Thinking on caring and being invested

Hi, I'm Defeu. Hi, I'm Garn. And this is the 13th episode of Thinking on Thinking. This week we set off to talk about how people care about brands, things, other people, and ended up spending a lot more time kind of exploring the notion of why

and what leads to people caring about things. We had some interesting thoughts about identity and how you care about things when they're part of your identity. But ended up really understanding and unpacking more about why do we even care about this, right? Like why are we doing this and why are we on this journey?

It was a really interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy. Like I feel like when I was in high school, I enjoyed ceramics, but also was good at ceramics in a way, more than like other kinds of art. And it made me feel, I don't know, I care more about ceramics. But I don't know if that's different than like, there's a caring for yourself.

Oh, I want to be better at this thing or oh, I want this to be part of my identity. And then there's a different thing where it's like, oh, I care about seeing you successful. I wonder though like... I care about this brand or person. I wonder though, like there is always that care.

Care is like closely associated with identity. Like if you think about when people talk about being a parent or, you know, being a pet parent. They always talk in terms of themselves or the relational aspect. Like a part of their identity is attached to this thing, whether it is, oh, I'm a runner. So I care about running or I'm a science person.

So I keep like oftentimes when people are caring about things, they have their identity closely associated with the thing. Well, so I wonder if that part of that is because like, like you have an attribute that you're expressing in that way. Right. So it's like, oh, I feel I'm a disciplined person. Well, because of that, I run every day.

Right. Or like, right. Like, oh, I am compassionate and warm towards like, you know, people or things that I feel like are dependent. Right. And like, I have a pet and that's the way I demonstrate that I am that way to other people into the world. Yeah. Which I think is also really interesting because then I think it's something that we've talked about before, but where you feel like you have to revert back to the mean. So when you start to, when you add something in your life that is something else and you feel, I don't know,

it's just like, either you have to change yourself image or you have to find a way that it's that things come back to the mean in a different way. Okay. So this is not entirely the same line of thinking, but like, I have information that can be added here. So do you know what is the difference between OCD and OCP? I think we've talked about this at some point before, but we might not remember it. So OCD is like, you have intrusive obsessive thoughts.

It can sometimes present as anxiety, but you basically have intrusive thoughts and you do some behavior. Which makes you think that this, like whatever is the negative thought, it's not going to happen. So like people who wash their hands raw, they're not thinking that the thoughts feel intrusive. The thoughts feel like they're not my thought. OCP is like when we call someone a control freak, they have obsessive tendencies as well,

except that they don't think that those obsessive tendencies are wrong. They think, of course, everyone should sort their books this way. Everyone should sort their travel this way. Everyone should do things this way. And like that's obsessive compulsive personality disorder.

Now what's entertaining is like OCD is ego dystonic and OCP is ego-syntonic. Which means that like one aligns with your self-image and one doesn't align with your self-image. And like what doesn't align with your self-image causes you distress. And what aligns with your self-image, you have zero inclination to change it because you're like, this is who I am. In that show I was telling you about White Lotus.

The mom like moves all the furniture when she checks in the hotel room and the children are like, what are you doing? And she's like, no, I'm just making it like into a more livable environment for us because like there's all of us here. And like she's like, this furniture is just not right. Like it's not creating like a good space for us to interact with each other. And anyway, it's just entertaining.

Also, in turtles all the way down, she really hates her thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. So it can kind of make sense that like sometimes when people have pieces of their identity that they don't think or rather sometimes when people have behaviors and they don't align with their identity, it would be very difficult to switch it.

So it can on the surface almost seem like, oh, you want to care about it, but you don't. Like the new year has just started and so many people would have made resolutions of I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to eat better. I'm going to like, you know, use my phone less meditate more. But I'm not sure how many people see themselves as the kind of person who does meditation or the kind of person who works out, even if they want the results of having worked out, which is like a strong body or the results of having meditated a lot, which is like a calmer mind.

