Curiosity Mapping

When you begin spelunking your way into intriguing new corners of the internet in order to find the others, I heartily recommend you chart the terrain, and make note of what excites you. Put a virtual pin in the map whenever something or someone resonates.

That's where a curiosity map comes in. It's a document/database filled with all the intriguing people, media, and communities you discover during your internet explorations. That way, you can easily return to the places that resonate, start fostering connections, and keep following your curiosity deeper and deeper into the most nourishing parts of the internet.

Setting up your curiosity map

First, let's talk about tooling. I’ve always used a Notion database to house my curiosity maps. I find it the ideal place for such things, which is why I’ve included a Notion template that you can duplicate and use yourself. In addition to that template, I recommend pairing it with the Save To Notion plugin, which makes it super easy to save things into your database.

But you can use any tool you’re comfortable with, ranging from fancy database tools like Airtable and Coda, to simple spreadsheets or text documents. There are a ton of great options, and what matters is you find one you like and that makes sense to you.

In your tool of choice, I typically recommend keeping track of the following things.

• Name of person/website/community
• URLs to their site/social channels
• Type (blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, media company, community, etc)
• Ability to post directly?
• Contact info for the person/organization
• A notes field for jotting down observations and such.

If you're using a database tool, you would create custom fields for each of these. If you're in a text document, you could turn this into a copyable template that you duplicate for each new entry.

A recommendation for how to fill your curiosity map

Back in the day, I used to recommend people document everything they encountered while searching a particular corner of the internet. That way, you'd end up with a complete map of an entire digital subculture, which could then be used for all sorts of traditional marketing activities, like determining the size of the market, etc.

Honestly though, that whole process is pretty tedious and unnecessary if the goal is to find the others. For our purposes here in The Forest, I recommend something much simpler and easier.

• Go about your Digital Spelunking process. Search far and wide for anything that relates to the keywords you brainstormed.
• Whenever you come across anything with good vibes (a person, piece of media, community, company, etc), add it to your curiosity map.
• Use your own felt sense of curiosity, intrigue, excitement, or resonance as a barometer for what's important enough to include on your map.
• In other words, add what feels good and interesting, and ignore what doesn't. And know that the vast majority of things you encounter on the internet probably won't feel good, and that's ok. Your goal is to find the things that do.

With this approach, you will end up with far fewer things on your curiosity map, and you'll spend less time doing tedious busywork. But the few things you do add will be immensely more valuable, and far more likely to lead you towards the others.

Good luck building your map, and godspeed.