Kahran & Divya on Continuing Projects

Hi, I'm Divya. Hi, I'm Karn. And this is... Thinking. I'm thinking.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Thinking I'm Thinking. This week, Divya and I have a discussion about the podcast. Divya had been sensing in some ways my growing ambivalence with the podcast. And we thought to have a conversation about it. What is it that we get from the podcast?

What do you get from any project as time goes on and your intentions change and the value get changes? And where does that search for finding value and finding a return on the time you're putting in lead you? It was a really fascinating conversation and we can't wait for you to listen to it.

Oh, remember we actually started recording? We started recording two years ago in May. Yeah, I think so. We only started publishing in July, but I think, yeah. It's been two years.

Wow, congratulations. Very topical as well, because if we are, you know, thinking about, hmm, how interested do we feel about the podcast? Well, I wouldn't say interested. I think that's a different thing.

I think what I was thinking about is how the value that you get from something changes over time. So I think we actually have an early podcast episode, maybe in the first season, where we talk about why we're doing this podcast. And one of the things we talk about, or at least I remember talking about,

is how I feel like, you know, hearing yourself and learning to articulate in the way that like, I don't know, you do on a podcast because you only have your like audio to kind of convey your message. You can't use your like hands or your face or your other emotions. So I don't know.

It was very interesting to me, but I feel like as time has gone on, like that has become a skill that I'm more comfortable in saying, at least I'm adept at, if not closer to mastery than I ever was before. Like in communicating how you're feeling and what you're thinking. Yeah, relatively succinctly.

And also just being more cognizant of how I'm communicating, right? I like, I don't think I just use as many filler words as a very like basic example, you know? Well, there was one right there. But yeah, I think great.

Like there's a whole way that as you grow with a project that the value would get from it would change. So I feel like maybe that's just where I am, where I'm trying to understand now, what is the value that I think about as we go into our third year of this podcast? Like, what are we doing it for?

What am I doing it for? What are you doing it for? Hmm. I have like certain affinity with mediums in some ways. Like I like making comics, like that's a medium that feels very appealing to me.

Similarly, I think I like making podcasts. It's a medium that appeals to me. It's a bit more on that side, at least for me, it's a bit more on that side where it's like I don't paint to get something out of the painting because the act of painting itself is valuable and interesting enough to me.

Like it's in the process and not in terms of, oh, every time I'm learning something new in the process and whatnot, like sure, that's happening. But to say it in a very poetic way, how do you live a good day by filling it with things that feel valuable and not in terms of like, am I going to get some future value out of it?

But like, you know, in the doing of it, it feels good. So for example, our last season for me was just like super interesting because I basically had this free excuse to sort of go and like, you know, talk to my friends. Last episode also, I have met Rashmi and like three years ago, two years ago, something like that.

And like, they're just like such fantastic people. And I was like, okay, I'm going to get a chance to sit with them for an hour and just chat with them. For me, just that part of like getting to dig into how are people thinking is interesting enough and valuable enough.

You know, it's funny, because I feel like, as of course, right, my framing, I think is just very different. And I think the thing that changed for me is that I used to just feel like, like more of an adventure, right? Like we were figuring out all these things.

And I don't know, I kind of miss that. And I'm interested why I don't feel that way about having guests. I think the cost to reward ratio has changed. What about it was rewarding to you spending time with you and getting to share that at the world, right?

Because I think there's something really special that we get to do when we're together. And I think it comes from the style of communication that we can like bring out in each other. And I feel like that has been, yeah, like the notion of being able to share that

with other people has just always been really nice to me. So like if we were to go back to our old format of just us talking to each other, would that feel as interesting again? I suspect not. Maybe I would do it with like more, it's funny because my thought was, well,

then we could have guests if we got bored of that, but we could just have them together. We could have our format of like having a podcast of the two of us, but then occasionally we would have guests on our podcast. But it would just be like, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't do them separately. So like to me, there are a couple of stray thoughts that come here.

Okay. One part is that thinking about how do two people interview one person that just feels like power dynamic wise in the conversation that feels off to me. Like one person interviewing multiple people or one person paneling multiple people, moderating multiple people feels okay.

But like multiple people interviewing one person feels like, because we would already have an established a dynamic. And then the person who's coming in, they would have to play our game that actively doesn't feel interesting to me. Well, so I mean, I feel like to me that feels like a problem that could be solved.

