Some of your best thinking happens outside formal meetings. It might show up during a walk with a colleague, a conversation that drifts off the agenda, or a moment when someone voices a question you did not realize you were also wondering about.
In these moments, you think further than you would alone.
This way of thinking with others has deep roots in our human history. At his school in ancient Athens, Aristotle encouraged students to walk through gardens while discussing ideas instead of sitting through lectures. The aim was to think aloud and explore together.
That approach proved so effective that it shaped how knowledge was developed for centuries. Yet today, most learning and problem-solving still happens in isolation, even though the challenges you face are rarely individual.
The idea behind Aristotle’s practice is collective curiosity: the practice of exploring questions together and treating uncertainty as something useful rather than something to hide.
Collective curiosity runs against a familiar story — the one of the lone genius. We like that story because it’s easier to celebrate individuals than to understand complex knowledge-sharing networks.
But the Wright brothers didn’t invent flight in isolation. They exchanged letters and data with other aviation enthusiasts. The Human Genome Project succeeded because thousands of scientists shared questions, failures, and discoveries rather than working alone.
Solitary thinking is often just untested thinking. In contrast, learning in public invites feedback and exposes you to perspectives you would not reach on your own. Research on decision-making also shows that groups that encourage respectful questioning are less prone to confirmation bias and tend to make better choices over time.
Despite these benefits, collective curiosity is often resisted. In competitive environments, admitting that you don’t know can feel unsafe. Time pressure can push you toward quick answers instead of exploring better questions.
So how do you make space for exploring and thinking together?
• Map the unknown. Name what you don’t understand together. It can be as simple as writing it down and putting it on a shared virtual board everyone has access to. These shared “research questions” turn uncertainty into a starting point rather than something to hide.
• Question assumptions aloud. Take an existing practice and trace it back to its origins by repeatedly asking why it exists. This shared metacognitive process helps surface beliefs that may no longer serve the work.
• Walk while thinking. Discuss open questions while walking with a colleague. Movement and informal settings tend to lower social pressure and make shared exploration feel more natural.
• Experiment with others. Conduct tiny experiments and share what you’re testing even when results are unclear. This is a simple way to invite others into the learning process.
You don’t have to abandon individual thinking. The key is to view it as just one path to insight rather than the only valid path, and to remember that the question you’re afraid to ask may be exactly the question someone else needs to hear.
Tiny Experiment of the Week
Ready to put these ideas into practice? Try this week’s tiny experiment to help you practice thinking together with others:
I will [openly voice my doubts in meetings] for [2 weeks].
This experiment helps normalize curiosity by shifting attention from having answers to exploring together, often leading to insights you would not reach alone. Want to dig deeper? Get your copy of Tiny Experiments.