Thinking on Describing What You Do and How You Do it

This is thinking on thinking. Hi, I'm Divya. Thinking

Divya: Hi, I'm Divya.

Kahran: Hi, I'm Karin.

Divya: Thinking.

Kahran: Thinking. And this is thinking on thinking.

This is the 27th episode of thinking on thinking podcast

Divya: Hi, welcome to the 27th episode of thinking on thinking. In this episode, we talked about what is experience, design, how have we arrived at the new tagline for joyous and all of the things that come around understanding what you do and why you do it, how difficult it can be to describe it, and how can you make things lower stakes for yourself so that it's easier and you can try more things. We hope you enjoy.

Kahran: It really took me aback that, like, we managed to agree on a problem state for joy so quickly. I kind of thought that we would spend a little bit more time finessing it, and I think it was just interesting that we seem to have finally converged a little bit.

Divya: wait, what made you think that it would take a long time?

Kahran: I think something I talked about in the podcast before was when I was coming to the decision to shut down Vidya next, which was the edtech company I was running in Bangalore. There, was this meeting I had, with a new hire, and, one of the things that we were talking about is I used to do these meetings with every employee where I'd talk a little bit about my background. I'd ask them about their background, and I asked them, if there was anything that they needed to be successful in their role and also if there was anything that they thought we should carry over that they had seen in other companies or done in their other roles. It was kind of four questions. so I was having this conversation with someone who had recently joined, like, a couple of months in, and she was telling me that her kind of, like, one thought that would make her be more successful in our role would be if we would stay the course longer, on each idea that we had as a company, that, she felt that we were kind of shifting ideas too quickly. and it really took me aback because I felt like we had kind of been staying the course for quite a while, for the set of ideas we've been approaching. We kind of had been doing this very, gamification centric approach to true and false questions that we were running out of our center and really trying to just learn a little bit about how could we get students to want to come back to the technology, when we already had the teacher as a disciplinarian. so anyway, so I thought we'd kind of been committed to this course for some time, and so I was very taken aback. but the thing that I think I've realized since is that for a lot of people in a company, especially in a smaller company, their perception of that company is really shaped by the people they work with on an everyday basis. And if there's not a shared kind of understanding of this is the thing we're doing and this is the thing we're doing and why. Or this is maybe sometimes it's in opposition to something. Right. This is the thing that we're doing and this is how we're not doing it because of this. Right. If there's not a shared understanding of that, sometimes it can feel to people like things are really shifting because you're going from resonating with one person's understanding, maybe the head of sales understanding, to maybe resonating with a different person's understanding, where you talk to the or become closer with the marketing team, and now you're really focused on the marketing team's understanding of the problem and what they're trying to do. I m think in our context, we'd hired a bunch of people who had come from tuition centers, and tuition centers are big in person tutoring, kind of like school. It's kind of like a study hall would be almost in the US, where students are really working individually and tutors are intervening as they need to, both from a discipline point of view, but also from an academic point of view.

Kahran: Right. And so if you bring people with that context, their kind of understanding is, you know, a tuition center times two or times five. Right. But they're going to have that kind of frame of reference. And so I think whereas other people who maybe came from a different context are going to have a different frame of reference. If you don't drive convergence between these different understandings, it can just be really jarring. And I think like happened for that person I was talking to that day. It can really feel like you're shifting between these different sets of priorities and the company is not being able to kind of agree on a path forward.

Divya: But like, that made you think that because we have different perspectives and we understand and prioritize different things, that would make it hard for us to sort of align on one unique thing, or rather on a one singular explanation of what we do and who do we do it for.

Kahran: Yeah, I think it's really hard for a lot of companies, to just decide that. I mean, it's hard for people to decide, right. Because when you commit to saying this is what you do, there's also, there's an implicit like these are these other things I don't do, and these are a set of things I might do, but this is the thing I do. I don't know. Maybe that's a reductive way that I kind of have internalized, which is why I have trouble with it myself.

