How to Think for Yourself
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Highlights
- I wish someone had told me about this distinction when I was a kid, because it’s one of the most important things to think about when you’re deciding what kind of work you want to do. Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I suspect most people’s unconscious mind will answer that question before their conscious mind has a chance to. I know mine does.
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When I meet someone who knows a lot about something unusual (which includes practically everyone, if you dig deep enough), I try to learn what they know that other people don’t. There are almost always surprises here. It’s a good way to make conversation when you meet strangers, but I don’t do it to make conversation. I really want to know.
- To go beyond this general advice, we need to look at the internal structure of independent-mindedness at the individual muscles we need to exercise, as it were. It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity.
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Another way to increase your curiosity is to indulge it, by investigating things you’re interested in. Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions.
- Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas, your motto should not be "do what you love" so much as "do what you’re curious about."