Collaborating with flawed mental models

In The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr, he talks about how our brain seeks one thing: control.

It's by learning how to control the world that they get what they want.

And to gain control over the world, we create mental models to understand it. But these models are flawed because our brains cannot understand the infinite amount of information we experience every moment of every day.

The controlled hallucination inside the silent, black vault of our skulls that we experience as reality is warped by inaccurate information.

Therefore, we're all working with broken models and trying to make sense of the world through those fractured models, and many of us are attempting to correct those flaws.

This is where the story occurs: each flawed mental model bumps against the faulty mental models of another individual. This is where conflict and drama happen.

But it is also the challenge of collaboration. When you're in a partnership, it's about communicating and sharing your mental model with the other person and listening to theirs. You'll never fully understand each other's—hell, you barely understand your own—but the critical step is to find respect for each other to try.