The Art of Manliness - #541： The Art of Noticing

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast quick

00:00:11.220 name the president who's on the dime or think about the letters and numbers on your license

00:00:15.640 plate were you stumped for a moment that's the strange thing about the powers of observation

00:00:19.900 we can look at something a thousand times and never really notice it our struggle to notice

00:00:25.060 what's around us is even worse in our smartphone age where we often have tunnel vision that limits

00:00:29.460 itself to a little handheld screen my guest today wrote a book that aims to help us recapture the

00:00:33.640 keen use of our senses his name is rob walker and he's the author of the art of noticing and he argues

00:00:38.040 that tuning into things normally overlooked not only provides fodder for art and business but can

00:00:42.920 make life seem more vibrant and engaging rob and i begin our conversation discussing what it means

00:00:47.200 to notice and the benefits that come from noticing we then spend the rest of the conversation walking

00:00:51.540 through several exercises you can start doing today to strengthen your noticing muscles including

00:00:55.800 creating observational scavenger hunts and collections rob also suggests several ways to notice overlooked

00:01:00.840 things at museums and while looking at the world like there's a dramatic heist about to go down

00:01:04.700 cause you to notice more in your environment lots of great insights in the show after it's over

00:01:08.920 check out our show notes at aom.is noticing rob joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:14.380 rob walker welcome to the show thanks so much for having me brad so you just published a book

00:01:31.620 called the art of noticing 131 ways to spark creativity find inspiration and discover joy in

00:01:37.200 every day so what got you noticing noticing well i guess a couple of things one of which is going to

00:01:46.100 be pretty obvious i probably don't have to spend a lot of time discussing the idea that we're living

00:01:51.460 in this you know information shoving economy of ideas where everyone's trying to get your attention

00:01:59.360 we're in time of distraction and it's partly down to our phones and stuff like that but it's also just

00:02:04.760 the nature of society now like everybody wants your attention all day long and it's hard to focus and

00:02:12.740 to zone in on the things that you want to zone in on instead of other things so i felt that frustration

00:02:18.120 too like a lot of people do i think but then related to that i teach a class a short class once a year

00:02:25.100 at the school of visual arts a design class and one of my big themes is getting students to pay

00:02:33.140 attention to things that other people have overlooked i think it's an important part of

00:02:36.800 of the design process but of many processes right that's kind of the beginning of innovation and

00:02:42.980 progress or whatever it's like noticing what others have overlooked and what i had noticed in students

00:02:46.940 is that they often felt because of this kind of attention economy that we're in right now they would

00:02:52.900 sometimes feel that like well if they were interested in something but no one else like it wasn't trending

00:02:57.460 it wasn't hot it wasn't a topic of discussion that maybe it wasn't important you know and i thought that's

00:03:03.820 a disastrous outcome like this is like you can't go through life just paying attention to what everyone else

00:03:08.860 pays attention to and so i thought about this as a subject of a book and what happened was for a long time

00:03:15.560 the idea was going to be a book that would kind of spend a lot of time explaining the problem and then have

00:03:22.540 this section at the back with like here are some things you can do in your life add to your life to try

00:03:28.580 to get your attention back try to get your you know focus back and i gradually finally realized that i was

00:03:34.480 not really interested in explaining the problem because everybody already knew it i was just interested

00:03:38.660 in the tips so the tips ended up sort of taking over the book so now it's a short introduction

00:03:43.940 saying here's the problem and then as you said there's 131 my publisher doesn't like me to call them

00:03:48.840 assignments but they're prompts or exercises or games or provocations to get you things you can add

00:03:55.900 to your life and add to your kind of daily practice that will get you back to controlling your own

00:04:04.180 attention at least from time to time you know just devoting a bit of your day or your week to these

00:04:09.600 things and making them fun and getting some control back so okay but we won't talk about the problem

00:04:14.900 because everyone knows there's a problem yeah but let's talk about like the benefits that come

00:04:18.820 whenever you you experience that focus and that attention or when you notice things that people

00:04:23.740 overlook i mean what what are the opportunities there and like how does noticing things that

00:04:29.580 will get overlooked make us feel more human right so there's kind of a range of answers to that there's

00:04:35.140 the and there's and different kinds of people respond to different ways of approaching this so

00:04:41.240 on a very practical i think level there's almost no like there's a lot of artists in the book because

00:04:48.780 artists are really good at noticing things and at drawing our attention to stuff that we had missed

00:04:54.500 but it's also if you think about it that's what an entrepreneur does and that's what an inventor does and

00:05:01.780 that's what a good manager does is notice things that other people overlooked and whether that's a problem

00:05:08.140 that needs to be solved or whether that's something great that's overlooked that needs to be celebrated

00:05:13.580 or whether it's something puzzling that needs to be explained and you know i mentioned design earlier

00:05:18.340 that's what a designer does i remember meeting in the course of my work as a journalist interviewing

