People aren't spices - you can't put them into boxes
#144 - music, Maths lectures, Maths lessons before March!
Hi there,
My sense of time about February has been disoriented. This seems to be a first this year - I don’t recall previous February’s being so short. Nevertheless, a new month to tackle. March has recently been a manic month, but this one looks quite doable (at the moment 😂)
A week of getting back to the maths, another interview and also my first shift as a Student Ambassador, helping out in a Year 6 Maths class. Quite a challenging task, managing 6 students with a very wide spectrum of ability.
Highlight of the week: my 2nd Wind Band concert! It was a tremendous programme of music, including masterpieces like The Wizard of Oz, Wicked and How to Train Your Dragon. Thoroughly enjoyed playing it all, with now arguably my favourite society. 🎷
University throws you into a melting pot of countries, cultures, backgrounds, interests and ideals. Although I was from quite a diverse school, it is definitely something to get used to, being surrounded by a) a lot more people and b) people also figuring out who they are, now armed with greater independence and processing the natural maturing into ‘adulthood’.
One thought this week was about how we/I put the people we meet into ‘boxes’, based on our initial data points about them and what they mean to us. A maths nerd? Probably likes chess. Enjoys going out? Probably likes to drink. Plays football? Was probably a popular kid at school.
Why do we have these mental shortcuts? They allow us to quickly remove uncertainty, the mother of all anxiety and a cause of much of our worries. We can easily associate them with people we know who have similar characteristics, to fill in the gaps about one’s personality which we don’t know.
Thinking about me in particular, I am very structured and organised in nature. This categorisation is probably a result of this: wanting to fit everybody into a mental framework of human personality and behaviour. A human application of the phrase “judging a book by its cover”.
Why is this a problem?
People are unique - ultimately, we are all different people with a world of reasons, experiences, nature and nurture elements. It is naive to simplify people into certain characteristics and draw inferences.
You’re missing out on the true picture - if you’ve filled in the gap before you get the chance to learn more about someone, when you do find out the answer to the gap, it’s harder to ‘erase’ your guess than it is to fill in a blank. Put in less abstract terms, you’re eroding the opportunity to find something interesting or ‘cool’ about a person, offering a topic of conversation.
It can damage your relationship - if you end up acting on your inaccurate impressions, through conversation or a decision you make, you end up undermining the person in question and come across as ‘judgemental’.
I am no stranger to this problem - I’ve even written about it before. I caught myself with this lazy thinking twice this week, which motivated me to revisit this idea. (Sidenote - repeating a topic signifies how crucial this topic is to me, and having a developed and more complex view on the matter is encouraging, a sign of learning and thinking!)
I’d like to refer here to 2 scenes in ‘Ted Lasso, ’ the popular Apple TV show featuring a football team, which I’ve recently watched parts of.
The coach, Ted Lasso, reflects on a quote he’d seen driving his son to school: “Be curious, not judgemental”. Have a flexible approach to getting to know someone, erring on the side of facts rather than assumptions.
When asking the players to switch positions for a session, a defender Isaac ends up having to take a corner. He hesitates: “But I’m a defender, I’ve never taken a corner”. Ted says “That’s just a box someone put you in when you were 10 years old. Today, that box ceases to exist”. We are much more than the labels we put on ourselves and the clichés/stereotypes that are associated with them.
The last one is also a reminder that people change - and putting them in hard, disjoint boxes means it’s harder to move them between boxes when they change.
Finally, we should consider ourselves and whether we are too one-dimensional in our views. Can people put us into boxes easily, and if so, what are they? If not, perhaps we should consider what the first impression we give off to people is typically is and, derivatively, what boxes will people tend to put us in? Are these the boxes we would rather be in?
Morgan Housel, the famous author, spoke about a ‘litmus test’ he’d learned recently:
”If I can predict your views on one topic by hearing your views about another unrelated topic, you are not thinking independently. So, for example, if your views on immigration allow somebody to accurately predict your views on abortion and gun control, there's a good chance that you are not thinking independently. That you are going along with the thoughts of other people.”
To be clear, it is ok and perhaps normal to hold similar views if you subscribe to a certain ideology. What is important is that you can back these up with solid bottom-up reasoning, and they are not just companions to your initial core belief about something.
Taking it beyond ideas, what attributes about yourself that have resulted from an aspect of your life do you want to change? Does holding that trait cause harm in another aspect of life? For me, I would say not drinking/going out perhaps means I don’t engage in many natural groups (or their activities). How am I working on that? Hosting 3 friends to watch India vs New Zealand in the cricket (which India won 💪)
We meet new people every day. Our natural primitive instinct is to realise whether we should trust them to be in our tribe. To do this, we fall back on simple and simply flawed methods of assumptions and extrapolations. We must be proactive in avoiding these mental traps and instead, approach with curiosity, interest and and open mind to learn the true selves of the people around us.
Podcast of the week🎙️
Modern Wisdom: #897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
A lot of neuroscience in this one, which I find to be a great way to explain our thoughts and actions. A few unique perspectives too.
What I’m grateful for this week 🙏
The superb waiter at Zizzi Tower Hill, my destination for a Wednesday night dinner - friendly, skilful and hospitable.
Quote of the week 💬
Luck marches with those who give their very best. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
The sun came out this week, in London and on your screens. Hope it’s a sign of a warm and positive March,
Adi