The Curiosity Loop
Inspired by on Lenny's Podcast
Before making a big parenting decision, try doing what product marketers do: run a lightweight survey with five trusted friends who actually know your kid.
Ada Chen Rekhi was prepping for a podcast when she didn't just wing it - she emailed 10 friends with a structured question: 'Here are nine topics. Pick your top two and tell me why.'
'I got back such an incredible amount of information for about 20 minutes of work.'
She calls this a Curiosity Loop. The key is structure: specific question, curated audience, lightweight ask, and closing the loop with thanks.
Parenting is full of debates that feel impossible to resolve. Sleep training or not? Which preschool? Screen time limits? Your partner has one view. Your mother-in-law has another. The internet has seventeen thousand.
Try the loop. Five friends who know your kid. A specific question: 'We're debating X - here are our two options, what would you do and why?' You're not looking for the right answer. You're looking for blind spots - 'things that you strongly disagree with or are surprises to you.'
Twenty minutes of work. Years of context from people who actually know you.
PM Theme: User research and customer discovery
Parenting Theme: Decision making with support
“A curiosity loop is essentially going to a whole bunch of people. In this case, I sent out an email very quickly to about 10 or 11 people and asking them, 'Hey, here are nine topics for Lenny's Podcast. What are two or three of the topics that resonate with you and why?' And I got back such an incredible amount of information for about 20 minutes of work.”Ada Chen Rekhi · 00:04:08
“Look for things that you strongly disagree with or are surprises to you. Because to me, I think these loops are more about looking around the corner and seeing if there's anything you missed in terms of the integrity of your decision making process.”Ada Chen Rekhi · 00:15:19