00:05:22.840 johnny ive years and years ago the apple guy and the way he

00:05:28.400 critiqued this was so long ago that i was using an analog tape recorder and the way that he sort of his

00:05:35.940 comments about the way that that object was designed it was like this guy just sees the world

00:05:40.580 in a different way like he picks up on details that the rest of us miss so there are these really

00:05:45.300 practical reasons to work on these skills to sort of build the attention muscles but then at the other

00:05:50.840 end of the spectrum i think just as important are this kind of softer side of it of you know just

00:05:58.340 maintaining focus and maintaining a kind of control over your own engagement with the world being

00:06:07.160 present sounds a little like meditation mindfulness stuff it kind of is and there's a reason that that

00:06:13.740 mindfulness idea is so popular right now at the same time that we're trying to fend off

00:06:19.640 all of these distractions is that it's a it's a it's a way of reconnecting with yourself of being

00:06:25.980 really present with other people just very very practical day-to-day stuff that i feel like we

00:06:31.980 all whether you're a manager or whether you're a parent sometimes we just need to be able to pull

00:06:37.880 back disconnect from other people's attempts to control our attention and pay attention to what

00:06:45.780 matters to us and kind of identify what matters to us so that we're paying attention to the right

00:06:51.260 things and that feels good when you identify and you actually pay attention to the things you want

00:06:55.600 to pay attention to like it just feels good or whenever you get that insight you figured out

00:06:59.660 on your own without having to go to the internet to figure out like it just it's empowering it just

00:07:05.060 feels awesome yeah i think so and i mean you know and it's it's obvious in some of the big ways but then

00:07:11.500 there are at least small victories that you can have along this of just like i mean the most work

00:07:16.220 a day things like just when you're walking the dog right i see people walking the dog and checking

00:07:21.940 their phone and it's like why are you doing you know like don't you don't need to know what's

00:07:27.180 trending on twitter right now be present in the world that you and your dog are occupying and maybe

00:07:33.720 you'll notice i don't know pay attention i like to sort of try to figure out what my dog is paying

00:07:37.460 attention to and he'll make me notice things like oh there's a bird over there that i wasn't tuned

00:07:42.720 into and you know it just makes you feel like oh i'm here i'm not somewhere else i'm actually here

00:07:49.220 so let's walk through some of these prompts you talk about in the book because as you said i think

00:07:52.980 a lot of people this muscle of noticing is atrophied because we've had other we've had

00:07:58.160 these external sources tell us what to pay attention to so it's it's helpful to have you

00:08:03.060 know sort of a prompt to guide this as we you know strengthen that noticing muscle the first one you

00:08:08.000 talk about is creating you know scavenger hunts for yourself what does that look like and how do you

00:08:12.580 decide what to look for yeah this was my it's the first exercise in the book because it was

00:08:17.360 sort of the gateway drug for me personally to think about this now it came from the example that i

00:08:24.200 share in the book is that i was making a business trip to san francisco a city i've been to a number

00:08:31.920 of times beautiful city but like i'd been there enough times that i you know i don't want to say

00:08:36.660 i was over it but you know i was past that sort of crush phase that you have in a city that's that

00:08:43.040 beautiful and i was going to be really busy i was going to be running around i did not have time to

00:08:47.820 do any proper sightseeing so i wanted to give myself an assignment of something to look for

00:08:53.480 everywhere i went and my only criteria and this is kind of important is that it had to be something

00:08:57.340 that nobody else particularly wanted me to look at you know what i mean it wasn't like

00:09:01.760 i wasn't responding to somebody else's prompt it was my prompt and so the thing i chose was security

00:09:07.460 cameras which was a little bit arbitrary i wasn't like working on a project related to that or

00:09:12.100 anything i just like security cameras and everywhere i went it really it really was an eye

00:09:17.380 opener to see how pervasive they are and to see how they're treated differently there are some that are

00:09:22.300 kind of flashy like they want to be noticed and then there are some that are kind of stealthily hidden

00:09:26.440 that don't want to be noticed but it also shifts your gaze when you're looking at for something

00:09:32.620 specific like that so you're kind of just looking around in a different way and you're kind of looking

00:09:37.820 past the street advertisements and the people trying to get your attention and it was so much

00:09:43.040 fun and i did end up writing about this later but it was so much fun that i i still to this day i look

00:09:49.800 at security cameras everywhere i go but at the end of that trip i got to the airport and you know called

00:09:54.760 my wife to say hey i'm planes on time whatever and like hey she knew i was doing this and then i was

00:09:59.840 taking pictures and i said hey and you would not believe the security camera situation at the

00:10:04.780 airport it's bananas and she said uh she said rob just please do me a favor and don't walk all

00:10:10.360 around the airport taking pictures of all the security cameras which was good advice right no

00:10:16.380 i've done the security camera i've done that too like i'll go into a store and just see how many

00:10:20.240 security cameras i can find which is fun another one you know you suggest looking for abandoned pay

00:10:24.580 phones which i've done as well and those are harder and harder to find well i think that that

