Stop Asking "What Do You Think?" - The Hidden Cost of Outsourcing Your Thinking

Why Am I Doing the Thinking for You?

I got a Slack message the other week, just "What do you think?" with a link to a Notion document. No context or indication of what this person actually believed. Just a link and a question mark.

I stared at it for a minute, trying to decide if I was annoyed or just tired (both, probably).

What's this message is actually saying is: "I haven't figured this out yet and I'd like you to do the thinking for me."

That sounds harsh, but it's true. When you ask someone "what do you think?" without sharing what you think, you're not collaborating, but more like outsourcing? You're taking all the work you should have done (reading and understanding the doc, weighing the trade-offs, forming an opinion) and dumping it on someone else's lap.

It looks like a question, but it's more like a task assignment. And yes, I've done this too. We all have. It feels polite. You're inviting input! Except that's not really what's going on.

What's usually going on is one of two things:

You didn't read/understand the freaking document, or… You did read it and have an opinion about it, but don't want to commit to it. What if you're wrong? What if someone more senior disagrees? What if you look like you don't know what you're doing?

Framing it as a question feels safer. So you wrap it in a question and let someone else take the risk.

Both are problematic in the same way, because you're literally creating work for someone else. Now they have to: understand the context, think through the options, make a judgment call, and put their name on it. That's a lot of cognitive work to offload onto someone because you didn't want to stake a position.

And it slows everything down. How many threads are open right now at your company's Slack because of this? Everyone asking questions, everyone waiting. Dozens of replies, somehow ending with less clarity than the thread started with.

Let me you show the better way.

Don't: "Hey, what do you think about the API versioning approach?"

Do: "Been looking at this, I think we should go with REST. The team knows it, latency isn't tight enough to justify gRPC, and GraphQL feels like overkill for three endpoints. Going to start on this Friday unless you see something I'm missing."

That second message has everything:

A clear recommendation with reasoning

The alternatives you considered and why you ruled them out

A deadline that assumes approval unless someone objects

It transforms "help me think" into "check my thinking." One creates work. The other respects people's time.

Some people worry this comes across as overstepping. Like they're being presumptuous by having opinions. I used to think this too. Turns out, it's backwards. People don't want to do your thinking for you (what a surprise!). They want to react to something concrete.

Give them a position and they can say "sounds good" in two seconds or push back with specifics. Give them a vague question and they have to do a bunch of work before they can even respond.

Reducing ambiguity is one of the most valuable things you can do on a team. And one of the simplest ways to do it is to just… say what you think. Even when you're not sure. Even when you might be wrong.

"But what if I don't have enough context to have an opinion?"

Then say that. "I don't have full visibility here, but based on what I know, I'd lean toward X, does that match what you're seeing?"

Still a position, still doing some of the work, still way better than a naked question. A clear position gives people something to rally around or push back against. That's how decisions actually get made, fast.

Next time you're about to type "what do you think?", stop. Figure out what you think first. Write that instead. Add your reasoning, your alternatives, and an assumed path forward. You're not being pushy (even in Canada), you're doing your job.

It feels a little more exposed. A little more on the line. But that's what moving things forward actually looks like.

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