I Remember Making It

While searching through some old books and journals, I came across this piece of paper.

It was inside one of my journals, from a time when journaling had become a habit for me. For almost six or seven years, I used to write regularly. Sometimes I would write about something I had read and try to relate it to my own experience. Sometimes it was something that had happened at work.

And sometimes there was nothing significant to write. “The weather was hot. I was feeling uneasy.”

That could also be the entry for the day. This paper was different.

I remember making it. I had divided it into sections: rationality, decision-making style, avoiding biases and management style.

Under decision-making style, I had wrote, Data backed; Logical components; Risk averse; Impact focused.

Under management style, I wrote Checklist based; Periodic reviews; Simplifying processes; Avoiding ambiguity; Preference for proactive colleagues; No preference for micro management.

Then there was a list of biases, Sunk cost; Confirmation bias; Hindsight bias; Contrast effect; Availability bias.

There were graphs and diagrams as well, trying to make sense of sales, profits, expectations, debt, personal focus and returns.

I remember what I was trying to do. I was trying to get better at what I was doing. But I was also trying to understand whether there was some pattern or structure in what I was doing.

If I repeatedly broke a problem into logical components, perhaps that was my decision-making style.

If I repeatedly looked at the downside, perhaps I was risk averse.

If I kept asking about the impact, perhaps I was impact focused.

If I preferred periodic reviews, simple processes and proactive colleagues, perhaps those were the components of my management style.

So I was trying to go from my actions to a pattern, and from that pattern to some words that could describe what I was doing.

Two of them are still there. Removing ambiguity. Simplifying the process. That is still the intent when I sit in a meeting.

But something else has changed, and I noticed it only while holding this paper. To make this paper, I had to be remembering.

I had to carry weeks of my own behavior around with me. I had to hold a meeting from March next to a meeting from June and see something common in them. I had to keep the pattern in my mind long enough to give it a name.

That was the work. I cannot do that now. Not because I have decided not to. My mind still tries to recall. But it doesn’t stay. The cycle breaks. Something comes up from last year, or from this morning, and I watch it come up, and then it is not there anymore.

I have stopped wanting to remember. And that has been peaceful. But it also means there is no paper.

Whatever I am observing now does not collect into anything. There is nothing accumulating that I could divide into four sections and give headings to. The observing that made this paper needed a mind that would not let go.

The observing I do now is only possible because it does. I don’t know what to do with that.

The paper says I am risk averse. What I really know is only that I have made many risk-averse decisions.

The paper says the first thing.