What jobs are based around thinking?
Thinking can never be a standalone job. Because you can think about anything and change the thoughts with the slightest stimulus. If you are an engineer, you are trying to solve a scientific or application based problem. If you are a painter then you are thinking accordingly and so forth. So if you want to be a thinker, welcome to every job on the planet.
But speaking in the true sense, a thinker or a philosopher should be a person who is able to think about ‘thinking’ itself. But to think about ‘thinking’ or the thoughts of other thinkers, you need to read and interpret and gauge. One of my friends, who is pursuing a Ph D in philosophy, reads philosophies for 10 hours a day and then writes his 2 bits on them.
Another thinking job would be that of an economist who perceives every thought based on monetary importance or value. Similarly, that of a sociologist or a psychologist.
Most researchers and consultants have a thinking job, as they are part of ‘think-tanks’ but I feel they are more of observers, problem solvers and pattern finders rather than true thinkers.
Semantically speaking, a thinking job should not be too concerned with the implementation of the thoughts or testing those thoughts in life. A thinker would just think and not preach. He should write but not make people follow his writing. Karl Marx was probably not a Marxist! Although, a thinker can think about how people might try to bring to life his thoughts but should never try to indulge or engage his readers into a particular way of implementation.
There, now you have my thoughts and I am not going to worry about how you take them :)
Originally Published in Quora on Septemeber 8, 2016
