Breaking through our 'frame of reference bubble'!
The more you work in your field, the more you know. The more you know, it is harder to break out of your frame of reference bubble. Why?
What is (might be) the biggest challenge for you and me in our thinking?
Getting out of our experience and thought bubble.
I've recently observed a lot of thinking about solutions to the problems, which exists only in specific settings and environments and, based on it, making an assumption that the answer is needed. Because people who do it are vocal or backed by a lot of capital. Their approach to the problem gets motion, even if there's no need for it from another environmental point of view or it was already solved.
So, I observe that my current thinking about it results from my experience bubble because of my info-bubble and environment. I don't see other people outside of it where the problem might still exist.
Bottom line: Be aware of the experience and thought bubble and take deliberate steps to confront your thinking with others. For small things in daily life, in your professional life, and in business. You will not rule it out completely, but it will help you better judge things.
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Nowadays (2021), it is hard not to take a step and not hear about crypto as a technology and financial instrument. As for every new thing, people try to apply it to different problems and areas. Some of them make sense, and some of them not - or at least not from my bubble perspective.
If I hear that we need crypto to solve problems with the current banking system for money transfer because it is slow, expensive, and not accessible to people, I have my doubts. I use daily a system that is accessible (mobile phone), fast and inexpensive (direct transfers to people, free transfers within the country, reasonable fees, and time for international transfers).
Believe it or not, I can go to ATM with my mobile phone and withdraw cash with no use of my card or fee. Same with paying for goods to another person with a phone and account or money transfer. A value proposition of doing the same with crypto with a low fee of a few % is an outrageous thing.
And BTW, in Africa, they solved it a long time ago with M-Pessa: a system based on mobile phones and optimized for low tech and low bandwidth environment and everyday use by ordinary people.
Yet, people work on solutions to tackle, which is my reality often was already attacked. Why? Because their banking system is stuck somewhere in the past and does not offer such possibilities.
It doesn't mean that those problems do not need to be solved. There are no people in other places in the world who will not benefit from it. Our world's capital weight and technology focus make solutions more oriented around the situation of few countries. People in the tech industry, backed by capital, work to solve problems seen from their bubble. Where such issues might not exist or are already solved in other places.
Instead of the next technological solution, what might be needed is to look at why this problem does not exist in other places and if it can be applied here as well.
The risk of being in your own experience bubble is also present in daily work and life. This article might be the best example of it as I write it based on:
- My environment and country where I'm living
- Information I acquired from my info- and social- bubbles
- My life and world experience so far are limited to places I've been and people I've met.
- My professional environment and what I do in it.
You might assume that people are doing something wrong based on your experience, but you don't know why they are doing it in this way or what environment shaped it.
Yes, it might be a lack of knowledge or insights from other places, but there might also be a good reason why they do it in this specific way. It might be their culture, local regulations, limitations of their work or life environment which cause them to do it in a particular way.
If you want to be better at whatever you are doing, do not assume that your point of view is correct. Be aware of your experience and information bubble.
Ask yourself: what I don't know about the specific problem or the way things are being done, which is outside of my frame of reference and how you can expand your understanding of it.
The last thing never was easier than now with:
- Books and accessibility to it
- Information and experiences transferred by people through media: posts, tweets, YouTube videos
- People and their accessibility - you are one tweet or call away from almost every person on a planet.
We need more challenging of our way of thinking and looking outside of our frame of reference. Staying in it is comfortable but will only reinforce our beliefs and point of view on the world around us.
I leave it for you as food for thought. Don't limit it to the technology; I used it as an example.
