In the interlude before starting Season 4, we pull ep 16 from the archive this week. There's some interesting ideas about how to think about sightless, how vignettes shape your experience, and, as always, the role of expectations in outcomes.
We weren't quite as good at editing or audio production back then, but rest assured, Akshay, our sound engineer, will be back for Season 4!
What I first notice about a space is where you're being told to move. How are people expected to move through the space, and how clear and successful is that?
Everyone was funneled through two detectors and then went straight up the stairs, while fifteen empty ticket machines sat unused. Design created a queue where there didn't need to be one.
Hello, and welcome to a special edition episode of Thinking on Thinking. As we get ready to start our fourth season in two weeks, we're playing a special episode from the archives. This was an episode when Divya was struggling with how to think about designing spaces and comes from our second season, when we weren't quite as adept at podcasting as we like to
believe we are now. We hope you enjoy it and looking forward to seeing you with season four in two weeks. Hi, I'm Kahran. Hi, I'm Divya and welcome to the sixteenth episode of Thinking on Thinking. Today we dive deep into a singular problem statement.
I generally have had a lot of resistance towards designing spaces, especially the spaces that I live in and our conversation went into how I can change that mental model, what would be required for that and how I can think about spaces. It was a very action-oriented conversation, but not action in terms of what you are doing, but how you are changing thinking about what you are doing.
It was a really fun conversation for both of us, something quite different from what we have done till now. And I hope you enjoy it. So as I think about our lives and the space that we have at now, we, like Gaurav and I like to hang out after dinner.
We like to hang out in the morning before he goes to work. He likes to practice flute. I like to work and all of those four activities need to ideally happen in this space, like in our living, like dining space. And because I think some of those activities are not as well supported and certain activities
are more easily supported, we default to certain activities, right? So we end up watching TV after dinner because it's easy. Gaurav doesn't practice flute that much because it's kind of difficult now. His flute used to be on the counter, but I put it away because there was so much stuff on the counter now.
And since I put it away, he hasn't actually taken it out because it's not there to remind him. It's just a little bit more work, right? And in the mornings, we kind of end up standing around because there's not an obvious place for us to either sit and be able to chat with each other or stand and talk to each other.
And just the space, again, because we have a marble countertop in the kitchen, we have to put something on it before you put your plates down. And then because you have to put table mats out, you just end up kind of standing and eating because it's just one thing leads to another. So that's how I kind of think about it.
There's a different part, which I mean, you could kind of call it aesthetic, but I feel like it's just like, is this space meeting all of the functional needs? And I feel like you have to do, it does take sort of some, the reason why I don't think aesthetic is totally wrong because it does take some sort of that kind of thinking to be like, oh, what are the needs even of the space?
And then, you know, how does the space maybe match and fit to those? No, that makes a lot of sense because I feel like you did something very interesting there. You expanded the definition of functional because initially when you started saying your, like, when you started your statement, I was like, yeah, but my space also meets my functional needs because it has everything that, like everything is assigned to a function.
We can do this here, we can do that here, we can do that here. But just the way you were describing, it became a little more behaviour in some sense. Like, what kind of behaviours would we like to cultivate? Like, that word probably I'm not thinking about. Yeah, and I think that's the part that I really focus on when I think about spaces.
Like, that's where I think we got to a good enough space with the place I live in in Megalore, where like, yeah, people did kind of, they behaved in the way we wanted them to, frankly, right? Like, people stopped walking into the kitchen when they would come into our house, they would kind of sit down, they felt flowed outside. And as you said, like, the outdoors is a beautiful part of the home, so it, like,
it just, the behaviours were nice. And it became kind of obvious where we would have coffee in the morning and like, where we'd hang out. Hmm, this is very interesting. I haven't thought about it like that because it's almost like, it's almost like you divided the experiential from the aesthetic and you're saying that, like, the functional and the aesthetic meet together somewhere in the middle.
