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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

Jungian typology says there’s two types of thinking - internal and external. “Internal thinking” is thinking that’s interested in curiosity “all the way down”, and tends to be precise, very thorough, and interested in puzzles, having fully fleshed out, consistent mental models. “External thinking” is curious to concrete ends - if an intellectual curiosity isn’t directly furthering your goal, you put it to the side. It’s concerned with faster, more effective decision making, provable real-world impacts.

I feel personally attacked.

But seriously though, while I've gotten better at handling it, there's a constant gravitational pull for me towards "internal thinking". But external is clearly where it's at. Anyone been on this journey?

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I'm still often struggling with this, but I do find there's a certain "activation energy" needed — on many real-world, very practical projects my interest only developed as I made some initial progress, realized "interfacing with the messiness of the real world" was its own intriguing intellectual puzzle, and got the hang of dealing with (and appreciating!) people who had more external thinking instead of dismissing it wholesale. Also, while puzzling is it's own satisfaction, I found I was not immune to the gratification of doing something others appreciated and that was "socially" considered useful. Takes some deliberate exposure and practice I guess.

I agree. I want to be able to be externally curious.

Maybe it's about actually having an external goal and a strong (internal or external) motivation to achieve it.

Whats the point of living if you never get to indulge in curiosity all the way down?

I’m someone who’s constantly pushed myself way from internal thinking.

It’s still seems shiny, but over the years I’ve come to desire being able to share an interest and someone else actually give a damn.

So I’d say “because I want to make an impact on other people’s lives” and I’ve never had internal thinking that resulted in anything someone else would care about.

In fact I’ve never had anything original come from it either. Maybe if I had a Ph.D. In mathematics maybe I could do this, but all my best ideas have come from insights derived from conversations (sometimes years after the fact though, so to someone with a worse memory they might seem spontaneous).

Well judging by the article, you get to be an incredibly rich cool person at parties.

But whats the point of money if you still don't get to do what you want to be doing?

You can be Thurston Howell and bribe Gilligan to go make your coconuts different from everyone else's coconuts.

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