Duality & the reason we don't agree on things

Duality refers to the seemingly opposite or conflicting nature of things. We see duality everywhere - It is knowing that light cannot exist without darkness, and joy cannot be fully appreciated without having experienced sorrow.

To an entrepreneur duality is the mortal enemy. Because as an entrepreneur you want a playbook, some best practices to follow. Having to explore two different sides of the same equation are counter intuitive. And the very act of this exploring both sides pushes us more into subjectively than objectively and there exists the problem for those who want to clear answer.

For entrepreneurs (or anyone really) certain topics always seem to be in fashion - and depending on whom you talk to, they might have strong opinions on either side

1. Working remotely or in person

2. Following a routine or being spontaneous

3. Pushing to get work done or surrendering

4. Being data driven or intuition driven

By default we all will have a preference on these questions. Its important to understand that there is no wrong or right answer. One cannot exist without the other - just like there may be two sides of a coin but there is only one coin.

Whats interesting is that often people who have strong views of one side tend to build stronger and stronger conviction on that same side.

Here’s an example - Do you know of someone who is data-driven? By default do they try and use data for every decision? Sleep trackers, diet, nutrition, metrics, goals - what might have started with work makes its way into every part of life. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, this is a slightly more extreme version of me not that long ago.

How often does strongly identifying with one side actually become part of your identity? Its easy to loose your free will to make decisions based on what will serve your highest purpose. The reality is for some hardcore data driven folks - not using data for some decisions might serve them really well and for some intuitive’s - validating with data might be an awesome combination.

Put another way theres a lot of value in exploring both sides of the equation. Its easy to be biased based on something that might have been true for you in the past, there is wisdom in checking in to see if those assumptions still hold true.

Something people don’t talk about is that there is a huge advantage of switching sides. When the brain gets used to something we form synaptic connections in the brain. Put another way - Hebb's rule states that cells that fire together wire together. Once this happens enough times - it becomes subconscious - you stop thinking about it. Working from the office - is not something most people think about anymore but everyone remembers their first day in a new office.

When you switch sides and try something new - the brain needs to make new synaptic connections - you literally start to prune the old circuits in your brain and build new ones. During the period of change you are hyper conscious - you don’t have the hardware connections in your brain to go unconscious as yet. This often manifests for me as periods of pure creativity. Some of my best ideas come in these moments.

Simply switching things up is a great way to tap into this zone of genius. Some tactics I use all the time

1. Changing my zoom background, and I don’t mean the virtual one, I mean actually packing up my bags and working from a new city. I like 3 months of travel and 3 months of being back home and building routine. This works for me. When I’m back home - I work from different cafe’s or even take a different route to work, anything to break the pattern. You would simply choose to work from a new part of the office if you don’t have the ability to work from somewhere else.

2. Meeting new people, trying new classes. Meeting people I would have once stayed away from. Attending events outside my comfort zone. I buy tickets in advance and put them on my calendar to incentive me to show up. I have built connections, found new hobbies and met some of my closest friends through this. Highly underrated and super fun.

3. Pushing to get stuff done. The infamous entrepreneur calendar where every minute is accounted for. You don’t need me to infer thats an extreme on one side of duality. I’ve been there and during the early stages - I didn’t have the luxury of delegating work so I needed to do more things - there is truth to that. A framework which now works for me - Is I list 3 things in the day I really want to get done which are going to have outsized impact and just focus on those 3.

There is no right side or wrong side, the only lesson is don’t fall in love with a side. Breaking the pattern has outsized returns. Once you break the pattern with one things - it gets easier to break the pattern with other things. Life can fall into crisis when you start breaking patterns - it usually fixes itself in a few weeks. Getting good at breaking patterns makes you anti fragile. You realize there are fewer and fewer areas where you have strong preferences.