✅The Binary Trap (and How to Escape It)
Newsletter #11
“To be or not to be.”
Man or woman.
Black or white.
Good or bad.
Happy or sad.
Ethical or unethical.
Sustainable or unsustainable.
City or United.
Red sauce or Brown (forget the trolley problem, this is the one true moral issue)
Binaries are everywhere. Some are fun. Some are political. Some start fights between friends.
Sometimes they’re labels given to us. Other times they’re choices we forced to make. Almost always they flatten the complexity of situations. They…
“…erase the experiences of certain groups whilst elevating others.” D’Ignazio & Klein, ‘Data Feminisim’.1
What I’ve been noticing
This past few weeks I’ve found myself noticing binaries sharply once again.
The fall out from the UK Supreme Court’s decision on the legal definition of “woman”.
The flurry of LinkedIn posts either praising AI or shaming those who use it.
Or the Substack advice urging me to either “write to grow my list” or “write only for a select few.”
We might sometimes wish that life were this simple and straightforward. That we could pick between neat options. But the reality is, that binaries are a trap.
They offer the illusion of clarity while quietly stripping away complexity, context, and care and more than that, they’re…
“Closely linked to perfectionism because binary thinking makes it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict.” 2 Tema Okun ‘Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture’
Moving beyond binaries
So this week I’m reminding myself:
1. Two things can be true at once.
We can be happy with who we are and still want to learn and grow.
We can care deeply about our values and make compromises.
This kind of dialectical thinking lets us move forward without feeling shame or blame.
It makes room for the grey. And, as we all know there are fifty shades of grey and none of them are workplace appropriate.
2. Decisions don’t have to be checkboxes.
I see them more like seesaws.
That gently shift up and down based on the moment, the context and the relationship.
Or we can see them as sliders that let us move closer and further away from our values. I like Cennydd Bowles’ description of value on “a value spectrum3”, recognising that most of our choices exist along a continuum rather than at polar opposites.
Which brings me to …
This week's question:
Why this question?
Because binary thinking can feel comforting and decisive. But it usually demands that we:
pick a side before we understand the whole situation
reduce and label a messy and entangled problem as “good” or “bad”
ignore anything that doesn’t fit neatly into one box or another
limit our curiosity and therefore our creativity.
How to use this week's question:
Start with noticing when a binary shows up in your work this week and if you’re being nudged to go only one way or another.
Consider where that pressure is coming from and if there is room to think differently about the options presented.
Try thinking dialectically first to see if both options could be true at the same time.
Next consider if you could change the checkbox to be a see-saw, slider or spectrum - or maybe even just start with a question 😉.
Good luck. And if a binary comes for you this week, see if you can slide away, hack it, or give it a knowing side-eye. Let us know how it goes.
Keep questioning,
P.S. If you found this valuable, please forward it to one person who might appreciate a different perspective on decision-making.
Inspiration & Credits:
I hope giving some distance between sources and their links frees you from ending up in an unintended rabbit hole! If you’re interested though - click away!
Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism.
Tema Okun , Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture
Cennydd Bowles, Future Ethics.