They probably don't see themselves as the kind of person who does this stuff. I was thinking about it like I don't know how true it is for you, but I know that it's true for me that I don't think that I have a crisp idea of what being an owner of a successful company looks like for me. What? What is it? Why would you be say more?

Right. So like, I mean, again, I don't know how true it is for you, but I have been feeling that like, you know, I was wondering why am I not making it a priority? Why am I not willing, like, you know, willing, ready, actively putting more effort, right? Like, why am I not putting more effort into making joy a successful and one of the things that I realized is I don't think I have a crisp idea of this is what someone who runs a successful company looks like someone being me. In this case.

But do you usually feel like you have that before you embark on something like you wanted. So like, in two different ways. So you know how you have met you would have definitely met people who were like, oh, I definitely want to write, but they don't want to write. They want to have written. Yeah, they don't see themselves as writers.

They aspirationally want to have something written. Right. And then there are people who see themselves as writers. So they're just like, oh, I'll go and I'll make things and I'll write things. Okay.

Right. I think that like, that has been true for me for creative work. Like, I have just seen myself as a creative person being an artist is still like, has a lot of resistance. No, but like, what about when you started working out more? That was the only example where it didn't.

And it did take me a long as time. It took me like more than two, two and a half years, three years to actually feel like I'm the kind of person who works out. Well, didn't you, I think it's on a previous podcast episode. In fact, but did you also do a similar thing when you started reading philosophy? But none of those things are very time dependent.

What do you mean? Like with philosophy, it took me like four years, five years to actually like it. And I was okay with that because there isn't a rider on it. With working out, it's like any amount of work out is fine. Like it's not as important.

Right. Like, I know that I'm not going to become a world class athlete. So for me, the only task was to find the fun in working out. Why is it different than finding the fun in having a company? I don't know.

Like, I have not had a long time for this, this, like, you know, this thought or distillation. The thing is we are having fun. But like, I know that there is something different because now I've like started actively telling myself, no, I want to be the person who is running a company. I don't care about the success or like having had a successful company.

Okay. So let's say you've started to care about something. Do, does that come with anything? Like, does that mean you like to see it successful or like, I mean, depends on what degree of care it is, I guess, at least for me.

So for example, like, am I just interested in this thing? Is that how much I care about it? Or am I invested in this thing? So for example, like chat GPT, I feel like I'm interested in AI art. I feel like I'm invested in care about both of those things.

But like, one of them I'm actually invested in. Like, where does this go? How does this impact culture or how does it change the world or affect my life, affect other people around me's life? Those are things that, well, okay, fine. So let me, let me stay with that.

So those are things that could be like, you could be doing something to to write. You could be talking about AI image generation or like, like, I don't know. Yeah, learning more about it. Like, are you doing those things? Yeah.

For for AI, like, are you doing stuff for AI image generation that's different than what you're doing for chat GPT? Like, I haven't used chat GPT. I've laughed at other people's usage as I found the usage entertaining. Like, engaged with the content that people have built out of chat GPT. On the other hand, with AI art, I'm having active conversations with people around it, especially with other artists and especially with people who hold views again, opposite of mine.

So I'm pro AI art. Yeah. And I'm talking to a lot of different people who are anti AI art. And like, having those debates and having those conversations while also trying to understand, like, for example, I've watched a bunch of videos around like, how does the stable diffusion algorithm work? What models are they using and stuff like that.

Which I'm sure that like GPT also uses similar models. But like, I haven't bothered to learn about it. Actively. But you don't feel like that's like, you don't have a goal for where you're trying to end up with your, your. Well, no, I feel like these are, this is like, this is something that directly impacts like you, how people who will do work like the work you do in the future will do their work.

Or how even I do my work right now, like for the game that Charu and I are making right now, we did a shit ton of concept art generation using mid journey. Stuff that I could not have generated in, you know, like I could not have made thumbnails at the speed at which it was able to generate. And we are able to just ask it, oh, but what about these colors or what about this kind of style or what about this kind of image or what about if it had these elements and I don't have a lot of knowledge about it yet. But I'm learning and I'm like really enjoying that learning process. I'm enjoying the growth process. But when you think about like outcomes that could be.

