What does it mean that curiosity directs attention naturally?

When genuinely curious you focus effortlessly — use this as a task design principle.

Example: A software engineer dreads migrating a legacy codebase — until she reframes the task as an investigation: 'What assumptions did the original authors encode into this architecture, and which ones no longer hold?' The same migration becomes an archeological dig. She works three hours without checking her phone. The task didn't change. Her relationship to the task changed — from obligation to inquiry.

Try this: Pick one task you've been avoiding or finding dull. Before you start, write down three genuine questions the task could answer — not questions about whether you'll finish, but questions about what you'll discover. Examples: 'What pattern will I notice in this data?' or 'Why was this process designed this way?' Work the task for 25 minutes while holding one of those questions. Notice whether your attention behaves differently when it has a question to chase.