Anyone feel overstimulated? Anyone feel like you simply have way too many things clamoring for your immediate attention to bother with noticing something else? I get it! The point of this post today is not to make you feel bad for missing the details. Rather, it’s to encourage a pause and give you a case for doing so.
I recently came across this article on what the author, Bruce Feiler, calls “the noticing game,” which he invented with his family. They basically go around the dinner table once a week and talk about one thing they each noticed over the course of the week. Most of the things are small, the day-to-day details of seasons changing and lives being lived.
The skill of noticing is important to the human experience, not least due to our need to feel connected to each other and our surroundings. Ever felt like you go unnoticed, unacknowledged, or forgotten? When we notice each other or things around us, we feel more connected.
What does this have to do with anything related to your business, improvement, or infrastructure? Well, friends, I’ll tell you. The first step to any kind of strategic improvement, any kind of important change, any kind of shift you want to see anywhere in your business starts first with noticing. Why? Because if you’re disconnected from what’s going on, any effort you make will likely be misguided, misplaced, or inappropriate – resulting in something other than your desired outcome.
Noticing what? Not just your own discomfort or fear. Change rooted in discomfort or fear is short-lived – not permanent – because it’s driven by a feeling. Once that feeling changes, or the pressure lessens, or the focus shifts, we take our foot off the gas and typically go back to the way things were.
No, it starts with noticing something about how your business is operating. You might start to pay attention due to discomfort or fear, but rather than diving into action without consideration, you lean into that experience. You start to notice what’s going on within it, why it feels the way it does, what’s actually happening, who’s actually impacted. Pausing to notice – making space for the connections – is what will then create the impetus for the change that actually needs to be made.
Noticing is not just looking. We look all the time – but do we take in what we are looking at? Do we engage with it? Do we allow ourselves to engage with what we are seeing? Noticing is an exchange: our attention for new information. It’s a worthwhile exchange.
The other thing about noticing? It helps us stay grounded. Noticing what’s going on around you allows you to think critically about what you’re experiencing. It allows you to better formulate an effective course of action. It allows you to consider all the variables in front of you.
In sum, here’s three positive outcomes of noticing:
- Connecting
- Understanding what’s real and what isn’t
- Being grounded
Last thing I’ll say on this: for those of you who scoff at the importance of connecting or being connected, when you are disconnected from what is really going on, you lose track of yourself and reality. You are caught up in the whim of your own fancy, which is fickle and can change by the minute.
How might you practice noticing? Try the activity below (make sure you go to the source for context behind these!) and talk with someone else about what you noticed. What have they noticed? Are there any commonalities? What might you do with this information – the data you are gathering through noticing?
Activity: Read the article this post was inspired by. Choose one of the exercises Mr. Feiler suggests to practice noticing. For your reference, those are:
- Take a walk
- Take control
- Take note
But go on over there to see what he means by these!