The Craft of Having Opinions

There’s a quality I’ve come to value in the people I enjoy working with or learning from: they have opinions. Not in the sense of always being certain or needing to win arguments, but in the quieter sense of having spent enough time thinking and observing that they’ve developed a view on things. When someone has that, conversations tend to have more substance and decisions feel a little less like they’re being made in the dark. It’s not a loud trait, but it’s noticeable and I think it makes a difference.

What I’ve realised over time is that this ability to hold opinions isn’t simply a matter of confidence or personality. It’s something that grows out of a wider posture toward the world. You can almost see the layers: curiosity, exposure, taste, reflection and the willingness to articulate a thought even when it’s imperfect. The more I think about the kind of people I’d want to collaborate with, whether on a team now or possibly in something I might build in the future, the more I find myself drawn to people who have taken the time to cultivate that inner landscape.

I think a big part of forming opinions starts with the kind of input you expose yourself to. It might be reading, or listening to long-form conversations, or watching talks, or even just paying attention to the projects people put into the world. Whatever the medium, the act of ranging widely into topics you don’t “need” for work and even into areas you barely understand ... builds a kind of mental reservoir. Ideas from one field sit quietly next to ideas from another and eventually they start talking to each other. Something you encountered months ago, which felt random at the time, ends up shaping the way you interpret a situation later. Even the things you end up disagreeing with are useful, because they force you to clarify your own reasons for leaning another way.

But breadth alone doesn’t fully explain it. There’s also something about taste, which is hard to define but easy to recognise once it’s there. Taste is essentially an internal sense of quality ... your own sense of what feels right, elegant, durable or meaningful. It gets shaped, often indirectly, by the people whose work you admire. Sometimes you can name them; other times you just know that a certain style or approach resonated with you. Over time, these impressions accumulate and start guiding the way you evaluate ideas. They turn raw exposure into something more refined. You don’t just see options; you start to sense which ones align with the kind of world you believe is worth building.

There’s also a cognitive element to all of this, though not in the strict IQ sense. It’s more about synthesis, the ability to gather pieces from different places and slowly form them into a coherent view. Some people are naturally inclined to do this; others grow into it through practice. What matters is the habit of paying attention, of asking “why?” a little more often than necessary, of not being satisfied with vague explanations. When you’re around people like this, you notice how their opinions help a group navigate uncertainty. They don’t necessarily have the final answer, but they offer starting points, constraints and perspectives that keep things moving. And when I imagine the kind of team I’d like to build one day, it’s very much filled with people who bring that sort of thoughtful structure.

It's worth mentioning that opinions don’t have to be shared to matter, but when they are brought into a group, the way they’re expressed shapes how useful they become. This is where EQ shows up in a very practical way. Some people hold strong views but express them in ways that shut down discussion. Others are so cautious that they never contribute anything substantial. Somewhere between those extremes is the person who can say, “Here’s what I’m thinking and here’s why ... but I’m open to being wrong”. They can disagree without it becoming personal and they can change their mind without losing conviction. They make it easier for others to offer their own thoughts, because their posture communicates that the goal is understanding, not winning.

When you put all of this together ... the wide exposure, the gradual shaping of taste, the cognitive willingness to synthesise and the emotional maturity to express ideas constructively ... you end up with someone whose opinions are genuinely helpful. Not because they are always correct, but because they make the process of thinking together more grounded, more honest and more generative. These are the people who help conversations progress rather than circle endlessly. They help teams make decisions with a little more clarity. And they help shape a culture where thoughtfulness is valued over certainty.

Cultivating opinions, in this sense, really is a kind of craft. It’s not about trying to seem authoritative, but about doing a number of quiet things that don’t always look connected at first; exposing yourself widely enough to gather material, admiring deeply enough to shape taste and thinking actively enough to form a view that can continue to mature over time.