Hi Reader,

Welcome to the 13th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here).

I write about transforming ICs into Impact Contributors.

And today, we're talking about what happens when you replace judgment with curiosity.

Let's get into it.

3 Things for Work (in L&D)

1. Don't Deprioritize Curiosity-Driven Research (Nature)

• Governments worldwide are demanding research funding follow political priorities. The warning: the breakthroughs that produced the most value have consistently come from curiosity-driven exploration, not directed outcomes.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 6 min read

2. How Do Workers Develop Good Judgment in the AI Era? (HBR)

• AI now handles the messy, repetitive tasks that once built judgment in junior employees. The result: people who've never done the underlying work are being asked to evaluate AI output they can't assess. The fix isn't keeping humans in the loop. It's redesigning work to build judgment deliberately through stretch experiences, real consequences, and structured decision-making.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 10 min read

3. AI and Cultural Debt (Deloitte 2026 Human Capital Trends)

• 80% of leaders worry co-workers are using AI to appear more productive than they are. But the deeper finding is what matters: enduring human capabilities like curiosity, divergent thinking, and connected teaming determine whether teams thrive. Not the tools.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 12 min read

2 Things for Life

1. Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail

• A short essay that changed how I pay attention. Salvatier's argument: we walk past enormous amounts of detail because we think we already understand what we're looking at. His example of building stairs with his dad is perfect. They argued for three hours because each saw a different detail the other missed. "If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived."

2. Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence

• I've been listening to Alan Watts for close to twenty years. This piece by Maria Popova captures his core idea: what keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present. Our primary mode of leaving the present is retreating into the mind, that "ever-calculating, self-evaluating cauldron of thoughts, predictions, anxieties, and judgments." The antidote isn't improving our experience. It's remaining present with it.

1 Idea from Me

Judgment is the default. Curiosity is the skill.

My son turns six today. Every few weeks I catch myself thinking how cool it'll be when he's a bit older. When we can read real books together. Have real conversations.

Then I catch myself missing the version of him that existed six months ago.

I've spent four years trying to get better at this. Noticing when I'm evaluating or judging the present moment instead of being in it. In other words, when I'm somewhere other than right here.

It shows up everywhere. Not just parenting.

Think about the last meeting you were in. Someone shares an idea. Before they finish, half the room is already building a rebuttal. Not listening to understand. Listening to judge. Is this good or bad? Do I agree or disagree?

That's the default setting. Judgment.

Jonathan Haidt's research says it plainly: we don't reason to find the truth. We reason to find the best argument for what we already believe.

Being confident enough to stay unsure

The alternative is harder than it sounds. It means walking into a room, assuming you don't have the full picture, and listening to understand. Being, as George Saunders put it, "confident enough to stay unsure."

And there's a real payoff. Angus Fletcher, drawing on decades of decision-making research, found that the longer we suspend our judgment, the more accurate our subsequent verdicts become. Not only because we gather more data, but because we stop filtering it.

Judgment closes doors. Curiosity opens them.

The return on curiosity compounds in every conversation where you feel the pull to be right instead of to learn.

Wishing my son were older or missing him younger are both ways of judging the idea of him instead of being curious about his reality.

Last week he was riding his bike while the sun stayed out past seven for the first time since October. He stopped, looked up, and said: "Daddy, I think it's almost time to go camping again."

I love camping, so it lit me up that he was excited about it too. And I only caught it because I wasn't somewhere else, judging the moment.

If you want to learn how to do this conversation, I wrote about the three techniques that make this practical here.

That's it for this week. Enjoy your Sunday! We have a birthday party to host at a local arcade.

I'll be back in two weeks ✌️

Andrew

P.S. 👉 If curiosity over judgment resonates, hit reply. I'm building something around this idea and would love to hear where it shows up in your work.