00:10:30.460 here's the interesting thing about that is that if they're hard to it's sort of it tells you

00:10:36.820 something about the neighborhood you're in in some ways if there are a lot of abandoned pay phones

00:10:41.220 around i like to look another one i like to look for is no loitering signs that's another tell as to

00:10:46.760 if you're like there are certain neighborhoods where there will be a lot of no loitering signs and

00:10:50.420 there are some neighborhoods where there won't be any so and i'd like to look for in the past i've looked

00:10:55.180 for um neighborhood watch signs you know you know the neighborhood watch right with the sort of uh

00:11:02.860 shady criminal guy right side eye and and uh when we live in savannah i used to protect georgia savannah

00:11:10.720 georgia i used to particularly i got obsessed with ones that had been graffitied in some way

00:11:15.540 because i just thought it was funny that if your neighborhood watch sign has been defaced like

00:11:21.520 maybe you have a problem you don't have a neighborhood watch so you you talked about you

00:11:26.400 started the security camera thing without any goal in mind but you said it later on it paid off because

00:11:31.280 it gave you a story idea yeah i write a lot about design stuff and um so both neighborhood watch signs

00:11:37.920 and security cameras when i i wrote a little bit about my experience for design observer and people

00:11:44.020 sent me examples it turned out to be kind of an interesting design subject because there are places

00:11:49.520 where there is actually in uh europe where they've actually given thought to what security cameras

00:11:55.600 could look like because i think that the visual impact of a security camera right now is kind of

00:12:00.820 negative when you see them it makes you tense so there are places where they've tried to sort of make

00:12:05.620 them softer seeming and so anyway the point is that it became and this is i mean i'm a journalist

00:12:10.880 and this is part of what a journalist does for a living too is try to pick up on things that uh are

00:12:16.800 right in front of you but no one's paying attention to you know break from the quote-unquote pack

00:12:20.420 or find the different spin on my favorite example this is jimmy breslin's when you know like everybody

00:12:26.020 else he had to cover the kennedy funeral the jfk funeral in the 60s but he was the one who came up

00:12:32.400 with the unique angle to write about the guy who dug the grave right so he spent the day with the guy

00:12:38.800 who dug the grave and that's sort of thinking in a different way outside the pack and that that piece is

00:12:44.660 considered a sort of classic of um of journalism so a similar exercise to the scavenger hunt is

00:12:50.040 starting a collection but you suggest getting more conceptual than say i'm collecting in stamps or

00:12:55.340 baseball cards what is your idea of a collection look like yeah well so i should credit here and i

00:13:01.040 should i should say that once i once i got going on it you know i was explaining how i sort of headed

00:13:05.920 off in this direction once i started thinking i want to make this about suggestions things people can do

00:13:10.940 a lot of them i made up but then a lot of them came from reading and things other people had done

00:13:16.680 and then i interviewed people and came up with ideas from them and then i got my students involved

00:13:22.280 but so one that was inspired by someone else there's this guy george nelson who's a design furniture

00:13:27.500 designer who wrote a book in the 70s called how to see but it wasn't really how to see it was really

00:13:33.140 how he saw it was and it was essentially a collection of his of his of things he had noticed

00:13:39.180 photography and stuff and he he was my inspiration for this one because he was a collector

00:13:43.200 of of images of but images drawn from reality so he would just take pictures of like every arrow he

00:13:51.080 could spot every clock every manhole cover you know certain geometric shapes and then he would get

00:13:57.260 really interestingly conceptual of contrasts like hard and soft so a flag outside of a concrete building

00:14:05.080 or whatever and i was just i love his inventiveness around this and you could almost pick anything

00:14:12.520 right now i'm collecting as it were that the sort of structures at the top of i guess i guess their

00:14:18.820 telephone i mean are they telephone poles or power poles they have these big rickety weird collections

00:14:24.900 of hardware up there that i guess are running power i don't even know but this is it and it's this

00:14:33.540 it's this kind of thing that we're trained not to pay attention to that we're trained to just zone

00:14:37.780 out and look past and that's the kind of stuff i find it really fun and exciting to look at and

00:14:43.040 then the birds that are up there stuff like that that's what i'm collecting right now so that's the

00:14:46.500 that's the collection idea you can take pictures as he did and i know people who do this on instagram

00:14:51.900 who take pictures of traffic cones or a friend of mine does close-ups of telephone poles which is

00:14:58.700 really weird but they're fascinating and it's just a it's just a it's a different way of taking in the

00:15:05.840 world yeah that's where that's a point where your your tool that is often the source of distraction

00:15:11.120 can be a tool used to notice more so you might not have to take you know share on instagram but you

00:15:16.400 just start your little collection yeah your little collection in your phone of your contrasts that you

00:15:21.620 find yeah or you could not bother to take pictures that i mean i don't take pictures and i think that

00:15:25.540 this is this is an important point to make actually because i think that sometimes there's certain kind

00:15:30.360 of uh people who react to this stuff by by by thinking like oh okay so i need to make a dedicated

