Thinking on Making Better Decisions

Now when I'm consulting with people often the value that I'm bringing is helping them figure out hey Here are the questions you can ask yourself to figure out how you are thinking things and what is everyone valueing and why are they valueing the things that they're valueing? Hi, I'm Tavya. Hi, I'm Kahran and this is Thinking on Thinking That's funny

I was actually thinking about you while I was like lifting today because I was like doing bench press and I like I just I'm not Been able to like like hit the goal My app has been telling me and it's like very depressing about the way it tells you it's like you have failed this combination of weights and reps twice before I have now reduced the number of reps and I was like no I won't do it

And I was thinking about it because I think like something about how I feel because I Was like why did I never work out before it was like it was because I always wondered Like the possibility of what could be when I worked out consistently was more exciting than what I perceived the outcome Which is going to be so I didn't want to like lose the imagination moment right and lose the moment where everything is a possibility Hmm, and I think that there is a certain I

Can't decide like the word that came to mind was blissfulness. There's a certain blissfulness, I guess to like having infinite possibilities and I know that there is There continues to be infinite possibilities, right? So like that it's not it's kind of a false Perception to think that like once you can day we started to go down a path that your number of possibilities are limited

This is also one of the reasons why companies fail to make changes especially the bigger they become They fail to realize they still have infinite possibilities in front of them. Yeah Yeah And like every choice becomes so loaded like the more further down the path you go the more loaded these choices

right, it's I remember there was some like discussions in the Pandemic early in the pandemic when like my my sister's company had lost a lot of customers And there was no like there was almost no one coming on board, right? And we were thinking about just chucking the entire onboarding experience And it was just so much resistance

I remember Tristan who's your CTO had just joined at that point and he was like guys. There's like six people using it We could just start over and I don't think we ended up doing it Right, we ended up doing a very iterative approach Because it's like we didn't want to jar the experience for people who had started it But it you know in retrospect, it's nonsense. It's complete another nonsense

It's hard, I mean even what we talked about last week I think I think it was a couple of weeks ago No, actually or when I was running but yeah next and thinking about what to do The fact that we had spent so many corrors on content Wade on my mind, right?

Like I knew that we had built this content and the content was this valuable thing in this organization and You know finding some way to I it wasn't like I felt it as guilt It was like this is one of my by my assets How am I going to leverage this because I don't have that many assets, right? Like I need to leverage the assets that we have

Now, you know in the beginning you had no assets except for the possibilities But then once you have them in hand, I think this is exactly why it bothers me, right? Because once you have them in hand, it's so hard to escape From that feeling Isn't there just some cost fantasy?

It is I mean part of it is some cost fantasy part of it I also feel like is So there was this thing When we when I was still like, you know in the point of decision or should we end up working together or not? I remember having this conversation with my sister and

Honestly feeling very scared Oh, but what if I leave everything that I know and I go do something completely different, right? I've worked in a certain way and like what if I don't work in that way ever and she was like See what you are thinking of it as like, you know, oh, I'm living in India and now I'm gonna go and live in Greece But it's honestly more like, you know how to speak English and now you're learning how to speak Korean

Nobody can take away English from you. You have that knowledge and you have that information and I'm not sure if that would be true for everyone at all times for all decisions But I think that that distinction is important You're not gonna forget how to speak English just because you know in Japanese and I've been sometimes convinces us that a decision is moving to a different country rather than learning a different language. I

Give you that for sure, right? I think that that that just like resonates with me when you say it But I think the the side that I'm thinking about from is a little bit different It's like Once you have like a mental conception of like say like what a tall building is, right?

I say that because I have some tall buildings out my window, right? But that will start to start to color how you think of what tall buildings can be That's why I almost feel like remind having this kind of reminder That that like what you see is not what all of what there is and I think having this notion in your head that there could be like this Like like there's an ultimate version of a building and these are just like shadow, right?

