Follow These 3 Rules to be Remembered as a Revered Thought Leader

A potent mix of advice from modern-day critical thinkers

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Amidst the ChatGPT hype, someone posted this prompt and its results on LinkedIn.

“I need 5 tweet ideas that make me sound like a modern-day critical thinker and thought leader.”

The post had thousands of reactions and replies.

I leafed through the comment section and witnessed a clear divide.

On one end were people thanking the writer; on the other were ones who could see through the obvious contradiction —

Critical thinking, even thinking for that matter, is a deeply personal endeavour. Outsourcing that to ChatGPT defeats its core purpose.

More importantly, the intellectuals these people want to emulate are fiercely independent thinkers.

And what about authenticity?

Imagine producing five synthetic tweets daily that make someone sound like a critical thinker but then finding them far from it in real life.

It’s the fastest path to getting labelled as ‘fake’. And no one likes that tag.

So, if your goal is to be an authentic critical thinker and ultimately a recognised thought leader, here are three rules of thumb that will set you on the path to becoming one.

1. Listen Consciously

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits and a remarkable, modern-day thought leader, said this on the Tim Ferriss Show:

“Almost every idea that you have is downstream from what you consume.”

Interpretation — To be a critical thinker, you must have some positive constraints on what you consume daily. And that makes perfect sense.

To that end, Clear mentioned that he spent an inordinate amount of time curating his Twitter feed.

Now, he didn’t go into the details of how he did it, but I’m assuming it involved following the right people.

With that thought, I designed my own method. It’s a simple (but not so easy) process you can apply right away:

• Step 1— Delete all social media apps from your phone. Stay with me; this goes beyond generic advice.
• Step 2 — List the top five people you religiously follow and whose content uplifts you. My chosen five for September are Cory Allen, Zach Pogrob, Mel Robbins, Sahil Bloom and Tim Ferriss.
• Step 3 — Save the links to their socials on a laptop or desktop, not your phone. The latter is of paramount importance.
• Step 4 — Create a time block during the day to consume the content they create on your laptop or desktop, not your phone.

I chose this method for two specific reasons —

• I aspire to become a thought leader and want my ideas to be a downpour from their content. Why? Because they’re freakishly brilliant critical thinkers, and their content contributes to my growth as a human being, not just a writer.
• Social Media platforms, especially Instagram, are designed to not work smoothly on the web. If you haven’t used the web version, give it a go, and you’ll know. I desire that friction because it irks me after a while, thereby helping me stick to my goal of mindful consumption and not get hooked to highly addictive dopamine loops.

This is what conscious social listening looks like. And if you desire to be a critical thinker/thought leader but consume mindlessly (without any fault of your own), give this method a go.

Trust me, you’ll start to see changes in no time.

2. Give It Time

Sahil Bloom, another brilliant thought leader, said this on a podcast with Varun Duggirala:

“You can’t just assume that something you consume is all of a sudden going to spark some amazing insight. You have to spend time with it. You have to wrestle with it, you have to think.”

In a way, this is the next step to James Clear’s advice of listening consciously — the next rung in the ladder, if you will.

And in totality, this makes it an invaluable golden stack of wisdom.

I’ve applied this advice stack, and you should too if your desire to be remembered as a thought leader burns deep inside.

Here’s why I paid heed to Sahil’s advice:

1. I was becoming a hoarder of information. To date, I have an insane collection of notes at multiple places.
2. But that’s all I was doing — collecting them. I didn’t spend a second with those notes — those thoughts that could turn into actionable guidelines for myself and others.

Not to say that I’ve stopped collecting information. That’s the foundation of it. I do it all the time.

But that’s merely the beginning.

In fact, I chuckle and feel proud at the thought of this article coming to life because I spent a ton of time with my notes, which were otherwise left untouched.

So unless you spend time with them, wrestle with them, lay them out and structure them, they’re the same as papers collecting dust.

Also, I’m slowly learning to be patient with the results. Because often, two or more ideas don’t glue together to make sense — especially when you put them on paper.

The goal is coherence and usefulness, but that isn’t how it always turns out.

Renowned thought leaders and their grand ideas stood the test of time because they were immensely patient with nurturing them.

So if you aspire to become one — befriend patience, trust yourself and utilise that spaghetti of notes because that is the path to developing the most coveted skill of critical thinking.

3. Think Like the Best, Think Like The Winners

In yet another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, a renowned Game Designer, Justin Gary, said this (in the context of losing a game):

The best players would say, “Actually, if five turns earlier I had made this different play, it wouldn’t have mattered what card they drew at that turn.”

Let’s circle back to our powerful stack for a moment.

So, you’ve developed a system for conscious social listening and have patiently processed that mindful collection of information into a cohesive thought model.

And you’re absolutely sure that it would click with your audience.

Only it didn’t. It flopped. Maybe, just maybe, it impacted a handful of people, but that’s it.

And it bothers you because you expected a massive impact. Hell! You even adhered to the first two rules.

But sometimes, life happens.

No matter what you do, how hard you try, or what system or framework you follow — sometimes, things go south.

But here’s what true winners — the critical thinkers, do:

1. They don’t blame the failure on luck or point to certain advantages of the opponent.
2. More importantly, they focus on prompt re-evaluation. They focus on what they could have done differently.

The underlying trait behind this is the will to learn — the will to grow.

You know how everyone speaks of the importance of accepting failures. As important as it is, true winners spend the least time on it.

They accept it quickly and focus on the one thing that matters.

I’ve recently started doing the same with my articles, and I’ll admit it — it’s challenging.

It’s tough to walk through the tunnel of emotions that accompany failure, let alone gunning through it in a flash.

But with each passing failure, I’m getting faster and better because I give at least 70% of my energy to re-evaluation and 30% to sulking.

I regret the 30% later, but I’m making great strides towards becoming a better critical thinker and taking baby steps towards becoming a thought leader.

Let’s do it together, shall we?

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