You talk about feeling imposter syndrome around upcoming AI conference

Divya: So, as of recording this tomorrow, I have a panel, on AI and creativity. And today I was talking to my, therapist about it, and we were discussing just the, idea of, like, basically what I was trying to describe to her was, I'm feeling a lot of imposter syndrome, around this. And we were discussing it, and so she was like, okay, let's do this exercise. You write a paragraph about why you should be a part of this panel. and so I wrote something, and then she was like, okay, now tell me what you wrote. Like, she gave me some time to edit it also, and I started speaking, and then she was like, we have been working together for many months. This is the first time that I did not hear who you are. And it was so shocking to hear that come from her. And then we discussed a bunch of different things, and, like, you know, she sort of helped me navigate away from it, and at some point, I got to being able to describe what do I do and who I am and why I deserve to be like, you know, in this conversation, not in the sense of deserving, but more in the sense of, oh, I belong here. and it was very interesting because at the end of it, she was like, okay, you did very well. Now. And then we just sort of like, you know, broke it down and discussed it, and I was like, it's very easy for me to get into the flow state when I'm not thinking about myself, but I'm thinking about the solution. And she was like, yeah. And that's where believability comes from, because you're not second guessing your words. What you are focused on is clear communication of the end goal.

Kahran: Interesting. Do you feel like that was specific to this AI conference, or. It's like something generally.

Divya: Oh, it's something generally. Like, for the longest time, I felt like I have gotten rid of my imposter syndrome, but in the last, maybe year and a half, it has feels like come back with a vengeance almost.

Kahran: I think I feel that way also. But I think part of that is just because of what we've been doing and because we've been trying to start a company, you really have to go back to things you hadn't done in a really long time. Right. And then you also end up questioning, why are you not being as successful with these things as you know you can be? So it kind of drives you to feeling like, an imposter, right. Because you're looking for some explanation and like, chance and, you know, circumstance is never the kind of explanation that we want to accept in our mind. There has to be some better explanation.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: that's interesting. I was actually kind of curious if maybe I had caused you to feel more imposter syndrome in this situation, because when you had originally told me about this AI conference, I had a little bit, I was a little bit jealous, I will admit, because I really, aspire to being on conferences like that. And I was just like, damn, I want something like this someday. And I was just curious, when you have that kind of reaction from someone close to you, does that kind of like, worsen those feelings, or do you feel like it's just kind of, you know, whenever we're kind of putting ourselves in those situations, we feel that way.

Divya: hm. Interesting. Like, I had not registered that as strongly.

Kahran: Oh, I think, because I would have. Right. I think I may be projecting where it's like, if someone I cared about had a reaction that made me think that this wasn't right for me, I think that that would be something I'd have to really process, before I would be able to kind of like, address my own feelings about it, because I'm like such a, I'm such an internalizer of how I think other people are feeling about things.

Divya: Yeah. It's very interesting, though, how you put it, because it's like sometimes we are trying to do this like secondary layer of guessing and predicting and trying to, almost like map out all of the different paths that a particular situation can take, whether it is in our personal lives, whether it is in a thing that we are creating. and of course there are systematic ways of doing it. That's what most of user profiling and user research and all of that is. but at the same time, you can't predict everything, and you have to let go of that notion that you can't predict everything when you're trying to design something. And I feel like this in some ways connects to what we were talking about because it's like you want to have good intentions and you want to focus on the, at least like, that's where I am at right now. You want to focus on the macro. Like, even with our understanding of what does joyous do. I think that's why I felt like, oh, at our current level of understanding, this feels like the perfect way to describe it, and then it's not the final, final thing. Like, you know, in a month's time, we have three more conversations with different people. And, like, especially these people who have done sales, we might have a better understanding. Like, you know, we might find elements that we can add to it, that can refine it. But it's a little bit, you know, like, it's starting to go from, at least in my mind, it's starting to go from, this is who we are, and to a question of, this is who we are right now as we understand it.

Kahran: Oh, that's so interesting.

Divya: And that's just, like, so much more of a low stakes situation. you know what I mean?

Kahran: I would. Yeah, but I would agree with it, arriving at a low stakes situation, but I would not agree with how I got a, because I feel like where we were before, in my mind, it was a lot of focus on the hows. I was really focused on trying to describe what joyous did in terms of we wanted to do those things that gave you a sense of awe or gave you a sense of wonder or made you feel a sense of connection. I was really focused on saying that what we are doing is we recognize that people, for whatever reasons, like, have these needs. Right. They have these unfulfilled needs, and if you can connect with them on that level as a brand, as a company, as whatever. Right. Like, you are able to really build, like, deep connections with people. M. And I think I even look at it as something more than just, like, marketing in some ways is to give people fulfillment.