It pushes you to keep thinking about like well, how could this be better? I don't know. I don't know if it pushes you into thinking like reimagining what like the purpose of what a building is and then if That and I think that is actually kind of the most useful side of the thinking I also think that like This is a conversation I was having with a friend last night

But I think oftentimes when we are reasoning through things especially when we call like you know ourselves data driven or heuristics driven or whatever We are confusing deductive reasoning with inductive reasoning Seymour So deductive reasoning is like, you know one plus one equals two and it's always gonna be two because you can prove it Inactive reasoning is Sun rises in the East every morning. So Sun will continue to rise in the East every morning

And I feel like the honestly the conception of what is the ideal Person thing company project product building it comes from past data And not imagining free form what possibly could be Apparently I'm curious what you what you would say. I think you would say that this is deductive reasoning, but you know when Gosh Jeff Bezos really took me a second. I was like who started Amazon

Apparently I was just reading this in that I that I'm like very slowly reading this biography of the IDO founder It's kind of an autobiography kind of a story of the company and he talks about how When when Bezos was starting Amazon that he read this line that the web is growing at 230 percent which is our 2300 percent per year and when he understood that he

Immediately got like flew to Texas or something and he like bought a used car and then he started like driving west and like as he was Like this is like because he was starting the company in California But and as he was doing this he like hadn't figured out entirely what what would be the right thing But he knew that there would be something you could sell online and that something would be because this was creating a new Channel where you didn't have to maintain the inventory in the stock

Right and so he arrived at books and music and then quickly launched books and then music Now, yeah, would you say that that was like deduction around like oh look here's this data around like what I mean I think that was a lot of creative thinking But I don't think that he arrived at it through just like you know flat logic Because it's not like you know what is going to happen, but he asked what could happen

Yeah, like that's a subtle distinction What's going to happen is more you're going towards a reasoning side What could happen is like you're trying to construct something new which is creativity at least like Just using that That's so interesting you say that

When I do a lot of creative work to me it feels like I am There's a certain inevitability to it So it's just interesting the way that you you framed that that because I Don't think about it like that like I never think about what could be with something It's just like this is the right thing for this

Interesting. I'm not surprised but say more Think like there's a certain point like when I write poetry there's a certain like point where it just feels done right and That's why I was telling you once I think that like I almost never revise any of my poetry, right? Maybe like a tiny bit like I would say like

One word for every ten poems maybe or even every like 30 poems, right? Oh, wow But like yeah, it's like I'll change like a couple of words here and there and usually it's like a tense or something And oftentimes I were like usually when I'm reading it I'll remember that I was like upset about it when I was writing it and then like it will still like not

And for example like in the book I just published I changed the end of one Oh, like I changed three lines and now every time I read it I I can like I hear the original three lines in my head Every single time it's like it's funny because yeah So yeah, it's just like it feels like like you're helping. I don't know

I think this is how I think about it There's like a certain inevitability to it that you're helping something be created. I was recently talking about this with my partner About how I don't think that I have a clear vision, especially when like it's things of pure creativity I just start and it happens Yeah, but I feel like that's that's the same thing as what I'm saying, right?

No, not really. It doesn't feel like I'm uncovering something It's almost like I'm meandering through a forest and I decide to stop and set up camps somewhere And wherever I stop is wherever I stop like Honestly the code that you know, you gave the Michelangelo example of

You know how sculptors bring out the sculpture. They just remove the parts that want this culture, right? Yeah, I relate a lot more with artists never finished. It's just abandoned So like I I think it is not the same thing even though of course we both end up finishing things I don't think it's the same perspective No, yeah

I think and that's also why I don't always like to get like sometimes such as funny and very small example But like when I was younger my mom would like want me to like decide really like small things like what should we eat and like I wouldn't want to commit to it because once I committed then if we didn't eat that I would feel more upset But if I hadn't committed in my like if I hadn't Realize that this was the right thing that one should be eating right now

then It's fine, but once you arrived at that, it's very frustrating more frustrating Interesting. Okay. So then I have a weird question How does it feel to work together with me because I'm I don't have that platonic idea Even when we have worked on things together and oftentimes you'd be like, oh my god

I don't know where this is gonna. What's this is gonna look like and I am just like, hi, it's gonna look fine I'm sure it's gonna look okay. I'll do something and I'll spend some time on it and it will look fine after some time But it's just like it's a very different approach So maybe I can't see it all the way till when something is done, but I can see it a bit better Hmm