00:15:35.500 instagram account about this and then if it's like no you really don't like everything doesn't have to

00:15:40.360 be translated and in some ways there's a lot of reasons not to do that like don't don't automatically

00:15:45.720 convert every personal looking project into something that gets subjected to the marketplace right

00:15:52.840 where you have to start worrying about how many likes it's getting if that happens fine but i just

00:15:58.720 think that there's a lot of it's not noticing and seeing and paying attention is a means to an end but

00:16:06.020 it's also it can also be an end in itself like it's really satisfying to just learn to take enjoyment

00:16:11.800 from the act so another noticing activity you recommend is looking slowly yeah what do you mean by that

00:16:19.160 well so this is specifically sort of came out of the context of museums there's a there's actually a

00:16:25.240 slow art day thing that happens every year but you could do it anytime and the the the basic premise of

00:16:30.920 slow art day is that you get together with a group of people you go to the museum and instead of trying

00:16:36.960 to you know you've been to museums and you've seen people spend i think that the average is eight

00:16:42.660 seconds or something looking at any given painting and people are practically trying to like run to the

00:16:47.920 museum so instead of doing that you just decide you're going to look at only five things

00:16:52.140 for 10 minutes each and then afterward you get together and talk about what you looked at what you

00:16:57.600 and what you took in so this is obviously a really different way of perception in general we're so used

00:17:03.640 to trying to rack up as many you know visual experiences as we possibly can and i think people spend

00:17:12.160 sometimes more time at museums reading a little placard next to the art as they do looking at the

00:17:18.140 art so if you're if you force yourself to look at something for that long it does shift your perception

00:17:23.720 and you you obviously start to notice things that you overlooked at first and maybe by the end of it

00:17:30.300 you even have a completely different understanding of the piece that you were looking at so that's the

00:17:34.900 essence of looking slowly and you you can do this not just with art but with other stuff i think you

00:17:39.740 talked about some design teacher that would say tell the students like you have to look at this rock

00:17:44.560 but for like an hour yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah or packaging or you know there's almost anything you

00:17:50.740 can do this with there's a different exercise in the book about looking out the window which sounds

00:17:55.160 like such a sort of i try to have a range of things that are really super easy to do like you you know

00:18:00.060 the minute you pick up the book you can start participating in this but you could spend 10 minutes looking

00:18:04.540 out a window that you've always walked past i mean think about that like in your life there's a

00:18:09.400 window that you walk past all the time maybe you glance out to see if the you know the world is

00:18:14.900 on fire but you don't really you couldn't really tell me anything about what's the view from that

00:18:20.420 window and spend 10 minutes looking out a window and look at every edge of what you can perceive

00:18:26.900 then do it again a week later and see what's changed you know so it's applicable in all kinds of

00:18:32.580 contexts yeah thoreau did like looking slowly exercises he would just look at a plant or a bug

00:18:38.820 for hours hours like like the entire day yeah and people are people are dismissive of that because

00:18:45.020 it's like well you know there was nothing to do and now you can now you can play pokemon go or

00:18:52.140 whatever and it's true we have more distractions at our fingertips but there are good reasons to

00:18:57.460 sometimes say i don't need to do that like i want to i want to pick up on yeah looking at watch spend 10

00:19:05.540 minutes watching a bug crawl you know kids do it and kids love it and there's something to be said

00:19:11.480 for reconnecting with that childhood innocence and wonder and seeing the world no yeah that you talk

00:19:18.780 about kids have a natural disposition to do that and i saw this firsthand we were in vacation

00:19:23.480 on vacation in vermont and my daughter's five she we went to this river to go swim but she was like

00:19:30.000 in the shallow section and she was there for probably a half hour on her hands and knees

00:19:33.400 just looking because she was looking for rocks and she was looking for fish and she just sat there

00:19:39.960 like for literally a half an hour yeah and it's also fun to see her because she has her own little

00:19:44.240 collections she's got rock collections yeah and she's always on the lookout for loose change and she

00:19:49.340 finds it all the time because she knows where to look like she goes to places where people

00:19:53.460 overlook so we were at a ice cream store the other day and there was like a vending machine and so

00:20:00.080 she like went underneath the vending machine and she pulled out all this change like oh look what i found 0.62

00:20:04.600 that's great and it's great that you pick up on that you know and that you can i'm always telling

00:20:12.280 people like that kids are good inspiration for this kind of thing and if you have access to a child

00:20:18.660 you know take inspiration from like pay attention to what they're paying attention to because uh they

00:20:26.300 don't have that jaded feeling of having seen it all before the world is full of wonder i saw bella used

00:20:32.160 to talk about trying to view the world like an alien but kids for kids that comes naturally they sort of

00:20:36.840 are aliens you know it's all novel to them so they get very excited about things and uh we shouldn't

00:20:43.720 dismiss that we should embrace it and we should be jealous we're gonna take a quick break for your

00:20:48.020 word from our sponsors and now back to the show so in museums there's a lot of exercises you provided

