She was taking the bullet. It didn’t matter the consequences. This was a hill she was willing to die on. Until that tiny piece of additional data snuck into the conversation and shifted her entire perspective. She almost lost her reputation and the trust of her colleagues, forgetting that complexity involves a funny little thing: concatenation. Weird word. Cool concept. Can we dive into theory for just a moment? Then we’ll get practical.

Concatenation is an idea from language theory, and is also used in computer science for program development. It means “linking together in a chain,” acknowledging that the stuff arriving later modifies the meaning of all the stuff that came before. I can say “Hello,” or I can say “New York.” and despite the richness of meaning each of these carry by themselves, when I say, “Hello New York,” a new meaning is produced.

It’s a time-bound concept that models communication as a string of data, instead of a web. Highlighting that aspect of life that is experienced as a sequence of events. Drawing our attention to the cognitive process of meaning-making.

Reality may be multidimensional, a web, but my experience of that web is still time-bound and therefore sequential.  

So, the only decisions I have the right to turn into a hill that I’m willing to die on, are the one’s that I’ve truly explored and investigated. The only decisions that I get to make intuitively are the ones that are shaped by years of experience. Everything else is a beautiful opportunity for humility.