So I think that's what happens in those situations is I end up shortening my perspective on where I'm trying to get it to Okay, see more. Yeah. So when I feel like I don't I can't like see the end of the journey But I can see I will be able to always see some milestone that I can help bring this to So then I just operate for that milestone It's like an in-between platonic idea if you want to think about it that way

Interesting Does it feel disorienting? No, because I've had to do it in so many contexts in so many different ways because the world is like that But isn't the world like almost always trying to move towards a platonic ideal of everything Like the perfect person the perfect son the perfect daughter the perfect wife the perfect husband the perfect

Company the perfect team member everything because those I don't feel as much About like that those Exists I guess Okay It's like I feel like those are like the people are the variables

Hmm not the constants As in like no one could be the perfect child Yeah Whereas like things there are other things that you could aspire to being because I guess things have to be perfect for their situation And I think like there's no the like a perfect chair for me here in Bangalore

It's not going to be the same even for myself, right a perfect chair and like I don't know Copenhagen, right? Or like a place that's a dramatically different weather or climate, right? But that doesn't mean that like like still I'm gonna have to create an example here I won't be very tough for her boosters But like still when I'm in like maybe a space like even this there right now

I'm working in kind of an L shaped room, right? And I spent a lot of time just like thinking about the flow of that room because it feels to me This always happens to me, right? Though I will move furniture around until it feels like things have arrived in a state that feels right Right, and it's not like and I guess this is maybe how I would kind of answer what I was struggling with earlier

I Think that it feels like like almost like a local maxima, right? Like you read maybe it's not like I don't feel a need to kind of chase the global one really But like I feel a need to get myself to at least a local one Do you not feel like the need to chase a global maxima or do you feel like a global one does not exist?

I feel like if you let yourself start chasing it never ends So I would rather so I almost enjoy more drawing the constraints in some way and then saying well, here's my box Now how I So like I would say that that very dangerously sounds close to the evolution model Same or

Like the way you're talking about this right like the way you are staying There is a chair which might be perfect here which wouldn't be perfect in a different condition It's almost like there isn't a perfect chair There is just a perfect chair for now and then that could be applied to people and situations like there isn't a perfect meeting There's just the meeting that you can have now and how good that can like you know how best that can get

I think that that actually feels pretty right to me So I kind of just feel like right when people and I So like if you're in a perfect place if you're in a perfect mindset in a perfect place like there is a great sort of way interactions can happen Right and a lot of times people are not in that place Right people are like they're stressed they're tired

They're right and then those interactions like have a less likelihood of being as maybe positive or creating as much utility as they would if people were in a more available space So it's worth striving after that ideal right and being cognizant of like when am I in a place that is compromising my ability to achieve that ideal Do you feel like the whole point of trying to strive to the ideal is because you are not sure what you would move towards if you didn't have that ideal Like that it's just the direction of your vector I never thought about it like that

Maybe I don't know I mean I don't know how much like overarching personality goals I guess are like like how much they actually manifest across different things I don't know to share another example I was listening to this podcast of a mathematician a couple of days ago and he was talking about how he was very shy growing up and then at one point he moved to France and he realized that shy people are not as able to make friends and you know do well in life and he decided he would not be shy anymore and he just like right and then over time he changed his personality and so he was like yeah so when people who knew me from when I lived in Japan it was like they were a little bit like this is strange but then this is just like

So I do think there is some you know obviously there is some truth to that where people like or even you were telling me I think a couple of months ago that you like or sorry a couple of years ago you decided that you'd become more funny and then you did Once you have an idea of your kind of direction that then you can have this vector that is pushing you across different aspects of your life right I would have actually articulated it as sometimes you get stuck in particular directions and we can just decide that we don't have to have that Like this is a sort of side story but so my closest friend and I we have been friends for like 15 years and we haven't had the kind of friendship where we would we're very warm and loving and caring and kind towards each other but we don't joke around too much and right around the time when I decided I need I want to be funnier was also the time when we decided I think we should have like more lightness in our friendship