Divya: Of course.

Kahran: Right? So the tagline that we have come up with is that we are design and marketing consultancy that maximizes the depth, length, and value of customer relationships for its clients. I think the really nice thing about that is it sidesteps the questions of how, but it kind of implies that you're doing things that are very cool because of the way you're framing the problem. So to me, it made it more about who we are and what we do. And then because of how we framed who we are and what we do, it implied a lot of other things, but we didn't have to go into that.

Divya: Interesting. Yeah. I also like that I would phrase it in a different way of why I resonated with it. I think it cleared my cut off of focusing on the process while also focusing on some amount of this is what's going to happen. Like, it's not talking about collaterals it's not talking about something generic like storytelling, which like, of course we want to do good storytelling, but like, what does it result in? Like, good storytelling can result in your brand being memorable. It can result in your own employees thinking about you in a different fashion. It can, like, you know, the way you were talking about at Vidya next and this person getting different aspects of the story of Vidya next and why they were doing the things that they were doing. like, it made her feel more confused. And you can, like, you know, sort of streamline it, but that's not the why. That feels interesting to me. Like, I feel like that's not the why. Why I want to make things. And the way we have articulated it right now, it feels like it's capturing the right why, if that makes sense. Like, that's where it sort of. I was like, ah, yeah, this resonates and this works very well.

Kahran: Yeah, I think it also helps. And this kind of connects to what we were talking about last week. But we had a lot of pre experiences, right. So we spent a lot of time thinking about what does it mean to be a consultancy, right? What does it mean to work on customer relationships? Like, what do we think about as being part of a customer relationship? I think that work, you know, maybe we could have accelerated. I don't know if we need to spend quite as long, as many months as we did, but, I don't know. I think that work is really helpful for early stage startups or anyone who's trying to drive convergence on an idea, because you, like, you have to get a shared vocabulary.

Who does the CEO go and talk to about doubts? Right

Divya: Yeah. Actually, you've had a conversation with these friends of mine. So one of them is a second time founder, and one of them is a first time founder, and they're starting a marketing SaaS, company.

Kahran: Oh, yeah, yeah, I.

Divya: And because of the second time founder, they had the understanding that first, we're going to just take three to four months and just explore all of the different spaces. So they explored, like, ideas in the physical space, and they explored ideas in, like, digital space. And do we want to go b, two, c? Do we want to go b, two b? Do we want to do sas? Do we want to do something else? Like, you know, just this, giving themselves the space to explore a bunch of different things. And of course, like, you know, for them, it was like they had both quit their jobs and they wanted to focus on it full time. for us, it's slightly different. Like, we are, we have organized our sort of time and setup differently. But I think that it's a very. I mean, I still feel that way, that it's a very mature thing to be able to just sort of say, okay, no, first I want to understand the shape of the problem. Maybe that's also, like, the designer part of me, which is like, I want to understand the problem before I jump into the solution mode. it's very easy to sort of, like, you know, get into a solution mode with things. It's way harder to just to stay with the problem. You know, it's. It's at that same scale of difficulty. I feel like when therapists tell you stay with the feeling, and your brain just goes, no, but let me solve this feeling.

Kahran: I was thinking about that because I was thinking, like, if we were trying to help a client through this, like, how would we do that? Right? Like, you have that company, the friends of yours that are trying to do a femtech brand, and, like, you know, today I was looking at some of their stuff, and I was thinking about, you know, where they could position themselves. Right. But that doesn't mean I could get a crystal sort of understanding. I don't know. I mean, you would have to spend a lot of time kind of with the company and understanding them, and I think it's very hard for an external person to even give that to them. Right. Like, it's almost like you have to help them kind of explore in the way that can help them find it themselves.