00:20:54.960 and like the slow looking so just look at a painting for 10 minutes 30 minutes even if you're if you're

00:21:00.060 feeling bold but the thing with museums though they're designed so that you pay attention to certain

00:21:06.460 objects right like there's a light and the way that things are put on put on the wall or on a pedestal

00:21:11.320 so what can we do in museums so we notice things that we're not supposed to notice yeah it's a really

00:21:18.400 super interesting context because there's a lot of thought is put into making you pay attention to

00:21:25.460 the right things and not you're not supposed to be looking at the guards you're not supposed to be

00:21:29.760 you're not supposed to be noticing that like oh it's kind of dusty on this

00:21:34.020 dream or whatever so in a nutshell it's basically try to pay attention to things that that you're

00:21:41.620 not supposed to pay attention to so among the things i suggest are are in fact paying attention

00:21:47.020 to the guards i often will ask a guard what their favorite piece is you know you don't want to hassle

00:21:52.480 these people they're doing their job but they have a different relationship to this room full of art

00:21:57.880 than you will ever have like they spend so much time there i think i like to encourage people to

00:22:03.940 tune into objects that could be art and this is a little bit inspired by because that because those

00:22:09.700 spaces are so charged with you know importance there have been a number of incidents there was one i

00:22:17.160 think in san francisco where somebody left a pair of glasses on the floor and people started to just

00:22:22.120 assume it was a piece there were people gathering around this pair of glasses and taking pictures of

00:22:29.120 it so i like to say like look for things that aren't art but could be maybe the fire extinguisher

00:22:34.500 maybe some security camera perhaps and then another one is people don't pay attention to this but

00:22:40.920 you know when you're walking around a museum you're often walking into like the

00:22:44.160 you know the rob walker wing of the uh thing like and but and it's a name that's not really familiar to

00:22:50.940 you here's a place where your phone is actually maybe useful like go ahead and google who is who

00:22:56.460 who is this person that this wing is named after and see if there were any interesting things about

00:23:01.840 them or in the case of i actually got the chance to lead a museum walk in dallas it's dallas museum of

00:23:08.120 art and we did this and there was this one collection of stuff that was displayed in a really idiosyncratic

00:23:15.300 way and that's because this this donor who the wing was named after insisted on that format so it's

00:23:23.120 kind of interesting you learn something that not that the museum was hiding that but that they weren't

00:23:28.040 it doesn't get foregrounded so it gives you a completely different way of taking in the stuff

00:23:33.240 that you're being asked to look at yeah i do that with the um looking at the plaques of like who who the

00:23:38.160 donors were like at yeah yeah like even at schools you'll often see this find out who they were i

00:23:44.540 like the idea of asking people at museums who you would not think to ask what their favorite piece of

00:23:48.600 art where it was or is and the idea that just came was ask a janitor right because they're in there all

00:23:54.780 the time and you typically though janitor doesn't have an opinion about art but no they probably have

00:23:59.880 their favorite piece of art yeah for sure and you know and museums in general are you know they

00:24:06.600 they want people to approach the work with different perspectives you know what i mean i think that

00:24:13.580 they're thrilled to have that and that they would like to have they would like to have more people

00:24:18.540 coming to the museum with a fresh or an open perspective that yeah like let the guard lead the tour

00:24:28.580 almost i think that they're open to that it's not an antagonistic thing i think that they're uh

00:24:36.040 they're into it because they are but it's it's an interesting environment because you you you have

00:24:42.040 this feeling that like you have to do it right and you don't have to do it right you can do it any way

00:24:46.520 you want so we've everyone's probably seen those photos of masses of people surrounding some famous

00:24:51.360 work of art like the mona lisa and they're snapping pics with their smartphone which i never understand

00:24:57.180 because it's like your pics gonna be really crappy but you recommend people don't take pictures at

00:25:02.640 art museums but rather draw art they see what why is that well so drawing and i cannot pretend that i

00:25:10.620 am the inventor of this idea but drawing in general is widely believed to i mean if you have to draw

00:25:18.800 something you look at it in a completely different way you're looking at details you're looking at

00:25:24.160 shape you're looking at form you're engaging with it whether that is drawing another artwork or whether

00:25:31.120 it's drawing i have suggestion in the book it's like draw everything draw everything on your desk

00:25:36.500 you know you can draw what you see out the window people's immediate reaction to this is always like

00:25:41.720 well i can't draw well you don't have to put these drawings on the internet just get yourself a

00:25:46.760 notebook a cheap notebook because the point isn't to show off the point is to work on your powers of

00:25:53.340 perception and just do one make a drawing don't worry about showing it to anyone and then the next day do

00:26:00.320 another one and then do another one and just have fun with it don't worry if you're making faithful

00:26:05.720 reproductions just think about how the act of drawing it forces you to slow down it forces you to pay

00:26:12.200 attention to detail it forces you to see and that's a really important exercise i try to make writers do it when i teach

00:26:19.500 a different sort of workshop about writing about objects and i encourage the participants in that to