Like it would take ingenuity and it would take thinking, but like we would think about what parts of it don't feel right to us and then what parts of it feel okay. And what parts of it do feel right. Right. So as I think about the scenario you were just describing, I think trying to

establish a place where that doesn't feel like that power dynamic, right? It doesn't feel like you're ganging up on someone. And instead it feels like we're maybe somehow creating more space for them to be able to share because we approach things from different facets. That would be like an interesting challenge to me to be like, how do you help

that be available to people? And I think like if there's anyone I could do it with, it would be you because I feel like I could do that, right? But I feel like I would need the kind of partner that I would be able to be able to kind of achieve that with.

And I guess the idea of it like being an established game, if you will, it doesn't feel that bad to me because it means that people would know what they were getting into a little bit, right? Like if we had a thing that we were kind of known for, maybe like we were a space for people to kind of share these stories that were the back stories to how they

made the decisions that they did, which I feel like you kind of did last week with the Sea Rats, right? You helped them see, you know, where do they draw the privacy lines? Where do they think about what is available for people to comment on and what is private for us?

And where do we lean into what makes us happy? And I think like those are all the stories you don't really get to see when you're in the public eye. Like what people see is just what you present and they don't understand what are the decisions there.

So I don't know, like if maybe that was the like the thing that our podcast was known for, that we kind of created these spaces, that wouldn't feel terrible to me, even if it was kind of somewhat predictable. I'm struggling sort of like separating out how I feel about it from if it would be a good idea, right?

Like those two might not be the same thing. Like because I don't feel like I like it. You know, sometimes when you don't like something and your brain throws like hundred different reasons at you. Did it happen to you ever?

Were you like ever on a podcast that you felt ganged up on? Just out of curiosity? No. Okay. So do you think you've seen it though and like some that you've heard and you've

like been like, this is a dynamic that I don't appreciate in some ways. So there is this podcast that I listen to two people from the Love is Blind franchise called Out of the Pots. And like, you know, generally they talk to each other. They might like, you know, talk about their lives or the new seasons or like,

you know, other things, but sometimes they would have like folks from the franchise or from like, you know, other reality shows. I don't know, like it doesn't really feel like it adds too much to have both of them there. To me, it feels like an interview would have been better because then

suddenly they are sharing their own stories of like, you know, how they reacted in that situation or how they saw it or like, it's like contrast or like, you know, there we'll push back on you, right? Because I think there you have to think about your experiences with me.

And like, I'm actually thinking the more close parallel in my mind at least is like selling with you, right? That I do feel like we have built a good dynamic in being able to kind of communicate together an idea or in some ways, you know, when we are trying to sell, especially in our line of business, we're trying to understand first.

So first we're trying to extract information from the person. What is it that they're really looking for? What's going to make this project successful? And then we're trying to communicate an idea together, right? Like, I feel like it's a certain dynamic that you build over time.

And I think in our case, we have spent time building it. Like sometimes I've thought about it, especially not as much as the interview season went on, but early on where I was like, oh, I wonder what kind of questions they'd be able to ask here. I definitely like this idea of like picking up a hard problem and discussing

it on the podcast without knowing like what both of us are thinking about it. No, I don't know. Like I also find it interesting because like in most cases, people don't do meta commentary on the work that they are doing as they are doing it. And like I've always been super interested in meta commentary.

Like right now I'm just commenting on us discussing the podcast together, right? It's just very interesting. Like even games that have developer commentary modes and stuff, I always find them much more interesting than like games that don't have that. Like I always feel like I learned so much about the game from the creators

because I have like a sneak peek into how they were thinking about it. Like nobody can encapsulate everything that they are thinking when they are making something. At least this part is like super interesting to me to talk about, okay, what would be the pros and what would be the cons?

I think like that was also interesting for me when I was interviewing the CRATs. They were able to sort of talk about their process in a much more tangible way than like a lot of people would be able to with their creative work. I don't know.

It's always very tempting to look at somebody's work and be like, oh my God, they just made all of this and it's just like, you know, one day magically popped out of them, but like it doesn't, you know, like you sort of slow down. You know, like you sort of slowly build up everything and like you slowly learn each and every tiny piece of it.

And so much thinking goes into it. Like there's a reason why most podcasts end after like 20 episodes, right? Like there's some 90% or 95% podcasts that end before reaching 20 episodes because it's like hard to continue going on. Well, I was going to comment on that part before you moved on.

So I feel like if I had been with you last week, I think I might have pushed them more a little bit on how they don't feel trapped into their roles over time because it just occurred to me, right? That at least I don't know if I was into those kind of things where we'd start to carve out very distinct roles.

