The Value In Original Thinking

A single piece of original thought is better than a thousand borrowed ideas.

The average human being has over six thousand thoughts in a day.

You, dear reader, may have over eight thousand. Why else would you be reading this?

Let’s consider the average human being. How many of those thoughts are perfectly original? Much of what we think is a conjecture about something we observe, read, or experience.

Then what makes a thought original? Is it something that has never been thought of before? Well, that is tough to confirm.

Has it never been expressed before? Possibly. But is it necessary?

Knowledge is socially constructed. It constantly evolves. It evolves through finding new data, experiments that test the validity of existing ideas, and critical analysis.

Whatever we know of today, on any subject, is an accumulation of cognitively progressed stacked data. This progress is a result of original thinking. The originality may lie in the application, analysis, or abstraction.

So, what do we do with this?

Well, for starters, it is advisable to evaluate any idea and exercise your critical faculties before you choose to endorse or apply it. Instead of curating tweets on others’ ideas and mental models, why not build on those ideas or look at your experiences and share something singular?

Instead of adhering to the “acceptable” ways, why not devise your methods? Instead of settling for the wisdom of others, why not construct your plans?

An original idea is derived after careful consideration, adorned with personal experience, evaluated with a critical eye, and shielded by its willingness to carry the conversation forward at the risk of being wrong.

It’s a worthy endeavour in that it drives progress, even when it is wrong.