Why Curiosity Is a Superpower, Not a Personality Trait

Key Insights: Deep, Universally Applicable Takeaways

Career Transitions and Risk-Taking: Major career shifts at age 30+ require both practical sacrifices and emotional commitment. The decision to pursue police work involved financial risk (LASIK eye surgery for qualification requirements), family sacrifice (three months away for training with two young children), and leaving a stable income. However, retrospective clarity often makes these decisions appear easier than they felt in the moment. The key is recognizing when you're ready for the leap while understanding that discomfort in the moment is normal.

Brutal Honesty Drives Growth: Early career criticism, while painful, serves as a crucial filter for professional development. The journalism industry's direct feedback culture—where work is immediately critiqued without sugar-coating—accelerates skill development by forcing creators to distinguish between emotional attachment to their work and objective quality. This "brutal honesty" approach, exemplified by editors dismissing early work or industry professionals pointing out lack of distinctive style, ultimately builds resilience and pushes professionals toward genuine excellence rather than comfortable mediocrity.

The Generalist Advantage: Being labeled a "generalist" rather than having a distinctive style initially seems like criticism, but proves valuable across career contexts. The ability to adapt to any assignment and produce usable content—whether photographing a rugby tournament, covering breaking news, or managing diverse police operations—creates long-term career flexibility. Specialists excel in narrow domains, but generalists navigate transitions and leadership roles more effectively because they can understand and connect multiple disciplines.

Natural Curiosity as Professional Currency: The best professionals across fields share one trait: genuine curiosity about people and situations. In journalism, this manifests as asking open-ended questions and allowing subjects to tell their own stories rather than directing narratives. In policing, it translates to understanding context before taking action and mentoring others by discovering their strengths. This curiosity isn't performative—it's an authentic desire to understand that drives both investigation and innovation.

Creativity Persists Across Contexts: Creative professionals don't abandon their creativity when entering pragmatic fields; they redirect it. Problem-solving in law enforcement, organizing staff events, implementing new technology, and mentoring officers all provide outlets for creative thinking. The creative mindset—seeing possibilities, making connections, approaching challenges from unexpected angles—remains valuable regardless of industry. Rather than suppressing creativity, non-creative professions benefit enormously from it when properly channeled.

The Evolution of Media and Accountability: The shift from daily deadlines to 24-hour news cycles fundamentally altered journalism's quality control. Traditional media had layers of editorial review—junior reporters, city editors, wire editors—that checked both grammar and factual accuracy. Modern media pressure to be "first out of the gate" has eliminated these safety layers, prioritizing speed over thoroughness. This same dynamic affects modern policing, where citizen journalism via smartphones creates instant accountability but also increases the risk of context-free narratives. The quote "If I don't read the news, I'm uninformed, but if I read the news, I'm misinformed" captures the modern challenge of parsing truth from rapid-fire, often incomplete information.

Leadership as Mentorship, Not Authority: Effective leadership isn't about climbing ranks for power—it's about gaining influence to elevate others. The transition from frontline work to supervision should be motivated by the desire to mentor, educate, and help people reach their potential. Leaders who view their role as identifying untapped talent and creating opportunities for others build stronger organizations than those focused on personal advancement. The perspective "if I can do it, anyone can" removes hierarchy and creates psychological permission for team members to pursue growth.

Comfort Signals Time to Move: When a role becomes comfortable and everything runs smoothly, it's often the signal to seek new challenges rather than settle. This applies to career transitions, promotions, and project completion. Comfort indicates mastery, but continued mastery in the same domain leads to stagnation. The key is recognizing when you've "completed" a phase—not perfectly, but sufficiently—and ensuring someone behind you is ready to step into that role before moving forward.

Surrounding Yourself with Superior Talent: The "secret power" of effective directors, leaders, and managers is deliberately hiring and empowering people who are smarter and more skilled in specific domains. This requires humility to acknowledge gaps in knowledge and confidence to delegate without micromanaging. Whether it's a gaffer who can rig complex lighting setups or police officers who are subject matter experts in their specialties, leaders who leverage expertise rather than compete with it create exponentially better outcomes.