00:26:25.080 spend time if you really want to learn how to describe something try drawing it and you'll force

00:26:31.180 yourself to perceive it in this much more detailed way so a lot of opportunities to flex those noticing

00:26:36.160 muscles at the museum or even it's just in noticing and drawing things on your own desk another game you

00:26:42.320 suggested for people to start noticing thing is if whatever situation you might be in say you're at a

00:26:46.760 restaurant is you look at all all the people involved who are there and ask yourself what would

00:26:51.920 be like uh what would be the plot of a high story in this situation so what does this exercise cause you

00:26:59.800 to notice that you overlook this is there's a couple people who i talked to for the book who i'm a big fan

00:27:06.880 of making up stories essentially about about people around you as a way to pass the time but i had dan

00:27:13.640 arieli the behavioral psychologists talk about looking at forces and jeff mannock the writer

00:27:18.540 talking about these kind of uh you know heist plots and disaster scenarios and stuff like this

00:27:24.640 and you know it's it's it's 50 50 it's 50 imagination and 50 observation and they fuel each other so

00:27:33.340 and seriously it is just a game but it's a more to me it's more fun than than checking instagram

00:27:39.620 to just speculate like okay what clues can i pick up on what do i think this person like who's the

00:27:45.640 most likely you know bad guy or whatever you want to say in there and then it makes you look at like

00:27:51.520 what are my escape routes how is this room really designed why are these tables so close together

00:27:56.260 how do i route around there's a another thing in the book about this friend of mine who is always

00:28:02.180 looking for the quickest way out of a party because he hates parties and it just uh it gives you a

00:28:08.780 little reset a different way of looking at it i find this comes in super handy and you know you

00:28:12.960 mentioned different scenarios but i like it when i'm stuck in line you know the security line at the

00:28:18.340 airport great place to start making up stories about in your head about who's who's going to do what

00:28:25.460 who's going to be the hero who's going to be the problem yeah because you have to look at the people

00:28:28.540 their body language uh so one guy might look like he's in a rush or he's nervous and you look at what

00:28:32.940 they're carrying like why are they carrying that you know why are they wearing that t-shirt are these

00:28:36.980 people together are they right together yeah who are they like maybe these other it's like oh i bet

00:28:42.480 this person and this other person who are like 10 10 people apart they're actually in league you know

00:28:47.360 it's fun it's just fun now you know obviously i should just put in the caveat that like

00:28:51.140 be discreet and sane about all this right yeah well you can just do it in your head you don't have to

00:28:56.840 like narrate it out loud it in your head you're making you're making time go by well i say similar

00:29:01.720 to this we've had a lot of self-defense experts come on the show and they talk about situational

00:29:06.780 awareness where you're in a room where you're in a building the first thing you do is you figure out

00:29:11.340 or decide or observe where all the exits are at right yeah even the exits you might not notice

00:29:17.400 because people forget like say you're a grocery store there's exits in the back right where it says

00:29:22.100 employees only and you got to think about that because people overlook that yeah it is it's

00:29:27.420 absolutely a form of situational awareness which i associate with and i'm sure do you know that book

00:29:32.260 left of bang yeah yeah we've we've had them on the podcast yeah i was gonna say and so so but this is a

00:29:37.320 sort of situational awareness light like it's not um you're not sort of in the mindset but that's a

00:29:43.460 fine mindset to be in if you're just you know you're just using it to pass the time you're not being

00:29:48.100 paranoid or whatever it's really interesting to think about that stuff and to try to it is a way

00:29:53.420 it is a way of engaging with the world as opposed to you know being the passive person who is just

00:30:00.560 engaged with their phone another thing you can do is spy on what people are doing with their phones

00:30:04.980 i'm a big fan of that so what what do you notice people doing with their phones my two favorite

00:30:10.620 well my favorite anecdote about this section another san francisco story is i was on the i i do like

00:30:15.480 to peek at what you know i kind of like discreetly looking over people's shoulders and once i was on

00:30:20.920 the bart in san francisco and i was looking at like what's that guy doing with his phone and he was

00:30:24.820 playing a game that you know it was it was a game that involved using your finger to direct a piece

00:30:34.080 of trash into the garbage can you know like you would sit in your office and throw a wadded up piece

00:30:39.660 of paper into the garbage can it was that but digital like that's what he was doing

00:30:43.940 but then you know a lot of people the other thing that's great to look at is how people who are

00:30:50.040 talking on the phone like their body language it's almost like a dance performance because they're

00:30:56.260 they're reacting to the conversation that they're in not the world that they're in so they're gesturing

00:31:01.560 with their hands and they're making facial expressions all for some audience and you know

00:31:08.900 they're holding their phone in that weird way up to their mouth like a tray right yeah and it looks

00:31:14.840 like someone needs to do a dance performance that's based on on on phone conversation gestures it's like

00:31:19.600 a madcap visual poetry thing i love it i recommend i recommend and that's something good to draw as well