Divya: Yeah, I mean, I would love to do that work, honestly. Like, I would love to develop the skills to be able to give people that deeper understanding. Because I think one of the things that really fascinates me in life is being able to think with someone. like, that's a very precious thing to be able to do where it's almost like, you know, somebody is letting you into the part of their mind that they would often feel very vulnerable about. Right. Because when your thoughts are half formed, it's a very vulnerable thing to go through because you're like, I don't know what you're going to misunderstand, because even I don't understand this thing fully. And I think a lot of times, you know, people try to belittle the work that consultants do quite often by saying, ah, it's just because, like, you know, CEO needs somebody to convince someone, and so they get these consultants in. But I think a lot of the valuable work is that who does the CEO go and talk their doubts to? Like, they can't go and talk to their board and they can't go and talk to their employees. Even the other cxos are their employees to some extent. So who does the CEO go and talk to? Just like people get a therapist, he gets consultants. Consultants who understand business and who understand, have some understanding of like, you know, how to navigate office politics, but most of all have an understanding of this person who is sitting on the other side. How can I help them think through whatever they are thinking through?

Kahran: I mean, to an extent I feel like especially when you're a CEO, you can use your board for that and hopefully, but yeah, your board's not there every day. Right. They might check in with you once a month or once a quarter m.

Divya: And also I would say that, like, that really depends on the quality of relationships that you have with the board. I don't think that like, most CEO's would have that kind of trusted relationship with every member of their board.

Kahran: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's just thinking about, I don't know how you get to that like, situation, right. Where you're being kind of brought in with the understanding that you're helping them get a better understanding. Right. I don't know because I was just thinking about the different companies I've worked with and invested in and been part of. It's hard to imagine ones that would bring consultants in, first of all, that they would kind of recognize that that shared understanding is part of their core issues and then kind of bring people in to help them have a better shared understanding. It's almost like you'd have to come in for something else and then I drive that as like an additional value add.

Divya: M sadly, you'll have to be duplicitous about it.

Kahran: Yeah. Because it would manifest in the customer experience or like in the marketing or something, right. That we don't have like a good, people are coming in with an expectation of the product or service being one way and then the product or service is a different way. Right. And that's how it would manifest. But I don't, like, I think you would just end up hiring a new marketing agency or advertising agency. Right. Being like, oh, I need to drive down my, I don't know, my bounce rate or drive up my retention rate or whatever metric you're kind of looking at. But you wouldn't, look and say, oh, you know, am I creating a different expectation in the customer's mind than.

Divya: What they're seeing as somebody who has done a bunch of branding work? It's so frustrating for people to come and give you examples of Nike, Apple and Coke. Yes, everybody knows that they are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Yes, everybody knows that they have done really amazing work. Do you also recognize they have poured billions of dollars and decades into that branding? Like, I start feeling myself shift into, you know, from hopeful and energized to the slightly cynical, oh my God, people do not understand the complexities of this kind of headspace. yeah, but, yeah, like, honestly, if we are able to do it, it would be amazing because, like, yeah, it was really pleasant to be like, oh, okay, now we understand what we do and like, now we can talk to other people about it.

Kahran: Yeah. Maybe to make it somewhat tangible though, you know? So we've concluded that our listeners, much like the rest of the audiences in the world, is not going to hire someone to do this. But like, what did we do? I think, I mean, one of the key things that we did, I think, is we talked to different kinds of people about what we did. And eventually, as we kept hearing different versions of it back from people, we started to understand, you know, what parts of it resonated correctly.

Divya: Oh, you know what we did? We did the work that media properties do in pre production in a way.

Charu: We need to reset two of the three pillars of our game

Kahran: Okay.

Divya: right, so, okay, this is like slightly longish, ah, sort of explanation, but so right now, Charu and I, like, you know, we ran one set of tests on our game.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: And we realized that the core mechanic is working, but we need to throw out the setting, we need to throw out the art. We need to restart from there.

Kahran: Wow.

