Ever noticed while watching the same movie and discussing it later. Your friend or spouse might have noticed different things in the same scene and remember something that you might have not seen. Also, on the rarest occasions it can happen that the other person might have got totally different perspective than what you understood about something.
A lot of times when I’m with my family and friends, I have noticed, same situations can be vastly contextually different every person in the group. Same stimuli = different perceptions (based on several factors) = different meanings. After so many years of noticing people from many different cultures, traditions and countries. I learned a few things about how people behave differently even after being in the same collective environment and situation for quite some time together, they still end up noticing completely different things, when given a task or asked an open-ended question, this is what I call priority dilemma.
Sometimes you notice important stuff what others don’t notice, which is good. However sometimes, you notice the un-important random stuff that was meant to be left un-noticed by default, and you think that’s what you were meant to notice. In this situation, others might notice the important signs before you.
Psychologists around the world have published their own theories for centuries and studied this phenomenon and explained this concept very well in different ways, like selective attention theory etc. I thought about writing this article because I wanted to share my personal experience and some more insights that I gained, hence I call it the Priority dilemma.
Why do people have different understanding of the same topic in the first place?
It all comes down to upbringing, personal thoughts, priorities, life experience, critical thinking and reverse thinking (I’ll talk more about it in future article). One day, my roommate at Uni gave me an eyebrow raise signal to pick up “that” from table because we were going downstairs. I picked up my id card because we needed that to access kitchen and room again. However, he was referring to “the bowl” placed right next to card. This is small, but a really good example of priority dilemma. For both of us, we saw the same things, same view and we were in same situation, however our priorities were different. Hence, we focused on different things when asked to pick up, without a provided subject.
These kind of open-ended questions or experiences are quite common in our lives, more common than we expect them to be. Studying in college? Everybody’s got different view of success, rules for life to live by, ideal friend group etc.
I have noticed time and time again. People with thoughts about a particular thing going on in their mind, tend to keep focus on that subconsciously. and as soon as it’s time to take the action, the thought from memory comes back first with the highest priority at the moment in each person’s mind. This is where people might see same things but focus on two vastly different outcomes or meanings.
How it affects our lives?
Priority dilemma, the way I call this phenomenon, is something that affects all of our lives on a regular basis. Either it’s work, home, relationships, movie time, going out etc. This is a built-in component of human brains, that evolves with time based on their experiences and other factors of course.
You and your friend might see the same ad, but you might notice the marketing strategy behind it, while your friend notices the model’s fashion. It happens all the time based on our internal priorities.
To change our thinking or to change what we notice first is quite simple. Define:
- What is something you struggle noticing with (like bug in the code, or spy hidden in a busy cityscape).
- Find out what kind of knowledge is needed to make you better (like coding expertise to find bugs in the first place).
- Practice it again and again, until you’re really good at noticing the right things at the right time.
I hope it helps. This article can be expanded further into more detailed outlook in future. But I think with this simple and short article with actionable insights for you. You can become better at any task now and probably improve your contextual understanding of situations better than your peers.
You may share or adapt the material, but you must provide proper credit for example:
“Article originally published by Aditya Gaurav at https://adityagaurav.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0.“
