post may well go viral as people come back to argue with one another.
So people put on an “influencer voice”, use trending audio instead of the song they really want and go to the Instagrammable place so you can get the views. Mispronounce a few words to get people to comment on that.
But what does that do with your curiosity? If what you do is no longer driven by what you’re interested in but by what anonymous viewers want?
Of course many of us already knew this – especially if we ever tried to increase views on various platforms. I’ve had very mixed luck with it – this blog has never been particularly busy – maybe 10-20 views per post. My Instagram page gets OK views and my TikTok page gets steady views in the hundreds to sometimes above 1,000 with generally nice comments from other cyclists. But what was interesting is that once I did get a very busy post (>17k) it was so stressful to deal with all the negative comments and arguments in the comments thread I had to delete the post.
So now I do nothing special for those. I post simply the videos I take along the way – and the whole point of that for me is to enjoy watching them. In the end the videos and music make me remember what it felt like to be on the ride and if I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to go out, I can watch one and be ready to go.
But one place I didn’t expect to see the platform driving my own behaviour was my cycle tracking app. Since 2014 I’ve been a user of Strava. It’s used by lots of athletes including professional cyclists. It gathers and summarizes data on your rides and even individual segments of a ride. I can tell you the fastest I’ve climbed a hill nearby and how fast the fastest person was. I can see my fastest or longest rides. What was the fastest I ever rode 100 km in? I can tell you with that data. And the result of my having that data is that I judge. I get back from a ride and a graph tells me that I’m trending slower on this route over the past couple of runs. I can see which of my friends is faster or slower on any given stretch and think about why I’m so damned slow. It’s not satisfying my curiosity.
A person I follow on Bluesky was talking about how he was considering leaving Strava, not because of that but because it’s an American company. As relations between the US and Canada sour, many people, myself included, are working to use as few US resources especially if they charge money. And so I decided it was time to migrate.
In the end I went to Komoot. This is a German company and their focus is a little different. There are a few stats like average speed or distance. But the focus is on exploration. The ride posts are more visual with space for pictures and highlights like tourist sites, beautiful views and interesting restaurants. Every week there’s a new set of suggestions for rides I might like to do on the weekend based on where I live and what I do (hike, bike, run). There are no segments with leaders or opportunities for loads of comparisons. Just a chance to share things you like – not unlike what I do with the videos I create.
I’ve also started looking at other ways of exploring my area. While I might dream of riding across Asia for months on end, it’s not a practical goal. However, taking my over 10 years of cycling data I can see that I don’t have to go far at all to see new things. An app called Squadrats takes that to the extreme going down to 25 metre squares. Ride or run through one and it gets coloured in. Try to get the most connected ones. It ends up looking like this if you’re me:
This isn’t too far from home and I thought I knew this area! You can really see also how much of what we see is defined by the routes we take. In over 20 years of living, riding and running in the area I have visited. Not much is the answer:
You can also look at it in larger squares of 1 mile by 1 mile. This then lets you find the largest contiguous area in which you went into a 1×1 mile square. This looks like I’ve visited more of the city but still have a ways to go.
Now I ride all over for fun and exploration. Imagine if I just rode the fast routes that lots of the roadies ride. My view of the area and cycling in the area would be coloured by busy streets. If I rode only in Scarborough I’d think of the city as being filled with great trails with massive barriers of busy streets that are too dangerous to cycle on. Ride downtown and I’d have another idea.
It reminds me of how I always say that people view our city differently depending on how they get around. Drivers who just go from point A to point B view it one way – especially if their point Bs are few and similar (malls, shopping centres, hospitals). Transit riders and those using active transport like walking/cycling have a different experience. Depending on who you are your impression of the city can be totally different.
So, too, is when you go. I remember when I lived in Quebec City for a year for a work job, I lived in the very touristy Old Quebec area. There were lots of fancy shops, restaurants and boutiques and all day it was filled with tourists. One night a colleague came to town and was only able to meet for a meal after 10PM so I went out when I didn’t usually. Instead of the tourists, the area was now filled with punks. Loud music blasted from a club hidden above a boutique on Rue St. Jean.
I’m finding the same is true with cycling also. I’m a huge fan of Scarborough. The diversity in terrain, plant life, culture and food is among the largest anywhere I’ve ever been. But daytime riding can be stressful. As I said, there are many really great trails and a few suburban streets. However, the residential routes are specifically designed to discourage people driving through them to avoid major roads. So to get some places requires riding on busy roads. The answer for me turns out to be simple. Leave at 5:15 AM.
Traffic was so light I often forgot about cars entirely. I did have to slow down a lot on the off-road sections, however. There were no humans or vehicles. However, I averaged seeing two skunks every kilometre. Hitting one of those would be a huge mistake. The bike would smell forever and I would have a lot of work to stop smelling bad as well.
The route was not one I’d take during the day but in the early hours it was delightful. Along the way I went on some new to me roads, smelling bakeries and restaurants getting their food ready for the day ahead. I was really surprised to come around the corner to see a large mandir (Sri Ayyappan) in a style I haven’t seen here rising up from behind some bland industrial buildings. It was set back a bit from the street and behind a fence that was closed as they wouldn’t open for another hour or more so I didn’t get a photo. However, here is someone else’s taken during the day:
According to wandrer.earth I rode over 6.2 km on roads I’d never been on. Near the end of the ride I crossed a bridge over a busy road and caught the sunrise.
So being curious and exploring new places, new routes and new times to visit makes a huge difference.
I did look at some maps recently to find a route to the nearest Indian supermarket. I can get there by transit but it takes two subways and a 5-7 min walk on either end. 30-40 min each way. Looking quickly at the map it appeared that the bike route would involve some big stressful streets. Looking more closely, though, I found a couple of good connections and in the end stayed off the streets for almost 90% of the trip. The route was lovely and I would never have found it if I’d just done my usual thing and taken transit.
This one I sped up the video for so you can see end to end what the 30 min ride there looked like in just 3 min.
So far the experiment of following my curiosity rather than what is comfortable or habitual is paying off. And going forward my aim is to continue and increase this – and have that, rather than trending audio and instagrammable locations dictate what I share here and in photos and video elsewhere.
What about you? Are you following your own curiosity? Or are you a creature of habit? How do you feel about new and different things? Do they energize you or drain you?
I agree with you Todd. Life is so much more fun when we enjoy what we are doing. Due to my husband’s health problems my brother suggested we should employ someone to cook for us. But I enjoy cooking and I don’t cook anything elaborate. My husband and Aravind help . Even with stitching my clothes, the thought once crossed my mind that I should buy ready made clothes but I dismissed the idea. I enjoy stitching A few days ago we met a senior friend. While talking he said he used to write stories but now he does not because no one reads them. I felt sad for him and was telling my husband that the friend could write for himself and enjoy the feeling of creating something. Like you wrote that you blog here inspite of not many readers. I too don’t have that many readers but there are many who always read my blogs. Most important I write because I enjoy writing an.