E72 Script
Last week we talked about the difference between struggle that is hard and struggle that is wrong - and how misalignment struggle is information about direction rather than a verdict on your capability.
This week connects directly to that. Because one of the main reasons creative makers end up in misalignment - and one of the main reasons they stay there long after the signal is clear - is a thinking habit so common and so automatic that most people never notice they're using it.
It's the habit of forcing a binary choice onto a situation that doesn't actually require one. Either this or that. One thing or the other. And in doing so, we quietly filter out a third option that was available the whole time.
This episode is about that habit. A statistics class taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned about it. And I want to share that with you today.
Alfred Korzybski - a philosopher and linguist who spent a career thinking carefully about how language shapes thought - said this: "There are two ways to slide easily through life. To believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."
I want to use that quote as the opening frame for this episode because it names exactly what either-or thinking does. It saves us from thinking. It's a mental shortcut. It produces certainty - fast, clean, comfortable certainty – even when the situation doesn’t support or deserve certainty. At all! It’s false certainty. And it is creäted without requiring us to do the harder work of complexity, of thinking, of developing our own thoughts. And certainty, even manufactured certainty, feels considerably better than sitting with a genuinely complicated question.
Most creative makers default to either-or thinking without realizing they're doing it. Artist or business owner. Technically skilled or artistically expressive. Creative fulfillment or financial stability. Freedom or structure. Serious craft or commercial viability. These feel like real choices that have to be made. They feel like the honest acknowledgment of genuine trade-offs that anyone building a creative practice eventually must face.
But most of the time - not all of the time, but most of the time - they're not real trade-offs at all. They're manufactured constraints. The binary frame was applied to a situation that was actually much more complex. And in applying it, a whole category of possible solutions got filtered out before anyone even started looking for them.
And I want to connect this directly to something we talked about in episode 70 on belief - specifically the idea of confirmation bias. When you frame something as a binary choice, you've already decided what the options are. Which means you're searching for evidence that supports one side or the other. The both-and solution - the one that doesn't require choosing - never gets considered because the frame eliminated it before the search even began. The belief that it is binary is doing exactly what confirmation bias always does. It's telling you what to look for and making sure that's all you find.
That's what this episode is about. Learning to notice when you've applied a binary frame to something that didn't require one. And what becomes available when you take it off.
I want to tell you a story. And I want to preface it by saying that I went into this particular class dreading it. Statistics was a required prerequisite for graduate school and I had been putting it off as long as I could. What I did not expect was that it would give me the most useful lesson I've ever received about how thinking actually works-never mind the math part. And it came not from a lecture or a textbook but from a moment of being thoroughly dressed down in front of my entire class.
Here’s what happened.
The final project for the course was a group assignment. The professor provided each group with a large three-ring binder full of data - research, numbers, articles, studies, findings - and the task was to examine a hypothesis using that data. Three groups, working independently, using the provided materials.
We worked. We dug through the data carefully. We built our argument. We were, I have to say, fairly confident in our conclusions by the time the presentations came around.
Group one presented first. Their conclusion: X drivers are worse drivers. Supported by the data. Clearly argued. Confidently delivered.
Group two presented next. Their conclusion: there is no meaningful correlation between X and driving ability. Also supported by the data. Also clearly argued and confidently delivered,
And then my group presented. Our conclusion: X drivers are better drivers. Also supported by the data. We were actually quite pleased with ourselves.
The professor looked at us - all of us - as a class. And he did not look pleased.
What followed was a thorough and not entirely gentle assessment of our collective academic performance. This was, he informed us, the worst example of academic rigor he had seen in his career. He was seriously considering failing all three groups. We were stunned. We had used the data. We had done the work. We approached his desk with our binders when he asked for them - all three groups, all three binders, lined up on his desk.
He looked at them and asked that we flip through them page by page and state what was on each. And then he stepped back and grinned.
We all had the exact same binder. Same data, same research, same reports, the only difference was the color of the cover.
How had three groups, working from identical information, proved three completely different and mutually contradictory things?
The answer, which he delivered with considerably more warmth now that the lesson had landed, was this: we had all selectively ignored the information that didn't support the conclusion we were trying to prove. We had each gone in looking to confirm a particular belief rather than to understand what the data actually showed. And so, we found what we were looking for - not because it was there exclusively, but because we filtered out everything that contradicted it.
The correct answer, he said, still grinning, was: with this data, you cannot make a determination. The second group was the closest, but missed the point by a few choice words.
We had been given incomplete and contradictory information. And instead of recognizing that honestly, all three groups had manufactured certainty by ignoring the contradictory evidence. We forced a clean answer out of messy data by deciding, unconsciously, that the mess didn't count.
Best lesson I ever learned in creative thinking. And it came from a statistics class. We all passed, by the way.
The application to how creative makers think about their work is direct and worth reiterating. Most problems aren't either-or. They're insufficient data, or both factors matter, or it depends on context. Forcing either-or thinking onto them doesn't resolve the complexity. It hides it. And produces false confidence in a conclusion that was manufactured rather than earned.
Now let's talk about why this particular thinking habit is so persistent. Because if both-and thinking is more accurate and more useful, the reasonable question is why anyone defaults to either-or in the first place.
The answer is not that people are unsophisticated or careless thinkers. The answer is that either-or thinking is genuinely efficient. Binary choices are faster to process than complex ones. They produce clear answers-even though sometimes incorrectly. They eliminate the discomfort of sitting with two apparently contradictory things at the same time. And certainty - even manufactured certainty - feels better than genuine complexity. Especially when you're under pressure, when the stakes feel high, when you need to make a decision and move.
