I Do My Best Thinking While I Take a Poop in the Morning

Or, why successful adulting needs philosophy

Some people think deep thoughts while writing a journal. Some people ponder upon big questions while taking a walk in the nearby jungle, interrupted only by mosquito bites. I get most of my thinking done while taking a poop in the morning.

I think if you’re in your late 20s, or 30s, or worse, in your 40s, and you aren’t actively working towards ‘knowing thyself’ more and more deeply, that is, if you are not consciously reflecting upon questions such as — What are your thoughts and opinions about such and such things? What makes you tick? What brings your genuine happiness? What sort of hidden assumptions are you harbouring about something without even realising? How important is friendship to you? How do you define empathy? — I don’t think you’re doing a great job at adulting.

A lot of people like to journal their thoughts. It’s a good way to dedicate some time every now and then to reflect upon the unprocessed things residing on our minds. But then, personally I’m not a big fan of journaling.

As a kid, when I wasn’t matured, when everything was brand new and life’s experiences hadn’t spoilt me, when I was struggling to make sense of the things going on — both inside and outside my head — journaling made a lot of sense. It helped me understand, reflect upon, and deal with life better.

But as I grew older, I began to notice a problem with this approach: after my initial assessment of my thoughts, there was no way to engage myself in further discussions, to prompt myself to consider alternative perspectives, or to challenge my viewpoints with counterarguments. Actually, that’s the second problem.

The first problem is that, the starting point of a journal is always some event that has happened. You start with something like, “It’s two in the morning and I am lying on my bed, thinking of an excuse that I should give tomorrow for missing the deadline of a project.”

You start off with an event and then you try to either draw some deeper meaning or you discover something new about yourself. Such as, it’s only fifteen minute’s worth of work, you might as well be doing it right now. However, you’ve decided to find of an excuse instead. It’s more fun, risky, and gives life a purpose. Life is boring if you’re on the right path all the time.

But, you often may not have many significant events to start journaling about it. And the chances of you drawing something insightful from that event is also 50/50.

Instead of relying on an event as a trigger, I prefer to do it the other way: I prefer to start with a question to ponder upon instead.

Questions like, What do you believe is the relationship between adversity and personal growth? What does friendship mean to you outside of social norms and expectations? What do you feel is the source of your anxiety? What does loneliness mean to you?

I call this process — where you start off with a question to reflect on, and then expand on your thoughts by digging deeper into them — “Wisdom Journaling.”

You don’t just clarify your thoughts, but you also gain wisdom. And to make it easy to do this kind of journaling, I’ve been working on an app for the past few months. But more on that later.

Before that, it’s important to mention that there’s no actual need for this kind of journaling. You can very well live a life that isn’t examined closely. Nobody’s saying saying, “You have to do it! If you do not do it, it’s wrong!”

There’s nothing right or wrong about it. But, examining your life, putting it under a microscope and observing it closely, and discovering new things about yourself every now and then — it’s definitely much much more fun!

SUCCESSFUL ADULTING NEEDS PHILOSOPHY

In your lifetime, you’d spend the most amount of time with yourself. If you live till 90, and if you exclude the time you’re asleep, you would have spent 50–60 years with yourself. It only makes sense to get to know the person with whom you’re spending the maximum amount of time in your life.

The byproduct of becoming more and more self aware is that it prevents you from living your life on autopilot where you simply sleepwalk — believing things others want you to believe, doing things they want you to do.

There was a time when I was fascinated with psychology. I wanted to know how the mind works, what are its biases, how can I not only avoid biases, but at the same time, exploit the biases of others for fun and profit.

But over time, I realised that when it comes to successful adulting, psychology is very limiting. Psychology can give you a good map of the territory, but it cannot give you any guidance on living a good life.

For that you need philosophy. Philosophy is all about the tools, the models, and the frameworks you need to not only know the status quo, but also poke it, and change it.

The way I see it is that philosophy gives you lenses. The more philosophies you know, the more lenses you have in your arsenal to look at your life, your thoughts, your ideas, your opinions from different perspectives, from various angles, and understand them better.

But again, that’s not why we do philosophy, or science, or anything for that matter. We do it for fun! It’s not a means to an end. It is the end.

I’VE BUILT AN APP. I’VE BUILT AN APP.

This brings me to the app I’ve been working on for the past few months. It’s called InstaReflect, and it not only asks you interesting questions to reflect on, but also followup questions based on your answer.

It asks counter questions, suggests different points of view, and helps you dig deeper into your thoughts so that you may learn something new — not just about yourself but also about the world you inhabit.

Under the hood, you’re paired with a philosopher who begins the conversation on a topic of their interest. You might be paired with the Dalai Lama, or Plato, or Bertrand Russell, or Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and even writers like Matt Haig or John Green. Discussion topics can range from existentialism, life’s purpose, empathy, human suffering, and many many more.

The questions you get are everyday questions, the answer to which you most likely know inherently, but you’ve never actually gotten the chance put words to them.

It’s not always easy to articulate your thoughts, at least not in the beginning. It takes a while to get used to it, but once you do, it’s much much more fun. I’ve been using it for a while and this is mostly how I journal these days — while I take a poop in the morning.

InstaReflect is available for the iPhone and the iPad. If you own an Apple Silicon Mac, the iPad app would run on your Mac as well. Visit InstaReflect.com to download and give it a go. And don’t forget to tell me what you think of it.