Well, you know, what if I am still want to have this creative expression and now, you know, if I'm an island that I don't get to have that place anymore? Cause now I've said that this is your area. And it's just been something that's always, I've struggled with whenever I know about couples or partners who really do these strict boundaries and say, like,

you know, this is my area and I work on this and this is your area and you work on that. It's just very curious to me. So I don't know. I mean, just to give you a sense, right? Like I feel like if I had been there with you, maybe we would have had the conversation go a little bit more in that direction.

But I just don't think we have the personalities that would make someone feel ganged up on. I think. Yeah, but like individual units versus system behavior both are different. Yeah, but that's like saying one plus one equals two. But in this case, it's like person plus person doesn't always equal.

Right? Like maybe, you know, we're very high in empathy and very low in aggression. And so together we're like a normal level of aggression person, but we're like the empathy of like three people, you know, we are like, but if he had much more empathy, I don't know. Like I feel like my instinct is to say we can experiment with it and we can see like how that pans out. That's how I feel about it.

Thank you. That feels very exciting. And a little bit of a relief actually, right? And I think part of the relief parts comes from much as I know it's not entirely my responsibility. I feel a responsibility to kind of help people tell their stories when they come on to my podcast, our podcast, right?

And I feel like it's just like a burden, right? Sometimes I think about some of my episodes where I like, oh, I didn't get to help people see the person behind the person. And I think it's really exciting when we're able to do that. And I don't know. So sometimes I guess it feels nice to have someone to share that burden with versus feeling like that's something I have to carry entirely by myself.

It's so interesting. I don't think that I think about all of these things when I'm making the thing. That's what I mean. Also, I think by like the process is fun for me because I feel like at least for me, it's a lot more in the play space than in the we are doing something serious kind of space.

Sure, the publishing and the transcripts and the putting it out there and editing and like all of that or setting up like all of that is like less play space. But like just the conversation, even when it is a serious conversation, it's quite in the play space for me. I feel I've gotten into it sometimes in our conversations, but this may be one of the first ones I feel like has entirely felt that way for the whole conversation. I think it's kind of just an evolution of myself also and my feelings about work and how for a long time I think I kind of approached work in a way where I didn't make that much space for play, excepted very like small, discreet chunks when I felt it was appropriate.

I don't know. I wonder if my feelings might change if I thought about it more in that space. I'm happy to also experiment with that notion. Maybe as I think about guests for this season, I think you probably mentioned our first episode, but you know, we're thinking about co-founders and thinking about people who have built things together because it's such a different experience than building something alone.

Maybe I can think about them more from like who would it feel playful and fun, unless who would it feel like it's like a great story for people to hear. At least for me, it takes the flavor of like curiosity. Curiosity about me knowing it. Like so I don't know if I showed you, but like recently I worked on these artworks with like macrame thread. Like I just stick the thread in like a sort of thing and it made some abstract thing.

Sure, great content for an audio medium that you talk about a painting. But for me, the final outcome is like sure, whatever, you know, it's something the fun is in exploring the medium for myself. Like I wonder how thread behaves with this thing in this situation is the thought in my mind. You know what I mean? I think the only thing in my life I approach that way right now is plants.

I was trying to think of anything really. Well, you really are taking the work hard part of work hard play art quite seriously. Yeah, because I don't even like even in my poetry or my writing, I don't really experiment with that kind of thing, right? Where I'm like, oh, I wonder what it would feel like just to like change the form in this way just to see. Right. It's more like I'm like, oh, this piece has a has a form that's correct for it and you know, we'll help it show its form.

I guess I did just take a drawing class really for fun, which was kind of fun. It was it was very entertaining actually. Some of my classmates were like, dude, the workshops are so tough. You should do the weekly classes because those are only once a week. So it's not like every day or like, but those will be like two and a half months and I'm like, oh my goodness, it's a long time.

That's a lot. I'm glad we talked about it though, because I feel like this is already making me feel less ambivalent about the podcast because I think I'm addressing kind of what was making me feel both a higher cost and feel like I wasn't getting as much of a reward. But I think you also gave me an interesting framing, which is like maybe just think about what I'm trying to do with it. If I can think of it as a more playful space that also feels like a reasonable path to me. And I also feel like since I've been doing those bug logs for context, I've been doing these daily bug logs for like 200 plus days now I'm going to go for 500 ever since I've been doing that.

It's interesting like my tendency to want to make mistakes is also higher. That's too funny. It's like some days I'm just disappointed that I'm like I have no bug to write. What is this? I need to do something different tomorrow. It's such a weird thing, but like it sort of has seeped into every part of my life. Like things feel lower cost now.

