This year began well—watched a Netflix movie on the wall, cuddled in a blanket with a cosmopolitan, well-travelled artist. Let me rewind a bit, I was talking to this girl who fits perfectly in my TG. She grew up in Dubai, then moved to the US to study fashion.
We immediately hit it off and ended up catching up later the same night. I dropped by her flat. Anyhow, post the New year’s Eve incident, I categorically asked her to watch my fall video to prevent a similar mishappening. Thankfully, it didn’t, it was a cherish able movie night. And even though it was quite a badly directed movie, I just didn’t want it to end.
Anyway, coming to the MBA concept of ‘MECE Principle‘. It is a grouping principle for separating a set of items into subsets that are mutually exclusive (ME) and collectively exhaustive (CE). It was developed at McKinsey & Company, one of the leading consulting firms in the world.
The MECE principle is useful in the business mapping process, wherein the optimum arrangement of information is exhaustive and does not double count at any level of the hierarchy. One can create MECE arrangements by categorising people by their year of birth (assuming all years are known).
Strategy consultants use MECE problem structuring to break down client problems into logical, clean buckets of analysis that they can then hand out as workstreams to consulting staff on the project.
We can draw interesting insights about modern-day dating from the MECE principle. We can revisit the Triangular Model that talks about the three components of love. People categories dating and relationships into three mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE) buckets: emotional intimacy, intellectual intimacy, and physical intimacy.
Love feels complete when one person fulfills your intellectual, emotional, and physical needs—but it also breeds dependence. To avoid that, I’ve always split these across different people. It works, but takes a toll mentally. Most relationships need at least two of the three to last, which is why long-distance ones often don’t.
That brings me to the fashion designer, So is this it? Have I finally found the one to fill colors in my grey life? Well, she is in a relationship with a fellow designer for the past five years. For the past year, they are in a long-distance relationship as he’s based in the US. Since they have a solid foundation with intellectual and emotional intimacy in place, they decided to open up the relationship in terms of physical intimacy. The night was quite memorable as watching a movie projected on her bedroom wall cozied up in a warm blanket on a chilly night was definitely a first. I mean she was watching the movie, and I was watching her. Though, I didn’t hear back from her post that night.
Later,
Sidhant