Like it's outcome oriented in the sense that when you paint you start building layers, right? Sometimes you might know what the final thing is going to look like and sometimes you might not. But if you have a general idea, you first start with the blobs and then you add in details. And like, at least with this thing in my brain, I know that I've started painting the picture. I don't know what it's going to look like at the end, but I started painting the picture. Sometimes when you have particularly good metaphors, I think of that one client we had who was very excited about your metaphor. No, we're going to somewhere slightly different. We're trying to say like, you know, people who are designers might look and say, okay, you know, I do visual design or I do interaction design and kind of be willing to say like this is the type of designer I am.

And but I feel like what you're saying is like, oh, you know, you feel like this is a kind of thing that you could use in your work or that you could use in your thinking as you as if as you can internalize more or like what what is a I am in generation outcomes and do. Or even how it works. Right. But what I'm curious about is like when you think about being a company owner or you know, like, like running a successful company or even keeping the successful part aside, that doesn't feel the same sort of like, like adding a tool to your toolkit. As yeah, that's actually an excellent articulation of it. I think that like it's a lack of experience slash imagination on my part. Like that I don't know what it looks like or what it feels like.

Like, at some point earlier this week, when I was thinking about this, I realized that while my brain recognizes that there is difference in working with clients and having a company and working with clients. I don't know what the difference is. Oh, like, and this is this I'm articulating is a known unknown. But there are a lot of unknown unknowns that I'm just like, I have a sense that there are a lot of unknown unknowns, but I haven't like interacted with this thing enough. I'm not sure if that makes sense. It just sounds like it's a big scary thing.

Right. Just like a big unknown thing, I guess maybe we'll keep the scary part aside. Does it make you feel anxious? No, I feel very differently about I think because I a lot of my interactions I imagine how they will be beforehand. And then often, right, that's why I also sometimes I have so much trouble in like getting things going further because I'm very worried that it won't be as good as I imagined, or like, you know, the fantasy of things is just so it's like, well, what if we should just stay in the moment of possibility forever?

But so it's very, it's very different than how I think about it because I wouldn't I just am not I don't come from that place of not I will always imagine something. I'm kind of, you know, Say more like what would you have imagined? Let's say in context of like, you know, the company, what do you have imagined? Oh, like I can easily imagine like, you know, what might be like to walk into like one of our offices, like, you know, because I have this dream that will have like 10 global offices, right? So like that what it would be like to kind of like what that feeling would be like, like to like walk in there what I would think about it being like for clients for like us.

Yeah, how I would like people to have that experience and also where I'd like them to take away and how how whatever like it for for people to, I don't know, how basically like how I'd like to be talked about I guess is what like what space would you like to be occupying? And you're able to visualize all of that. Yeah, I can almost somewhat visualize the building. Do you think that helps you or does that stop you like does that. So I always feel like there is such a thing as caring too much caring too much about something becomes a hindrance in some ways. Do you feel like being able to visualize the thing makes it easier for you to get moved towards it or makes it harder for you to make it.

It makes it confusing when you when you're moving towards it. Why not? Because some well, I mean, it makes it easier in that there's less unknown unknowns, but it makes it confusing. Like sometimes it's confusing whether you're making progress or not, because sometimes you might be moving towards it, but you're not moving towards it in a way you you understand. Correct.

And that part is annoying. I don't know. I mean, it's kind of a hard question because when you haven't done it any other way, right? Like you don't know what it would be like to do it a different way. And hard and easy are like comparative terms. So how would you know? Correct. Very interesting. I think for me, the more I can get into the doing part and less into the thinking. So like if I start imagining, I know that it stops me from doing the thing, but I have to do it.

And find the joy in like the smaller details and like, you know, figure out those smaller things more and more and more. Like so those are the unknowns that need to be clarified in my brain. So like in context of a company, it would be like, you know, like we've talked about, for example, sales or operations or admin or like, you know, all of these other different branches and like actually pushing more things out in each one of those branches. I'm sure will help me more to visualize the thing. But if I sit and visualize, I'll definitely get in my way.