00:31:27.520 so another exercise is find something you weren't looking for what does that look like so this was

00:31:33.660 inspired by have you ever had davy rothbard uh no so he he's this guy who he's this zine and then

00:31:42.340 podcast and books and all kinds of stuff called found and he is a proponent of like you're walking

00:31:47.940 down the street you see a piece of trash blow by that has some handwriting on it don't kick it out of

00:31:53.980 your way pick it up and look at it you weren't looking for it but um and he has built a whole kind

00:31:58.880 of mini empire of like finding these fascinating it started for him with uh someone left a note on

00:32:05.360 his car that they mistook his car for their ex-boyfriend's car or something and said like i

00:32:09.880 can't believe you're here and you're seeing her again aren't you and all this stuff this crazy note

00:32:15.540 and then at the end of the this hostile note it said like text me later and he realized there was

00:32:21.660 like a whole short there was a whole novel practically built into this like random thing that he wasn't

00:32:27.220 looking for so he says like you know a lot of times you'll pick up a piece of piece of uh discarded

00:32:33.000 writing somewhere on the street and it'll be nothing but one out of every 10 times one out of every 20

00:32:37.740 times there's a little story in there and you know it's an opportunity again to be surprised and delighted

00:32:43.420 by something you weren't looking for right grocery lists can tell a story grocery lists can be really

00:32:48.920 interesting yeah they're worth they're worth scrutiny they're worth a little bit of attention i had a

00:32:53.220 friend this reminded me uh in high school this was before cell phones so whenever you

00:32:57.060 wanted to communicate somebody wrote notes right for in school he would collect notes that he found

00:33:02.780 on the ground that are discarded and then he would turn them into songs oh perfect yeah which was

00:33:08.180 some of them were really like poignant because they're these are like these you know angsty like 0.79

00:33:12.240 teenage love letters but other ones are just silly because you know teenagers are silly that's perfect 0.78

00:33:17.240 though i mean that's a way of embracing the universe and taking it as like this isn't trash this is

00:33:22.180 potential inspiration and it's a personal challenge what can i do with this you know how can i convert

00:33:27.200 this thing that was literally discarded by the world how can i redeem it turn into some piece of

00:33:34.840 creativity i mean that's again one of the reasons there are so many artists in the book is that the

00:33:40.480 artists are so good at at recognizing that the overlooked is the beginning of creativity so we've been

00:33:48.880 talking about noticing with our eyes because that's what people think of but we can notice things

00:33:53.540 with our other senses what are some things that we can do to notice with our ears our smell our taste

00:33:59.260 etc yeah the book's actually set up this way we start with visual stuff and then it moves into the

00:34:05.240 other senses for exactly this reason because i think that people immediately associate when you say

00:34:09.420 noticing they immediately think visual but there are a couple of things that i would suggest

00:34:15.000 one that i do in my life all the time is this it's in the book it's it's described as there's a famous

00:34:24.160 john cage composition called 433 that when it was first performed consisted of someone sitting in front

00:34:31.460 of the piano and not playing it for four minutes and 33 seconds now this was not a very popular piece

00:34:37.180 when it was performed but you know it's a comment it's people read it as a comment on silence but it's

00:34:44.200 really a comment on listening and it's really a comment on on engaging with everything you can

00:34:50.360 and can't hear so i suggest hijacking that and covering as the way a cover band would cover something

00:34:57.660 cover 433 which you can do at any time you can not play the piano for four minutes and 33 seconds and i'll

00:35:03.980 literally do this i'll put my phone on the timer on 433 and just sit in my office and see what sounds

00:35:10.000 come at me which could be i i live in new orleans i work at home in a residential neighborhood

00:35:17.060 pointing at a my office points at a quiet street so there might be some bird song there might be a

00:35:23.060 train in the distance my neighbor peter might be out holding forth on the porch as he does from time to

00:35:29.540 time and um you kind of over time build up a little sort of like repertoire of what are the sounds of my

00:35:36.700 neighborhood so that's sort of challenge that i put in the book is think about having a what if you had

00:35:41.540 to draw a map of the most interesting sounds in your neighborhood the five most interesting sounds

00:35:47.180 then you can extend that to other senses what if you had to do a map of the five most interesting

00:35:52.580 smells in your neighborhood and there are artists who have done elaborate smell walk tours of cities

00:35:58.420 you know trying to sort of capture and we all know how visceral that sense of smell can be

00:36:04.700 or you could build something around textures taste is trickier right you don't want to go licking

00:36:10.440 buildings or whatever you don't really want to go lick building but you can think about uh you could

00:36:14.620 think about five tastes that just define your neighborhood with being uh restaurants and things

00:36:21.040 like that um but the and then we even in the in the book i even get into the idea of duchamp talked

00:36:26.820 about this idea of the infra thin which is stuff that's kind of beyond the five senses like

00:36:32.240 the feeling of the chair that someone has just gotten out of things that kind of don't really

00:36:38.420 get so that gets kind of advanced but it's fun to think about like what what what senses are what