Divya: Out of the three pillars, we have gameplay figured out and we need to reset the two other things. earlier our story was based on Sci-Fi and it was like in a futuristic setup. and this time we were like, okay, no, we want to do it on earth, because the Sci-Fi setup doesn't really give us much. Plus, because we want a visual, people should be able to identify clues kind of a thing. It needs to be something that people should be able to identify. And in Sci-Fi they would not be able to do it very well. and so we started exploring, things. And then we were like, maybe we should like, you know, do something in India. we were like, okay, cool. And then like, we sort of split the work and like, charu took one part of it and I took another part of it and Charu went and, ah, sort of like, you know, played around with a bunch of different setting ideas and asked GPT to generate a bunch of them. It's a little bit like, you know, doing concept art, except that, like, GPT generated, like, some 20 settings. And then we were like, oh, really liking this desert festival kind of thing. So then we went, ask GPT, generate 40 more, but use the desert festival. And like, you know, it sort of kept growing. And so every time we would come back together, we would figure out, okay, what do we, like, where do we want to go from here? And I think this is the. I mean, we have released six games, but we have tried to make something like ten games together. This is the fastest iteration of the story part because we just, like, sort of spread out and, like, as we saw GPT talk about those different things, we just understood, oh, this works, and this doesn't work. Right. It's a little bit like when we describe to somebody else what we do, it becomes easier for us to understand. Except that, like, with AI, we just did it at scale, so it accelerated. Like the thing that with ourselves, it might have taken us, like, you know, two months to get to. We got there in a week.

M says refocusing experience design around customer relationship made sense for company

Kahran: Interesting, but you said this term, a, media loop, was that.

Divya: That's what it's called, media properties. Like, whatever, you know, anything that is, whether it's films or comics or, like, you know, stuff like that, you always create storyboards and you always, like, you know, sort of break down the story and stuff like that. Right? So, like, we did concepting work.

Kahran: I see.

Divya: I see in a particular way, but except that, like, it looks like business concepting, you know what I mean?

Kahran: Yeah, I guess we did kind of do that. I mean, we didn't use GPT as much. Like, I think we did do a little bit with GPT to try and help us earlier in the process and understand what we do. But I think.

Divya: No, but we talk to people.

Kahran: We talk to people a lot. Yeah. At least. I feel like for me, one of the things that, like, really happened for me was we used to really talk about what we did as experience design. And then as I met more people who did experience design or did what they called experience design, I realized that this was a term that was growing to basically mean user experience in all non tech domains. M so if you are a company that doesn't work in technology, but you have a team that handles your technology experience and you don't have developers and designers and everything, you might have an experienced design person, who will work with an outsourced development team, and then that person is responsible for your online experience. it seems like that's what it's evolving into, which is just not necessarily the mindset we want to put people in. And I think refocusing it around the customer relationship and not the how of experience design really made sense to me.

Divya: I also think that there was another, I would say, like, personal shift for both of us. I think we have done those things for so long that we were wanting to not use those terms like design and marketing. It's like, ah, I don't want to use it any longer. But, like, I think ultimately we arrived, ah, at that because there is shared understanding with, like, you know, our potential clients there. But also, I think somewhere we also became less picky about the words. You know what I mean?

Kahran: Yeah, I mean, I think I just say it slightly differently, but I think for me, I was really didn't want to be put into a box. right. So it was like, I know what these boxes are, and I don't want to be in that box. And then I think what we started to realize is people are going to put you in a box anyway, so you might as well be in the box you want to be in, and then you can figure out how to show them that you do things that are outside of the box. See what I did there? But I think kind of like going for. And I think this conversation we had with this, friend and colleague of mine, Deb, a couple of weeks ago was really helpful in helping us. Really just think about, like, yeah, how can you make it so people can use 5% of their brains and still understand what you do? M. You know? And I think that realization has just really sunk in where it's like, yeah, you can't make things complicated for people because they're only going to give you 5% of their brains. They're running around and doing 10 million other things.

Divya: There's also this other thing, and I don't know if it was a fear for you, but I think an, underlying fear for me always was that, like, I would not be able to capture and hence, articulate all of the amazing things. The first line of the novel only needs to convince you to read the first page. Like, that kind of a zone made it much easier. Okay. If somebody has written, like, you know, read that line and they understand, oh, okay, I understand what these guys do. Maybe I want to learn a little bit more about it. Then we can have the elaborate, like, you know, we want to do this, and we want to do it like this. Like, all of that makes more sense. But, yeah, like, what Deb said, which was getting a fast no. Is your friend, like, it really stuck with me. Like, just that one particular thing as well.

