Left brain, right brain

The right to lead

A recent piece by Defender focused the left brain / right brain distinction unlocked a realisation for me.

Why do they think the right brain / left brain thing is a myth?

The article is well worth a read, but here’s a summary.

It’s a commonly known idea now that people are more likely to be ‘left brained’ (analytical, methodical, exact) or ‘right brained’ (creative, intuitive, seemingly haphazard).

There has been a recent trend of online discourse ‘debunking’ this idea, and Defender goes on to debunk this trend itself - the left brain / right brain distinction and their role in cognition is a useful and likely largely true description of how humans operate.

There was one particular section that resonated with me.

I think there is a correct relationship between the left & right strategies. It is obviously that the “unbounded cognition” must be the one setting the direction for the “bounded cognition”.

I think this is reflected in all human organization: the scientist/engineer type is almost never the one at the top of the hierarchy making decisions

As someone with an arts background who later moved into software development, I’ve been highly aware throughout my career of the distinction between the left brain and the right.

Applying right brained, creative, non-linear thinking to engineering problems can quite quickly result in a mess. When you’re debugging, creating a new abstraction, or integrating against an existing API, being methodical and exact is important. Small oversights can create big problems later down the line. Even the syntax of code requires left brain thinking: one misplaced semicolon can break your entire app.

But the value of feeling comfortable in my ‘right brain’ has been apparent throughout. The greater ease at human communication, of dealing with the uncertainty and messiness of team dynamics and company politics, has served me in good stead and drawn me into leadership positions earlier in my career than I otherwise might have expected.

At times I’ve resisted; I love coding, and I love the deep focus and satisfaction that comes with being in the zone of my left brain.

But when on a team with other engineers who often more naturally feel at home in this mode of cognition, I am naturally drawn to setting the direction and dealing with the ‘messy bits’ so that they can focus on the narrow but deep problem of building well.

One interesting note is that as LLM tools develop, more and more of the ‘bounded cognition’ tasks are likely to be handled by AI, placing an increasingly important emphasis on ‘right sided thinking’. Suddenly, you don’t have to be so exact - you can say roughly what you want to do, and let the LLM handle the precision of the syntax.

But no matter the technology, we will always need both sides of our brain. We must find a balance between playing into our strengths (by focusing that our default cognitive mode excels at) and mitigating our weaknesses (deliberately doing things that feel uncomfortable, to stretch and work out the less dominant side of the brain).

For me, understanding and accepting both halves of myself has helped me embrace my uniqueness, brought me greater joy and satisfaction in my work, and helped me understand others better in the process.

How do you think about your own cognition?