Okay recently we were having some very deep and serious conversation while both laughing and mocking at the thing at the same time like oh my god life is good ha ha ha it really is good And like we weren't we weren't being like false about it we were actually finding it funny and it was just really interesting how much that had changed or like you know seeing for example my mom like now start to work out and like you know start to take care of her body It's like in India most people do not they don't have a culture of like you know learning to take care of their body especially as you grow older people are like oh now you just accept that old age your body is going to bitrate you I just feel like a lot of this is your brain can get stuck in certain directions but if you decide then you can change it which is why I think like my like normal thing is there is no ideal just decide from a moment to moment basis as new data comes in And you are able to make a better decision not the best decision but a better decision and better being fits your constraints more appropriately

So you also don't even feel like there's an ideal version of yourself Yeah Oh that's so interesting Like I used to have it when I was much younger but I think that like sometime while I was still in college and undergrad it went away I was just like oh I could be like you know I took the switch from physics to design and I could be a physicist sure I could also be a designer I could also like I could live many lives That's interesting because like something's like for example I was late to recording our podcast today because something came up right where I needed to go and meet someone right and I didn't really feel bad about that right like I felt like you know these kinds of things happen

But when I realized that I had forgotten to upload our podcast then I was like this is not, I forgot to upload last week's podcast right so like this is not there I'm just like oh right like it just makes me feel like I'm not Right like it just makes me feel like I'm like oh I wish I was better in my systems like I wish like right like there's things like I just remember things better right like it's not my ideal version of myself But you don't feel that way I mean not never of course like I do feel the feelings of we had a conversation last week where I was like I am a really horrible person But I think that like unless I'm in a very dark place mentally it doesn't happen to me

Like for me honestly it's more of a sign of oh you are probably moving slowly inching towards a depressive state That's so interesting I was talking with one of my family members a week or so ago and it was interesting because she was sharing with me like all of these behaviors she wished other people would do Also in our family right and it was just, it was interesting because I usually don't think like that I mean sometimes I do but not like frequently where I'm like oh I wish like this person would change their personality trait like for some reason my pushing of idealness doesn't go to that Have you read this book about transactional analysis I'm okay you are okay

No I've read a lot about the transactional analysis too and yeah no I have not read this book tell me about it So it's basically like there are four quadrants right so I'm not okay you're not okay I'm not okay you are okay I'm okay you're not okay and I'm okay you're okay Right where it's like whose existence do you feel like is bringing up bringing the misery in your life So for certain people it would be like my existence is bringing misery everyone else is fine And for some people it would be like everyone else is not okay I am okay

Like I'm perfect I'm fine if only all of these other people didn't do the garbage things that they are doing and then indulge in the garbage behaviors that they are indulging in And then there are people who would be like I'm also not fine you're also not fine and they're all playing out our patterns and according to at least like this psychoanalyst who wrote this book he was like Ideally like if you process to things then you would arrive at like I'm okay you are okay like you're gonna do your things and I'm gonna do my things and misery is like you know yeah inevitable kind of Yeah Like of course cognitively these things are much easier to accept than emotionally but yeah

So I feel like you had more experience with me in like working with the diversity of different kinds of companies And I'm curious like how much do you feel like that kind of whether it's awareness as kind of maybe the first level and then kind of being like just cognizant maybe about it Like one is being awareness of yourself and one is like kind of being cognizant of how is this happening in the culture of our company Like how much do you feel like those things have mattered to the kind of companies ability to execute or operationalize Have they mattered a lot? Have people been aware of it very little

Interesting so sometimes they have situations that work well without realizing Yeah I mean so one of my friends she was in a net tech company she was like one of the founding team members and was a part of the team I think for 8, 9 years or maybe 10 Like somewhere around that mark And I think she is probably the one person who I have talked to who had a lot of models for interpersonal conflict resolution in teams and for like just figuring out things getting people on the same page And like a lot of it like I don't know if you have discussed the 10, 100,000 thing on the podcast before but like that's a model that I've gotten from her

There are other things that I've like learned from her and a lot of it just starts from like building awareness in people But I don't think that like at least the teams that I've worked with most of the times they don't have those things either Like now when I'm consulting with people often the value that I'm bringing is helping them figure out hey Here are the questions you can ask yourself to figure out how you are thinking things and what is everyone's value and why are they value the things that they're value Yeah then I think about it like I think a lot of the companies that we kind of were chatting with earlier this year and last year

