What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays.
There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers.
Your ideas have to be both correct and novel.
You see this pattern with startup founders.
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 air beds or on strangers floors.
He's referencing Microsoft and Airbnb there do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else?
Independent mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture, which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy.
If you're naturally independent minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager.
And if you're naturally conventional minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research.
One difficulty here is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional to independent minded.
Conventional minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional minded.
It genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything.
It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers.
And the independent minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly.
Can you make yourself more independent minded?
I think so.
It matters a lot who you surround yourself with.
If you surround yourself with independent minded people.
Hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to and to think of more.
The independent minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional minded people.