Richard Templar - The rules of thinking

If you want to be a top-notch thinker, you have to do the work yourself. That is to say, you have to do the thinking. You cant let anyone else do it for you. That might sound obvious, but youd be surprised how often we take the convenient shortcut of adopting other peoples thinking.

All right, Ill let you off working out the theory of relativity for yourself. There are specialist areas where you dont have the skills to do the relevant thinking, and youre allowed to let scientists, mathematicians, top-flight economists and statisticians and engineers do your thinking for you. Even so, dont take their word for anything until youve established in your own mind that they know what theyre talking about and have no ...

When youre a child, you dont know any better than to think as your parents tell you to. If they say its bad to put your elbows on the table or good to change your underwear every day, you believe them. Its part of being a child to absorb your parents values and systems. As you get older, you start to find that your teachers have a slightly different set of rules, and your school friends may have values or opinions that are different again. So you start to modify your earlier views and incorporate others that you acquire from fellow students or friends who might think very differently from your parents. And when youre young you probably think about these quite carefully.

Of course, its easy and comfortable to hang out with other people who broadly think the same way as you. As you form your values, you look for other people who are like-minded. It means you have plenty in common and you dont have endless arguments. When someone else says what you were already thinking, it makes you feel validated, makes you feel you must be right, reinforces your view, makes you feel like you belong. Its a good feeling and you can all spend time together validating each others beliefs and making yourselves feel right and valued. You can find a partner who thinks the same as you, can have friends like you, can work in a place where there are other people who think the way you do.

And this is what we call an echo chamber. Yes, its comfortable and affirming, but it makes it very difficult to be your own person. Everyone in your world votes the same way, supports the same causes, has the same beliefs, prejudices and values, and all belong to social media and online groups that reinforce them.

And it gets harder and harder to think in any other way. For one thing, youve virtually cut yourself off from being exposed to different ways of looking at the world, except perhaps so you and your friends can all agree on how wrong they are, in a self-congratulatory way. And that means you dont want to change your views or, presumably, your friends will all agree how wrong you are, and thats not going to feel very nice.

And yet, and yet the world is full of people, lots of them lovely people, who dont agree with you about everything. You may rarely encounter them, but can they really all be wrong? Some of them are just as clever as you and have arrived at their beliefs in as valid a way as you have. Maybe more valid because youve stopped thinking for yourself and moved in to a groupthink where your views are the collective ones, where you dont really ever have to challenge yourself any more. Youre no longer an independent person. Youve unwittingly become a bit of a sheep.

If you want to be a Rules thinker, you need to change this, shake things up, force yourself to broaden your views, listen to other ideas with a genuine open mind. About the best way to do this is to cultivate friends based on who they are, not what they believe. Aim to have friends of all ages, from other cultures, varied backgrounds, different classes from your own. Between them, theyll make you see the world in a more nuanced way and, if your beliefs cant match up with all of them because theyre not all the same youll have to think for yourself.

CULTIVATE FRIENDS BASED ON WHO THEY ARE, NOT WHAT THEY BELIEVE

It can be frightening to start thinking for yourself. Who knows where it could lead? You could end up with any number of principles and beliefs that dont sit comfortably with the people you spend your time with. You could find yourself out on a limb. You could have to face up to realising youve been wrong about things, or at least not been right about them. One of the barriers to being an independent thinker is the fear of being different.

Look, thats understandable, of course it is. But you can take things gently. There are no thought police out there not yet anyway. No one else has to know what youre thinking until youre ready to let on. You dont have to sit your whole family down and say, I need you all to ...