Because people had had conflict people didn't know how to resolve it and then the results of that after time become very strange in organization Because you have like sets of a company that don't really work well to do each other a lot of assumptions while people's motivations are it's just it becomes a very crazy scene to try and unpack I also think that like a lot of times people don't understand the value of after care like I'm borrowing the term from the BDSM community but like people really really don't get the idea that you can quote and quote resolve a conflict and still not feel okay Because there is some friction that has caused abrasion on your bond with the person and you need to do something to like ease that friction like you need to do something to make that pain go away Even like just resolving the core issue is not going to be enough and not a bad way

I feel like the thing my father has been very good at in a lot of the companies he has had is creating spaces and expectations for people to behave in other ways So like there's always just been this tradition that like there will always be like like a TT tournament happening in the office at all times somewhere there's like just so many TT tables right and then like like other the which is his first company always had like they had an annual day which like you were meant to bring your family and then they would have to have a like the other three day that was like a party to like drink and like there was just like many environments that you would see people behaving outside of there just like classic work environment I think even when I worked in some of the satellite offices like I worked in the London office and the London office just had this really strong culture that we all went out for drinks every day or nearly every day and it got crazy I mean I you know I was at a certain point in my life where I could have two large whiskies with my boss but for other people it was kind of crazy because what are you going to do if your boss is having two large whiskies you're going to have two large whiskies do you know and it's hard to do it means you're a little bit drunk when you're going home to your family but it made you see everyone in a certain right like after it happens day after day it's not like oh this person got drunk like everyone got a little bit drunk everyone's on something kind of stupid or like spilled their drink or their chips or whatever

I don't know but when I think about it from myself and I'd be curious if you if you also think in that way I always end up thinking a lot in terms of like structural incentives and how like how how is the environment being created around people expecting them to work in a certain way because I always just come from that my starting kind of lens if you will is that kind of place I'm like well you know what incentives have we done and what behaviors are we expecting and therefore is it crazy to imagine this person is going to behave in a different way when everything the structure around it is expecting them to behave in that way I feel like I have overlap with that especially like if I put on my game designer cap then I start thinking okay how is the system sort of incentivizing people like what motivations are intrinsic what motivations are extrinsic and what behaviors that would lead to but honestly I also think internally I try to come from a place of personal agency not personal responsibility I think responsibility is always of the system but I think agency can be on every single person in the team. That's so interesting it's funny because I keep so much agency for myself but then I very often I think I especially when I'm working with people I like forget about their agency I don't know or rather I take the responsibility to make the path that I think is the right path the easiest.

I mean I don't know if this is the right spot to sort of close our conversation on but I think something that I've been learning recently in my life has been not to make decisions for other people like have some humility and like not make choices for other people thinking that this isn't your best interest. Yeah, no I know when you say it like that obviously it feels very obvious right like that like yes but I think what I was trying to say is like how are you thinking through the situations you're creating for your people you know and I think that there's this this ability for people to be like yeah right you can make your own choices and it's like well can you like how much have you enabled for them to make their own choices. You know and I think yeah and I think that responsibility kind of starts to come to you as you as you like manage people as you employ people like how much are you enabling them to have agency. No that's a very clear point. It's very easy to sort of like push it it's one of those things where like oh women should speak out in the office more and it's like well sure but it's the thing that is dropping women empowerment women.

Let's really question that. No that makes sense yeah. Yeah. Okay see look here also we've arrived at the same conclusion from slightly different point. Indeed.

Yeah but I think that's what keeps it so interesting I think when you can find someone who like you know you have enough overlap with that you're able to understand where they're coming from but then you have enough differences that it's always interesting to understand their perspective it just like it's endlessly entertaining. Yeah because there's endless possibilities. Yeah. And on this note I think we can say bye and we can have like maybe more conversation around this idea of like coming from different perspective would be interesting at some point in the future. Yeah I think talking about some of these things in more specific will also be interesting.

Yes. Okay let's talk about that sometime. Okay bye. 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.