And then something else gets added and that builds the experiential component of, like, whatever the space is. It's actually this interesting idea that I think early listeners of our podcast, and I remember, but I'm working on a short story with one of my childhood friends. One of the ideas that we use in the story around how magic works is when something
has happened in a space for a long time, that it leaves echoes of that in that space. So like, if, you know, there was a large body of water or people like, you know, gathered every year for a fair or something, all was in that same space, that then there would be some, like, some of that, once the behavior happened there for a long time, there would be some remnants of it going forward. Anyway, you just reminded me of it when you were
mentioning that there was this intersection. That also reminded me of, like, as you were describing this, you know about walk hate, which like literally translates to breath of the walk. No, oh, I do. Yes, yes, yes. But go on. Right? So like, it almost sounds like that, right? Like the idea that you said spaces hold
the experience. Walk hate is literally that. Like, the walk holds the breath, like the breath of everything that has been made in it till now. And like, it becomes more rich and complex with that. Yeah. So there's a food blogger who I really like named Kenji Lopez, and he recently read a book called The Walk. And so in the introduction, he talks about this concept. I forgot about it until you mentioned it just now. Yeah. You should follow him. I love his food. He's always just
like doing exciting things, eating exciting things. He's in Mexico right now. He's just like eating the coolest stuff. And I'm just like, and he just like seems like a really lovely guy. Okay. So now like, let's say my initial resistance towards the idea of making my space nicer for the lack of a better term is reduced. Like I can feel less resistance towards it right now because it makes more sense to make something more experientially conducive.
Then try to just check. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's the thing about it. But then like where I would go with that is like, now I don't have the right heuristics for how to solve for a space because I'm a visual designer. I can think about what looks nice and what doesn't look nice because I've done experience design. I can think about what would feel nice and what wouldn't feel nice. But I don't think I have enough
of a framework to like sort of work it together. It's almost like it would need like there is a recipe to make places feel nice or there's a way of understanding how to make spaces feel nice. And I don't have that. Like that's like that's the thought that comes to my mind right now. Oh, so you feel like it's like, like more of like an algorithmic problem? Like where there are steps that you can follow to
Okay, no, I use the wrong word. I don't mean to use the word recipe. I would, I think what I was internally thinking about was how if I want to make something Indian, I don't need a recipe for it. I understand how Indian cooking works. So I don't need the proportions. I don't need, oh, this is how exactly I need to make this thing because I have an overall understanding of the thing. Right. And I feel like there would be some analogous thing. So like it's not a like it's
not an algorithmic problem. It's a heuristical one. But I feel like there would be some set of heuristics that I could build up. And right now my table feels empty. I feel like when you say like an algorithmic versus heuristical problem, you have a frame reference that I don't know if I share completely. Okay, in my mind, problems can be complex or they can be complicated. An example of a complex problem would be I don't know making a like, you know, 40 step dish or
building a car or building a rocket engine. Right? Like it's complicated in the sense that the first time you do it, it's going to be hard. But after that, you can like with a very reasonable reliability, you can just reproduce the same result. So the first time you have to figure it out, but then as you keep doing it again and again, you can as long as you follow the steps correctly, you're going to get reasonably reliable results. Like if you have figured out our recipe to make some
really good dish, if you can recreate the recipe, you can recreate the dish. I would argue that's true of almost everything, right? Because like in the example I give you, it's like, like, I'm not very good at balancing. So whenever I'm learning a new sort of balancing posture or like trying to balance on top of a ball or something, the first like set or exercises, it will struggle with completely. But then it'll just get much better. So by the third
set, like I'll usually be able to like, like balance completely well, right? But if you had 10 kids, by the 10th kid, you are no like you're not going to be way better or find it way easier to raise a kid. And that is an example of a complex, like complicated problem. There is no recipe for raising a kid. There are certain things that you should be doing, right? There are certain things that you should be avoiding. Same as with making friends. You have
made a lot of friends. I've made a lot of friends, but I can't give someone a step by step guide to reliably make friends. I have some ideas around how can I nudge the system into the direction. Let's say, let's just keep going down the route of friendship. If I'm meeting someone and I'm interested in them, I have certain things that I know. Oh, if I do this, it makes more likely that we're going to be friends. And if I do that, it makes it less likely that we're going to be
friends. But it nothing ensures. Like if I have a good recipe, I can be 95% sure that I'm going to turn a good dish. And with like friendship, the best case I'm hoping for is like 55%. Same is true for like building companies. You could have built a company before and you will have better systems for thinking about things. But at least like in my experience, complicated problems, you feel more confidence about them because you know what questions to ask, but you
