Every day we have in front of us a quantity of stimuli coming from the everyday objects and events that are shown to us, stimuli that are ultimately valuable information.
The problem is that we do not make adequate use of our sense of sight, we look but we do not observe, we have lost our observing ability.
Let’s take an example, let’s see a painting by Picasso, Velazquez, El Greco, etc. the painting you want. For those who are not used to this art, they will hold their attention for a few seconds, and say “very nice, I like it …” but for a mind trained in this art, they will detect multiple details that will describe the feeling of the author and his protagonists, the lines , the color, the depth, the texture, the iconography, the symbols … You will know how to express all the information that the work transmits to you.
A personal example, I remember that as a child I would meet friends in the street to play to see who would see more vehicles of a certain model first, we would sit down and start the competition, the most curious thing about the game is that it seemed that all the cars of that models appeared that day and when we were not playing those models did not appear. This is certainly not the case, the traffic of vehicles was normal and routine, the only thing is that those days of games we paid attention to a specific model and we detected the amount. Continuing with the example of cars, surely when you have decided to buy a vehicle of a specific make and model, you have suddenly started to see it everywhere, and it is not that they have agreed to buy the same car They’ve always been there, we’ve just never paid attention to it.
We have to break with this observing passivity, since we can obtain a large amount of information from daily scenes. The ideas for finding our business model may be there, right under our noses, but we must observe, not just look.
Let’s practice and play one of the following games:
- Focus your attention on some detail even if it seems irrelevant and start asking questions to answer you: What is it? Because it is there? Who, how, when has it been put there? What function does it have? which shape has? what color has? What smell does it have? Etc.
- Another game, although it is advisable to do it as a couple or with other people, if you go down the street, establish an object and carry out a competition of who finds more or how many pass in front of you.
- This game is the most important, also to play in company. It is about going to a certain establishment or place. After a few minutes, one must close his eyes and the other must ask him questions from his surroundings and determine his observing capacity. For example, if you are in a park: How many people are in the park? How many bikes? How many banks? What was at the entrance to the park? Is there a trash can next to you? What color are the flowers behind you? Etc.
- You can do the same game if you are alone, how? Observe for a while, then take a piece of paper and try to draw what you have seen, all the details that you remember. No matter how you draw it, the important thing is that you capture as much detail as possible. At the beginning of these games it is normal to remember very few details, but as time goes by you will remember more and more, you will be surprised.
Looking does not imply any effort on our mind, so we must perform these exercises that invite you to concentrate on what you see. Do these exercises and you will see that after a while observing it will not involve a great effort, it will be as natural as breathing.