00:36:43.460 what can i detect that doesn't even fall within the five senses and it becomes you know again it

00:36:48.140 becomes game like i looked buildings when i was a kid and you're still here to tell the i'm still

00:36:53.600 tell the tell the you know yeah when i read that about taste uh and that's the right cow you can

00:36:58.180 lick it and i was like i did that because i remember i could the memory came flooding back

00:37:01.620 you know i grew up in oklahoma city and our we did our banking at the murrah building that you know

00:37:06.940 was bombed but i remember distinctly licking that building for some reason and wow i don't that

00:37:13.420 your book helped me remember that so

00:37:15.680 well i mean maybe we could convert it into like you don't want to lick buildings but but like be

00:37:23.160 really ambitious and adventurous about like where you can taste things as you move about your city or

00:37:32.140 your neighborhood or the neighborhood you work in and short of licking buildings but like where

00:37:37.000 taste can be found that's a good challenge yeah rock rocks have taste people don't they do have a taste

00:37:42.180 um so we also talk about in the book you talk about like the role of solitude

00:37:48.660 in noticing what is what's the role do you think most noticing is like is it it's an individual thing

00:37:54.240 um primarily or can you do this with a group uh you can do both and there's the way that the way that

00:38:00.800 what happened the next in the in the way the book is structured the way the uh exercises are organized

00:38:05.380 is there are there's a batch that are specifically designed it to help you in noticing other people

00:38:13.120 basically but then it does end on a on a more personal inward note with ideas about and i think

00:38:20.180 this is important now to go back to what we were talking about at the beginning there are there are

00:38:25.340 very logical reasons why we need to be aware you know why that fear of missing out thing is real like

00:38:31.840 we want to be generally aware of what the pack the tribe the society is thinking about but it's also

00:38:39.140 kind of vital and it's harder now to take that time to devote to yourself to devote to your own

00:38:46.720 reflection so that some of the ideas literally come down to in one case make an appointment with

00:38:52.700 yourself the same way that you make appointments all week long with people for work reasons or social

00:38:58.300 reasons or whatever give yourself that hour a week where and this came from mike birbiglia

00:39:03.520 talking about the way he put it was you have an appointment with your brain

00:39:08.520 at a bus and so cafe this is so he could work on a personal project and feel like that's as important

00:39:15.440 and you have to honor that as much as you honor business meetings and then i had a student who i make

00:39:22.320 my students invent their own exercise attention exercise and i had a student who said oh i misunderstood

00:39:29.840 the assignment i did it wrong because what i did was i bought a cactus and i took care of it for a week

00:39:35.460 and i said okay that's definitely not what i had in mind but caring for something is the ultimate

00:39:43.580 you know act of attention and that is the goal of building those attention muscles is to make sure that

00:39:50.540 you're paying attention to what you care about and you care about what you're paying attention to

00:39:54.720 well rob this has been a fun conversation that like there's a ton more of these exercises in the book

00:39:59.200 where can people go to learn more about the book and your work so the best place to go is robwalker.net

00:40:05.900 and robwalker.net slash noticing is the section that has stuff about the book including the

00:40:14.620 there's a newsletter that comes out every week or two where i share new exercises or ideas that i've

00:40:22.760 come up with since the book and also the very popular icebreaker of the week feature where i get

00:40:31.540 people to submit and if you have listeners who have a good icebreaker question i really hope that they'll

00:40:36.600 zoom on over there and submit it because that's a reader driven feature so that's the best place i'm on

00:40:41.720 twitter at not rob walker and facebook at facebook.com slash consumed so any of those places are good

00:40:50.520 so the icebreaker that's intrigued me what is like the most bizarre interesting icebreaker prompt you've

00:40:56.040 gotten well this is a little bit of a cheat because it's something that i got from and i give her

00:41:02.420 whitney her name's whitney who she in some ways inspired this whole thing and has this amazing had this

00:41:08.740 amazing question that i experienced in real life i was seeing her for i was part of a group work thing

00:41:14.640 and we were at lunch and she had this question about whether under the right circumstances if you

00:41:22.140 were offered a chance to eat human flesh but you were guaranteed that no one was like the for what

00:41:29.840 somehow no one was harmed would you taste it would you taste it and listening to people answer that and

00:41:36.300 like their rationales and the looks on their faces i know that sounds weird but uh it's really

00:41:41.700 interesting it's a really good icebreaker yeah do that on your first date do not not do that on your

00:41:49.020 dating advice from rob walker ask no yeah right no well rob this has been a great conversation thanks

00:41:54.860 for your time it's been a pleasure listen i really appreciate you were great i guess it was rob walker he's

00:41:59.900 the author of the book the art of noticing it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you find

00:42:04.120 out more information about his work at his website rob walker.net also check out our show notes at

00:42:08.660 aom.is slash noticing we can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

00:42:12.880 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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00:43:18.820 you

The Art of Manliness - September 09, 2019

#541： The Art of Noticing

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