don't really know the answers. The answers are very subjective. But interesting because I think you amass a set of knowledge that you feel like you know. I was telling you before we started recording that the last episode of the Knowledge Project I was listening to. Shane is talking to this gentleman who's sharing this mission that like as companies know more and more, then they start to feel like they've solved more and more of the problem. And then the room for innovation
becomes less and less. And it's just kind of a tendency that happens. And then you tend to that company will tend to buy it acquire a company because that company is doing innovation, but then they apply their processes. And then that company gets absorbed and then the cycle begins again. So it's an interesting thing, I think what you're saying that when we start to move into algorithmic solutions to things. I think that we like sometimes yes, it's like you're saying that there's an
there's like a recipe to be followed. But even when there's a recipe to be followed, that recipe is dependent upon certain external factors, right? The most obvious example is like when you bake, it's dependent on what altitude you're at, like otherwise the recipe can be dramatically different. And I think people forget just that that once you have an algorithmic solution, it's dependent upon external factors as well. And if those external factors change, then you have to look at it again
as needing a heuristic sort of a heredistic problem, needing a different kind of solution. Yeah, I also think that like certain problems, if you break them down into smaller pieces, sure, you can find algorithmic parts to it. But it's a folly to think that it ever becomes an algorithmic problem just because you've broken it down into smaller and more manageable pieces doesn't mean that the like the complicatedness of the problem has changed. Yeah. So back to the idea of like,
I don't understand spaces in that passion. Like I don't think that I have even the markers around which I could start building heuristics. But you relate to spaces very differently. So like, let's go to that question. When you enter a space, how do you think about it? How do you feel about it? Like what other spaces that you generally gravitate towards? What do you not? What thoughts you easily evaluate and what you don't? Lately, I just moved from Bangalore to New York. And,
you know, there's a lot of transport involved in that, right? So a lot of spending time in airports and like kind of lobbies and receptions. We've also been like hanging out with some of our friends. And I know that tends to be in restaurants. And so I would say that those spaces like tend to be places where you're trying to move people into certain activities. And that will usually be what I first kind of noticed about a space is like how where are you being told to move to? How is it?
How what is the movement within the space? Right? Like how are people expected to move through the space? And how clear and successful is that? Right? And I think depending on the space, it can mean different things like, you know, how easy is it to find your way to someone's apartment? How can you find the bathroom without asking anyone? Do you know where to go just kind of instinctively? Or often just examples of a space that's well designed where they've given you markers
that you're not having to consciously think about. For example, in the MoMA right now where I was earlier this week, they've clearly added a sort of security check a little bit ahead of where you used to walk in. So it's just really interesting because what it's done is it's changed the way people enter into the building because now you go through these kind of detector thingies and then if the detector goes off, then only do they look at your bag. Otherwise, you can just like walk
straight in. So they're there, I think the purpose of it is they're having to look at less people's bags. But the net result is everyone is walking through these two detectors. And this is an entrance that has maybe 10 doors across of which they've kept two doors for exiting. So everyone's coming in through these doors but then being funneled in through these two detectors. And then because of that, you're they're cutting off to the left. There's a section for overflow ticketing so people
can buy their own tickets on these machines. And everyone is instead going straight and up the stairs and then to join the line. And so there's a queue to get tickets and there's about like 15 empty electric electronic machines where you could be getting your tickets. And so that was just interesting to me, right? Because I was like, Oh, I understand how this could have happened and how this wouldn't have happened in the design. But now because of this like a kind of additive component, now you've
changed the flow of people through the building. See, that is the kind of thing that I find like that is the kind of thing that scares me when I think about making a space better. Why? Because it's such a complex thing. So for example, I went to the Kochi Biennale this weekend. And they had a bunch of different venues. I think I went to like some six or seven different venues. It was very interesting how different. So for example, they had like they had these main venues
and they had some satellite venues, which were like, not as high, I guess. And the interesting thing was because it was really hot and the satellite venues did not have the kind of money, there wasn't air conditioning in those like there wasn't even a single room which would have air conditioning. It wasn't like any of the venues fully air conditioned, but there were some rooms which had air conditioning. And I just found myself feeling way more harshly critical of the artwork.
Oh, that's really interesting. Like because I was just like, oh, this is too hot. I'm feeling uncomfortable. I don't want to be here. And so I was just less open to the art in those places. There were some artworks which would probably not as deep or as meaningful, but because it was cooler there, I just felt nicer and I'm aware of this bias. Like as I am doing this, I'm still aware. Oh my God, I'm not liking this because I'm feeling hot right now. And this is not aesthetic. This is
just very purely functional. But I'm sure when they were designing and of course they have designed it for across months, air conditioning was probably not needed till last month. But now that it's getting so hot, my brain was just could not think beyond that. And like that's such a small thing. But I know that when you're a curator, you're probably not thinking about that. You are thinking about the space in many ways, but probably not thinking how are people going to be moving between
these spaces? Is it going to be hot? Is it going to be windy? What happens when somebody's coming here in the evening, in the morning? Are they hungry? Have they eaten? Like how far is this thing? Like you're probably not thinking about all of those things. But when you're designing us, like when you're a person experiencing the space, you feel all of those things. I don't know. I would say that it is possible to think about those things, right? Like in the moment
again, like the first thing you see when you enter is there's a cafe, and then there's a space to sit down. So like immediately, right, you know, and then there's also a bathroom, right? So immediately, you know, once you're inside, like where the things you might need immediately are, right, like you can get some sustenance, you can take a little rest. And like the first exhibit is actually there's there's a projection in this whole like atrium area, which has an indoor and outdoor
component. So like it's a really lovely space. So you can even feel like you're, you're experiencing some art, you're like taking a little rest, and then you kind of can gather yourself to move forward. I don't know. I think it's just a question of really thinking about behavior, right? Like it's knowing like especially MoMA, like they know it's so many foreign tourists, they have a bunch of museums they want to see in the day. It's not their first rodeo. You know, I think I remember
there was like, it was in our lifetimes, they moved into that space, like it was with great fanfare. I can't quite remember when. How do you think about it? What do you mean? Okay, I'll give a side example. But recently I was talking to someone who was telling me, oh, I just can't make art. I don't have the artistic thing. I just don't have there's something that artists need that I don't have. And she was referring to like a skill of the hand. And I asked her, can you write with your
hand? Like can you hand write? And she was like, of course I can. And I was like, when you have all the spine motor control that is needed, what you probably don't know is how to see. And when you learn how to see, you learn how to draw. So I feel like that's a bit of a no. That is true for all art forms. When you learn how to observe, you learn how to write way better. When you learn how to listen to things properly, you get better at music. Especially when you're thinking about
constructing things from scratch, you can copy things. Sure, you can do road learning and copy things. But at least in my experience, all art forms require observation. Like doing good quality input is a reliable way of having good quality output. It's just like, you know what questions to ask, you know where to look, you know how to think about it. And which is I am asking, how do you think about spaces? That's interesting. I will answer your question. But I was thinking about as
a counterpoint while you were talking about like learning about convergence and like parallel, like how parallel lines behave was such like an important thing for me when I learned how to draw. But now I'm thinking about it really, it's kind of a shortcut to make you observe those things. Right, because once you have that construct in your mind, then of course you'll look and say, oh, I know, you know, these windows are the same size. But the because I'm standing at different
relationship to all three of them. In fact, right, they all look like they're going, like the lines of the windows are converging to a single place. The dot. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So I guess I would say, yeah, so the first frame I already kind of gave you, right, which is like how you would move about the space. And I think how the space is functional for its purposes. I think something we talked about on a previous episode was I was
sharing this example of this coffee shop that I like to go to. And how it is not really conducive for for working, but it is very conducive for taking meetings and for like quiet contemplation. And I think we were talking about how like, you know, even if they added power adapters, that would have changed the feel of it, right? So I think something I'll also notice is what is the feel of of of the experience, right? And does does the functional choices make
match the feel, right? So if it feels like this is a place for lounging, does the there's a furniture feel like it is actually for lounging? I think I'm using feel in two different ways there. So one is like kind of the sense of it, but then the other is like how it actually behaves when you touch it and interact with it. So, you know, does the furniture actually behave in a comfortable loungy way when you interact with it? Did you ever thought? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It like made
me think about this concept in game design called Ludo narrative resonance or dissonance. So Ludo is the play and narrative is the story, right? And if you're playing a game where, okay, so have you played or seen the last of us? I've seen we've been what Gaurav and I have been watching it. Right. So when you're playing the game, you can tell from the show the relationship between Ellie and Joel is the central thing in the entire show, right? And like both of those characters
and how they evolve with that relationship. Now, when you play the game, almost always the focus is on the relationship. They are always like whether you play as Ellie or whether you play as Joel, you are always focused on the other person. Like the play is always like whether Ellie is trying to protect like it's really, really centered like they're helping each other out here, always focused on it. Even in the moments when the relationship is not doing well, the gameplay tells you that
like Ellie quote unquote wouldn't listen to you in certain parts when she's feeling depressed. It's just so amazing because you just feel that oh, I feel something is wrong. And like there the play and the story is sort of gelling well together. Interesting. Right. Because there is a lot of ludonarrative resonance. So you feel what you are playing. On the other hand, there is like Witcher 3 amazing game, one of the best ever made. I love it. The central like team line is that you're
trying to find your daughter. And then you would be doing all of these side quests of helping a woman find her goats or like, you know, giving someone some herbs or some like random things like that. And if you are like, you know, Witcher does not do it poorly. So like you are always immersed because the world is pretty immersive. But if you were just to think about that larger thing, if my child was missing, would I be doing random things for other people? Like would I be
doing chores for random strangers that I've never met before? No. Right. And that's like ludonarrative resonance. And the word gets a lot of hate because like a lot of critics use it in wrong ways. But you can do it in like smaller ways also like is the play and the layer on top of it, are they pushing me into different directions? Because if they're pushing you into different directions, it builds tension. And if they are bringing it together towards the same goal, it like improves
the pace makes the thing feel a lot more seamless. And when you were talking about spaces and like how the functional and the feel part of it and how they interact with each other, it like sort of made me think, oh, this is kind of like, you know, like this is kind of like that concept, where it's like, even if I see this is a space for you to sit, if there is a lot of through fare in that space, and a lot of people are coming and going, you're probably not going to feel
comfortable sitting in that space. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking about for a second whether like how that is true across other things, right? Like I think something we've talked about in the podcast before is how it's true across different levels of the experience that a company has with its customers, right? So what do you have when you have expectations of how a company will behave when you learn more about that company and it behaves in the way you expect?
And that is part of how people move down that path of loyalty. But when when there is that kind of that dissidence, when you have this expectation that is not net, then that often can lead to, you know, something that erodes the kind of trust that is built between the brand and the person experiencing. Like I wonder if there's something about physical spaces that does not let it to be like clearly mapped into other things, because that's how generally I build
heuristics into areas that I don't understand. For example, when I first started writing, and it's not very like old that I started writing, like in 2020, I started writing a little bit. And very quickly my brain found, oh, this is similar to this part of design, and this is similar to that part of design, and this is similar to that part of design. And very quickly it became like I had a rough skeletal framework, and then I could figure out, okay, these are the things
which are very different about writing, which are not so about art. So for example, a very rough artwork can communicate a lot. You can't do the same thing with writing, like the requirement of polish is just slightly higher, because there isn't other sort of relationships beyond the chronological how you are reading the words one after the other to distract you. Abstract writing is a lot more cognitively draining, while abstract art can be very
emotionally evocative. And like those small things, my brain was able to pick up, but broadly there is this structure and you can do like, you know, XYZ things like that skeleton instead. And now I'm just like, I think because I'm trying to problem solve it, and because I know that there is not going to be a singular thing, I'm just thinking about how do I map it for the lack of a better term? Can I map it into something that I know?
See, the answer I would give you, it goes back to this thing we talked about previously, right, but how we have different feelings about making art, and how I feel like things reach a point where it feels right. And then you were saying that that you reach a point where you're like, I'm going to stop working on this, right? Isn't that how you said it? It was, you had said something about expression and I had said about art is never complete,
but abandoned. That was it. So I think I feel similarly about spaces, right, that it's a little hard for me to explain what like what the components would be, because there's a certain point where it just starts to feel right. When I had my studio in New York in 2014 to 2015, I really went through a lot of iterations of the space. And it was like kind of a joke with all my friends that like they would come over and it would be like in a different because it was a studio. Okay, so it was kind of
crazy that I find so many different layouts. But I would manage to and then it reached a point. I think after about four or five months where I was happy, and then I kept it like that for the rest of the time. And I wouldn't say necessarily that it was any particular component didn't move in that final layout, right? Like I think actually I ended up moving the bed and kind of the dining table, which were the two biggest pieces of the space quite significantly in that final layout.
So it wasn't like I kind of iterated my way, you know, at least visually iterated my way into where it made me happy. Yeah, but it was this kind of understanding of I think what I like to use the space for, right? And so I realized having a place I could sit and read was really important, that I wasn't going that didn't really care that much about the table being like a huge part of it. So I could kind of put it in this other place that I like to rely on my bed.
This is so frustrating. Because like, so I understand this problem enough to know that I can't iterate my way to it. But I don't understand it enough to get to it. See, like you just know how to make big changes and where to make big changes. Like when I'm making games, I know where to make big changes. What should I significantly change for the feel of the place to alter? Or what should I
significantly change for the experience to be different? When I'm making products, I know that like, like I know what is a small change and what is a big change. And what seems like a small input and what seems like a small output, like what will come out to be a small output. I understand that. And like with spaces, I just like that mental map is just absent almost. Oh, well, I mean, okay, maybe I'll tell you some of the things I feel like are basics. But like,
you know, obviously the placement of the furniture, maybe I shouldn't say obviously, but one of the big components of the placement of the furniture and also like what you see, right? So like, especially when I think when you enter into a room, your sight lines will kind of guide you on what you feel like the room is for. This is I think maybe a slightly controversial thing that I feel I'm not sure if it's like a well accepted fact, right? But like if you see
like a bed when you first walk into a room, you're going to feel like it's a bedroom or like if you see a table, you're going to, you know, feel a certain way, especially if like a formal dining table, right, you might not feel like that's the right place for you to hang out in that room. So you might move to a different a different space. So I think about one of the things I think about is that right? So what are the sight lines from like the different places where people hang out
in the room? Or like also the entrance and exits of that room? And then also where are your placements of big furniture's because and how did those orient with each other? So how would you interact in different spaces? And then thinking about like, okay, you know, if there were two people here, where how would they behave? Like if there were three people, where would they behave? There are four people and then going to whatever you feel like the reasonable sort of max is for that
space. And as I think I was mentioning earlier on, you know, one of the things that you want to think about is what are the functions in that space going to be. So in our case, we have so like frequent functions, but then also like more occasional functions like gore, I might like foam roll, or we might, you know, use some sort of like yoga mat or something. So that's something where you need to be able to like create the space, but it doesn't have to be available all the time.
But if you have to move like a heavy piece of furniture, that's kind of a pain in the ass, if you can move a light piece of furniture or something easily movable, that's much easier to deal with. If it's something that you might be doing on like a weekly basis. But I do think a big thing though is it was whatever you see you're going to do. And there's a lot of interesting research that proves this, you know, people will eat the sugary thing when it's at their
sight line, and they'll drink whatever is at their sight line. So I think thinking about that is a really big thing. It's like what is visible to you. And I think as someone who does tend to forget stuff, like I know that I have to keep things that I need to remember in a place that they're visible to me. So I'll have a space usually, you know, that I'll see on my way out that I'll have things that I need to remember, like my wallet is sitting right by the door.
And that's a learned habit, but that's also just helpful for everyone. I like that. That's actually really helpful. Yeah, it wasn't basic. I hadn't thought about where are people looking at? Yeah, like I really hadn't. And it's like now that you once you said it, it feels really obvious. Like, of course, you should be thinking about it. Okay, are there other things that you would say? And like, you know, this is very basic and obvious. I think something
you and I have talked about before is that moods can be created by the levels of light. And I think that's similar to what you were just saying with like sight lines. But depending on how well things are lit, certain areas are going to feel inviting or less inviting. Yeah, like, you're not going to go into a dark space, generally, right? So if some spaces are lit, and some spaces are dark, that's going to encourage people to sit in the light in the lit spaces. And it's just an interesting
way you can start to think about how you control the traffic flow or control where people are going at different times of the day. And I mean, at that point, control from like a space design point of view, right? Like you've, you've thought about, Oh, this is where we want to sit for the evening. Well, how am I going to encourage people to do that and to know that, especially when they might have a habit of doing something else. And that's a really interesting thing you have to think about
is because once people are used to a certain space or used to a certain way of behaving, they have habits. And if you're trying to encourage them to do something different, you're going to have to use all of the resources at your disposal. And some of them can mean, literally, like, you know, putting it more dark at the dining table and lighting up your, your sitting area. If that's what you want people to do after dinner,
it turn off the lights over the table and turn on more lights over there. And people will naturally start to migrate over there. Oh, that is very smart. Okay, so I'm not sure if like this fits or doesn't fit. But I'm always painted walls in whatever space I believe. Okay. Like, since my college time, like, we used to have a corridor and I had painted this like gradient of bubbles in front of like in front of my room. And I have painted every house that I've lived in
since then, like even if it is something very small, I've done something there. And I wonder if it is like, because I'm trying to convey some amount of that mood to myself, like in a weird way, if you have very bright and vibrant colors, regardless of the amount of light, there is always a certain amount of energy in the space because of the colors. Like you can keep it like unless it is completely dark, if there is some light, it's always going to be more vibrant than if there was
nothing there. Right. And I wonder if like, you know, I've always done that because I like higher energy spaces. Like one of the artworks that I really liked in Koche Biennale was this mega colorful floor. And like it was just empty giant room and some like the artist had taken multiple colored tapes and they had sort of gone around and made this like very beautiful pattern of like concentric, so you can't call them circles, but concentric loops and had done vinyl sort of flooring
on top of like just sort of put vinyl on top of that. And I can love that space precisely because it was so colorful and bright. And I wonder if like, like now I'm just thinking about, okay, does that attract me to a certain space or like, you know, because I am willing to put in that effort also. Like I said initially, I generally don't think it's worth the effort. But like here I'm like, okay, it takes effort, but I'm willing to put in this effort. Interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting
idea. Because I think there can be certain singular pieces or certain singular things that give a space of feel. And maybe that's what you're doing, because you know, you're not having to rely on so many small things because you're doing one big thing, especially because you have attachment to it and the people that you live with have attachment to it because they've seen you building it. And so there's both the final outcome and the understanding of the journey that every time you engage with
that, every time you see that thing, it's going to bring to mind all of those those feelings of, you know, attachment and ownership and interesting. I wouldn't have. Yeah. I wouldn't have thought of it as like attachment. Because like I've made it in every space that I've been in. And I just leave it right like somebody paints over it. And I remember making one of the artworks in one of my friend's houses and they were so upset when they were leaving the house. Because they were like,
no, you made this thing. It was so pretty. And I'm and I was like, yeah, but wall art is meant to like, you know, it is ephemeral. I don't think I feel attachment as such. But like just the mood idea feels interesting to me. Like the mood part really resonates there. Yeah. And I guess maybe attachment was a strange word, but it's it's making the space feel a certain way. And I think that doing that is what I was calling attachment, right? Like is is you're not
just putting your bed and you know, a desk and like kind of not doing anything else. Like, even though you're not maybe creating a mood with the layout of your furniture or you know, the the colors of your your color scheme or something, you're doing something else that then creates a feeling. And that you're building something in conjunction with the space, I guess is how I was saying attachment. Huh. Okay, like, I feel like even though these are like, you know, maybe two or three
main components, it almost to me feels like I have somewhat enough to start building the skeletal framework for thinking about spaces. I wonder if like, you know, I feel like I should just go and experiment a little bit with the spaces that I'm a part of, whether it is my own space or like with other people's spaces. I should experiment with other people's spaces also. And then maybe I can like, we can in future maybe sometime discuss this or not. But I really like how we have talked
about and named our podcast Thinking on Thinking. But I think this is the first time we have actively done the thinking on thinking. And not in a cognitive way. I guess like we've always done it in a cognitive way, but this feels much more actioned. I wonder how the listeners would feel about it. But yeah. No, I know what you mean. I think I think like sometimes we do this with each other, which is like point out where we seem to be having a cognitive bias. But I don't think
we've really done it on the podcast before. So I think yeah, it was it was a good time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Thinking on Thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gones. If you found any of the topics we talked about interesting this week, we'd invite you to get in touch with us. We'd love to invite you on the podcast or just have a conversation about how these topics apply in your business and in the decisions and problems that you're struggling with.
You can get in touch with us on our website, joyus.studio, or by reaching out to Divya or me, Kyon, directly.