An interesting piece by John Manson, entitled, ‘The Discipline of Noticing‘. The key idea in this article is ‘to notice’. Noticing, as simple as it sounds, could actually be one of the hardest things to do.

Manson’s explains that noticing is something that doesn’t happen intentionally. It comes and goes, and there is no guarantee. The most you can do is increase the likelihood of it occurring by exercising discipline to notice things around you. And by noticing, it means to say that a person who has noticed an occurrence should be able to re-tell the story to others or to himself. To actively mark that occurrence as a valuable piece of information to be reflected upon. That, is noticing.

There are so many things that we are aware of, but have never really noticed. For example, if I asked you to name one of the items on the back of a $20AUD bill, could you do it? Because I can’t. We look at these pieces of paper frequently, and have been doing so ever since we could remember. And yet, we still can’t recreate an image of a $20AUD bill in our minds.

Noticing isn’t as easy as I thought it was. Mindblowing stuff. Now, to test if you were noticing, answer this question: What is the title of the article?