Transparency vs. Privacy in Modern Work: Modern technology enables unprecedented transparency—body cameras, tracked vehicles, GPS-enabled phones—but implementation requires balancing public accountability with individual privacy rights. In policing, this means every interaction can be documented and reviewed, but releasing that documentation must consider the privacy of victims, witnesses, and accused individuals. This tension between transparency and privacy extends beyond law enforcement to any profession dealing with sensitive information or public trust.

Structural Patterns: How the Content is Organized

Chronological Narrative Framework: The conversation follows Jeremy's career timeline from high school through current leadership, creating natural progression and allowing lessons to emerge organically from life stages rather than being presented as abstract principles.

Parallel Story Technique: Both speakers share complementary experiences—both pursued photojournalism, both faced rejection from Chris Mallett, both eventually earned his respect—creating resonance and validating shared industry experiences. This technique builds rapport and demonstrates universal patterns in creative careers.

Question-as-Reflection Method: The interviewer uses questions not just to extract information but to prompt deeper reflection. Questions like "Did that help you get into the police force?" and "Did you know you wanted leadership?" encourage Jeremy to connect dots he might not have consciously drawn, creating insights in real-time rather than reciting prepared answers.

Concrete Example Integration: Abstract concepts are immediately grounded in specific stories—the lollipop guy photo rejection, the vice principal signing him up for photojournalism, the Peter Bragg critique about lacking distinctive style. These concrete examples make universal principles memorable and relatable.

Vulnerability and Humility Framing: Jeremy consistently frames his success with humility ("I'm not overly smart," "if I can do it, anyone can"), which makes his achievements more accessible and his advice more credible. This structural choice removes intimidation and invites listeners to see themselves in his journey.

Hidden Implications: Deeper Meaning and Future Impact

The Death of Apprenticeship Models: The journalism story reveals a broader cultural shift—traditional career paths with mentorship, editorial layers, and gradual skill development are disappearing across industries. The pressure for speed and reduced resources eliminate the "learning by doing under supervision" model that once defined professional growth. This has profound implications for quality, accountability, and how future professionals develop expertise.

Creative Skills as Universal Literacy: The conversation implicitly argues that creative training—visual thinking, storytelling, problem-solving—constitutes a form of literacy valuable across all professions. Just as traditional literacy (reading, writing) is foundational regardless of career, creative literacy (seeing patterns, crafting narratives, thinking spatially) provides competitive advantage in law enforcement, business, medicine, or any field requiring complex problem-solving.

Trust Erosion Through Technology: While technology enables transparency, it simultaneously erodes trust by making every moment potentially public and permanently documented. The shift from "you could hang out with police officers and build relationships" to "everyone has their phones out recording" reflects a broader societal transition from trust-based to verification-based relationships. This impacts not just police-community relations but all professional and social interactions.

Leadership as Curation, Not Creation: Modern leadership increasingly resembles curation—identifying existing talent, creating conditions for it to flourish, and connecting capabilities to opportunities—rather than top-down directive management. This reflects broader workplace evolution from hierarchical command structures to networked collaboration models where leaders facilitate rather than dictate.

The Single-Income Family as Outlier: Jeremy's casual mention of "we've always been a single-income family" highlights how economically exceptional this has become. His ability to transition careers, take financial risks, and support a family on one income represents a privilege increasingly rare in modern economics, with implications for career mobility and risk-taking capacity across generations.

Information Abundance Creating Decision Paralysis: The discussion of media evolution and short clips creating polarized views reflects information overload's impact on decision-making. When everyone is a reporter and content is instant but context-free, audiences face the burden of assembling truth from fragments—a task most aren't equipped for, leading to either paralysis or retreat into echo chambers that confirm existing beliefs.

Career Pivots Requiring Identity Reconciliation: Jeremy's journey from wanting his name in the paper to preferring anonymity as "just a number" reveals how career transitions force identity renegotiation. Moving between fields isn't just learning new skills—it's reconstructing your relationship with recognition, success, and self-definition. This psychological dimension of career change is rarely discussed but often determines whether transitions succeed or fail.