Well, I'm not visualizing those things and just visualizing the like overarching experience. Like it's a feeling not so much. It is very interesting because I don't think that I've ever done that. Whatever the three years that I spent trying to get into college, right? 11th, 12th and the gap year.

I don't think that I'd even for a second imagine what being in college would be like. Oh, that's literally how I chose my college because I had this moment outside the Tufts library where I was like, was just walking around and I felt like I could, like I just felt like I could feel myself there. Right. Like I was like, this could be my experience. I don't know. It was. And you know what is the most weird thing?

So all the college campuses in India have a similar feeling. Right. You have like a large star and then you'll have like a circular area in front of the main building. There will be a lot of trees or whatever. And so when I went to my sister's college, I had the exact same feeling that I had when I went to my own college.

Even though it was totally not my college. Despite the fact that I had spent five years, the emotion was pretty similar. So you could imagine yourself in Tufts and it was unique enough for you before you went there. For me, it wasn't even unique enough after I lived there for five years. Oh, that's so funny.

Yeah. Cause I remember it was right after a class had got out or something or like maybe that period was about to start. I don't think we used to call them periods in college, but anyway. So it was like a moment where like all these kids were going out of the library and all these other like some people were coming in, but I think mostly kids were just going out of the library. And I like looked at them, right? And I was just like watching all the people and it was the people that made me feel that way that that's I feel like the people are different.

Right. Like when I go to the University of Washington, it just feels different because like, I don't know. Actually, University of Washington feels much more laid back than Tufts does. Like people are just chilling. But Tufts don't want to just chill. There's a lot of like a little bit of like nervous like energy that I feel like I really resonated.

It was like very stressed out or at least a little bit stressed about something like, ah, these are my people. Wow. Yeah. Quite hilarious. This is so amusing.

Like I definitely did not think when we will choose this topic that this is where we would land. Yeah. I don't think that we had that huge difference in how we relate to future things. You didn't think that, but now you think that. Yeah.

Clearly. Like massive difference. Yeah. Because in some ways it's the thing you were saying about people you feel like who want to have written versus being writers. Like I do think I feel a little bit of that, but it's not that exactly.

It's that. Yeah. So I'm not even saying about writing, right? Like I would say I was actually thinking about like my feelings about having a restaurant or kind of like a cafe. Like I, if I started to think too much about all of the small things that need to be done for it, then I would, I would just like become discouraged.

But if I think about the feeling that I want people to have when they come and visit it, that's just like very exciting to me. And I know that feeling. And that's the thing that I imagine and that is the thing that makes me excited about it. You know, this is so amusing because I think it was like eight years after I had already been like doing design and making art and stuff. And I was having this conversation with one of my very close friends and I was very distressed.

I was like, I don't have an art style. I had like, you know, my art means nothing. And then she was like, and this is someone who was working in consulting at that time. She had had finance jobs before that. This wasn't someone who was like particularly wouldn't call herself a creative person.

It wasn't someone very close to creativity. And she gave me like a mini speech on what my art style is and what it means. And I was like, wow, that captures it so well. And it also plots to a part of my personality. This is amazing.

But it was just so weird. Like after doing it for close to a decade, like I still needed someone external to tell me that like this is what it was about. Like this is what the feeling is. And like, I'm just finding it very amusing that you're like, I know the feeling that people need to have. Yeah.

Well, I was gonna say, because I think that is a skill in some ways, right? Like being able to understand from people what it like, I mean, not to not discount your friend. Like maybe that is something she's very good at is being able to kind of like synthesize in that way and then be able to like, maybe it was probably not. I mean, I'm a designer. I mean, I am a designer.

I think that I'm okay at like, you know, figuring out what people, what emotion people would be driven towards and what emotion they might want in this situation. I feel like I'm able to do that. But yeah, it's just very weird. I don't think that like there's something here. Like how do you, or rather maybe maybe make, like me ask you a harder questions.

