How to think for yourself: get past your first nine thoughts
To think for yourself, write your own thoughts on a subject before you read, search or ask anyone. Write ten. The first few will be the ones everyone has. Yours start where those run out.
Try it now. Pick a word. "Cow" works. Write ten things about it, numbered. Notice the line where it gets hard.
Why are your first thoughts not really yours?
The first things anyone says about a topic are shared property. They are not wrong. They are just common. In our team game, the easy ones always went first: the audience had them all out within two minutes.
Those thoughts arrive first because they are the easiest to reach. Thinking for yourself is not about having strange opinions. It is about getting past the shared ones before you settle on a view.
The trouble is that most of the time, we never get past them. Someone else, or a feed, or a search result, says the easy things first. We nod. We move on. The thinking was done for us, and it felt like ours.
Where this practice comes from: the cow game
In my first job I noticed something I could not stop seeing. People looked at the surface of a problem, and then they decided.
In 2020 I started my first company and saw the same thing again. So I made a small game for my team. Every day at tea time, one person got a random topic. The first one was "cow". They had to say ten points about it, out loud.
There was one rule. Whatever came to the audience's minds, the audience said first. The person with the topic could not repeat any of it.
Within two minutes the shallow thoughts were gone. All of them, spoken by someone else. The person holding the topic still had to find ten. Ten that were their own. That was hard.
As the weeks went by, something changed in the whole team. They thought before they talked. That is what I saw. It is not a study.
What do you do when the easy thoughts run out?
This is the uncomfortable middle. Somewhere around line four or five, your head goes quiet. Most people stop here. Do not.
- Slow down. The next thought does not come faster if you rush.
- Look at the thing. Picture it. What does it actually do, minute by minute?
- Ask how, who and what if. How does it work? Who decided that? What if it were gone?
- Go one step under an easy one. "Cows give milk." Who decided which animals we milk?
- Write questions. A good question counts as a line.
Here is what a later line can look like. Why does a cow chew sideways? Who decided which animals we milk? What does a herd do when one of them is ill? None of these are clever. They are just not the first thing anyone says.
How to think deeper, step by step
You need a pen, a page and about ten minutes.
- Write one word or one question at the top.
- Write ten numbered lines. Short ones. Facts, guesses, questions, doubts.
- No reading, no search, no AI until all ten are down.
- Draw a line under the point where it got hard. Everything below that line is the part to look at.
- Circle the one line you would not have said yesterday.
- Now read about it, or ask someone, or ask an AI.
- Write one last line: what did the reading add, and what did I already have?
Keep the page. One word a day is enough. Need a word? Here are 50 thinking prompts.
How to think better with other people
The game works best out loud. It takes about ten minutes.
- One person gets a random topic. Keep the topics simple: an object, an animal, a place.
- The others say what comes to mind first. All of it.
- The person with the topic now gives ten points. None of them may repeat what was said.
- Rotate every day.
No scores, no winner. The point is the moment the easy answers are gone and someone has to look again.
How to make it a habit
- Same time, every day. We did it at tea time. Pick a moment you already have.
- Small topics. "Cow" is better than "the economy". Big topics invite borrowed opinions.
- Do not look it up at line four. That is exactly where the practice is.
- Keep the pages. After a week, read your circled lines together. That is a record of what you noticed that nobody handed you.
What this will not do
I cannot promise this makes you smarter. I do not have a study for that, and I will not borrow one. What I have is a game, a team that started thinking before it talked, and my own way back. Years later I got stuck myself, in stress and a feed, for a year or two. I built something for myself first. This practice is its first step.
If you use AI every day, the same idea has a shorter form: ten before you prompt.
The gym for the habit
You do not need an app for any of this. Paper works.
I built DoomsHuman as the gym for this habit. In every topic, you write ten bullets first, and nothing else in that topic opens until you do. You can try the cow game on the first screen, without an account. What you type there stays in your browser.
Why? Not for money. To prepare humans for Dooms Day. When corporate giants or a super AI take over most of the world, a small group of people will rebel. That group will be smart, sharp and real. Ten thoughts on a cow is one small step in getting ready for that.
The full story of the game is on the About page.
FAQ
How do I start thinking for myself?
Before you read or ask anyone about a subject, write ten thoughts of your own on it. The first few will be the common ones. Keep going past them. Only then read, and compare what you had with what you found.
How can I think more deeply about a topic?
Stay with it after the easy thoughts run out. Ask how it works, who decided it, and what would happen if it were gone. Go one step under each obvious point. Write questions as well as answers.
How do I think better and more clearly?
Put your thoughts on paper before you take anyone else's. Ten short numbered lines on one word or question, no search and no AI, then one line on what you now think. Doing it on paper makes it easy to see where your own thinking stops.
Should I ask an AI first, or think first?
Think first. Write your ten lines, then ask. Then compare: what did the AI add, what did it miss, and what did you have that it did not?
