Coping 3: Noticing
Coping is short posts on Fridays about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 3, the importance of noticing.
The world becomes bland and routine far too easily, especially when life is busy and things need to get done. There are a number of different strategies I cycle through to not become too comfortable in seeing the world that way. Though I often lapse, I try to remind myself that noticing is worthwhile.
This one is an assignment I came up with for my students a few years ago. We were at a design museum and I asked them to do the following, as an introduction to taking time for noticing.
Staying with it
Pick an object. Stay with it, look at it, experience it for longer than you normally would. How long is normal? 10 second? 30 seconds? A minute? Five? What happens when you overstay your usual inclination? What does it mean to stay with the object? What do you see that you might not have seen otherwise?
