Dealing with Chaos and Brain Gaps

By: Bradley Binversie

One of the challenges that we all face is that the world is chaotic and increasing complex to the point where our minds simply cannot process or make sense of all the information and stimulation that is coming our way. So our brains take care of it for us. We unknowingly use of strategies to organize the world around us.

Why Do We Do This? Our Brains are naturally lazy and pre-conditioned to conserve energy so they’re constantly looking for short-cuts. These short-cuts are helpful as well, it saves us from having to completely de-code all the information in the world from scratch.

What are some examples? (These are not the technical terms)
1. Pattern Recognition- Our brains naturally seek out information that are already familiar with. The challenge is we might miss important information because we’re not familiar with it, so our brain does not actively look for it.

2. Associations- We look for information that resembles previous information that we’ve seen. This isn’t that different that pattern recognition, but the brain takes the liberty of making assumptions with this little bit of information. Again helpful in certain circumstances, if sharp things are dangerous, I can make the assumption that knife is dangerous without actually needing to be cut myself. The problem is it can also lead us to make assumptions that just aren’t true. We may presume to know or understand things about other people based on quick judgments.

3. Grouping- our brains organize items, people, and information into groups to help us make sense of the world. Example: instead of having millions of different individuals with their own needs, we group based on a shared fact pattern, sort of like their brain’s filing system. A great time and energy saver. Sometimes its helpful, other times it leaves gaps or misunderstandings.

There are countless more and the point of sharing this is that our brain can miraculous things but it can also go on autopilot very quickly and easily. With our team at Exclusivia, we try to make sure we are aware of the fact that our brain will leave us prone to gaps. But hopefully because we’re aware of our brain’s hardwiring, we can be a bit more proactive in questioning it collectively. We try to ask simple but helpful questions to the group such as:
“What are we missing?”
“Why are we making this assumption?”

While this does not mean that we never miss anything or make any mistakes, we believe that being aware of some of the brain’s shortcomings has been helpful in collectively serving Exclusivia’s mission as well as living our own best lives.