I see components… everywhere :)
When a couple fights over… wait, what were they fighting about again ? — it’s often due to the fact that they don’t know how to analyse their own emotions and needs, or how to communicate them constructively.
If we could all develop the habit of “looking under the hood” before we hit the tire of the car out of frustration, I believe there isn’t much conflict or imbalance we couldn’t fix on Earth.
Languages = components + system
I have flash memories of being 6 years old, sitting in German class in Luxembourg. We’d just moved from Ankara to Luxembourg. I was attending a French primary school and taking private lessons every day, and here I was trying to learn yet another language that was part of the curriculum.
Just a few months back, I was living in a world in which there were only two languages: Turkish and English. :)
And suddenly, I needed more words just to say the same things. Didn’t make much sens to little ol’ me at that time. But I didn’t realise how these language learning challenges would train my brain in a very specific way.
During German classes (and later with Spanish also), I remember decomposing the structure of the sentences, looking for similar “blocks” that I would recognise from Turkish or French.
The subject, the verb, the noun, the “suffixe”, the “préfixe”, gérondif, datif, féminin, masculin…
A lot was stressful back then, but this exercise was comforting to me. It gave me a path to follow, a method I could trust. Step by step, words became sentences, sentences became paragraphs, and language could finally allow me to express myself.
Things were blurry at the beginning, but my brain was scanning data and getting me there organically, by trial and error. I remember feeling confident that if I was given enough “example sentences”, I would be able to figure out the construct and repeat it. I loved examples. I’m sure the AI bots learning to recognize images on Google feel the same way.
Seeing the structure.
Mapping out its logic.
Seeing the system that will make the wheels of that language turn… Loved it.
Everything is made of blocks, kind of…
Actually, when I think about it, that same approach is what allowed me to figure out emotions, people, behaviour, brands, apps and websites… and write poems, stories, build strategies, facilitate workshops with dozens of people in a room…
Nature is a system.
A relationship is a system.
A village runs on relationship and resource management systems.
An airplane is a system (and one that requires high discipline from the humans that design, produce, run an maintain it).
Democracy is a system.
When we detect friction, imperfection, frustration or danger, we need to look at what is being exchanged, what are the components and what dynamic, logic or… system… rules… laws…. are putting them into action.
There is always more than meets the eye…
While we operate on our conscious minds through the day (while the subconscious holds 99% of our data), we don’t dig deep into the back office of things. But that’s were true improvement can be achieved through design thinking.
CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and systemic approaches are design thinking applied to psychology and brain. Everything can be approached through this step by step, well thought logic.
I am obsessed with exploring the anatomies or maps or dynamics of things, so we can design dashboards to signal us what truly requires our attention, so we can actually solve the root causes behind the symptoms.
