Things That People in This Coffee Shop Don't Even Notice
I.
The girl sitting at the table
across from me. She has a book
opened up in front of her.
She hasn’t turned a page
in about thirty minutes. She just keeps
looking at her phone then at the door
then back to her phone.
I wonder who is she waiting for.
II.
The name of the man, who is by himself,
behind the counter. Running between
taking orders, making drinks and occasionally
having to clean up a spill.
His name is Jasper
by the way.
III.
The upright piano on the small stage
in the corner of the room. It’s missing the
fourth white key from the left. If
I could remember any
of my music lessons, I’d be able to name it.
IV.
Nobody can see the fight
the couple in the corner is having,
including the man in said couple.
He’s been talking away on the phone
while she sit across from him,
tapping on the rim of her drink
and rolling her eyes
before staring out the window.
V.
Me.
Writing this poem.
VI.
The girl who just walked out the door.
She stops for a moment and looks left,
then right. Her shoulders drops. Slowly
she turns and walks away,
hugging that book to her chest.
How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes: Lessons in Mindfulness and Creativity from the Great Detective
brainpickings.orgMaria Popova has an amazing breakdown of Maria Konnikova’s new book Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes. The fictional detective was a crime-solving case study in the limits of human mindfulness and observation. Can any mere mortal actually train their own mind to observe as he did?
It turns out that our attention spans are a bit paradoxical. Being a better observer might seem at first to be about taking in and processing all the information that you can. However, our minds have evolved to filter out a great deal of the sensory input (and noise) around us. Multi-tasking and division of our attention only seems to impair our mindfulness and creativity:
Attention is a limited resource. Paying attention to one thing necessarily comes at the expense of another. Letting your eyes get too taken in by all of the scientific equipment in the laboratory prevents you from noticing anything of significance about the man in that same room. We cannot allocate our attention to multiple things at once and expect it to function at the same level as it would were we to focus on just one activity. Two tasks cannot possibly be in the attentional foreground at the same time. One will inevitably end up being the focus, and the other — or others — more akin to irrelevant noise, something to be filtered out. Or worse still, none will have the focus and all will be, albeit slightly clearer, noise, but degrees of noise all the same.
Becoming a more thoughtful observer of the world around us is more about observing better, not observing more. It’s about being selective and engaged simultaneously, and taking time out to do one single thing, and do it well.
In my efforts to become more Sherlockish, I’m already well on my way to “strikingly handsome Cumberbatchian looks”, so I guess it’s time to begin training the brain! There are so many more great tidbits about attention and observation over at Brain Pickings. Do check them out. I’ll be picking up this book as soon as I can.
