How To Think For Yourself

A practical guide to thinking and being human. Learn how to think actively and beat ChatGPT.

When was the last time you thought for yourself? When was the last time you wanted to know something and thought deeply about it instead of looking it up or asking a friend?

In the not-so-distant past, people would think about things, on their own, all the time. If they wanted to know how much time it would take to get to the other side of town, they would not look it up. There was no way to look it up! Instead, they would pull out the maps, contemplate about the methods of transport, make some estimates, and assemble themselves an answer.

Today, you just open Google Maps, set a destination, and read out the time it projects to get there.

Doctor Syntax with the Bookseller • The Tours of Dr Syntax (1809–1821)

This is a good thing. It makes sense to look up facts like the height of the Eiffel Tower. It is simply inefficient and unimportant to calculate those kinds of things yourself. And sometimes it can be harmful if there is too much uncertainty or error in judgement.

But when you seek the answers to questions that have no definite answers, like “what should I do with my life,” what can you do? They are not questions with ‘the correct answer’ available online. The only thing you can do is think for yourself! Of course, you could ask others for guidance as well, but ultimately the hard work falls upon your shoulders.

It is for similar reasons that I, for the past few years, have been increasing the amount of thinking I do for myself. It is surprisingly simple, and I will show you how I do it. But however easy it is to do, it is also astonishingly easy not to do.

Passive Thinking

Many people do not think for themselves. Even in my philosophy classes, congregations of people you would expect to think quite deeply, many people merely read assigned texts and seek to understand the material.

Once they have solid understanding, they regurgitate the written ideas in their predefined orders. In other words, they follow established trails but do not venture into unknown territories nor make their own maps. But this is understandable: thinking for yourself is difficult and painful, so your brain naturally avoids it.

An Hour • Émile-Antoine Bayard’s Illustrations for Around the Moon by Jules Verne (1870)

The brain is all about optimizing its efficiency. Since thinking hard uses a lot of energy, it is discouraged if it does not seem worthwhile. Even more disagreeable is the discomfort of uncertainty. We like to have certainty since it comes with safety. Thus, for as long as we are thinking about something, we do not have an answer, we do not have certainty, and we do not have comfort.

So instead of investing all that energy, we usually think passively. Walking around town, I might passively notice a good smell or wonder why a shop is closed. Passive thinking is effortless, unconscious, and without a clear goal in mind. Since it is effortless, it does not require much energy, and as a result it is not discouraged by the brain.

However, while passive thinking is important, thinking for yourself begins with active thinking.

Active Thinking

Active thinking is effortful, conscious, and intentional. Whenever you work on answering a specific question, you partake in active thinking. Recall working on a complicated math problem, and it should be clear that working through such a problem is an effortful and conscious attempt to find answers.

Now, when I urged you to recall working on math problems, you might have recalled getting distracted. Since active thinking is difficult and discouraged by the brain, it is natural to lose concentration and wander off. Then, those passive thoughts take center stage, and active thinking halts.

Many times have I been thinking about something only to wander off in tangent trains of thought. Sometimes that is great, and I have fun with those meanderings. But it is important to stay on topic. A great way to maintain active thinking is to express the thinking.

Thinking through expression, such as writing down a train of thought as it arises, helps in many important ways. Of note, expression creates an artifact of work. Just like building something with your hands, writing thoughts down provides feedback that encourages more work. The feedback loop of adding something and feeling proud of your addition keeps the process going.

And if you get distracted or just cannot keep everything in mind, the artifact can easily bring you up to speed as a base from which to continue.

Below is a real artifact of my active thinking for this essay:

Personally, I always do my active thinking through writing. Most often I write on chalkboards or whiteboards, but sometimes in notes and through writing essays. What is important is to find a method of expression that works for you. After all, thinking for yourself is a highly personal act.

The same flexibility is true of the method I will present to you. I will show you how I think, but you must find out how to make it work for yourself.

Even if you turn it upside down, however, I doubt you will change the fact that it all begins with a concern.

The Method

At the beginning of the method is a concern. To think actively about something, you need something to think actively about. Are you feeling unfulfilled? Do you want to decide whether you should attend an event or not? Would you like to develop a unified theory of everything?

The first step of the method is to express that concern as a question.¹ “How can I feel fulfilled?” “Should I attend that event?” “What is the unified theory of everything?”

Doctor Syntax Sketching the Lake • The Tours of Dr Syntax (1809–1821)

Putting concerns into words can be very difficult. Do not be discouraged if it does not come naturally at first. It is a skill, so you will get better at it with practice.

Once you have formulated a question, take some time—but not very much time—to let an answer come to you.

This is the stage of the method that takes the most amount of energy and effort. On top of that, since often you will not have an answer, it can be discouraging. It is best to spend very little time here, but this varies from person to person and question to question. I have gotten to the point where I decide whether I have an answer or not while writing down the question.

If an answer came to you, perfect! You have the answer to the question. If not, then begin a miniature version of the method, formulating questions you think might advance the overall question. If your overall question is “what should I eat tonight,” your sub-concern might develop into questions like “what ingredients do I have.” And once you know your ingredients, you will be in a better place to decide what to eat.

At any point where you have an answer to a question, mark that question as done and indicate the answer. Sooner or later, the answer will be in your hands!

To illustrate the method in progress, here is an example I made with Obsidian’s Canvas:

As you can see, I wrote down a few words about my problem. Then, I formulated a question—the box in orange. No answer came to me immediately, so I posed a question I thought might help give me direction. I had an immediate answer, but this also prompted a further question. The cycle continued until I found some answer to the problem in that case, but I did not end up investing enough effort to resolve the original prompt.

The Methodology

There are going to be some aspects of the method I shared that do not work for you. You might find some element missing, or maybe the way I have everything structured does not suit your thinking patterns. Any problem you find, however, is an opportunity for you to figure out a solution for yourself.

See, this is when thinking for yourself becomes important. Everybody is different, and it is the personal particularities that make all the difference. My method will not work perfectly for you. As a result, you must think, not just to find some objective answer that is universally agreed to, but toward a subjective answer. You must think not for anybody else, but for yourself in particular.

With the rise of generative AI, people outsource their thinking more and more. See, before GenAI you would only get the answers you were looking for if they were available online, or if somebody responded to you. After GenAI, and as it continues to improve, on the other hand, you can get an answer to anything you could think to ask.

So it is a valid question to ask: with the advent of GenAI, would it still be worthwhile to think for yourself? The answer is yes, especially since the most important questions, those like How Might One Live, are only meaningful in the sense that a person struggles to work out their personal answers for themselves.

Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)

Since ancient times, we humans have distinguished ourselves from other animals through our ability to think. And as we learned that some animals were capable of reason, we maintained our distinction through the quality of our thought.

In a sense, without the ability to think on your own, and without the practice of thinking for yourself, you lose your personality and your particularity. You lose what makes you human and become an animal.

Maintain your humanity by thinking for yourself. It is easy, and I have shown you how.

1. If you have no idea whatsoever where to start, a question you can always begin with is “what question should I think about!” If you apply the method, you will find an adequate question as a result.