What is a Good Life? #130
Embracing The Unknown with Ella Fryer-Smith
On the 130th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome our guest, Ella Fryer-Smith. Ella is the founder of Do You Research. Specialising in qualitative research methods, particularly film ethnography, her work has taken her around the world—observing people’s everyday lives and exploring everything from toilet roll and white goods to how people manage their money. She has also helped policymakers navigate the future of health services and travel. Ella is the Vice Chair of the Association of Qualitative Researchers (AQR) board and sits on the Market Research Society (MRS) Social Inclusion Group.
In this conversation, Ella shares her journey of embracing uncertainty and the paradox of confidence in admitting what we don't know. We explore the importance of presence in parenting, the significance of her parents as role models, freedom within constraints, and the need for research to reflect the voices of the unheard.
For me, this discussion really emphasises the significance of lived experience in understanding—and truly seeing—each other.
The weekly clip from the podcast (3 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (63 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
I took from this interview that much of the research conducted on people is more quantitative than qualitative. That qualitative work often takes longer, costs more, requires more resources, and can lead you to places that are out of our control and far from where we intended to go.
To me, the path of qualitative work sounds a lot more alive—or like life itself.
It reminded me of an interview I conducted with Niobe Way, an author and psychologist at NYU, who spoke about the lack of qualitative research on friendships.
She pointed out that the studies which do exist are often survey-based, rather than truly exploring what something means to a participant.
It made me think about how much we seem to lack meaning in modern life—both individually and collectively—and how little curiosity we show in understanding what something actually means to another person. We’re often quicker to tell each other what the right answer is.
It also made me consider how much our ideas of each other—even the labels we use to define a psychological profile or grouping, based on whatever test we've taken—miss so much of who we really are.
A living, breathing organism, shaped by its own experiences and stories. And yet we often reduce all of that for the convenience of a few initials, or the grouping a psychometric test offers up.
Almost so we don’t have to get into the weeds—the murky waters of contradiction and paradox that sit at our core.
Many, many things, combining as one.
All of that reduced to a word, for the sake of ease and compartmentalising each other.
I interviewed a psychotherapist recently who said that whatever models or theories he’s learned, as soon as he tries to use them in a real-world setting—with another person—if they don’t fit, he drops them.
I suspect much of our difficulty in understanding each other—and in relating—comes from our minds being clogged with theory.
Clogged with ideas about how humans ought to be, according to the frameworks we've absorbed. And instead of questioning the theory, we assume there’s something wrong with the person in front of us.
And when they don’t respond as we expect, we reach for more assumptions. We apply more theory. Sometimes we even pathologise, rather than asking better questions or paying closer attention to what’s unfolding.
At the beginning of this interview, Ella mentioned that over the last decade, she’s been paying more attention to her earlier resistance to simply saying, “I don’t know.”
I suspect that’s a significant part of developing wisdom.
For me, saying those words tends to sharpen my attention. It creates space for my desire to understand. It makes me more curious.
I have a sense that when we reduce people to one-dimensional characters, based on aggregated and impersonal data, we mask a large amount of not knowing with a blunt sense of certainty.
There are good reasons for collecting broader sets of data. But if we believe we know someone based on what we’ve read generally or assumed before even meeting them, I think we’ve already lost something important.
We’ve narrowed our view, mostly for the sake of speed and convenience.
And like with my own experience facilitating group work, I suspect there are limits to how far this can be scaled.
It seems we want to believe we can know people without spending the time, without going through the intimacy required to really get to know someone.
The approaches we use may seem more efficient, may save time and money—but like many ideas of progress, they often lead to thinner, more distant ways of seeing and relating.
I’m coming to see there aren’t shortcuts for this.
There’s no way to leverage or scale it.
These are the things that make it meaningful in the first place.
These aren’t things to circumvent or hack—but maybe the very heart of what makes a life good.
Something to embrace, savour even.
3. Full Episode - Embracing The Unknown with Ella Fryer-Smith - What is a Good Life? #130
4. This week’s Questions
What part of your life is asking you to admit: “I don’t know”?
Can you identify a belief you hold that is not based on your lived experience? How has it come to be?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed nearly 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, my 5-week group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.