I was recently talking about this with my therapist as well. Like I had told her that maybe we should discuss my relationship with success. And she was like, I don't think so. But like, okay, we can like, you know, talk about it. The next time I went, I was like, I don't think I have a problem with success. I think I have a problem with disappointment. And she was like, great, I am really glad that you arrived at that yourself.

And it was really interesting because it's not even failure, right? Like it is disappointment. And like as a perpetual optimist, how are you going to live with the absence of hope? Like that feels so scary. Do characterize yourself as a perpetual optimist? Yeah.

I didn't know that I knew that. Oh, I think I have like a nihilistic optimism view of the world. Like nothing matters. And so, oh my God, nothing matters. I could actually do whatever I want. I guess I'm obviously an optimist. I just had never really thought to characterize myself that way. It's interesting. What? What did you think you were a realist or a pessimist? I hope you didn't think you were a pessimist.

No, I mean, obviously not. Yeah, I guess I feel like I would have thought of myself more as a realist with some optimistic flavors. But sure. No, but I feel like this is very different from like, you know, what we were talking about. But like, I don't think realism sort of gives you as many divergent thoughts as optimism does. Like to go in uncharted territory, you need to be an optimist.

And I think like if you are creative, then by nature, you have to be an optimist. Like as in if you not creative as a job, but creative as a value of how you live your life. Like then you have like optimism just has to come with it because like why would you find new things? Unless you were thinking that, oh, new thing could be exciting, interesting, curious, worth discovering, worth exploring. I wonder if pessimists are more likely to feel stuck in life.

Like if those kinds of mentalities go hand in hand or like life is happening to them, maybe correlated. I don't know if they go exactly hand in hand. Optimism is more correlated with higher sense of autonomy. I mean, that's why you would also at least like I have seen it amongst my friends, like some of the very high autonomy friends who are naturally more angled towards being depressed. It's very interesting because they're always in like this constant inner mental battle because a part of them wants to be really optimistic about the world and they want to invest in it.

But like also they're like, you know, neurochemistry is just like, but how about you don't? It's such a struggle to be in that situation. I'm sure you can also think of many people like that. Yeah. I was thinking about what you were saying though.

I feel like what has made things lower stakes for me has been identifying what my drivers are and what makes something feel higher stakes. Like for example, I realized recently that I made a new friend who I like connected with on a more spiritual level and there hadn't been anyone who I kind of connected with in that way for a long time. And so I realized part of what was making this feel so high stakes for me when we would hang out was like, oh, I value this relationship so much. But part of why I was valuing it so much is because it was also reflection on how I was valuing that part of myself. And I think that realization just helped me realize like, oh, this is the part that's making this feel so high stakes.

So how can I then do other things to make sure that I feel that part of myself is still validated? Which I don't know. It's a very different framing than what you were kind of saying. I guess it kind of depends on what makes things feel high stakes for you. I also feel like a lot of these things are at least like in the way our mind works.

A lot of these things are also like, if you figure out one route to solve it. In most cases, it is good enough. And then you just need to go down that route. For the longest time I used to use that 1010 pointer scale to sort of assess, is this a very difficult thing? Do I need to invest my energy so much?

People do it also. Will I care about this tomorrow? Will I care about it in a week? Will I care about it in a year? Will I care about it in a decade?

That's also the same scale that like exponentially increasing time scale. Do you actually care about what is happening? And that is a very good way of emotionally balancing things as well. If something works for you, you can just use it. Yeah.

It's interesting to me because I finally found a meditation practice and the facilitator wasn't really teaching us a visualization based practice. But I don't know, I have this visualization very much centered around the forest that I grew up in, which have this really interesting rejuvenation model. Because it's a perpetually wet environment, it's very much fungus driven. So things will fall and then the funguses are very active and will help trees just decompose very quickly. It's different than a fire driven ecosystem, which is very common outside of the Pacific Northwest on the Western part of the United States.

Anyway, so just like these visualizations around the forest and there's a term for these stumps that they're called like mother trees or mother stumps or something, something like this. Because what they do is they give an elevated platform for a tree to grow so that it will get light and it won't be covered by all of the underbrush and foliage. So basically by like having a stump that is lifted from the ground, the next generation of tree is able to kind of be born and grow and part of the forest. I think just like reflecting on that is just a meditative practice that I can bring to like most situations. And it's very interesting to me because I've tried so many other practices, right?

