You Can Only Outsource The Thinking You’ve Already Thought

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I saw a post on X the other day: “You can outsource your thinking but not your understanding” (@yacineMTB).

Understanding is the product of thinking.

So what “you can outsource your thinking but not your understanding” really means is:

You can only outsource the thinking you’ve already thought.

In other words, there is no way to avoid the thinking.

It’s just that if you’re doing the same thinking over and over again, the exact same line of mechanical thought, then yes, you can automate it.

But the #1 failure mode in automation is jumping straight into it without actually knowing what you’re automating.

Automation starts with you getting inside the loop and figuring out exactly once the loop is.

Then, and only then, can you automate yourself out of the loop.

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