Some instructions at work are written in programmer logic: “If you see result X, then the opposite is true.“
My brain doesn’t work that way. I read linearly. I follow the thread, build a picture, and arrive at a judgment.
When I hit an instruction written in that logic, my first instinct is to ask someone before I act. It probably looks like overthinking. But what I’m doing is building the picture first. The same way I write. Before I put a word down, I run the whole thing in my head. I follow the thread until I can see where it goes. Then I write what I’m thinking.
That process is why I can tell a story. In my experience, it’s also why I catch things in content review that a faster read would miss.
For a while I thought I needed to fix the linear thinking. Learn to work in inversions and conditionals. Rewire my instinct.
But the linear read is why I’m useful in Trust and Safety work. Context accumulates. Meaning shifts depending on who’s speaking, where, and to whom. Catching that requires exactly the kind of slow, thread-following read I was worried about losing.
My guess is that people who can move between both grammars, code-logic and language-logic, are harder to come by than people who’ve mastered just one.
I’m still working that out.
Language ≠ Code
