Why Increasing Exchange Does Not Deepen Thinking — the Design of “What Not to Do” Is What Works

Introduction

You increased your chances to meet people. Both the people you talk with and the number of exchanges are growing.

And yet you have no real sense that your thinking has been updated. The conversation flows. There is sympathy. But what remains after it ends is only a comfortable feeling, with no sense that thinking moved.

Many are surely searching for how to increase exchange. What this article verifies is the premise beneath it: why increasing the volume of exchange does not deepen thinking — its reason.

Let me give the conclusion first. Because what moves thinking is not the volume of exchange but the design of “what not to do.”

“Not Doing” Is More Fundamental Than “Doing”

First, let me confirm the order.

What decides the quality of a relationship is, more than the design of “what to do,” the design of “what not to do.” This sounds paradoxical, but seen from the structure it is a necessity.

The dynamics that produce dependence work of their own accord if left alone. Give approval. Stand in for judgement. Enter the role of one who keeps giving. The moment any one of these settles in, a relationship in which thinking does not move begins.

So what is needed to maintain a relationship where thinking moves is to consciously “not do” these. Not by making it through adding something, but by not doing the things that stop thinking, you make the condition.

The Choice of Not Returning a Judgement

There is a most important choice in the process of growing a relationship. “Whether to return a judgement or not.”

When you receive the question “what should I do?”, returning an answer produces the other’s satisfaction in the short term. Having received a clear answer, the other shows gratitude.

But when this choice is repeated, what is happening?

The other learns “ask this person and an answer comes out.” When the next question comes, the choice “ask” becomes easier to take than “think for myself.” Once entrusting the question becomes habitual, the frequency of use of the circuit “produce an answer myself” falls.

Piling up the choice of returning an answer means, unintended, growing dependence.

This does not mean “you must not return an answer.” It is a problem of the design of “how to return.”

Returning “do it this way” and asking back “how do you think about this question?” are different ways of relating. The latter prompts the other’s autonomous thinking and supports the process of facing their own question themselves.

Here you notice something interesting. The first resistance to “not giving an answer” often arises on the giving side.

The sense “isn’t it cold not to give an answer when they are troubled?” is born. But this sense itself touches “the desire to give.” The motive “I want to be of use to the other” is legitimate. But the premise “giving an answer is a help” is not necessarily right.

The Choice of Not Keeping On Giving Approval

There is another “not doing.” The choice of not keeping on giving approval.

To keep giving approval — “that’s impressive,” “you’re heading the right way” — reinforces the other’s extrinsic motivation of “moving to seek approval.” As the self-determination theory of the psychologists Deci and Ryan shows, the reinforcement of extrinsic motivation invites the retreat of intrinsic motivation [Deci & Ryan, 1985].

The response “is that so?” or “I see this part from a different angle” moves the other’s thinking more. When a critical evaluation is received, the thinking “how do I answer this?” begins. That process deepens the other’s ideas.

To keep giving approval has the short-term effect of “making the relationship easier to maintain.” But this comfort makes the dependence “I cannot move without approval.”

What matters here is consistency. To suddenly put out a critical evaluation after keeping on returning only approval feels to the other like “a change in the relationship.” By keeping on offering honest evaluation from the start, that kind of dialogue settles as “the standard of this relationship.”

Note that “not giving approval” differs from “negating.” You can hold at the same time the reception “your observation is excellent here,” “this part I had not seen,” and the question “here it differs from my view.” Honesty of evaluation and respect for the other do not contradict.

Build the Limit Into the Design

The third “not doing” is not trying to answer everything.

To engage deeply and individually, you must understand each person’s situation and pour your thinking into it. The depth you can pour in has, naturally, a limit.

What matters is not to “admit” this limit but to “build it into the design.” Clearly separate the range you engage deeply with from the range you deliver widely to. This bifurcation prevents half-hearted involvement.

And when you judge “in this period I cannot engage deeply,” declining too is part of the design. “To decline” is not rejection. A refusal grounded in the judgement “right now I cannot deliver what you truly need” is a choice that respects the other. Rather than keeping up a half-hearted involvement, declining clearly is, for both sides, more sincere.

▸ How the design of this limit prompts the other’s autonomy is treated in why relationships wear you out — not because there are too many.

With a Sense of “Selling,” It Does Not Hold

Let me touch on one point about the stage of beginning a relationship.

I first experienced this sense in a period when I worked as sales staff at a consumer-electronics store.

The policy on the floor was simple. “Communicate as if you were with a dear friend” — this alone.

When you speak to someone on the floor, if there is a feeling of “let me sell,” it gets across to the other. Once the sense “this person just wants to sell me something” is born, the other grows wary. In this state, conversation in the true sense does not hold.

When there is no feeling of “let me sell,” a strange thing happened. The customer’s true trouble comes into view. Toward that trouble, I could naturally put out the most useful information I knew. The other, having received that information, felt trust and said “please handle this for me.”

There is one more thing I noticed. The question shown on the surface and the true question beneath it can differ. Beneath the question “which of these computers is good?” there is the true question “I want to move ahead preparing for a new life.”

And that true question is invisible as long as the sense of “let me sell” is there. It comes into view only when there is the sense “I want to talk with this person.”

This principle is the same on the sales floor and in transmission. When you begin not with the outward motive “let me change the other” or “let me give the other something” but with the inward motive “let me offer what I can see,” a relationship where thinking moves rises naturally.

Conclusion: Consistency Comes Not from Conviction but from Design

That increasing exchange does not deepen thinking was neither because the people you talk with are bad nor because the volume is short. It is because the actions that stop thinking — giving approval, standing in for judgement, answering everything — work of their own accord if left alone.

So what is needed is not to increase the volume. It is to decide “what not to do.”

Do not stand in for judgement. Do not keep giving approval. Do not try to answer everything. And keep this stance consistent.

And this consistency comes not from conviction but from design. More than keeping the creed “not standing in for judgement is right,” from the understanding of the structure “standing in for judgement produces dependence,” the action of “not standing in” is chosen naturally.

When understanding of the structure guides action, a consistency independent of willpower is born. When what you felt as “difficult” turns into a state that is “made clear as a design,” practice becomes natural. The whole of this design is gathered in why the more you connect, the lonelier you grow.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
• Dunbar, R. I. M. “Neocortex Size as a Constraint on Group Size in Primates” (1992) Journal of Human Evolution, 22(6)