Friday, May 28th, 2021, 22:17 IST

Today I had a 30 mins call with one of the renowned designers of our community.

In the conversation, she described how our brain plays survival games by categorizing things into two buckets - good or bad. Thinking fast using System 1 (from the book Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman) is easier for the brain because it doesn't involve much thinking. Bucketing things into two extremes is thinking fast and is termed as Dichotomy in psychological terms.

She further explained how unhealthy dichotomy is for designers, given a designer's primary work is to understand the dualities and not fall for them.

We also shared a word regarding how a threatening environment can make you question your abilities and hamper your learning process. You feel vulnerable and unsafe. And hence, you are too afraid to share your input.

She answered:

"You don't have to be vulnerable in an unsafe environment. You can always choose to be rational."

Insightful right? Approach everything by logic. You're not agreeing/ disagreeing with anyone. You're not proving anyone anything. You are only sharing whatever you have in mind with a disclaimer "This might or might not be helpful, but just hear me out."

Towards the end, she also emphasized the importance of reflecting on everything we do, and how it can help us win over dichotomy.

Approach any difficult task with an affirmation. Once you're done, go back and question yourself:

• What scared me? What confused me? What did I enjoy the most? What wasn't clear to me, etc.

Take a pause -> question -> learn -> repeat.