Like numbers and like chakra visualizations and all sorts. And somehow that really never resonated. But here, something just kind of did and now I'm just like happy, right? Like I'm like, I don't need to keep chasing more practices. I can be satisfied with this one, which I think kind of connects with what you're saying.

I think once you find a way to kind of connect with yourself or ground yourself, that's really what you need regardless of how many tools there are. This is also making me think of so like there are a couple of really popular writing books like Bird by Bird by Anne Lamar and on writing by Stephen King. And oftentimes on Twitter, there would be these people who would be like, Oh, another white man's book, another white woman's book. Oh, I didn't like this part and I didn't like that part. And I find it very interesting how like as a cultural thing, we are so primed for trying to find universal solutions.

Like even when you were saying that like, you know, we should try and do like, you know, both of us are interviewing a person. My brain was just like, but that's not how interviews happen. Like interview is one person interviewing multiple people at best, right? Like one person, one person is the format, but like, you know, and it's just interesting, right? Because most of the times like what we do is not what would be considered a format because we just pick up and we talk, right?

Like people would have like some structure, they would be like, okay, these are the questions that we do and then we do this and then we do this and then we do this. Maybe that will help us increase our readers listeners or something like that. But I don't know, it's just like, at least to me, it's just interesting that oftentimes with formats, just like with art forms, you have to just find the one that works for you. And then you just like go with that. I don't know. I just feel like in our case, it's easier for me to reach insightful places when we are in discussion.

And I think that that would happen even if we are interviewing someone. So I understand what you're saying, right? Like I understand what you're saying about the form and how the form has a practice. And yeah, it's just, it's just how those, those don't matter to me as much in this situation. It's interesting that I don't feel like necessarily like I'm being playful with the form, but it just feels like it's not as much of a, as much of a consideration as I often approach things.

It just feels like that we'll be able to make something better together. And it'll be so satisfying because it'll be so much more enjoyable. Yeah, and I wasn't saying that like there has to be like this particular format. It's just interesting that like, you know, your brain tends to at least like my brain tends to like, you know, do that. Like, oh, there is a thing it is like, you know, you just you're doing it.

And it's also that like, I am not particularly finding any issues with the current format. So it's a lot easier for me to like, you know, think that, uh, Why change what works? Yeah, the same thing that like, you know, you said that if there is a solution that works for you, then you don't really go out and search for another.

It's also fair to go out and search for another because like it might work for me, but like if it's not working for us, then it's not working. That's what I was just thinking about that. I wonder how much that influences just like accessibility choices and you know, even like diversity choices where it's like, oh, you know, we built a system that worked for our company in a certain way. And then, you know, maybe we hired people without the same shared background or shared context, but we forgot that maybe we need to build different systems because now we have different kinds of people. Hmm.

Very true. And ignorance not necessarily nefarious in time. Time is happy when I can't find ignorance explanations. All complacency. It's not even ignorance here, right?

Like it's just complacency. Here's an interesting thing I was thinking about this morning. Whether there is deliberate cruelty would exist without people having been hurt by indifference originally. Like I feel like indifference, like indifferent cruelty can breed this can breed this need for cruelty in people who have been hurt. But was that a cycle that always began at some point with indifference or, you know, just not having a presence or attention in a moment where someone needed presence and attention from you?

Or is there like an actual deliberate cruelty that can exist without having there been some kind of trauma traumatic event that kind of helped formulate this? I would imagine that there would be some people like there would be some combination of nature and nurture where even if the nurture component is really low, the nature component is high enough on that factor that it would lead to deliberate cruelty regardless. Like there are kids, for example, who, you know, these stories of people who become serial killers and like, you know, they used to kill pets and like birds and even when they were super young, they would dismantle their toys or whatever. Again, I don't know how much like, you know, substantial research there is on the subject. So like that part, I don't really know like the validity of but still I just feel like there would be something there.

I was just thinking, isn't that the premise of the show Dexter? Do you remember Dexter? Yeah. Right. That he's like was a serial killer and his father tries to raise him to be like a good serial killer because he was going to be a serial killer anyway. Yeah. But also that's the show. We know from Hollywood.

Exactly. Okay. So on that note, maybe next time we can try and interview people together. Oh, you feel we could change mid season? Heaven forbid. Sure. I mean, like we have just started. We don't need to wait for like, you know, 12 episodes.

That's interesting. Okay. Yeah, we can think about it. Let's see. We'll keep you in suspense, our dear listeners. What we will decide. The music is by Akshay Ramu Halli of BTRPT music. Editing is by Beatnik.