What makes you care about this business or whatever we are doing together? Oh, because I can, I have like a feeling of what this company could be. That's very exciting. Like both in terms of like the type of work that I think we could like bring to the world, but also the type of environment I think we could create for our people. And I feel like it's, it's kind of like trying to figure out who should be your co-parent if you have a child.

And I feel like we would have a good child. Huh. You know, when you were giving that answer, I realized that I think I care a lot more about the kind of work that we could be putting out in the world. I think you knew this. Yeah. Then the kind of experience that like people could have with us.

I think that was one of the first things that I felt like when we were talking about starting a business together, I felt like, yeah, you can take care of this thing. Clearly you're invested and you care enough about it and you know enough about it. Like, I mean, this is a little bit of a tangent, but something my dad and I were talking about when we were like deep into wedding planning or really like right at the end of wedding planning and in the mid moments of execution starting. And I was just saying that I feel like a wedding is one of those few places where culturally you can create an experience for people and then just take them on it. Like otherwise culturally it's not very acceptable.

It's like kind of weird. Like people, I don't know, right? Like people don't expect for you to kind of like take them on a curated experience, one that they haven't chosen particularly, right? Like people expect to choose their experiences in the day that we live in. But, but a wedding is very much you kind of like people to show up and then they do whatever you ask them to do.

And it's just really fun to be able to have that moment to be able to create something to create something that can, you know, can change people or give them a new outlook or something. Right? Like all of our experiences change us in different ways. So I don't know. I mean, I feel like sure, you know, having a good client experience is great. But I think more than that, like, I think having an experience for the years that people work with us, like at like for us, or, you know, as consultants or whatever, that those I feel like I want them to be impactful for people.

I've been, I've been really blessed in like most of my company so far, I think have been really impactful for, for a lot of my colleagues and myself. What made you care so much about like how the wedding experience would be? Because like I definitely would say that like every single piece of your wedding was so well planned and so well done. It's just that. I'm more like, why did you not feel tired afterwards?

Or like, you know, most people give up at some point. You only told me this, right? Everything takes about the same amount of time. Some might as well go for the best. There's something I think I paraphrased a little bit, but something like this you said a long time ago.

And I kind of feel like that's true, right? Like, I don't know. I mean, I, not to make light of like why I think other people find it exhausting, but I think like if you can figure out what if you know yourself and like, if you've done a lot of project work before, you know what things you find exhausting. And so you know, kind of like where you need to offload stuff. Did you like, I didn't find it that exhausting until really the end.

I think we talked about this like the last week or so two weeks before it was kind of exhausting. But until then it was really fine. And I think that was just like, I only really had to deal with like I found people to take up the things that would I would find exhausting basically. Also, because a lot of like dreaming is never exhausting for me. So it's only when getting into like the house of it that sometimes I find it very exhausting.

And so if you could have people to help you with that, then it's letting planners are great. I feel like yours were specifically great. Our source specifically great. Anything also they understood a lot of the like the feel, right? Like we managed to communicate the feel that was the hardest.

And then once you have that and once you can, and then once you can kind of set a tone with certain things, like I think for me it was really the food that we like kind of just set a tone with the hotel and with our wedding planners about how much we want to care about things. And then that kind of it goes through. Right. Like I didn't ask the hotel to set up a vegan station at every meal. They did that by themselves because they knew that we cared about our vegan guests and we had talked to them so much about all of our guests that like, yeah, fine. We'll just make sure there's a separate vegan live station for every meal.

So I think there's some part of that that is very that makes things easier. It's like if you can be, if you can figure out what is driving you, then you can set, you can figure out where you need to set kind of almost an example. So then those things can percolate through to give you kind of a different flavor of an example. Like it's one of the reasons I felt like running early, early stage companies was not something really like great for me because I am not someone who, I feel like a lot of really early stage companies need to have good budgetary control and like just setting a tone of like, you know, we watch every dollar every. Right. And that's just not somewhere that I kind of come from.

