# How to Think for Yourself ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article1.be68295a7e40.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[paulgraham.com]] - Full Title: How to Think for Yourself - Category: #articles - URL: http://www.paulgraham.com/think.html ## Highlights - There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. - To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet. - It's not enough for a public market investor to predict correctly how a company will do - If a lot of other people make the same prediction, the stock price will already reflect it, and there's no room to make money. The only valuable insights are the ones most other investors don't share - You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors. - An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new. - There's room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there's a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it's essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it's not. - Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? - Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture - if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent-minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional-minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research. - the independent-minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. [1] - schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it. So we don't get anything like the same kind of feedback about how independent-minded we are. - most conventional-minded people are confident that they're independent-minded, while the genuinely independent-minded worry they might not be independent-minded enough. - I think so. This quality may be largely inborn, but there seem to be ways to magnify it, or at least not to suppress it. - simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to. - A conventional-minded person would probably feel anxious not knowing what other people thought, and make more effort to find out. - . If you're surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you'll have the opposite experience: - the independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people, they tend to self-segregate once they have a chance to. - But there is some advantage even here: it teaches you what to avoid. If you later find yourself in a situation that makes you think "this is like high school," you know you should get out. [2] - One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. [3] - Fortunately you don't have to spend all your time with independent-minded people. It's enough to have one or two you can talk to regularly. And once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are; they need you too. - Most students will still be conventional-minded, but you'll at least find clumps of independent-minded ones, rather than the near zero you may have found in high school. - if you're part of several different worlds, you can often import ideas from one to another - You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space, by reading history. When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point. - You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong - end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. - true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few. - More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. - When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves - You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those - unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking - It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity. - Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief. - Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think - The second component of independent-mindedness, resistance to being told what to think, is the most visible of the three. But even this is often misunderstood - The language we use reinforces that idea. You're unconventional. You don't care what other people think. But it's not just a kind of immunity. In the most independent-minded people, the desire not to be told what to think is a positive force. It's not mere skepticism, but an active delight in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counterintuitive the better. - novelty and humor share a certain kind of surprisingness. But while not identical, the two are close enough that there is a definite correlation between having a sense of humor and being independent-minded just as there is between being humorless and being conventional-minded. [9] - In my experience, independent-mindedness and curiosity predict one another perfectly. - The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it. - Is there a way to cultivate curiosity? To start with, you want to avoid situations that suppress it. How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something. - The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. - Few adults are equally curious about everything, and it doesn't seem as if you can choose which topics interest you. So it's up to you to find them. Or invent them, if necessary. - Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions. # How to Think for Yourself ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article0.00998d930354.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[paulgraham.com]] - Full Title: How to Think for Yourself - Category: #articles - URL: http://paulgraham.com/think.html ## Highlights - There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. - To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet. - It's not enough for a public market investor to predict correctly how a company will do - If a lot of other people make the same prediction, the stock price will already reflect it, and there's no room to make money. The only valuable insights are the ones most other investors don't share - You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors. - An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new. - There's room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there's a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it's essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it's not. - Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? - Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture - if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent-minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional-minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research. - the independent-minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. [1] - schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it. So we don't get anything like the same kind of feedback about how independent-minded we are. - most conventional-minded people are confident that they're independent-minded, while the genuinely independent-minded worry they might not be independent-minded enough. - I think so. This quality may be largely inborn, but there seem to be ways to magnify it, or at least not to suppress it. - simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to. - A conventional-minded person would probably feel anxious not knowing what other people thought, and make more effort to find out. - . If you're surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you'll have the opposite experience: - the independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people, they tend to self-segregate once they have a chance to. - But there is some advantage even here: it teaches you what to avoid. If you later find yourself in a situation that makes you think "this is like high school," you know you should get out. [2] - One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. [3] - Fortunately you don't have to spend all your time with independent-minded people. It's enough to have one or two you can talk to regularly. And once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are; they need you too. - Most students will still be conventional-minded, but you'll at least find clumps of independent-minded ones, rather than the near zero you may have found in high school. - if you're part of several different worlds, you can often import ideas from one to another - You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space, by reading history. When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point. - You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong - end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. - true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few. - More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. - When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves - You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those - unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking - It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity. - Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief. - Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think - The second component of independent-mindedness, resistance to being told what to think, is the most visible of the three. But even this is often misunderstood - The language we use reinforces that idea. You're unconventional. You don't care what other people think. But it's not just a kind of immunity. In the most independent-minded people, the desire not to be told what to think is a positive force. It's not mere skepticism, but an active delight in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counterintuitive the better. - novelty and humor share a certain kind of surprisingness. But while not identical, the two are close enough that there is a definite correlation between having a sense of humor and being independent-minded just as there is between being humorless and being conventional-minded. [9] - In my experience, independent-mindedness and curiosity predict one another perfectly. - The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it. - Is there a way to cultivate curiosity? To start with, you want to avoid situations that suppress it. How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something. - The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. - Few adults are equally curious about everything, and it doesn't seem as if you can choose which topics interest you. So it's up to you to find them. Or invent them, if necessary. - Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions.