Let Me Borrow Your Body For 5 Minutes

Would you give your body to someone else to use? Clearly, no, and neither would I.

We would never say to a stranger “here’s my body for 5 minutes” yet we’ll read an article for 5 minutes, giving our time and attention to a stranger without a second thought.

Why don’t our standards for our bodies also apply to our minds?

Over the past month, I’ve tried to focus my thinking and reading on thoughts and articles around independent thinking. This is part of a new series I’m calling “Of The Month” where I pick different topics of the month and only learn and think about those topics.

Person of the Month is: Naval
Framework of the Month: Relationships

For this piece, my thought of the month, I tried to answer the questions:
1. What’s a good framework for independent thinking?
2. When should you and should you not let others make decisions for you?
3. What metaphors help conceptualize what it meant to be and not to be an independent thinker?

All thoughts below are based on the assumption that you have a set amount of cognitive load at the beginning of the day that wanes throughout each decision and act of will power. Feel free to read more about this in Ego Depletion.

Not creating a boundary forces others to create boundaries for you - based on their priorities, not yours

If someone were to offer heroine I already have an answer prepared: “No thanks”. If someone wants to cut me in line I’ll ask why — if it’s convincing, I’ll let them. I won’t blindly say yes.

Now it gets trickier.

Your friend asks you “What did Jessica say behind my back the other day?” You’re closer with the person who just asked you about Jessica’s mean words, but you want to hold your integrity.

You have three options:
1. Tell them what Jessica said.
2. Tell them the jist but don’t give specifics.
3. Say the following: “Sorry, I can’t say what someone said if they aren’t here regardless if it’s positive or negative. It’s just one of the things I stay true to.”

A few things just happened. First, you made it apparent to your friend that you have boundaries and your friend will respect you for it.
Second, you’re sending a signal to your friend that says, “Your stories are safe with me because when you asked me about someone else, I refused to tell”

A boundary you set up ahead of time enabled you to independently create that boundary rather than have another create it for you.

Now you don’t have to waste your precious cognitive power for the day on trying to determine how much you’re willing to cheat while still feeling good about yourself.

Had you not created a boundary for a similar scenario prior to facing the decision of what to say, you’d be enabling the friend asking to push the boundary to a point beyond what you’re comfortable with because their goal is to get information.

Values are when you act upon the boundaries you set up for yourself ahead of time.

If you don’t create boundary x for yourself, others will create boundary x for you.

If you intentionally let others make decisions for you, you’re making decisions for yourself.

Ironically, by giving away your decision making power, you can make better decisions and think independently where it matters. Just don’t convince yourself a decision was yours when someone else made it. The easiest person to fool is yourself.

This past month, I realized that by avoiding the formation of one opinion, you’re opening the door to spend time thinking on another opinion.

While this may seem insignificant, when you couple this with specialization and comparative advantage, you realize that by enabling other people to think for you, you’re giving yourself more time to contemplate the things that matter.

Think of it this way.

If you have 30 things you’re strongly opinionated about, you’d probably be better off having even stronger opinions on 5 of those things that have a deeper impact on your life and no opinion about the other 25. I think the 80/20 rule goes for independent thinking as well.

Controversial Opinion: I decided that I was going to stop forming opinions around politics and more specifically, who to vote for. But don’t mistake this for not voting — of course, I’m going to vote.

Now wait a second, how can you vote if you don’t decide for yourself who to vote for?

Easy, delegate that power of voting for you to a group of other people who share similar values and whose opinion you trust (in this case, more than my uneducated one). This concept isn’t particularly revolutionary as it partially reflects the ideas of Liquid Democracy. The difference is that Liquid democracy entails delegating your vote to another person whereas I’ve decided to give percentages of my vote to different people.

I’m mainly left-leaning when it comes to politics, but gave about 35% of my vote to a combination of right-leaning friends especially those who are left socially.

Why is this a big deal to me?

The Democratic National Committee has announced plans to hold 12 debates during the 2020 presidential primary.

If we assume each is 1.5 hours long, that’s 18 hours of watching PLUS additional research on the republicans who I would also consider voting for.

If I have 10 friends whose opinions are formed over 20 total hours of learning about the candidates, then assuming I’d take 2 hours to research who to vote for, wouldn’t my vote be better off with them?

Better yet, of all the things I care about in this world, who’s elected is probably close to #73, so I can spend those 18 Hours forming opinions that do matter like opinions not to form and why independent thinking matters.

So, I started my own framework for independent thinking.

I realized I must build systems for my third person self (higher level you or birds-eye view on your own life) so that my first-person self (the person reading this sentence) can stay on track.

The first step for independent thinking is to recognize your own values and decide blatantly what values of yours are most important

By doing this you can determine the top 5–10 things you need to have an opinion on. If you care about ways the future is changing, you should probably know something about emerging tech.

Second, be aware of what types of things you do and do not want to be an independent thinker around. You can’t independently think about everything.

This way you can know upon making a decision where that decision was derived from. If you realize mid-thought: “Oh, my mom says this. This is what she’d think” then you can look back at your values from number one and say to yourself, “Is it worth my time to change my opinion here or should I just continue to default to Mom’s until I’m proven wrong?”

At the same time, your mind will take shape of what you often keep in thought, so think wisely.

Step Three, recognize that when making a decision you need to differentiate between what you want to be knowledgeable about as well as oblivious about. It’s good to be oblivious about some things; it forces you to delegate that thought to people who know more than you in that topic. It’s economically efficient for your mind.

One semi-related quote I read recently: It’s impossible to learn what you think you already know.

Takeaways

1. You have a set amount of decision making power in the beginning of the day, so every decision and thought you have takes away a piece of your daily cognitive power. So, think wisely.

2. If you don’t make a plan for thinking, others make the plan for you. If you don’t do x for yourself, others will do x for you.

3. If you intentionally let others make decisions for you, you’re making decisions for yourself as long as you’re aware who’s making the decision. By giving up some of your own independent thought, you can gain some.

4. High-level 3rd person you should be an independent thinker. On the day to day, you should listen to your 3rd person self, and avoid listening to your 1st person self. Listen to your principles.

5. You should build systems for your third-person self to abide by and live by them religiously … Or don’t. That’s for you to decide ;)