Right. Like I like to more be in a place where I'm like, oh, you know, I trust you're going to figure out things as you will. And also, you know, be cognizant of how much time and energy we're putting into things. And if that means we're not getting the kind of best prices, that's fine. That's a lot more complex of an understanding to be percolating through an organization. Whereas like if you set one where it's like, oh, you know, we're going to need to be able to identify all of our spending.

Like that is easier to percolate through an organization. Anyway, so long story of coming back to your question, which is I think that we were able to kind of set like we wanted people to feel to engage with other people was a big thing that we said from the beginning. We want to create spaces that would let people engage with people, especially people they didn't know. And then we wanted to just have a feeling that everything had kind of been taken care of. Right. And that you didn't need to feel stressed about anything.

I think like setting those tones then managed to kind of percolate the feeling we wanted through. That makes sense. But then how did I grow? Well, thank you. But I think now why did I grow to care so much about doing something like this, which I think is the question you actually asked.

I think there's some amount of like, well, I don't know if that's true. No, I think there's some part true. So I think some part of it is obviously like you feel a little bit like you have something to prove when you have my kind of personality and have been to some of the letting go. Things that you have been to. And just like that, you know, I can also do something like this.

But I think it was really like I like I was kind of started this story, right? Like I think my dad and I had that conversation and about like how a wedding is such an opportunity to create something for for creating experience for people. I think that is just really, it's really special. Right. Like there's a lot of my friends who are coming to India for their first and maybe only time. And a lot of people, I always find so much joy when like I get, because I get to know so many lovely people in my life that like when I get to connect those people, it's just such a special thing.

And so I think doing that was a lot of what how I thought about the events. And then I think Gaurav has really a sense of like elegance that I think that really made everything feel just so much more like beautiful. Right. Like I think that that really was how we kind of came together in doing something like this. Yeah. Yeah, it was quite the experience.

And it also like at least for me, it was like, oh, this is why he was planning it for 15 months. Now I see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you say that it wasn't exhausting, but I don't think that I've seen anyone plan a wedding for that long. Well, we only were really planning for the last four or five months.

You know, there was some stuff that we just took a really long time on like we took, I think like eight months on a venue. And like those are just really early kind of decisions that you don't really figure out anything else until after that is done. Well, that and like how many days is your wedding going to be? And then are you going to have a pre-party? If so, where?

Yeah, about that. But I'm excited about like a starting our conversations again and like getting back into the groove of the work again. Yeah. Because it feels like I think like last month a lot of things sort of kept stewing in my brain, which I think over the last like whatever one and a half years, almost two years now that we have been talking have we haven't like don't think there has been space. For just letting things stew for a while.

I think for both of us. And in a weird way for me, it was also like, hmm, ask myself, do I care about this thing enough? And thankfully the answer at the end was like, oh yeah, definitely. I don't know if you've quite answered why you care about it so much at any point yet. So one part is like, I think similar to what you said that like we'll raise a great child. I have that feeling as well.

I think we would be able, I think that like we would be good co-founders. We would be able to build something really interesting. So I generally had this sense of I've worked a lot with early stage companies and I don't like that feeling of giving up on the things that are important to you. Because you need to make money. And I've seen people do that often.

And the problem is that it's not just that they give up on things that are important to them. They also change their identity because the environment is so because of the like pressures of the environment because of the pressures from investors because of the pressures from their team. Like they end up changing who they are. Yeah, I know exactly. And I think that like I'd always found that very exhausting, especially working with that many people like it's fun, but it's also pretty exhausting.

And I think that I just felt I've always had the sense that like with you that wouldn't happen. Because I think that like fun, you care about the right things. And we care about a lot of similar things. And whatever are I think important things that I don't care about, I know that you care about them. I don't think it's possible to care about all of the things at the same time.

And so like that's what I think. I'm not sure if I answered your question. No, I didn't. Yeah. Okay, but this was a good conversation.

Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Thinking on Thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes and you can find a link to it in the show notes.