I don’t think good thinking starts at high confidence. It starts low. All the good stuff comes from wrestling with ideas you only half believe, the ones sitting at a medium or a maybe. If you only ever say the things you’re already sure of, you never get anywhere new.
The problem is that everything around us now pushes the other way. People feel they need to show up with the finished, authoritative take. That pressure kills the wrestling before it starts. What I actually want is permission to say “I’m only sort of sure about this” and keep going anyway, out loud, including to myself.
That’s why I like marking confidence on ideas. It isn’t there to police anyone. It’s there to make it safe to put a low-confidence thought on the table without pretending it’s more than it is.
What helps you say a half-formed idea out loud instead of waiting until it’s bulletproof?