There is research in cognitive psychology on the capacity to hold apparently contradictory ideas simultaneously - what's called dialectical thinking. And it is genuinely harder mental work than binary thinking. It requires tolerating ambiguity without resolving it prematurely. Resisting the pull toward a clean answer when the situation is actually messy. Staying with the tension between two things that both seem true rather than collapsing to whichever one is easier to defend.
There is also research on what's called integrative complexity - the ability to recognize multiple dimensions of a problem and find ways to integrate them rather than forcing a single answer. And this is where it gets directly relevant to your work as a creative maker. Because what the research shows consistently is that higher integrative complexity is associated not just with better decision-making but with more original, more resolved, more layered creative work. The maker who can hold complexity - who can see that technical precision and expressive freedom aren't opposites but tools that inform each other, who can recognize that structure and spontaneity can coexist in the same piece - that maker has access to a wider range of solutions than the one who has already decided it has to be one or the other.
Either-or thinking doesn't just limit your decisions. It limits the work itself. Because the work reflects the thinking that produced it. A maker who has decided that technical rigor and personal expression are mutually exclusive will make different work - less interesting work, less fully realized work - than one who has figured out how to hold both simultaneously. The both-and thinking doesn't just open up options. It opens up the work.
And yet the pull toward either-or is strong. Because for a creative maker, these binary frames show up constantly and they always sound reasonable. I can make meaningful work or I can make work that sells. I can develop serious technical skill or I can preserve my intuitive process. I can build a teaching practice or I can stay focused on the making. I can charge what my work is worth or I can reach the people I want to reach.
Each of these feels like a real choice. Each feels like the honest acknowledgment of a genuine trade-off. But each of them is also a frame. And the frame is doing a significant amount of work to make the both-and solution invisible before the search for it has even begun.
So what does both-and thinking actually look like when you apply it to the specific decisions a creative maker faces? Because I want this to be practical rather than theoretical.
The question that unlocks both-and thinking is deceptively simple. Not "which of these should I choose" but "how could both of these be true or integrated?" That single shift - from which to how - changes the direction of the search entirely. Instead of looking for evidence that one side is right and the other is wrong, you're looking for the conditions under which both could coexist. And that search almost always finds something worth considering and far more interesting.
Take a few of the either-or frames that come up most often for textile artists and fiber makers specifically.
"I can't develop serious technical pattern making skills without losing my expressive intuitive approach." The both-and question: how does technical precision actually expand what intuition can do? What becomes possible in the work when you have the technical vocabulary to execute what the intuition is reaching for? These aren't opposites. Technical mastery gives intuition more tools to work with. The both-and isn't a compromise. It's a more complete version of the work.
"I can't build a body of work and also teach." The both-and question: what does teaching reveal about what you actually understand deeply versus what you only think you understand? Teaching forces a kind of clarity and rigor that making alone doesn't always produce. Some of the sharpest thinking about craft comes from the work of explaining it. These two things don't compete. They inform each other.
"I can't charge what my work is worth and also reach the people I want to reach." The both-and question: what would need to be true for those two things to coexist? What assumptions are embedded in the frame that might not hold up when you look at them directly? Could it be true that the people you really want to reach are those who truly value your work, respect the time and talent required and are willing to pay you for that work? This one doesn't always resolve immediately. But the both-and question at least keeps looking rather than accepting the manufactured impossibility.
In my own experience, the most significant both-and I've had to work through was the question of what came after the garment industry. The either-or frame felt real at the time: corporate employment - with its structure and supposed security - or the uncertainty and risk of building something on my own. Those felt like the two opposite options. What I had to discover was the both-and: financial responsibility and creative alignment. Not a choice between them. A path that honored both. And that path required staying in the question longer than the either-or frame was comfortable with.
The both-and frame doesn't always produce an immediate answer. Sometimes the honest conclusion is still that the constraint is real and the trade-off is genuine. But it produces a better search. And a better search - over time, with honesty and patience - produces better solutions than the ones the either-or frame made available.
The thinking habit this episode is about - the default toward binary framing, toward manufactured certainty, toward filtering out the complexity before you've actually looked at it - is not something you fix once and leave behind. It's something you notice, repeatedly, in the specific decisions you're facing right now. And noticing it is considerably easier when someone else is in the room helping you see the frame you've applied without realizing it.
That's a significant part of what happens inside the Fabric and Fiber Studio. Not just critique of the work itself - though that's central - but honest conversation about the thinking behind the decisions. The either-or frames that are limiting what you're attempting. The both-and possibilities that aren't visible yet from inside the work. A small group of committed makers, direct assessment, and the kind of sustained engagement that makes real development possible.
The spring cohort application just opened. And I want to be direct about the timing: by the time the next episode of this podcast airs, the application window will be closed. If this is something you've been considering - if you've been in the either-or of "I could apply or I could keep working on my own" - this is the moment to ask the both-and question. What would it look like to do both? The link is in the show notes. The application takes about ten minutes. Do it this week.
I want to leave you with the image from the statistics class. Three groups. Same information. Three contradictory conclusions - all manufactured by filtering out the evidence that complicated the story each group was trying to prove.
The professor's lesson wasn't that all three conclusions were wrong. It was that none of them were warranted. The data didn't support certainty. The honest answer was more complex than any of the three groups was willing to admit.
That is the both-and position. It’s not a tidy answer. It’s a more honest relationship with what the question actually contains.
Most of the either-or choices you're carrying about your creative work are not genuinely binary. They're manufactured constraints that feel like facts because you've been living with them long enough that they stopped being visible as frames. The work of this episode - and of the download that accompanies it - is to start seeing them as frames again. And to ask what's on the other side of the filter.