Kahran: Yeah. And I think in what you were just saying, also, I really would emphasize that I think we changed our expectations of it a little bit where there was a while, where I think we were trying to communicate with each other and the world and everyone. This is what we do. This is why we are here. Right. And we're trying to write something that captured that. And I think now what we've done is we're trying to write something that will capture people's attention so they'll want to talk to us. Right. Like, it's a very different. We're not trying to communicate as much with each other the breadth of what we do. We're trying to communicate with a potential buyer, the breadth of what we do. And I think that's just. It lowers the burden a little bit.

Divya: And makes it low stakes.

Kahran: Yeah. That's interesting. That's an interesting contention you have. I mean, I think it's very true. Right. Wherever you can make things lower stakes, it does just become easier. Easier, obviously. Yeah.

Divya: I mean, like, that was something that my sister was telling me yesterday when I was sort of discussing with her, that I'm feeling so panicked about this panel. And she was like, imagine if every time you had to choose what to eat, you had to deliberate on it for an hour, how difficult would it be for you to eat food? Like, if every time you go on a panel, it's like two days of extreme panic, and it was more like four days of extreme panic. Like, how many panels are you gonna do? And she's so right. I'm not gonna do that many. Right. And it's so strange. Like, talks don't bother me. That's why, like, when I was doing talks, I was like, ah, okay, whatever. Like, I'll write something and then, like, I'll go and speak about it. But somehow, maybe it's, the thing that you always say. Having some idea of what other people are going to say will help me also navigate the thing.

Kahran: But it is your first panel, right?

Divya: It is my first panel, yeah.

Kahran: And, you gave your first talk a long time ago.

Divya: I don't even remember when I gave my first talk. Yeah, it has been years.

Kahran: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, it's new, of course. I don't know. I feel like. Yeah. Freaking out for four days the first time. Kind of makes sense to me because you don't know what to expect, but no, very true.

She was talking about making things low stakes before a panel

Divya: But she was talking about making things low stakes. And there is merit in that as well. That, like, you know, if you can reduce the stakes of whatever is in front of you, that can also help.

Kahran: Oh, because saying that you'll do more of them makes it feel like this one is lower stakes.

Divya: No, she was just like, what is making it high stakes? And just eliminate that.

Kahran: I see.

Divya: Right? Like, oh, if you're feeling like it's gonna be the audience that is judging you, then you just think about, okay, different people have given me different perspectives, but, like, you know, ah, somebody said that, oh, you can think about it. Like, oh, AI is so new. People don't even. Haven't had time to learn about it. And maybe they're just coming to learn whatever they can. It's a curated set of people who are actually making things. or you can think about, like, there are no expert creators in AI because, like, it's been out for four months. Like, how many experts can there be, right? Like, maximum experience is like four, five months and stuff like that. But, like, almost everybody has been okay. Is it the audience? Is it the, like, you know, venue? Is it the panelists? Like, all of those things. Interesting. Like, how do you reduce wherever you feel? Like, oh, my God, this is too much.

Kahran: So I also recently, started going back to therapy, and my therapist said something to me that I think was kind of interesting where she was like, can you play it out a little further? Right. So, like, for example, I sent some people some of my writing, and, it's kind of, like, dark in some ways. And I was kind of stressed about, like, what if they do see me in, like, a negative way after reading it? And it's like, well, and then what? Imagine they do, like, they see, like, you know, some of my really close friends, like, have this new kind of more negative opinion of me after reading something really dark that I wrote. It's like, will that change our relationship? I don't know. Maybe, right? But, like, we would talk about it and we would see, like, it just. I think if you play out the. For me, at least, if you play out the negative one really far, then eventually it stops being as, scary because you realize that there's not really a scary thing at the end of it. Like, imagine your panel goes really terribly and everyone really thinks that you had a big talk about what you knew in AI, but you didn't show up. you weren't able to talk through it. So let's say maybe 30 people know, maybe half of them kind of has this opinion that on one idle Wednesday, you had a shitty day and didn't talk well about AI. And then what? Maybe fine. Maybe 10% of them might, like, you know, remember it the next day. Maybe of those people, right? Like, maybe 2% of them might remember to act on it in any way. So maybe one person who observed this experience might even remember it a week later enough to maybe tell someone about it that, yeah, they'd be kind of bombed at this thing. It's like, it would literally be a sentence, you know? Like, that's the worst possible outcome.

