How to Think for Yourself - Paul Graham  ## Metadata - Author: **Paul Graham** - Full Title: How to Think for Yourself - Category: #articles - URL: http://www.paulgraham.com/think.html ## Highlights - You see this pattern with startup founders too. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hh924w23zn6tg1h0fb6j4653)) - It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. 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: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hh945qxhc3sr4d86qe5hkh86)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hhrjh209ykeqh7va6jczk9nm)) - Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hhrjhkt4adbqvs63xq7d94jj)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hh94cavh0n3gy01n610jpcf4)) - 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 big mistake people make about it is to think of it as a merely negative quality. The language we use reinforces that idea. You're *un*conventional. 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](http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html) in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counterintuitive the better. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hhrjfp8a6qn1yy1a045zkcpq)) - Everyone I know who's independent-minded is deeply curious, and everyone I know who's conventional-minded isn't ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hhrjpgtbza7sfkmtz207ntjy)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hhrjrdj31qg7j22j56n9f4d6))