Divya: Yeah, I think I used to have a version of it. Like, I just remember it very clearly. I was in Goa, and, I was sitting behind a friend on a two wheeler, and I really hate being on two wheelers. Like, I really dislike them. They feel very scary to me. And we were on a highway, like, crossing a bridge, and it was really fast. Like, my friend was driving quite fast, and I was just like, oh, my God. And I was like, okay, the worst thing that can happen is you die. I. And then it ends, and that's the worst. Okay. So I don't like, you know, I think after that one, and how darkly people look at me when I tell them that. What? What? How did you soothe yourself by telling yourself, it's okay if I die? After that? They're just like, m. Okay, maybe I shouldn't.

Kahran: That's interesting. I guess you're. Yeah, because it's, It's ultimately defining the fear, right? It's like, you know, it's. And absolutely true, right? Like, that the amorphous fears are so much scarier than a, defined fear.

Washington: If I was in a situation, I would plot different scenarios

So I tell you one thing. I just had this thought. If I was in that situation, I feel like what I tend to do is I, like, plot different scenarios, right? So I'd be like, oh, if we skid, I will leap this way, and then, like, the bike will start to tilt because I've leaped off. Right. So then I'll do. And I'll just, like, construct more and more scenarios that, like, I will have a plan. Makes me feel better.

Divya: So, you know why the brain does that? We have the fear response in our, primal parts of our brain, which is, like, stimulus, direct connection to harm, okay? Escape. That is where fear response comes from. But then, as our world got more complex and as we developed the prefrontal cortex, what ended up happening is now we can give reasoning, which is multi step to our fears. which means that if ever our fear cant be plotted to a direct thing. Our, brain will try and come up with more and more of those paths. And the more you come up, sorry to tell you this, this is anxiety, not fear. And the more you come up with it, the worse it gets. Because the sad part is it's coming from the rational part of your brain.

Kahran: You're like, I will rationalize this feeling.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: Very high agency.

Divya: Like, you're trying to find reasons. Yes. But, you know, the ideal situation is, I guess there is nothing to fear about because I can't find anything that should be feared.

Kahran: Interesting.

Divya: But I'm not there yet. I'm with you on plotting out different things.

Kahran: Yeah, I remember I had a colleague once years ago, who was like, something I realized is that you've planned conversations in your head, and so then when you're talking, you're looking for it to fall into that planned conversation. Because sometimes I think, especially in, like, especially when I was younger in my career, like, work environments would make me feel a little bit nervous, especially. Right. So I would just, like, think about what I was going to say beforehand. But then you're, like, anticipating that the person is saying what you thought they were going to say. And so it's very quickly for you to make an assumption, because you're not really listening. Right. You're trying to figure out which path. So that's another interesting side effect if you do too much of this, because you're like, oh, I've already thought through whatever 20 different scenarios there are in this moment. So which one of the 20 are they? Instead of being like, oh, wait, what is happening right now?

Divya: Huh? I must go and think much more about this now.

Kahran: I do love when we end on nice, big, open questions.

Divya: But this is a good conversation, and I'm really glad that, like, we managed to sort of, put together our thoughts as it is, like, really fresh in our minds how we arrived at this understanding, because it's very easy to sort of forget. Like, I'm sure in a week from now, we would not remember how we got here, and we would be in a space. Oh, we always thought this way, and we were never confused. So, like, it's nice to be in the space where we were confused, and now we are not confused anymore.

Kahran: And I think one of the goals that we really had for the podcast, Washington kind of capturing these key moments on our journey right as we're starting this company, as we're just figuring things out, life out. So I think kind of capturing this thing that was really kind of been pivotal for us and sharing kind of how we got here. I hope it's been useful for everyone, and I know it's going to be useful for us in the future, too.

Divya: Awesome.

Kahran: Good chat. Bye bye.

Divya: Yes.

Kahran: Bye.

Divya: Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on Thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gooms.

Kahran: If you found this topic to be interesting or have other topics you wish we would explore on a future episode, please reach out to, us at, our website, joyous studio.